Category: culture

We Love You, Baba

Father’s Day is celebrated in Scandinavia on the second Sunday of November which was this previous Sunday. Happy Father’s day to my own father and to my amazing husband who gets to enjoy two Father’s Days a year! But he deserves it! I want to dedicate this post to my dear husbandRead more

Welcome To The World Little Prince!

I’m so happy to announce that we were blessed with a healthy baby boy a week ago. Everything went well with the labor this time around, thank God we were able to avoid another awful birthing experience in Saudi Arabia. We were lucky and blessed to have a beautiful, all-natural birth with aRead more

National Day Celebrations In Riyadh

The Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia celebrated its 82nd “birthday” or National Day on Sunday the 23rd of September 2012. As usual, the streets were full of Saudis celebrating the National Day. In addition to everyone having Sunday off, King Abdullah had given an extra day off for governmentRead more

Saudi Hospitals, Bureaucracy And Bullying

A colleague I used to work with recently asked me, don’t I miss work at the hospital? My first reaction was yes in a way I do miss it. I miss the patients mostly. I miss interaction with them and the opportunity of meeting so many different Saudis from all levels of society and learning aboutRead more

Saudi Positives-The True Stories We Rarely Hear Of

In response to the negative behaviors seen in line cutting post, I was asked by a Finnish reader to write about an example of a very good behavior or a nice deed I witnessed done by a Saudi. No problem! It’s very easy to write about positive incidents in Saudi-Arabia because theyRead more

Saudi Wedding Extravaganza Part 2

The first part of the Saudi wedding experience post left us foreigners still sitting at the table in amazement of the goings on. Read that post here. The main event of the Saudi weddings is of course the arrival of the bride. Like I mentioned before the bride actually stays hidden from the guestsRead more

Recycling The Saudi Values

Recycling, preserving the environment, conservation and green thinking are all mostly alien terms in Saudi-Arabia. Wasting, exploiting the environment, littering and materialism are the way of life in the Kingdom. “The GCC has the world’s highest levels of domestic waste, after the USA,Read more

I See Pink, People

Pink houses, pink villas. Pink trousers on fellas. Pink in the bathroom pink in the garage. Pink at the mosque, is this a mirage? Pink at the gas station! Is this a pink nation? Men with pink shoes, shirts and jeans,  can you tell me what all this means? Is there pink in masses, or is it just myRead more

Good Sides to Life in Saudi-Arabia

In Finland where I’m currently writing from, this time of year (and for a very long time) it gets really dark, murky and gloomy. I haven’t seen the sun for over a week and I’m already feeling depressed and out of energy. Everything seems so expensive and has a tax on it. PublicRead more

Lessons Learned on the Saudi Roads

Let me share a story and a valuable learning experience from our Saudi Road trip. So we were cruising on the highway in the rented SUV somewhere between Kharj and Wadi Al-Dawasir surrounded by literally NOTHING else than rocks. The scenery out there is just flat. Not even the random camels youRead more

The Famous Saudi Hospitality

I experienced hands on the generous side of the Saudi people by having the chance to interact with many families through my work. At the hospital a patient would have their own private rooms and the average length of stay would be 8 days. A nurse typically works around 12 hours a day, on averageRead more

Filthy Rich Arabs Doing Forest Work in Finland

I stumbled upon this news article on a Finnish tabloid magazine about the GCC youth camp that has been arranged for the first time in a tiny town in Eastern Finland. The article about these millionaire Khaleejis in the Finnish forest made me laugh a few times but it was also interesting. Looks likeRead more