I was a co-founder of the Dhahran Rugby Club in 1971 (I think) together with Peter Phillips who went on to also found a club in Salalah in Oman. He and I drove people working on the Dhahran Airbase as teachers, aircraft maintenance guys or the TTI, who wanted to play to the Aramco softball ground and kind of played without any posts. I think we might have even played a Royal Navy ship once.
The game of Rugby Football has been played in Saudi Arabia since 1970 when some enthusiastic players of the Airworks company met to throw a rugby ball around amongst themselves. This official version is an amalgam of the prefaces for the 1978 Gulf Rugby Union Chairman’s Invitational and the 1979 Thailand Tour and has been updated with some statistics.
We drive up to the Greek border crossing and show the customs people our international insurance and our European passports, as I have transformed myself from Canadian to British. These documents are received well and there is no hassle and no problem, making this the easiest crossing so far.
The next day was declared to be a definite “no driving day” and the Discovery Land Rover keys are stashed away. Breakfast was grabbed at the hotel before walking to the ‘Misir Carsis’ or Egyptian Bazaar, a busy and exciting place even in the rain. It is packed with all sorts of folks in many different dress codes and skin tones all yelling and pulling and pointing at the stuff packed into the bazaar.
In our modern high tech lives, with instant access to global news, email, and Google Maps, how often do we think about the nomads in our world who live as they did in earlier times, without any of these modern conveniences? Who are they? Where do they live?
After a good breakfast at the hotel, we fill up with 45 liters of diesel at a cost of TL 5,100,000 on a very cold and frosty morning. It is a pleasant drive along the coastal road to the E-80 toll road, which we join. With few readable signs, we become confused about which highway we are really on and where we are going.
Salukis in My Life is the title of a book written by Sir Terence Clark, who was the British ambassador in Iraq and Oman where he came to know and love salukis. Like him, I too have had salukis (four of them so far) and I could not imagine being without one of these elegant, aristocratic creatures in my life.
Last week, Aramco retirees and brats enjoyed the 5-day Aramco Hafla Cruise Reunion departing from Miami, FL aboard the Celebrity Summit. This beautifully equipped sailing vessel offered lovely accommodations, lively entertainment, memorable excursions and fine dining.
Once back in the Land Rover Discovery, we head off down more mountain roads to Selcuk, a small town close to the ruins of the famous Roman settlement of Ephesus. We have read about the area and the small Hotel Kalahan, which is well known and is reported to be a very interesting and famous guest house.
Home is where the heart is, And also where the foot is, Home is the smell of freshly baked za’atar filling the aroma of the commissary, Home is the creation of beginnings in a new city, Home is the Arabian sunshine and desert, the palm trees and the souks...
The 2022 Aramco Hafla Reunion Cruise departed Miami on October 31st, setting sail for Cozumel, Mexico. Following a relaxing day at sea, annuitants gathered for a celebratory evening that began with hors d'oeuvres and cocktails, then proceeded with fine dining at the Cosmopolitan restaurant followed by decadent dessert, and finished with a night of mingling and dancing.
With inflation running at multi-decade highs, 2022 has been a difficult year for global stock and bond markets. Amidst this backdrop, a silver lining is that Social Security beneficiaries are set to receive an 8.7% cost of living adjustment (COLA) in 2023. This figure, which is the largest COLA in more than 40 years...
At the Turkish border we are met by the usual hoard of ‘company men’, but we are feeling much surer of ourselves here now that we are out of the Arab world and demanded, loudly and repeatedly, to meet with the official customs officials. This causes some confusion and I end up with the police who demand our passports.
The Aramco Retiree Golf Group held their seventh overall and second 2022 event in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina at the Marriott Myrtle Beach Resort & Spa at Grande Dunes, October 3-7, 2022. It was a fun-filled 5-days of activities including 3 rounds of golf at The Players Club, Barefoot Resort’s Love, and Myrtlewood Palmetto golf courses.
While it’s extremely important to plan for your retirement, what happens when you decide it’s finally time to enter that phase of your life? At Creative Planning, we’ve worked with hundreds of Aramcons, helping them to retire and working with them throughout retirement so that they can achieve the goals they’ve worked so hard for.
On Saturday, we arise to begin our dreaded trip through the Syria border crossing. We had read about the crossing into Syria and none of it was good. We fortify ourselves with a breakfast of hommus, bread and tea at our usual local coffee shop, and buy bread and hommus to eat on the trip. The coffee shop fills one, but only one, of our flasks with hot water.
Explorers are a noble breed, and Arabia has certainly had its share - Bertram Thomas, Lady Anne Blunt, Gertrude Bell, Harry St. John Philby, Wilfred Thesiger, and, of course, T. E. Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia. You can add another name to that list. Mark Evans.
Because of our short time in Jordan we are forced to cram as much as possible into our visit to the country. We return to the hotel, collect the Discovery Land Rover and drive south, out of the city and onto the ‘Kings Highway’. This is a very old and bad road, with a rough surface, and lots of bumps and bends.
Have you ever played Mah Jongg on the computer? It's a type of match game played with Chinese tiles. I've played it on occasion but it certainly didn't look like the active game that I saw being played in Chinese parks. Besides, I have a terrible memory for any type of matching game, so when given the opportunity a couple of years ago, I resisted the offer to learn Mah Jongg with a local group.
‘I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it!’ – I hope most of you were in Saudi when we were amazed by the ‘5- 6-7-8’ performances to this song. Ah, those amazing, talented performers!! Well, that’s just the way I feel about this Hafla cruise on the Celebrity Summit that we’ll soon experience. I’ve been asked to write about packing/preparing for this adventure.