Saudi Arabia/Bahrain

Just spent a week in Saudi Arabia. I flew into Bahrain, stayed with a colleague on the Friday night, then travelled over the causeway into Saudi the next day.

What an odd country...incredibly hot (47 degrees C) and no alcohol! I stayed in a place called Al Khobar as I was giving a presentation at ARAMCO (based in Khobar) on the Monday evening

http://isasaudi.org/xoops/modules/news/article.php?storyid=22

I stayed at a Holiday Inn (where else) for 3 nights. The weirdest thing was watching the British Lions vs South Africa with a whole load of South Africans in a "compound". This compound was previously a British Aerospace facility and the security was incredible. It was also the only place you could get alcohol being brewed on site. Unfortunately there was a rite of passage of a chilli vodka shot...not great in the heat...and the Lions lost...

Saudi is an odd place really. On the one hand its somewhere that is a really interesting place to visit, on the other its somewhere I was quite glad to leave. Not many people get the chance to go to Saudi - they don't readily issue tourist visa's and so I feel quite luck to have been. What was weird was the shopping malls. First shop I saw was Debenham's followed by Marks & Spencer! How strange is that!

Jo'burg

Flew into Johannesburg on Saturday night for a week over there with our distributor. We were attending the S.A. Process Expo show and we also had some visits at a few customers. Its the middle of the SA winter akthough you wouldn't know it. Stayed at the Hilton. Was very nice. There's a lot of building work going on in to make the country ready for the 2010 World Cup. This is particularly evident on the roads as virtually every junction is being remodelled to make them more efficient.

Overall I was a little disappointed with Jo'burg - I never felt really safe and to me, the city had few redeeming features. Apparently Cape Town is where to go.

One thing that was nice though was the food and drink - the steaks were absolutely amazing, easily the best I've tasted, whilst the wine was on a par...

Summer Ball

We had some tickets to go the Capital FM Summer Ball. It was taking place at the Emirates stadium...quite an impressive place. The lineup was good too...Lionel Richie, Saturdays, Leona Lewis, Dizzee Rascal, etc, etc (...ohh and Blue...they were rubbish...)