A Very Metric Christmas

I've already decided what I want for Christmas next year. I realize MY wish comes at the expense of everybody else, but isn't that the way Christmas works? Dear Santa, please exert yourself and all your elves, and expend significant resources so I can have what I want? So I'm going for it:

I want the U.S. to go on the metric system.

Ow! I'm bracing myself for the kickback. But again, this is all about what I want. And I want it because I now live in The Rest of the World, where the metric system is standard, where I struggle to keep up, and where I'm routinely embarrassed by not knowing how big/hot/heavy something really is.

My beloved, Mr. Calculator-in-His-Head, walks around with the conversion formulas as solidly in place as the names of his children and with the mathematical capacity to do those conversions inside said head. Well, good for you. Not the case in here.

The worst part is the way it kills my opportunity to enjoy something funny.

If I had to convert just the currency, I'd be so much quicker to enjoy the joke of how expensive these cherries are. So let's see...119.95 Saudi rials for a kilogram. A rial is worth $.28, so I customarily divide by four and add a little. 120/4 = 30. That means the cherries are selling for about $34/kg. (You get used to guessing--turns out it's actually $33.60, so I'm pretty pleased with myelf.) Easy!

But we're NOT THERE YET. Now I have to go through the weight conversion to give myself a point of reference against what I'm used to paying at home--something none of my European friends have to do. SO, 1kg = 2.3lb, and 1lb = .45kg. What we're looking at is two different ways of describing a really awkward relationship. Bigger than double, less than double plus a half. And because I have so many Big Ideas in my head that I don't have room for formulas and math, I just function on the idea that a kilogram is a little more than 2 pounds, and that a pound is a little less than half a kilogram. In my world of approximates, $34/kg means $17 for a half kg, but you're paying LESS than $17lb because a half kg is MORE than a pound, right? Or did I just do that backwards? No, so these cherries are selling for about...$16lb? (Less pleased with my guess--turns out it's actually $15.30ish.)

THAT'S SUPER FUNNY! Or it would've been if the punch line hadn't taken ten minutes and a calculator to set up. And they don't even look as if they'll be that sweet. A little bright, don't you think?

Which is not how I feel most days. A recent cold snap in my dear old home of Colorado pushed nighttime lows into the -30F neighborhood. People around here tend to talk about the weather when it gets into the 50s, so you can win any "Yeah, but" conversation when you whip out numbers like that to local folks, whether they're actually Saudi or from India, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, South Africa, and really most of Europe. But only if you can put it in centigrade! I've been left stupidly silent in a lot of these conversations, itching to impress, but unable to accurately translate the temperature in Colorado to something anybody else can understand.

The latest from my favorite food writer, not yet
published in the U.S. because it'll take a while
to translate it for us backward Americans.

And they shouldn't have to work at it. Our system is stupid, and theirs is logical. Let's review: A pound is 16 ounces, so when the kitchen scale says you've measured out .8 pounds of chocolate, that's not 8 ounces. It's a little shy of 13. A cup of liquid is 8 ounces. A pint's a pound the world around, so 2 cups is a pint, and a quart is 2 pints, but a quart is only a quarter of a gallon, so you need 4 of those to get to 1 gallon. We good? A tablespoon equals 3 teaspoons (3?), but 8 tablespoons equal a cup. A stick of butter is a half a cup, so you have 2 cups of butter in a box that has 4 sticks. DOES ANY OF THIS MAKE SENSE? And I haven't even touched on miles (5,280 feet), yards (3 feet), feet (12 inches), and inches (divided into eighths).

Of course the transition would be hard at first. I know exactly how hard because that's pretty much where I am right now. I have a metric converter on my phone, a website link on my iPad, a sticky note by the oven with temperature conversions, another by the baking goods with units of measurement, and a kitchen scale set to grams. But I expect that my head will come around eventually. I already know that 0c is 32F, so I know what 0 feels like. I know that at 10 I'm wearing a sweater while my beautiful Thai neighbor is in some fabulous boots and slammin' skinny jeans and a coat and is showing me on her phone how incredibly cold it is. I've gotten used to the idea that 20 is comfortable for the house, 30 is starting to warm up, 40 is desert-hot, and 50 is what you're afraid of in a Saudi summer. We can do this, people.

Because, you see, we're not just embarrassing me, but embarrassing all of ourselves. Right now, in this land of imported food, I am constantly confronted by boxes and cans and jars that have American weights and measurements. You have to know that every time a non-American picks one of those things up there's a head shake, an eye roll, and a silent "those idiots."

But back to me. You see, when we make the grand transition, so nobly attempted and abandoned when I was in elementary school ("We can fight the Nazis and fly to the moon, but not count by tens!") I and my children's children will no longer be global hicks and rubes, but will finally be fluent in the language that probably started all the rest of the language: A couple of cave guys, trying to estimate how much more meat was on a mastodon than a bison, and whether the cost of pursuing one was more per unit than the other.

In the name of global commerce and international cooperation, everyone else has made the grand gesture of learning our language. (Thank you, Silicon Valley.) And that's hard. So in return, can't we make just a little effort to use their measuring cups? For Christmas. For the children. For me.

Arabian Holidays: Shopping the Souks

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style...

Walking through an alley at the Diyrah souk.

Okay, so shopping is a little different here than what most Americans are used to. And the quantifying ALL the differences is way beyond what one blog post can hold. I should be able to milk this topic for a solid dozen.

But this is a good place to start: the souks.

Yes, the malls of Riyadh are famous and plentiful. It's in the malls that you find Sephora, Banana Republic, Pottery Barn, Marks & Spencer, dress shops, hypermarkets. But do you think the people on my gift list are going to be happy if I go to the other side of the world and come back with sweaters from the Gap? No, I need to find someplace else to shop.

Saudis are new to city living. Most adults here have grandparents who lived in mud brick villages scattered around the desert. Shopping happened in souks, which are just open-air markets. Merchants grouped together by type, so you'd go to the camel souk for Bedouin supplies, the gold souk for jewelry, the clothing souk for clothes...you probably have the pattern figured out by now. If you've been to an American farmer's market or a European Saturday market, you've been in a souk--fruits and vegetables over there, sketchy electronics over there, cheap sunglasses and weird shoes over there. As Saudis migrated to cities, they brought the souk paradigm with them. As I'm sure the Europeans did, too, when their cities were new. So you have actual souks--sprawling, rabbit-warren-like arcades of stalls and storefronts grouped by type, such as you see above or in my photos from the second-hand souk, taken earlier this fall. (It's morning in the shot above, so a lot of shops aren't open yet.) But the souk model also influences the way other shopping happens.

Typical Riyadh streetscape on a Friday morning.

This is not a bad neighborhood. This is a street near our home, and pretty representative of what you see all over Riyadh: mile after mile of concrete block cube-style buildings with rectangular, plate-glass shop openings at the street level with roller-style pull-down doors or metal gates. And a bunch of trash in front. Above are apartments. (In this case, it's Friday morning, so the shops are closed and the normal jumble of every-man-for-himself mis-parked cars is missing.) What's souk-like is the way the business are arranged: same-type businesses tend to cluster together (interrupted by mini-supers, pharmacies, and eateries). A row of car-rental storefronts, a city block of lighting stores, another of furniture stores, another for tile shops.

Figure 1: The snuggle effect

To the American mind, this is puzzling. If you're trying to sell teddy bears, why on earth do you want to snuggle up with your competitors? But here, shoppers would never find you if you eschewed snuggling. The snuggling produces a mass big enough to be a landmark people know about.  Refer, for example, to Figure 1. Do you see how much bigger the fuzzy mass of puppy and bear are together than either would be alone? None of these individual shops has an advertising budget--any more than the stalls at the farmer's market do--so standing alone they'd have no way of letting shoppers know they're there. People around here start their search for what they need not with Google or Yelp, but by asking "Do you know where you can get teddies with ribbons round their necks?" Then someone will say, "Oh, the adorable fuzzy thing stores are along Ali Bin Somethingorother--you know, just south of King Somebodyelse." That block of roadway becomes, in essence, the fuzzy thing souk for that part of town.

(This is a forced example, I know. It was driven by the Google image result for "snuggling." Of course you'd never ask where to buy a teddy bear because stuffed animals aren't sold here, silly. Another story for another day.)

But the street-front shops are driving destinations. If you're shopping a number of lighting stores, you might park your car and go to the eight or ten right in front of you, but you cross the multi-baracaded street at your own peril (especially at night, dressed all in black), and you're separated from the next block by another uncrossable street. This kind of shopping is an evening errand that you do with a Man...who has a Car and can drive to the next block. Or that the Man with the Car does on his own. If you're going to stroll and shop, outside a mall, you're going to a souk. A real souk.

In the picture above, we're in one of the alleys between souk areas at Diyrah, the sprawling souk that sits near the site of Riyadh's original mud-brick settlement. Duck inside, and you see something like this:

Bedouin souk, Diyrah

This is the Bedouin souk area, To my right, beside the blue bags in my hand, are tent furnishings. And I'm not talking about sleeping bags and blow-up mattresses. No, Arabian tent furnishings are rugs, floor cushions, and sofas or back rests for sitting on the floor. Rope curtains with tassels. Plus camel supplies. This fellow is just walking into the souk to find out where to unload his truckload of camel saddles:

Camel saddles outside the Bedouin souk, Diryah

Fun, to be sure, but not very practical for Christmas giving.

On, then to men's clothing:

Inside the men's clothing souk, Diyrah

Much to my surprise, it turns out that not all red-checked headscarves are the same. Men who shop here are actually making decisions between these:

Shimaghs and ghutras at a men's clothing shop, Kuwaiti Souk

But they had plenty of time to develop a sense of style as little boys:

Boys' costumes, Kuwaiti Souk

Okay, again I'm being distracted. I don't think my daughter and son-in-law would appreciate us arming their 8- and 9-year-old boys with daggers. Perhaps I'll fare better at the gold souk:

Gold souk, Diyrah

Off these grimy alleys, with the clattering old gates and faded signs, are stunning jewelry shops. My phone camera struggled to deal with the contrast, but my friend Patty managed to get this one:

Inside a jewelry shop in the gold souk, Diyrah

But gold is gold, folks, the world over. There are no deals to be had, so...sorry, kids.

Now, because shops close at around 11:30 a.m. for prayer, and in the traditional souks tend to stay closed through the afternoon (reopening after afternoon prayer, sometime between 3:30 and 4:00), the compound bus goes early in the morning so we can maximize our time there before 11:30. Only a few shops are open when we first arrive. This week, the Al Shark craft-and-who-knows-what store was the place to kill time and find, oh, all kinds of stuff before other Kuwaiti Souk shops opened.

Treasures at Al Shark, Kuwaiti Souk

Let me help you figure this out. Those are Flower Fairies scented sachets on the right, next to "best quality" police whistles, next to mouse pads that look like oriental rugs, above gold-covered cardboard place cards. YES. Turn around for plastic air horns, novelty clocks, and clown shoes.

Treasures--including clown shoes--at Al Shark, Kuwaiti Souk

 WHAT?!? CLOWN SHOES?!?!!

Clown shoes at Al Sharq

Yes. Clown shoes. Sometimes "living lightly" means not having what you really want, doggone it. Back to the souk.

But look at the furniture shops!

Furniture at the Kuwaiti Souk

Be advised: Anything that sits still for very long in Saudi Arabia will be gilt, embellished, or tufted.

Home decor shop at the Kuwaiti souk

Unfortunately, this shop was closed, so we had to snap pictures through the glass. Oh, how I would've loved to see it with all those lights turned on. So I found comfort on the divan:

Gold divan at the Kuwaiti Souk

 And played hide-and-seek among the abaya closets:

Abaya closets at the Kuwaiti Souk

Around the corner were the fabric shops:

Fabric shop at the Kuwaiti Souk

Yes, fabric shops. Those dresses are draped and pinned. You can see the bolts of fabric beyond the display window, through the glass.

Fabric shop display window at the Kuwaiti Souk

(When you get that black one figured out, let me know.)

Okay, seriously. I have to focus. Close my eyes and go straight through the gold souk at Diyrah to the shops of trinkets, collectibles, and gifts clinging to its edges. I'm finally on track.

Finding collectibles at Diyrah

I actually found some things up this alley. But I'm keeping my secrets for now. And that doesn't mean I'm finished. I'm sold on souk shopping, and will be back often. Rate for yourself, if you would, the irresistibility factor of the antique shop:

Inside an antique shop at Diyrah

Or the Afghan/Pakistani handicraft shops:

Inside Bedouine Art, Shop No. 12, Diyrah

Inside Royal Kashmir, Diyrah

Are you catching my drift? I just love handling this stuff and hearing the stories. Lunch boxes from Afghanistan, wedding jewelry from Saudi Arabia, hand-painted bottles and plates, daggers, camel bells, astrolobes, mascara cases, perfume bottles, jewelry chests, carved camel-bone panels...

Too many choices, too little time to decide. But when you get right down to it, nothing says merry Christmas like a camel saddle, right? I think I'm done for this year.

Merry Christmas, everyone. 

*Extreme photo credit goes to Cheryl Glassett and Patty Jones, who bailed out my lazy bad self when I either (a) forgot my camera or (b) couldn't be bothered to download my own pictures.

Christmas Crafting, Saudi Style

I'm very excited about Tuesday.

Do you see it? There's a HUGE turndown. Partly cloudy (or "mostly sunny"--not sure of the difference) and right around 70 for THREE DAYS. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, eh?

Having none of the seasonal markers has made it a challenge to feel the Christmas mood. And I really LIKE the Christmas mood. (Glenn Miller. Get it.) It's more than the weather, although it certainly didn't help to find myself standing outside the gym yesterday in shorts and a tank top wishing "Happy Christmas" to a friend leaving for home on Sunday. No, the bigger problem is not having all those other crutches--malls and shops decorated for Christmas, holiday music piped into the grocery store, everybody around you involved in the same scurry, putting up the tree, getting out the decorations, cookie exchanges and planning my *sniff* annual wrapping party. When you bring suitcases rather than a shipping container to start a new life, you're not bringing your Christmas baubles. Besides--I don't want to have to store them for the rest of the year. So I've had to start from scratch in a country that doesn't sell Christmas decorations. Desperate times lead to desperate measures, so I CRAFTED.

Stop. What?

I. Crafted.

My friend Landee, professional crafter and blogger and do-er extraordinaire, is reaching for her smelling salts about now. I should explain: I don't craft. I'm not opposed to crafting, and I even own a craft or two of my own making, work products of ladies' crafting evenings that were a ton of fun. But I'm an instant-gratification kind of gal, and multi-step processes will shut me down faster than a power switch. You know--one of those big lever-style switches like Igor flips to turn on Frankenstein. Now picture a bunch of pieces of wood, and sandpaper, and bottles of paint, foam brushes, and something in a spray can, and a design, and a ribbon, and...whump. Dead on the table.

So I started easy. Lights, thanks to the grocery and hardware stores that sell them in plain boxes, labeled just as "LED lights," with a wink and a nod to western buyers from the Filipino checkout worker. There are more ways to make those lights flash than I can count, but I finally found the option for a steady burn. I put them in a philodendron:

Thanks, IKEA. And thanks as well for the candles, tray, and lanterns.

One of the all-IKEA furnishings in my furnished villa is an odd floating shelf, all by itself way too high on my living room wall. It would make a great decoratable mantle (I'll be getting a couple of hefty shelf brackets when I'm home), but 220v power means monster cords and inconvenient outlets, so there's no way to put little lamps or a nice bunch of those lights in some sort of garland up there. So, thanks to Pinterest, I scrounged up some Christmas printables and put them below it in frames that will hold family pictures after the holidays are over. Plug in the iPad playing a fireplace app and voila. Happy almighty holidays.

You have to keep staring into the fire to get the full effect, though, because just to the left, this is the view out the patio door:

Yes, those are petunias. And yes, that green surface is "grass."

Finally, the tree. You can buy Christmas trees here if you're determined. Departing expats are always selling them, or the shop inside the compound has small ones (flashing like crazy). But I don't want to store one all year. I like this whole living lightly thing. Pinterest, again, to the rescue:

Hmm. Two-dimensional trees. That board tree, in particular, seemed like something I could adapt. I didn't want to mess with lumber for a variety of reasons (acquiring, painting, hanging, storing), but I thought I could work with foam core--you know, the stuff your kid makes his science fair displays on. Correction: The stuff YOU make your kid's science fair displays on. Then glue decorative paper on it, which I knew I'd seen at the office/art supply store. Ta-da!

Problem: That decorative paper turned out to be a figment of my imagination. So how about printing my own Christmas paper from online designs? Great, but the mock-up I did in miniature looked a little too folksy-patchworky:

Fabric? Ah--the shopping bus had a scheduled trip to the fabric souk and haberdashery (as the Brits refer to the shop full of trims and notions and sewing supplies) after the Thanksgiving weekend. Perfect.

Saudi fabric stores are...different than American ones. Folks here don't do crafts or home decorating projects. These shops sell dress fabrics, and by "dress" I mean "fancy dress." The display windows have mannequins dressed in fabulous ball gowns that aren't gowns at all, but draped and pinned designs. When I went shopping at the second-hand souk, none of the ballgowns I saw had a label inside. Though you certainly see plenty of ballgowns in mall shops, it's typical for women go to dressmakers, choose a design (or make one up themselves, judging by many I saw), and then buy fabrics.

How else would you explain this?

Quite the treasure, eh? My friend Cecelia found this at the second-hand souk and let me try it on. (The purple is my workout top, not some weird liner. Heaven forbid there should be something weird.) Those are inexplicable little kerchiefs tacked around the hip (for twirling?), and with the right moves I was able to make a real sparkle show on the patio out of sunlight reflected from the jug-jewels.

The starting point for something like this is back in the fabric shops: pre-made jeweled bodice fronts. For beginners, start simple.

Then work your way up:

Now, time to match and build. For fabrics, there's tulles and satins and velvets and laces... And if the bodice isn't enough, here's just one wall of beaded and gilded trims in a shop with rows and rows of them:

For me, making a plain ol' tree, shades of green satin worked well. I cut the foam core into rows, the longest being the full width of one piece, then cut right triangles (your high school geometry at work!) off the ends of the shorter ones, taped them together, laid the satin here and there over the boards, taped it to the back, sticky-tacked it to the wall, and voila:

(Okay, a craft blog this ain't. I actually did take step-by-step photos, and I'll add them at the end if anybody's interested.)

Pretty freaking proud of myself. Original concept, original design, AND actual execution. Not a box full of supplies. I CRAFTED. (How we doin', Landee?) I don't know about you, but when I put it all together, I'm feeling pretty Christmatastic.

I did pick up more trims. I have red pom-poms, a gold chain, a ruby-and-gold jeweled swag, strands of plastic pearls in ivory and celedon and red, but I kind of like it with just the thin swag of green-velvet-I-don't-know-what. Edit, as they say to the bedazzlers on Project Runway.

So maybe I'll save the sparkles and pom-poms for decking out my next princess dress.