For want of anything else to write about tonight, I thought I'd dip into the guitar collection and see if there weren't a few points of interest to share with you. Here then is my Yamaha SA2200, a quite stunning 6-string semi-acoustic I picked up a few years back.

Sometime back in 2000, not long after I came out to Saudi, I decided I need to bring a guitar with me to see if I couldn't improve my playing (a lot). At the time the only thing I had was another Yamaha, an MSG Standard. So I duly packed it up in its hard case and trundled myself off to the airport to come back here to Riyadh - I had a lot to learn I think about travelling with an instrument. It should come as no surprise then, that when I collected the guitar from the carousel, not all was well. I could see that the case was damaged, one of those little metal feet they put on cases was punched clean through the case, and I could also see that one of the catches was undone. An on the spot inspection confirmed my worst fears that the case had been dropped. What was worse, was that the MSG was now resting in the case with its headstock snapped off - all looked very terminal. To cut a long story short though, BA held its hands up to having responsibility for their lack of care and one £200 repair bill later, Sounds Great Music near Manchester did a sterling job of repairing it for me. It travels no longer.

Stuck once more for a guitar, I was left with a long stretch in Saudi until I could get home again and pick up something else. Fortune smiled on me and up popped an alpine white Gibson Les Paul Studio on one of the many notice boards - not a bad guitar at all in the circumstances. One short negotiation later and it was mine. It didn't take me long to realise that all was not entirely right with it though. Sharp fret ends protruding out from the edges of the fretboard told a rather unpleasant story. This guitar had not survived the ravages of the Arabian climate well and the lack of humidity had taken its toll, with the wood shrinking and so leaving the frets ends standing proud. At the time, I neither had the tools nor experience to sort it out, so I gradually grew to dislike it intensely - it just wasn't nice to play. But time passed and other acquisitions meant I could quietly forget about it.

So we get to around 5 years ago and in a speculative moment, I thought it might be worth bringing it back to the UK and seeing what it might be worth in part-exchange for something else. I'd had my eye on something in a local shop and thought the LP might well get me a good proportion of the way there, so back to the UK it came with me. A deal was struck and I found myself the rather pleased as punch owner of the the SA2200 you can see here.

The soundness of the deal was confirmed to me a few months later when I called into the shop again, only to see the LP hanging on the wall in a rather sorry looking state. Back in a country with moisture content in the atmosphere, the wood of the Gibson had started to absorb the humidity around it and expanded as wood does. It had the most amazing crackle glaze effect across the whole of the front of the body and did not look good.

The SA2200 is still with me, though at a distance. It plays wonderfully well and is a joy to hear. Only a couple of weeks till I'm back home again and I can give it another go.

This evening has been occupied with much head-scratching and consternation. I was short a post for the day. Not wanting to disappoint any small corner of Blogsville that is following what is going on here, I turned to Google for ideas. This I may say was a bad move.

Whatever else you do when searching for blog post inspiration, don't go searching for "blog post inspiration", you'll regret it. Too much bad stuff about how you can use Twitter to improve your social networking profile, or trading posts with other bloggers (nice idea potentially, but it's not happening before midnight). So bad idea then. Despairing then that I was going to come up empty, I looked round me and spotted a free magazine about living and working in the UAE, not that I have any plans in that area, but it can't hurt to browse a little. A couple of pages in and an advert for deep sea fishing leapt out at me; I have no plans in this area either. It did though remind me of a couple of features I saw in the stuff they leave in hotel rooms whilst we were in Bahrain last weekend. The features in question were about this:

The WHY58

Now I've never been a fan of boats per se, but this one has me smitten to my core. I cannot hope to see one in the flesh, much less set foot on one and the notion that I could afford much more than a few ship nails on such a thing is the stuff comedy is made of - "One day Rodders, we'll be millionaires". This is pure fantasy stuff for a landlubber such as myself. AM and I once went on one of those mini-cruise things to Norway. As nice as Norway was for what little we saw of it, the cruise itself was a horrid experience. I can get seasick on a mill pond, and though I avoided that indignity, there's no getting away from the fact that we were sleeping below the water line on a RoRo ferry.

It's worth taking a good look round the WHY site, the levels of luxury the 58 offers quite beggar belief. Ignore the fact that from above it looks like a whopping great teak topped Dairylea cheese triangle, it just just sucks you in with one 'oooh!' after another. Tell me you couldn't just drop into cocktails on that sun-deck, or wake in a morning, throw back the curtains and just gaze over the waters. You know you could, we all could. Hell some of you I might even invite along - you may need to dress up a bit though, just to fit into the general theme of refined opulence.

The only problem I can think of at the moment though is where I'm going to park it. I'd be lying if I tried to convince anyone that this pied a l'eau is small. As much rain as we've had in Riyadh over the last day or two, I'm just not sure I'm going to find a berth. That assumes of course I could get it over the compound's hydraulic road blockers. Looks like I may just have to dream a little longer...

Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers...

...in That Quiet Earth

Yesterday:

I made the phone call to arrange for the OGTT yesterday. It's a while since I had the last done so I couldn't remember the exact process other than it involved fasting, drinking some syrupy crap and sitting around for a few hours whilst being punctured regularly with a hypodermic. Nothing too challenging, just something that killed a few hours of time I could never get back - I didn't even have a book with me last time...

"Hello, I'd like to make an appointment to get an OGTT done please"

"Which Doctor?"

"I don't think I need to see a Doctor, it's just a lab test"

"No, you need to see a Doctor first..."

"OK, when can I get it done"

"Today, or tomorrow morning... 09:00 or 10:00?"

"Oh OK then, better make it 10:00 tomorrow then"

That means my weekend lie in is out the window. It's Thursday here now which means it's 'virtual' Saturday. The clinic is a 45 minute drive away, but that should be OK, Saudi's don't really do early on a weekend, they're very much late night people as a rule of thumb - almost nocturnal at times. Still, it won't take too long to just see the Doc and get a time for the OGTT which will be the predictable result. After that, AM and I can get to the mall, grab a coffee and I can perhaps look for my Mum's 70th birthday present.

This Morning:

So we're up and out of the house by 09:00, mobile if a little sleepy - I've not really been doing the early night thing recently, which means I've been subsisting on around 5 hours a night on work days, catching up big time on the weekends. The OGTT has just cut into catch up time. We're out though, me behind the wheel of the Durango, AM in the passenger seat, iPod in the FM dock playing away randomly as always. The last week or so has finally seen November weather catch up with us, so the predicted rains have come upon us and the temperature no longer gets above 15C. This morning it's grey overhead and in the distance, towards the city centre where we're headed, it looks greyer still. Inevitably within 5 minutes of leaving the safety of the compound, the windscreen is beginning to spot up - oh goody, this is going to be fun. Wet weather driving is not to be recommended in these parts. During the summer months, the roads become slick with a layer of rubber and an assorted range of flammable liquids that never shifts because there's nothing to wash it away. By the time November comes, it's been baked hard and ground into an already polished tarmac surface. Throw water on it and you may as well be setting up an ice rink, one that's been allowed to soften slightly so that the surface melts and can flatten itself out before re-freezing.

We head further into it and the rain begins to come down heavier, nothing torrential, but enough that mean the wipers need to go on, lowest intermittent setting to start but as the distance towards the centre shrinks, the frequency of the blades moving in front of me increases inversely. By the time we're half way there, we're on a new section of road surface and the car is becoming distinctly nervous in it's disposition on the road; anti-lock cutting in at the slightest provocation, the occasional shimmy on acceleration. Carefully does it now. The roads are quiet though and as we get a little further on, it seems that we've passed under the cloud and things are getting easier. The rain eases off, the wipers go off, but the road is still damp in places. Nearly there. In the end we reach the clinic none the worse for it and what's more we're there in 35 minutes and parking is a doddle for a change.

Inside all is calm, we follow a Saudi girl to the lifts, she works here - white medical jacket on but still wearing a black headscarf and veil. She presses the button to go up, hears the ding of the lift arriving, but seems unsure which door to head for...

"Come on, which lift is it?"

The right one opens and we follow her in to the cramped compartment, doors sliding closed behind us. She turns seeing two Western faces and it dawns on her that we heard her frustration outside. Behind the veil, her eyes are lit up with an embarrassed smile - she knows we heard. As we leave on the second floor, we head for the reception desk, behind which the girl has just walked.

"Yes, can I help you?" she says... smile still firmly fixed in place. She points us round the corner and we head off to my appointment.

I hand my cards and referral over at the next desk. I still don't know that name of the Doctor. It's been repeated at me over half a dozen times now, but I still can't quite get the gist of what's being said to me. Not a problem though, my appointment and name are on the systems, so we go out to the waiting area. As we sit, both AM and I notice the various posters inviting us to get treated in an assortment of manners. Something about getting you stomach reduced in size; we can tell because of the step sequence diagrams provided, not the Arabic script accompanying it. "Better a colonoscopy today, than colon cancer tomorrow" and one on diabetes, but that's too far down to read the details - I'm glad of that one.

Another girl comes out and I'm taken in for height, weight, temperature and blood pressure measurements. Nothing unusual here, so I go and sit down again.

Eventually another member of the admin staff comes out to tell me the Doctor says I don't need to see him, I can just go down to the lab to get the OGTT done. I must looked confused at this, but I'm guessing he sees a lot of referrals like this and he just needs to compare it with my previous notes - I've been there more than once. She offers to take us to the right place, so with notes in hand, she leads the way back down to the lifts.

Back on the ground floor again, we're taken towards the back of the building and she hands the notes over to another receptionist, chatting away in Arabic to him. He invites us to take a seat and we wait again.

After a few minutes typing away at his keyboard, it begins to look with some certainty that he's not just booking me the right appointment so that we can leave and resume the day. I can hear the temperature rise in AM's voice as she becomes a little agitated at being kept waiting for no apparent reason.

"How long does it take to make an appointment?"

It's not altogether clear.

Above the door is another admonition to personal health care - "Old smokers don't get old, they die young..." - this is cheerful stuff I'm reading. You can't accuse the Saudi's of pulling their punches, there's a very matter of fact air about it all.

The receptionist heads out back with a folder in his hands. A minute or two later and I vaguely hear my name being mispronounced - I'm used to it these days and would probably respond to a shout of "Fido" if required. I get up and go towards where another Saudi lady is holding what are clearly my notes, inviting me into a cubicle. As I step inside, I can see the usual accoutrements and paraphernalia of the phlebotomist - they think I'm here for the OGTT now.

She realises there's been some error.

"Have you been fasting?"

"No" I say, "when I rang for an appointment, they said I had to see a Doctor first"

"You can come any time, no need for appointment. How long since your last meal?"

"I had breakfast this morning"

"You need to fast for 12 hours. We do blood test, then after one hour I take blood again, 3 times, you're here for 3 hours. You can come any time"

"What is the earliest time I can come?"

"You can come any time"

"No, when do you open? What is the earliest time I can come?"

"You can come any time from 08:30"

"So you start at 08:30 then?"

"Yes, you can come any time, no need for appointment"

I follow her back to the receptionists desk.

"I'll come on Sunday morning then, I can't do Saturday"

"OK, you can come any time" the mantra continues...

She passes me a piece of paper to bring back with me and we leave. Outside, it's still wet on the ground and we go shopping....