pondělí, dubna 19, 2010

Life in the campus

So here we are, just about a week after I came to Saudi Arabia.

So we have a rented house (I would not need to add much to Martin's description were it written in English :)) in the university campus just opposite of the Harbor Sport Centre. This location proves to be quite beneficial as we use the facilities a lot (different exercise classes, swimming pool, bowling, squash, gym).

The house is semi-detached. It has 2 stories - downstairs there is the kitchen, living room (with the casement (French) door to the terrace and little garden), maid room (with the bathroom), WC, pantry for the washing machine and dryer (both big, American style), a huge entrance hall (very unlike ours in Britain, Martin calls is railway station and I second to that :)) that we use as a parking place for the bikes; upstairs there are 2 bedrooms each with a double bed and a big separate bathroom (it is ridiculous a bit, I always wanted a big bathroom and now we have several of them :)) and a terrace.
The two floors are connected by stairs (24 steps) so we get some exercise even inside the house while fetching coffee or some fruit from the kitchen (the computer is in a bedroom upstairs :)).
There are several air conditioning systems in the house, but they get quite noisy, so I try not to use them too much ... and believe it or not the other day I felt cold here.

The life in the campus is similar to all those we lived before - community connected by the main purpose (here working for the university) having different possibilities to connect to the world outside.
The environment quite surprisingly connects for me the places we've been before:
  • the work is unique (for the University aiming to provide education in science and technology for both men and women coming from around the world - for more see their Vision and Mission) with the objection to help people globally - similar to the EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute) and that to IRRI (International Rice Research Institute)
  • it also has similar facilities for well being of the staff (the cantine, the sport centre) to those at the Genome Campus (EBI)
  • the 'living in a bubble' part here is - thanks to the weather - similar to the Philippines where Martin worked before. We are simply not used to the heat and tend to choose the recreational activities inside.
  • and there are actually a lot of Filipinos working here as helpers, gardeners, in the sport centre ... and it is nice to hear the typical "Mo'nin' Mam" I used to hear while visiting Martin in the Philippines

The university officially opened in September 2009 but there is still a lot of building work in the progress and you can see for example the sunset over barbed fence (see in the Czech post).

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