More on the Red Arrows

I wrote previously about the Red Arrows visiting Jeddah. I'm afraid I wasn't able to escape the cubicle farm to attend, but Alex Sykes did and was kind enough to provide me with a picture. Thanks Alex!

The Holy Saudi Cows

I'm fuming. Who wouldn't after reading this pretty piece of news (BBC News). And here's an alternate source (Arab News). And another (Al Arabiya).

A lawyer for a gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six-months in jail says the punishment contravenes Islamic law.

Lovely. The poor girl gets gang raped fourteen times, and all the towel heads with big beards can think of was the girl breaking the taboo of Saudi sexual segregation. What about the rapists?

The sentences for the seven rapists ranged from 10 months to five years in prison.

To put things into perspective; a few months ago a man accused of raping a boy was sentenced to death. But of course the girl was somehow guilty for being an object of lust. She went out with unrelated man after all. She must be a slut! The poor rapists. How could they resist the temptation?

The Saudi society and its hypocrisy make me sick sometimes.

Oh and it gets better. This appeals court had actually doubled the girl's sentence from the last time the case went into court.

A source at the Qatif General Court said that the judges had informed the rape victim that the reason behind doubling her punishment was “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.”

How dare she speak against the most Holy of Holy Cows? Their words come directly from God after all? Oh, and her lawyer. He was behind all of this. Burn the Heretic!

Judge Soliman Al-Muhanna from the Qatif court told the lawyer (Al-Lahem) that the judicial committee had decided to suspend him from the case. They also confiscated his license which is granted to Saudi lawyers by the Ministry of Justice. To Al-Lahem’s surprise he received a call from the Judicial Investigation Department of the Ministry of Justice to inform him of a disciplinary session he should attend on 25th of the Hijra month.

The thing is, we've come to expect this kind of injustice from our esteemed justices. But what really really makes me want to pick up a chainsaw and go medieval and people's asses is the reaction from many people in the Saudi society. Most would just shrug it away citing that their Holinesses know best. Some even have the audacity to change the question into "Yeah, but what was she doing with that guy in the first place?". Seems everything can be forgiven in Saudi Arabia, except for going out with strangers. That and speaking out against Judge Dredd.

Book Review: "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

Scifi fans revere the name William Gibson. His classic book Neuromancer single-handedly started the cyberpunk genre, and introduced the word cyberspace. Films like The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell all trace their lineage to Gibson's vision of a bleak, dystopian, computer run world. And while I'm not too familiar with his work, Bruce Sterling is another cyberpunk author of some renown. So what are the two doing writing a book set in Victorian London?

Starting a new Scifi genre, that's what.

You see back in the 19th century, English mathematician Charles Babbage designed what is probably the first programmable computer. Made from gears and mechanical parts, Babbage's analytical engine was ahead of its time. Too ahead. Babbage died before his vision could be completed. But, what if Babbage had perfected his design? What if the computer revolution came a full century ahead of its time? Perfectly coinciding with the Industrial Revolution?

Say hello to Steampunk, where the 19th century is re-imagined into a more high-tech world.

Gibson and Sterling paint a wonderfully detailed world where the Engines have touched every facet of everyday life. From mechanized animated displays, to automated factories, to gargantuan government engines that store data about everyone in the realm. In this world three people, unrelated at first, have their lives changed and intertwined when a mysterious set of punch-cards, a computer program, makes its appearance. Shady characters stalk them and will do anything to get their hands on the cards. In the background, unrest boils as the rampant industrialization and the pollution it brings takes its toll on London.

Unfortunately, despite the teasingly good premise, the book fails to deliver. As typical of Gibson the world is vivid with detail, however the storytelling suffers. The book is basically a collection of three novellas, each covering one of the three major characters, and a small collection of short stories at the end. All three novellas end somewhat anti-climatically, and the characters failed to grip my attention and were quite forgettable actually. By the end of the novellas very little is achieved and many tantalizing questions are left unanswered. The book also had the chance to explore the effects of 2oth century tech on a 19th century world and values, but does very little of that.

Ironically, it was the last part of the book that I enjoyed the most. The short stories and news bites that compromise the book's final pages do a good job of fleshing out the world of The Difference Engine and go a long way into providing the book with actual closure. A somewhat chilling ending that is typical of Gibson. If only the whole book was in this format. Overall, The Difference Engine feels like an interesting exercise in speculative thought that found itself, clumsily, turning into a novel.

The RAF Red Arrows in Jeddah

Just got the news. The Red Arrows, the acrobatic team belonging the British RAF (don't you find it rather amusing that the Brits don't feel the need to explicitly say that it's the British Royalty they're talking about, it's just Royal this or that), will be conducting one of their famous air shows here in Jeddah. The show will be tomorrow (November 7th) at 3:00 pm and held in the Corniche near Al Nawras roundabout.

I have to question the timing though. I understand the need for having plenty of daylight for the show (hence the rather inconvenient 3:00 pm timing), but couldn't they have held it on Thursday?

Whether I'll actually attend is yet to be seen since I finish work at five, but if I can squirm away from work tomorrow I'll try to bring my camera with me to take a few shots.

The Power of Names

"What's your last name?"

It may seem silly, but I dread this question. I dread questions that would lead to a long and involved answer which is something I don't like to partake of, especially when the interrogator is a (friendly) stranger. You see I don't exactly have what you might call a traditional Jawa last name. Not technically anyway but I'll expand on that bit in a sec. So what is a traditional Jawa last name? In 99% of Jawas in this country you can tell where they come from simply from knowing their last names. Indonesians and Malays in general don't have surnames in the Saudi sense. So when they migrate to the magic kingdom most of them use their point of origin as the surname. Felimban, Kalantan and Banjar are amongst the most wide spread. While most of us Jawas have very tenuous links with our ancestral homes, we still carry the old monikers.

I don't have one of those. Or rather I do but they're not on my identification papers. Long story short: when my father was naturalized some government regulation made him drop the surname (Or maybe dad just dropped it on his own. I don't know. He's not around anymore for me to ask) so we're using my great grand dad's name as a family name (which is actually more in accordance to how it's done in the old country). I have to go through that whole explanation every time someone asks about my surname and getting confused about it. Gets annoying and tedious after a while.

Recently however, I noticed my little brother using our long forgotten Jawa name whenever he could. Always identifying himself as an Ampenan. He also hinted to me once that he would like to make it our official surname.

While I didn't explicitly agree (didn't explicitly reject either), I could understand where he was coming from. Names have power. They tell you who you are, where you come from. Gives you a sense of identity and history, and anchors you firmly on solid ground. It says you belong, are part of something larger. Especially in a country like Saudi Arabia where tribal law still rules the community. "Who are you?" is almost always followed by "Who are your people?" in this land. I've learned through the years not to let it bother me much. Yet still, like an itch that longs to be scratched, the longing is there.

More on the Eid Crescent

As I wrote in an earlier entry many people have been distressed about the fact that it was astronomically impossible for Eid to be on the 12th of October, but now it seems it isn't just us crazy immoral liberals who have taken note. Several Saudi religious scholars lead by Abdullah Al Munaie (member of the Grand Council of Ulema) have made clear their suspicions. "Blindly accepting that the views astronomers are invalid puts the whole community on the Judiciary Council's conscience." Al Munaie wrote. "Even if we assume that astronomers are a bunch of dissolutes whose testimonies should be investigated first, that does not mean we have the right to completely not hear them." he continues.

But of course this is Saudi Arabia. The head of the Judiciary Council stated that "astronomy remains an inaccurate discipline" preferring the use of the naked eye to a science that is older than the pyramids. "How are we to ignore the testimonies of eyewitnesses and listen to a a man calculating in his home?" he adds. Like my dear departed father used to say: "They still think science is some kind of djinn operated magic."

Still, the fact that there is a rift between the high ranking Saudi ulema over the matter gives one hope that maybe sometime in the (hopefully) not too distant future we can stop being the laughing stock of the world.

For a full article over the matter (in Arabic) visit Al Arabiya

Craving Burgers

There's something about hamburgers that is just so damn addictive. Every day during Ramadan I'd spend the day light hours craving burgers, promising myself a quick trip to the nearest McDonald's as soon as the sun sets. Yet, like most stuff I crave during fasting, I change my mind when night comes (stomach still groaning from the traditional Ramadan breakfast) and postpone my date with patty for a later date.

So now it's Shawwal, and nothing was getting in between me and my burger. Ah but since I was in Jeddah now during the day and not fasting I thought I'd have a special burger. While I like fast food style burgers just fine, I adore the burgers made by local chain Capo Grillo (Don't you just love sites that use the Comic Sans MS font? *gouges out eyes*). What I like about Capo's burgers is that they both look and taste like they were freshly made, as opposed to the frozen stuff you get in most fast food joints. And they cost just as much as their fast food cousins. Win-win in my book.

So there I was at Capo Grillo's licking my chops, bringing a friend along (I hate eating alone), waxing poetic about how good their burgers are, when the friendly cashier lets loose the bad news. Capo have switched to frozen burgers. A whole month craving the damn thing. For nothing. I ended up having a grilled chicken breast sandwich (which was pretty good, and healthy), leaving my burger addiction unanswered. Guess I'll just have to pony up the cash and visit Fuddruckers. At least I still know their burgers are still good. I hope so anyway.