The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the country with strict shari'a rules and a totally man's world. I was thrown out here a couple of months ago after I accepted a job offer in the Jubail Industrial City. It is a massive industrial complex with an array of distillation towers, reactors and flare stacks as far as the eyes can see. There are plans to expand the Industrial City as if the current site isn't big enough!

Living in the Kingdom is not that bad, but it is not too good either. Obviously petrol and gas are cheaper here, much, much cheaper than Malaysia. Cars are cheap too. Unfortunately, I don't have my Saudi driver's license yet. So I won't be talking about a car for a while.

A variety of foods can be found here. They vary from excellent to palatable to a horribly taste food substitute! Malaysian won't miss Malaysian food much because ... we ARE truly Asian ... and, Asian foods are abundance here.

Most notable difference between Malaysia and the Kingdom is Public Holidays. As far as I know, there only 3 Public Holidays in KSA: Eid ul Fitr (5 days), Eid ul Adha (5 days) and National Day (1 day). So if you want to come and work in KSA, you better make sure you like to WORK!

Adnan Md Shariff

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