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The diary of a Saudi man, currently living in the United Kingdom, where the Religious Police no longer trouble him for the moment.

In Memory of the lives of 15 Makkah Schoolgirls, lost when their school burnt down on Monday, 11th March, 2002. The Religious Police would not allow them to leave the building, nor allow the Firemen to enter.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Money isn't everything 



Mrs A says she doesn't want the previous post to give the impression that she is mercenary. So she's selected some items to show that "money isn't everything".

Man Refuses to Marry Woman for Her Salary

The father went to his cousin and asked for his daughter’s hand for his son. The father agreed and during the engagement party, the son did the unthinkable. He stood in front of the matchmaker and said that he refused to marry his cousin. He said that his father had pushed him into marriage with the woman because she was a teacher with a good salary.

Understandable. She may have a good salary, and she is a teacher. But, as I've already said, money isn't everything. You see, she might be condescending, bossy and bad-tempered.
Not that there's any connection between that and her being a teacher. (Ducks)
No, what I really meant was, we shouldn't all going round marrying our first cousins. Being Saudi, we already have enough genetic problems as it is.

However sons should obey their fathers, and if they don't, they know what to expect. Our 60-year-old fathers work out.

A 60-year-old father beat up his 22-year-old son .... who managed to escape to an unknown location.

Meanwhile

Woman Demands Divorce From Chef

A woman has demanded a divorce from her husband because he accepted a job as a chef in a five-star restaurant in Riyadh....The man said he had worked as a security guard for SR700 a month and that he would be happy to use his cooking skills to improve his living conditions.

So, she married a man earning approximately $180 a month working as a security guard, but didn't like him becoming a chef for a much better salary. Well, as we keep saying, money isn't everything. Besides, you're probably "thinking Western"; you know, grasping opportunities, getting on, improving yourself, work ethic, nobility of labor, all that stuff. That may be fine for you over there, but this is Saudi Arabia.

She said that she refused to be married to someone who was a cook in a restaurant. Her family said that the man would bring shame on their daughter because the job was not up to their standards.

Still puzzled? Oh dear, you are slow today, let me explain patiently.

You see, a security guard gets a uniform, so it's almost like the armed forces, which is the pinnacle of ambition for any Saudi male. And he gets to sit in front of security camera screens, drink coffee, be rude to people (especially from the Third World), and then fall asleep. It's a respectable job.

A restaurant chef, on the other hand, has to be capable of cooking six main courses at the same time in extreme heat and humidity whilst singing some 10-year-old pop song badly out of tune and swearing colorfully at the trainees and waiters. It's the sort of thing we import Pakistanis and Filipinos to do. It's skilled manual labor. It's demeaning. It's not a Saudi sort of job.

So that's clear? And the wife and the family are quite right, we must maintain our standards.

What we Saudis are good at, on the other hand, is Financial Services. You know, working with money. High-value deals involving large amounts of currency. All we need to do is find a buyer.

A gang of counterfeiters couldn’t believe their luck when a Dubai man agreed to pay them seven million dollars in return for 22 million pieces of blank paper.
The blank paper was cut in the shape of $100 bills, and the gang told the buyer that if he dipped them in a special chemical solution, they would turn into real money.


But I'm proud to say that the inventive mind behind this ingenious Financial Engineering was...

The gang’s ringleader Abdul Rahman Al Madokey, 35-year-old Saudi citizen

...although...

when they turned up at a late-night rendezvous to hand over the blank paper, they found the “buyer” turned out to be an undercover Dubai cop.

....and....

Dubai’s appeal court upheld a lower court’s ruling sentencing each of the men to one year in prison followed by deportation.

Typical Dubai. Too busy building hotels and houses for soccer stars. Not only have they no sense of humor, they can't recognize a creative finance opportunity when it's right under their nose.

Still, money isn't everything.

(Thanks to "Condo" for that last item.)

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