Moving my family to Saudi Arabia

I traveled back to Saudi Arabia with my family earlier this week. We have all been together here for a week now and I finally have had some time to reflect on all the preparations and efforts we went through to make the move successful. During the two weeks that I was in Houston we spent most of the time sorting out things at our house. This move forced us to sort through all of the junk that we accumulated over the past decade. I realized that I really need to do something about my addiction to buying books because I have so many of them and they are such a burden when it comes to living a more “agile” lifestyle. We packed many books in boxes and placed them in storage, but we also left many on shelves in a small storage room within our garage. We are renting our house to some long-time acquaintances, whose daughter is one of our daughter’s best friends, and so I hope my books will be in safe hands. We were so busy with our preparations that we did not have much time for more fun activities, but we did meet with a few friends and our Houston-based family members; and we had a few meals at some nice restaurants.

For example, we tried lunch at Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant on Post Oak Boulevard. I had one of their “triple decker” sandwiches and although it was delicious – and the service and atmosphere were excellent – I couldn’t help thinking that I was helping to reinforce Houston’s reputation for being “fat city.” The amount of sliced turkey and corned beef inserted between three slices of bread was almost obscene and I made a mental commitment to get back to a regular three-day-a-week gym schedule once I was back to Saudi Arabia. Yes, I have made such commitments before, with less than stellar results, but this time I really will make a concerted effort …

We are very grateful to our friends who treated us to lunches over the past couple of weeks and to my wife’s work colleague who invited us to her family’s home for some delicious home-cooked Louisiana-style food. We really appreciate the time and effort made by friends and colleagues. Thankfully, my wife is a lot more gregarious than me and as a result we have some wonderful friends, mostly from within Houston’s Indonesian community, and we will certainly miss them during our time in Saudi Arabia and travels elsewhere. Fortunately, modern communications will enable us to stay in touch with each other and maybe the physical distances between us will not be a barrier to continued friendship, insh’Allah.

While I was in Houston I wanted to check out the city’s cafe scene. I searched Google to find some cafes in the downtown area, where I thought there might be something different from the usual Starbucks chain cafe. I decided to visit Boomtown Coffee at 242 West 19th Street in The Heights. The cafe is located in a “historic” part of Houston, maybe a couple of miles west of downtown. The cafe occupies a large space on the old main Heights shopping street that dates from the early 1900s. The cafe was so full of people when we got there that we had to sit outside at a table on the covered patio, with only the breeze from a ceiling fan for comfort, until a few patrons vacated their seats and we were then able to find some soft chairs and air-conditioning. We got to the cafe at around 3:30 p.m., on a normal work day, but the place was full of what looked like students and a few older folks who were glued to their laptop screens and were probably updating their blogs. Once we had seats in the air-conditioning we were able to admire the poster art on the walls as well as the large canvasses of abstract paintings. Tall ceilings and fans helped to keep the place cool.

Outside Boomtown Coffee, The Heights, Houston.

I ordered a flat white coffee, which was flavorful. Houston is really booming now and the cafe seemed to reflect an economy that is benefiting from the flow money from the domestic energy industry renaissance that has resulted in numerous construction projects along the “energy corridor” next to the I-10 interstate that passes across the northern part of the city. The growing economy has resulted in an influx of new people and a great demand for housing that has led to an increase in property prices. I know this from anecdotal evidence from some friends who have been house hunting in the Eldridge-I-10 area and have found a huge increase in the prices of houses in that area compared to when they lived there a couple of years ago. The crowded nature of the cafe – during the day – certainly seemed to show that people have money to spend on fine coffee, as well as laptops.

Our last few days in Houston were rather hectic. The movers came to our house on Wednesday and packed all of the things that we wanted to ship to Saudi. This was my second time going through this sorting, packing and shipping process and so we were more prepared than when I first moved to Saudi last November. The packing took about seven hours. After the movers left with all of our things it was time to clean up the house to make it ready for the family that will be living in our house while we are away. On Thursday a couple of cleaners came to help us and by the end of the day we had more or less finished cleaning the house and tidying it. The only tasks remaining were to take some items to our storage location, finish the packing of our cases, and sell our car. It would have been nice to just relax on our last day in Houston but it had taken us so much time to sort out things, pack and clean the house that we needed all of our time remaining in the city to complete our preparations for the move. We had visited a couple of car dealerships earlier in the week to get a price for our vehicle, but we kept the car for as long as we could and sold it at the last minute. Our last stop was at the home of my in-laws where we said goodbye to our family and a few friends that we had known for a long time and who’s children had played with our children from when they were babies.

We had a couple of last minute dramas that made for an interesting start to our journey. On the way to the airport the oil pressure on my father-in-law’s suburban dropped and we had to stop until the pressure went up again. I’m not very conversant with the ways of the combustion engine so I had no idea what could have caused this. A small oil leak perhaps. After about 10 minutes we were able to continue the drive to the airport but after a few more miles along the road, one of the front tires exploded and we had to change wheels beside a busy freeway, with other vehicles constantly zooming past. We eventually arrived at the airport with little more than an hour to go before the flight was scheduled to leave. Fortunately, most passengers on our Qatar Airways flight had already checked in and so there were no lines of people waiting in front of the check-in counters. But one final problem arose when I tried to check in to get my boarding pass. There was an issue with the way my two flights had been linked in the airline’s computer system, which I think was something to do with the fact that the flight was being code shared with American Airlines, which – at my request – had changed my outward flight so that I could spend a couple of days in Doha, Qatar, on my way to Houston two weeks earlier. It took about 20 minutes or so for the airline representative to complete my check-in. By the time we joined the shuffling line of people through the security obstacle course there were probably no more than about 45 minutes before the flight was due to take off. After all the stress involved in rushing to get to our flight, we finally arrived at the departure gate with about 30 minutes before the flight was due to leave only to find that the flight had been delayed. We had to wait about another 30 minutes before the boarding started. After our frenzied preparations of the last few days and the adventure of getting to the airport we were exhausted and were relieved when the flight finally left Houston. We could relax at last and enjoy the long 14-hour flight to Doha, before catching the short connecting flight to Dammam in Saudi Arabia.

Getting ready to move, August 2013.