Oh! Welcome back sandy season...

Image is taken from http://cindy-twoplustriplets.blogspot.com

When I woke up this morning, the light coming through the window was different. It was not your regular sunny day light, rather denser.
It didn't take long for me to notice our sand/dust storm days are back.

Last year they started around this time and lasted until late October. Sometimes it is so strong that you cannot breath without a mask or see without protective goggles!

Well, it is not my favorite time of year, if I must say. I don't find it pleasant to clean the dust layer on my scooter every single day! I can almost hear you suggest that "get a cover". Well, good idea! But I don't think I will have any luck to find such miscellaneous stuff in here.

Anyway... Stay safe fellow KAUST residents. Try not to walk if it's not urgent and do not forget to keep your goggles and masks handy.

Oh! By the way, RAMADAN KAREEM to all fellow Muslims. I hope this Ramadan will be as festive as it was last years. :) I am hoping to catch a camel-ride fair on campus this year. I was so jealous ( :-P ) all year round when I saw friends' pictures on or next to a well decorated, cute camel during Ramadan 2009 (the very first semester of KAUST).

Well, I guess that's enough for today.
Cheers.

Dear fire alarm, please stop! Would you?

KAUST fire alarm systems are famous for their "weird" behaviours. Once ours is activated while we were cooking something in the oven around lunch break time and we called the maintenance people to come and stop it (because you don't have the panel password to stop it by yourself!). They came the other morning around 9 AM!! Thanks God that my dear husband had already found out the password by exploiting the options and stopped the annoying thing.

This interesting fire alarm panel woke us up the other night around 2 AM by giving the most annoying bleeping noise! It was a CPU error, and the password knowledge was not helping this time! We immediately called the maintenance guys again. Luckily they came around 2:45 AM and stopped the bleeping. After they were gone and we were hoping to get some sleeping before going to work in the morning, it started bleeping and screaming again around 3:15 AM. We called the guys, they came at 4AM and disabled the whole system with a conclusion that our panel needs a CPU change!

I would be very grateful if they did tell us the way to disable it in such cases. It is not a pleasant thing to be waken up by the screaming fire alarm panel, especially if you need to go to work in couple of hours!
KAUST needs to find a solution to this specific problem, and I hope they will do it soon.

Burglary incident vol 3! Safety IS an issue on KAUST campus!

When we first moved here, KAUST campus was a safe place, almost as safe as New England! We didn't need to lock our doors and we could easily let maintenance people/caretakers in while we are not present. Good, old days...

Recently, our community members received an e-mail from the victim of the 3rd burglary incident within the past 6 months!

First one was a student, who locked the sliding balcony door of his room, but when he was out somebody opened the door using force and stole his electronics (~ 1000$ worth he says). Of course he immediately reported the incident to the campus security, but they couldn't find the person who broke in! Apparently those surveillance cameras everywhere are for ornamental purposes!!

Incident number 2 happened right after the first one. This time victim was a family living in a townhouse. Around 2 AM she heard some noise, and went out to check in the dark. She started screaming when she saw the silhouette of the burglar. Then he (the burglar) hit her and ran down the stairs to go out of the house. Her husband woke up, they called the security, etc etc... They finally caught him who turns out to be a plumber at KAUST! You know, the kind that we welcome to our houses without having trust issues! I do not know what happened to the guy, hope he got the punishment he deserved.

The last incident happened 2 days ago to another family who lives in a townhouse, also. This time, burglar didn't enter from the front door or the balcony door... The entrance was done from the roof! Thanks to the victim's e-mail, we learned that our roof entrance locks might be broken by these nasty people!

Such a shame for KAUST that the campus is becoming so unsafe. You cannot let your child play out anymore. You are not safe even you lock every single door in the house, since KAUST burglars know their ways from the roof or maybe from other secret passages only they know!!! 

Only thing I can say is please stay safe fellow residents...

Introducing your spy in KAUST ;)

Hello dear reader;

The first post of a blog is always awkward, but I will try my very best!

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology is an international research university owned by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. KAUST campus is located next to Red Sea, in a city named Thuwal (80 km North of Jeddah).

I am a resident of KAUST since March 2010. I experienced the life in it both as a dependent and as a student and will soon experience as an employee. So, I will try to reflect a wide-angle of point of views in this blog.

Hope you enjoy reading.

Cheers,