ON REMINISCING SAUDI ARABIA

During our breaktime, my colleague and I are talking about our experiences when we were still working in Saudi Arabia.

It was funny because our experiences were almost the same.

We both know that we have the vegetable of life in Saudi Arabia, and it's the ordinary lettuce. We call this as such because in Saudi, we have very limited ingredients whenever we cook something. We do not have kangkong, pechay, ampalaya leaves, or even the chow-chow (chayote) there. So be it sinigang, nilaga, monggo, tinolo, whatever dish you have in mind that you have to put some veggies on, I am 100% sure that lettuce will be a one of the ingredients.

Love life, oh yes. We all have one don't we? Both of us were in a relationship when we left the Philippines to Saudi Arabia. It's not just a simple relationship because both were already counting the years. Yet when we arrived in Saudi, both of our partners betrayed us and dated someone else. Typical ain't it?

And as we were both young back then, after the breakup along came other suitors. I really don't understand why old people in Saudi (particularly our Kabayans) are very judgmental when it comes to relationship. If they will see you going out will someone, they will brand you as a flirt, malandi, or BI! It's as if you're not allowed to date someone because they won't like it. I don't if they were envious because you still have a life while they don't, or is it because they didn't want to see someone else happy? What's worse is that you'll be the talk of the town for the next couple of months if you're seeing someone.

Last but not the least, we talked about the simplicity of Saudi life. Saudi, as we all know, is a conservative country. Even the facilities are very limited especially if you are living in the province, like we did. Weekends in Saudi are simple. Friends will usually go to a park (of course with a married couple so that it'll be safe for men and women to mingle) and have a picnic and that's it. We also talked about the never-ending birthday and maasalama parties that we have to attend even if we didn't know the celebrant.

We shared a good life talking about this and realized that we almost had the same experiences in Saudi Arabia; some were good and some were not, but one thing is for sure, and that is the lessons that we have learned from our experience there that helped us to be what we are right now.