"Lets Waste Time, Chasing Cars..." العربية السعودية
The Middle East, Not the Midwest
Hashing in Riyadh: kindred spirits running and walking through the desert to forget how far we were from home—and remember how simple it was to have fun.
Sun is shining. Wind is blowing. How bad can I be doing?
Hashing in Riyadh
A friendship of kindred spirits, joined together for the sole purpose of forgetting how far away we were from home and remembering how simple it was to have fun.
Run or walk. The pace matters less than leaving the compound, entering the landscape, and moving long enough for the mind to change channels.
It was good to do something besides work, sleep, eat, and complain. Compound life made distance manageable, but it also compressed experience into a repeating loop. The hash broke the loop.
Outside the walls, the desert became less like scenery and more like release. Movement restored social contact, humour, and the sensation that life was larger than the assignment.
Inside the compound, expatriate life followed a more familiar set of rules. Outside, local expectations shaped dress, public behaviour, shopping, and the separation of social spaces. Two words quickly became operational vocabulary: halal, permitted, and haram, forbidden.
I once learned the boundary through clothing when a restaurant objected to my shorts. The moment was absurd, memorable, and instructive: the environment did not adapt simply because I had arrived with different assumptions.
Movement
The body became the fastest route out of boredom. A walk changed the day before the destination mattered.
Community
Distance from home created a new kind of temporary family—people connected less by origin than by circumstance.
Reframing
What first felt restrictive eventually became a field lesson in reading culture before judging the operating environment.
Field Notes From 2002–2009
The observations below describe the Saudi Arabia I encountered during those years. They are preserved as dated memoir—not presented as a description of the country today.
The Compound and the Outside World
Compound life was a protected residential system built around company employees. Inside, expatriates lived with greater social familiarity. Outside, local customs and rules became immediately visible.
The contrast could make ordinary errands feel like border crossings. The walls did more than provide security. They separated two operating systems.
One-Eyed Man in the Land of the Blind
At the time, my work permit—not tourism—was the route into the Kingdom. Social functions were heavily separated by gender, and public interaction followed rules that could feel opaque to a newly arrived expatriate.
The humour came from the gap between official language and lived explanation. A Saudi counterpart once translated a newspaper claim about traffic accidents with perfect comic timing:
Jeddah, 2002 · Infrastructure on Sandy Soil
In Jeddah, I witnessed the continuing arrival of twentieth-century infrastructure onto desert ground: roads, power, communications, schools, housing, and utilities.
The scale felt less like gradual development and more like an operating system being installed in public.
Riyadh, 2009 · A Bit Like Mars
Riyadh felt remote even when connected by modern systems. Heat, distance, compounds, and a limited public entertainment landscape created an atmosphere unlike anywhere I had lived before.
The challenge was not only understanding the rules. It was recognising how quickly unfamiliar conditions could become ordinary.
The Pascal Problem
The old observation attributed to Blaise Pascal followed us into the desert: much human trouble begins with the inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Compound boredom tested that proposition. Hashing answered it by leaving the room.
Somewhere in the Desert
Sun and Wind
How bad can I be doing?
Hashing in Riyadh
Motion created emotion, whether we ran or walked.
The Majik Kingdom
The assignment before the doctrine had a name.
Places and People
Landlines connect places. Cell phones connect people.
Jeddah, 2002
Modern infrastructure meeting sandy soil.
The Teacher Becomes Ready
When the teacher is ready, the students appear.
Is It Safe?
Risk begins with the question. Readiness begins with the honest answer.
We Speak English or People Die
The later war-years chapter where language training moved from controlled environments to live operational consequence.
Open the War YearsContinue Through the Desert Years
Hashing did not shorten the distance to America. It made the distance livable. Motion restored emotion, friendship interrupted isolation, and the desert became more than the place surrounding the assignment.