Mike's Saudi (43) Back to work in Saudi

Our holiday over it was back to work and get to know my new boss. In my new post I had a new large office and two Pakistanis to work with, they were great lads once we got to know each other we worked well as a team. In fact at one time three of us talked about setting up a secretarial agency in Karachi when we left Saudi. Apparently much of the official documentation in Pakistan was in English and most of the population needed well written letters in English, we thought it would be quite a good market and pretty close to what we were doing for the boss. The way things have worked out over there I’m pleased it got no further than talking about it.

Our job was to support the boss in whatever way he wanted, his written English wasn’t so good at the time so I would compose his letters for him and the boys would type them. Then I’d explain the content to him and he would alter it to say precisely what he wanted to say as time went by I got to know him so well that there were fewer and fewer alterations but I always checked with him. This new job of mine was not a BAC contractually recognized position but we called me an advisor which in fact I was and the actual work developed as his trust grew.

One day quite unannounced a couple of large cabinets with keyboards and TV screens built into them. These were word processors of a very early type. Soon we got down to learning how to use them, they were ingenious contraptions that would work in English or Arabic which when you think about it is very clever as English reads left to right and Arabic right to left. Of course they did not translate it was one or the other at the flick of a switch. One day two Saudi girls showed up and offered the boss 10,000 riyals for one of the machines to help them with their school homework. However they believed that the word processors translated, but it just shows what country of contrasts Saudi was at the time when school girls could stump up 10,000 riyal for a machine to help them with their schooling. (Riyals were 7=£1 or $2)