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A few months ago, Ms. ActiveSteve and I signed up to take our PADI Open Water course, with the hope that when and if we visited Saudi Arabia, we may get a chance to do some scuba diving in the red sea while visiting Jeddah. Well, I’m extremely happy to report that we did indeed get that chance, and it was phenomenal. Of course, we have very little real world experience to compare it to, but that’s besides the point. After all, how many other people got the chance to dive the coral reefs of the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia this New Year’s eve? Well, by my count, maybe 8 other people. That’s it. In the whole world! So, understandably, we were pretty stoked about it. So leads to this blog post, which will shed a little light on this most excellent adventure that Jody and I got to share together 🙂 For maximal enjoyment, I should also recommend that you check out the pictures that I’ve posted from the day on flickr. Ironically, the camera screen conked out early in the day, and without a viewfinder some of the framing may have been off, but it still took pictures thankfully. Looks like it’s time to take ‘er in to the shop again!

Greetings, and Happy New Year to one and all. This blog post of course is a little after the new year, but what can I say, I’m still playing catch up. Believe me when I say that everyone near and dear to me was in my thoughts as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s eve, in spite of the fact that I couldn’t be with everyone to celebrate. However, this did mark yet another year where I would be ringing in the new year in another far off land. Last year saw me turning the calendar over in one of the earliest areas to change years, New Zealand, and this year, I was spending that time with family in another part of the globe, Saudi Arabia, and specifically, Jeddah. How cool is that? I think I should make this a new tradition if at all possible. Although I do like to be close to friends on this most auspicious of days, it’s also pretty cool to be able to experience a new place. However, I’ll have to admit that Saudi Arabia may not be the most ideal of places for New Years. For starters, they don’t follow the Gregorian calendar, which means that they don’t consider that date New Years. Secondly, as a very strict Muslim country, There is absolutely no alcohol to be found or consumed. Besides those minor details though, it’s a great place to be 🙂 Read on if you’d like to hear a little more about how we celebrated.

Well, here I am sitting at a rather high altitude over our great nation. We’ve been airborne for about an hour now, and far below me is no doubt the roiling waters of the great Atlantic Ocean. It always amazes me what clever creatures we humans are. Conquering the skies with our mighty flying birds. I hadn’t intended to actually spend much time blogging on this first leg of our journey to Saudi Arabia, but what can I say? Circumstances have lead to this outcome. What circumstances? Well, mainly the fact that the onboard entertainment system is kaput. Yup, no fun movies to pass the time. Too bad. I was looking forward to watching Tropic Thunder, and probably Hellboy II or Christmas Vacation, that all-time classic holiday movie. I guess I can’t complain though. I’ve got my iPod and I’m rockin’ the Pink Floyd with my sound isolating earphones, so that I don’t have to listen to the myriad of crying babies on this red-eye flight to London. Jody seems rather oblivious beside me, having dozed off even before we left the ground! Good for her, she’ll be well refreshed when we touch down in the great city of London for our 24 hour layover. What? A layover? Weren’t we supposed to fly out Sunday and just stop for an hour and a half? Well, read on to find out what happened. Click here for pictures.

Welcome back all. I’m sorry if you’re all reading these one after the other, as I know that the text of my narrative can sometimes drag on. Just remember that for every 5 paragraphs you read, there’s probably another 15 paragraphs of memories and thoughts that I’m sparing you. I kid you not when I say that it takes me at least an hour for each of these posts. And that’s only if I sit and write them straight through… This tale revolves around another magnificent adventure that we had in Saudi Arabia. Namely, the visit to the Kingdom’s first, and so far only, Unesco World Heritage site, Mada’in Saleh. Many of you may have heard of a little place called Petra in Jordan, right? Well, Mada’in Saleh, is the 2nd city of the Nebateans, this one carved in to the rock hills very close to Al Ula. The stone in this area is actually harder than in Jordan, and as a result, some of these tombs are even better preserved. However, for reasons beyond the scope of this post, many Muslims have a beef with this site, and so they have tried to deface and damage it, and in many cases have succeeded. Read on for more great information about this place, and what we did there. As usual, make sure you check out all the pictures on flickr before you read on!

Hello everyone! I figured it was time to give you all an update on the happenings of me over in Saudi Arabia. As you likely pieced together from the last couple posts, we had a very smooth arrival in the Kingdom. Unfortunately, the Internet connection from here is rather slow, making it difficult to fire off too many emails or do other things. In spite of this, I’ve still managed to post quite a few pictures on our flickr page, so feel free to head over to our sets page and check out the latest while we’re over here. I will also attempt to give a little insight into our first few days over here in Riyadh and the Diplomatic Quarter. I’ve decided that although these are the same physical place, life is much different in the DQ than in Riyadh. Namely, I am on ‘Canadian soil’ when I’m at the embassy and in the house here, so we have a lot more breathing room in terms of what we can do while here compared to traveling around the city. I’ll try to keep this post on the short side, as we are leaving shortly for the camel souq and the horse races, and I’ve only got a little time to sort out my thoughts. Read on for the details.