Stranded in the UK

The past two weeks started normally enough…

I have been playing squash at the sports center and coincidentally had just read something in a magazine that said people should not be afraid of muscle pain when first starting to exercise. I now fully understand what they were referring to! Ohhhhh – my back, feet, knees, arms and the hundreds of other parts that normally work just fine. I had to get up the night after and take a pain killer. But it was fun.

As many of you know, I went to Wales for a conference between the 11th and 14th of April. I got back on the 22nd – 8 days later than I had intended. The story goes like this:

6.5 hrs flight to London. Next, purchase a ticket from a vending machine in Heathrow and catch Express train to Paddington – 15 minutes flat! Purchase another vending machine train ticket and travel 3 hours to Swansea through the British countryside. Flag a taxi and arrive at my hotel 15 hrs after my departure.  My impression of Britain during spring? Psychedelic green fields with new crops growing, but the trees still do not have leaves, yet they are tinged in green as the buds begin to open; grass, GREEN, green, green, apple blossoms -- what a beautiful sight. Often during my stay I would just stop and turn around, trying to take it all in. Along the train track as I traveled I saw a fox, ducks, pheasant and rabbits were never far from the hedgerows which divided one field from the other. In many of these fields there were two lambs per ewe. I think it will be a good season. Upon arriving at my destination, I found myself in a place a whole lot like Quebec – as in ‘a country within a country’. Welsh is on all the signs, which continually caught me off guard because I habitually read from the left and by the time I figure out that I did not understand, I was passed before I could transfer my attention to the right-hand side where the English was. Oh, and about the names of the people; a real challenge for someone who has never been exposed to the language. Somehow, I just don’t think that many of these people leave this wonderful part of Britain. Reflect if you will, do you know someone with the name that my taxi driver had? Gyrrwr – I copied his name from his ID in the taxi.

Blackboard Conference

Two days were spent among my colleagues who work with Blackboard at educational institutions across the UK, throughout the EU, the United States and even one from Edmonton, Canada! I presented at the conference – you will find me on the second day in the main panel session. I think the most important thing that I learned from the conference was the skill set we need to develop within our team at KAUST.
'Doing London'

When the conference was finished, I traveled back by train to London and checked into a ‘1-star’ hotel close to Paddington Station, the Gresham Hotel, which I found was just one of about 8 hotels side by side -- all part of the same long building.  I guess the building used to be homes and they changed each into a hotel.  [PHOTO] That evening I went for a long walk, which coincidentally passed through an Arab section of the city and stopped at an Italian Restaurant at the furthest point – some place close to Soho along Oxford Street. I spent two nights in the hotel and it was at this time that I learned of the ‘volcano with an unpronounceable name’ had erupted in Iceland and was sending an ash cloud over the UK and flights in and out of Heathrow were canceled.

The Animal Art Fair

Elsen, my brother who lives in Kenya and his wife Amy, were also in the city and I took the underground down to Putney Bridge and walked a few blocks to meet them at the Animal Art Fair where Amy was exhibiting her work. To reduce expenses now that I had found that my stay was to be longer than I had intended, and also because the low-end hotels were all suddenly fully booked as people moved from expensive hotels to less expensive ones to stretch their funds, I moved to Amy’s cousin’s place, Camellia and family. With a hotel stay between, I spent two days at their place. I took the tube all over the place spending one day with Elsen browsing the shops. In full, I spent three days at Fulton Palace where the art show was held – it was lovely to listen to the churches chiming the hour as I wondered around the garden and along the Themes River – much like a call to prayer, but more melodious.

At the end of the show, Elsen and Amy were booked into a hotel and I had been offered a bed ‘out of London’ with Amy’s brother, Cren. So, it was back to Paddington by Tube, then Reading by train and a change to another train to reach the village of Kintbury. I stayed at Cren’s place for the night.

I was getting the distinct feeling that I was experiencing what it was like for children during the Blitz in London when they were shipped out to the farms for safety. Homes were being opened for me and I was given a genuine welcome. Cren and I walked that evening along the Kennet & Avon Canal.  I greeted a few of the people traveling along the canals in barges and one friendly elderly man gave me a magazine on barging in Britain and then called me back as we were walking away and gave me an article on the history of the canal that he had written. I WANT to do a barge trip some day! Here is a short video showing a family moving from lower down in the canal to a higher level.  They had moved into the lock, closed the back gate, flooded the lock, floating up on the rising water and what you see in this video, is the opening of the lock gates at the front of their barge as they move out.

Cren was off into London the next day for work and Amy’s parents dropped by around 10:30 – just enough time for me to have another walk along the canal for a few more photos.

Gillem and Beverley then took me to their home. Oh!!! And what a wonderful place! Thatch roof, and history. The single structure (left building in the image) used to be two, where one of the original buildings was the bakery for the estate. We are talking hundreds of years old here… I found myself in a meditative state and drawn to the back yard where I could look down the valley while sitting in the soft deep sponge-like grass and listen to all the birdlife with the garden pool beside me, while my eyes caught the flashes of movement in the valley below -- could be a pheasant, rabbits or birds foraging in the undergrowth. I love spring time! In the evening the Munt Jac (small antelope the size of a smallish German Shepherd dog) came out of the brambles to graze along the edges of the field.

Wednesday the 21st was when we heard that the flight ban was lifted and with frantic emailing (52 in total for the trip) my travel agency here at the University booked me a flight on the Thursday evening, one week exactly from the day I was to have left originally.

My dream-state became reality on the flight back to Saudi Arabia. Many travel to Saudi at any time of the year, for a short pilgrimage called ‘Umrah’. As with the more well-known pilgrimage, the Haj, the men remove their western attire and put on a white terrycloth robe. Most have two parts, one around their waist and the other over their shoulders. On occasion only one is worn. I realized I was traveling back when I was bumped by someone walking down the isle of the plane and I opened my eyes to see a rather LARGE man moving down the aisle towards me on the way to the restrooms just behind me. He was one of those who only had one robe – and for all to see, he had blue Y fronts… Maybe he was just in a hurry to get to the ‘loo’? Anywhere else, this kind of ‘exposure’ would definitely land a person in the good hands of security. Here… it is just part of our day.

Odds and Ends

I finally got bike license. If you are interested to calculate how long it took, you can scan back in my Blog … Now… should I get a bike or not? Hmmmm And, I really should get back to playing Squash or all the pain will be for not.
Photo Story:
I have an accompanying photo story for this blog if you want to get a better idea of the 'look and feel' of where I went. http://www.pbase.com/pinicola/britain

Bikes, a Fish Dinner and Pets

Since I do not have a car, I have to plan my grocery trips.
The bicycle trip to the store takes about 10 minutes and I have to go often because I can only fit so much into my backpack which is the same one I wear each day to the office. I used to carry a briefcase, now I have become a back-packer. During my bike rides around the campus, I find I am always riding into the wind. Since I live on the coast there is a constant gentle breeze in the morning coming off the land towards the sea (against the direction I go to work) and in the evening a much stronger breeze originates off the water and blows onto the land from the North West and the grocery store is to the North. I am riding predominantly towards the sea on the way home with a full backpack and one or two full grocery bags hung off the handlebars. Sad thing though, I think I bring home more calories in those bags than I burn off riding there and back.

Last week I traveled to Jeddah by taxi again.
This time to get some shoes and a few other essentials that are not available on campus. Guess who we got again? We got "Smiley the 180 km kamakazi taxi driver guy!" He is not able to speak a single word of English and yet we requested specifically and were assured that we would get an English speaking driver, but I guess what is ‘intended and promised’ is not actually reality or what you are guaranteed to get here. I would like to know what the driver calls all the other drivers when he yells at them in Arabic as he madly swerves around them. You know the kind, It is the other guy that is always at fault!

Arindam and family were with me in Jeddah and one of the things we intended to do was have a nice dinner out during our trip. This became my first formal dinner since I have been here. We went to the ‘Fish Restaurant’ where you pay by weight. You walk down this counter and look at all the fish just like you were at a wharf. Each different collection of fish had a different price flag beside them so you can shop by color, by price or by reputation or even shape. I chose the rock snapper-like fish which is supposed to be the best fish from the Red Sea. Arindam and family had lobster in cheese sause. Nice music and nice place! A nice get-away.

During the evening, we stopped at a number of stores and one was a Pet Mart store with real stuffed cinnamon bear, two huge pelicans in the window and a few antelope heads stuffed and hanging on the walls, all with price tags hanging off them. Also, in the main window were two ‘real’ stuffed Indian tigers – full body mounts. I looked, there were no price tags, as these are endangered and sales would be internationally and locally illegal. In the store were mice, turtles, green lizards, (the fast running kind with long back legs), rabbits, cats and dogs. The more exotic animals were meerkat, small primates that were possibly 10 inches head to tail and their heads about the size of a walnut with tufts of hair from their cheeks and ears. These little guys were eating bananas. Also in the store were tropical fish, the kind I see swimming free among the reefs when I dive.

I have been doing quality of IT services surveys
of faculty last week and this week. While walking round the university, I am always impressed with the names on the labs that are being set up in the buildings. It makes me feel like I am living in a science fiction novel. These labs are in the Biophysics Building: Bioactive Molecules Lab, Nanophysics Lab, Bimolecular Lab, Integrative Systems Biology Lab, Nanobiophysics Lab, Plant Stress Genomics Technologies Lab, Proteomics Lab and Genomics Lab are a few of them.

This weekend will be spent here on campus
but come Sunday, I will be in the air flying to London and then by train to a city called Swansea in Wales. I will be there for the week attending and presenting at a Blackboard conference. I hope to meet up with George K who I met in Jordan when I was there. He is now laboring in London and I hope to be able to spend half a day before I catch my flight back to Saudi.