First trip out of my comfort zone
Mar 19, 2009 10:58:43 GMT
Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2009 10:58:43 GMT
The very first “real” business trip that I ever took was to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was also my first trip to anywhere in the “3rd World” as it was called at the time. I hadn’t been with the company very long, but my boss was hospitalized and somebody absolutely had to replace him. I started out quite confident, but all confidence disappeared the moment they closed the door of the Saudi Arabian Airlines plane and played the scary recording of the Muslim travel prayer. It sounded like an Arabic version of James Earl Jones reading a text that would begin along the lines of “Abandon all hope….”
In-flight entertainment was one of my next discoveries. None of that multi-channel individual screen stuff in those days, and anyway there were certain rules that must be followed: no direct interaction between men and women in any film presented, so it was a submarine movie. I think there was a scene or two with a woman speaking on the telephone to her husband. There were a couple of missing scenes that I can only guess at. There may have been the husband kissing his wife goodbye at the beginning of the film. That would be a definite no-no.
After several hours, we approached our destination. All of the women had suddenly disappeared from the flight and were replaced by mysterious ninja warriors in black. Night had fallen over the desert as the plane descended, and I could see campfires and tents. Where the hell was I going?
This was before they built all of those incredible airports in the Middle East, so Jeddah airport was just a big aluminum hangar. We walked out of the plane into a blast furnace (it was August and the temperature at 9 pm was 35°C). And then we walked into the building which was like a freezer – it must have been 15°. It was just a big frozen box with blinding fluorescent tubes completely covering the ceiling. It took about an hour to clear immigration. Each passport was carefully inspected as though it were the first passport that the officer had ever seen and that he had been informed that there was a very small mistake on it that he needed to find. There were also long lists of names to consult (I assumed it was the “shit list”) before finally stamping the passport.
Strangely, customs was not interested in my bag, although they were busy ransacking suitcases all around me. I just opened it, closed it, and a big white X in chalk was scrawled across it by the official.
After stepping over about 200 pilgrims sleeping on the pavement in front of the airport, I then had the pleasure of negotiating my very first 3rd world taxi. (The next morning I discovered that I had only paid triple the rate, while the Americans coming to the same meeting had paid 10 times the rate.)
I was never so relieved as when I finally found myself in a normal hotel room where I could lock the door, take a shower and recover from my very first case of culture shock.
Over the following days, I discovered many incredible things about Saudi culture, and I am not even talking about their religious practices. It was really hard to imagine that people could be so different from me, in the way they ate, the way they managed their time, the way they walked, the way they dressed, the things that interested them… When certain people say that basically people are the same all over the world, I would have to disagree.
In-flight entertainment was one of my next discoveries. None of that multi-channel individual screen stuff in those days, and anyway there were certain rules that must be followed: no direct interaction between men and women in any film presented, so it was a submarine movie. I think there was a scene or two with a woman speaking on the telephone to her husband. There were a couple of missing scenes that I can only guess at. There may have been the husband kissing his wife goodbye at the beginning of the film. That would be a definite no-no.
After several hours, we approached our destination. All of the women had suddenly disappeared from the flight and were replaced by mysterious ninja warriors in black. Night had fallen over the desert as the plane descended, and I could see campfires and tents. Where the hell was I going?
This was before they built all of those incredible airports in the Middle East, so Jeddah airport was just a big aluminum hangar. We walked out of the plane into a blast furnace (it was August and the temperature at 9 pm was 35°C). And then we walked into the building which was like a freezer – it must have been 15°. It was just a big frozen box with blinding fluorescent tubes completely covering the ceiling. It took about an hour to clear immigration. Each passport was carefully inspected as though it were the first passport that the officer had ever seen and that he had been informed that there was a very small mistake on it that he needed to find. There were also long lists of names to consult (I assumed it was the “shit list”) before finally stamping the passport.
Strangely, customs was not interested in my bag, although they were busy ransacking suitcases all around me. I just opened it, closed it, and a big white X in chalk was scrawled across it by the official.
After stepping over about 200 pilgrims sleeping on the pavement in front of the airport, I then had the pleasure of negotiating my very first 3rd world taxi. (The next morning I discovered that I had only paid triple the rate, while the Americans coming to the same meeting had paid 10 times the rate.)
I was never so relieved as when I finally found myself in a normal hotel room where I could lock the door, take a shower and recover from my very first case of culture shock.
Over the following days, I discovered many incredible things about Saudi culture, and I am not even talking about their religious practices. It was really hard to imagine that people could be so different from me, in the way they ate, the way they managed their time, the way they walked, the way they dressed, the things that interested them… When certain people say that basically people are the same all over the world, I would have to disagree.
