For the Love of Pasta

italyflag This should go well with the King’s visit to Italy today, but I swear it’s just a coincidence :-) but first I need to ask: is there that many Italian restaurants in Riyadh? I don’t know but I don’t think that I have seen many of them. But if you were craving pasta there are certainly a few places to be recommended.

There is Pizza Roma in Sulaymania. Now I have never been there because they don’t allow single men in the evening (don’t you just love how crazy the segregation in this city can get?) but whenever I ask about a good Italian place it is the first answer I usually get. So, Pizza Roma has a big reputation but since I’ve never tried it I don’t know how good it is. I trust the high taste of some of those who recommend it but I advice you to try it yourself, or if you have already eaten there you are welcome to share your views in the comments.

Another nice Italian place is the Roma Restaurant. It is one of Riyadh’s hidden treasures, located on a small dark back street near the intersection of Olaya and Mousa bin Nussair. A friend of mine who’s been to both Pizza Roma and Roma Restaurant says they have very similar menus. I recently visited the place and tried their mushroom cream soup as a starter and later the cannelloni with four kinds of cheese and béchamel. Both were delicious and the prices are not very expensive.

The place is small and if you have the misfortune to find a noisy crowd when go there then you might have a problem listening to your friend on the other side of the table. Even worse, some people don’t seem to have a problem smoking heavily in such a small closed area. Unfortunately, instead of banning this disgusting habit, the restaurant seem to encourage it by providing ashtrays on every table. A reservation is needed, especially on weekends, but during midweek you should be able to get a table without one if you were willing to wait for a few minutes.

On Tahlia St. you can find Pizza Amore, which offers a very good selection of speciality pizza that you can’t find anywhere else in town. I have been there a couple of times with foreign guests and my experience has always been more than nice. The families’ section is not very spacious so you may need to check before going there with a big mixed group. I recommend the anchovies pizza, if you were into that kind of thing, of course, as it seems that many people are afraid to try anchovies. I used to be like that, btw, but after trying this pizza I found that my fear was unfounded. They also make some seriously delicious raviolis.

Although I enjoy the experience of going to restaurants and slowly eating my meal under the dim lighting, sometimes I wish if there was a place where I can find a good instant pasta on-the-go that I can grab on my way home. I really wish that Mrs. Vanellis, which I like to go to in Khobar and Bahrain, would open here. If you happen to know something like that in town please let me know. Other than the restaurants I mentioned here I expect there might be a few more good Italian places in the city, so don’t hesitate to share your finds in the comments. What’s your favourite Italian restaurant in Riyadh?

Suggestions Box

My friend Carol Fleming has recently moved her excellent blog from MySpace to WordPress. In case you don’t know, Carol’s blog offers some really interesting views on Saudi Arabia through the eyes of a former US diplomat who is now married to a Saudi and living in Riyadh. She has a lot of good ideas and I thought I would steal one of them: is there any topic that you would like to read more about on Saudi Jeans? Mirela, one of my readers, has asked me to write about handicapped people, accessibility, religion and marriage. What about you? You can leave a comment below, contact me here, or email me: ahmed at saudijeans dot org.

Job at MBC for Women

Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, or simply MBC, are looking for a woman to work on online community development for the imatter project which focuses on empowering women across the Arab World. I’m posting this because I thought some fellow female bloggers might be interested in getting this job, especially that the job description goes well with what they are already doing with their blogs. If you would like to apply please follow the instructions posted here, and let me know as I might be able to help.

More on KAUST

The groundbreaking of KAUST was the biggest news in Saudi Arabia during the past two weeks. King Abdullah officially broke ground for the promising project in a huge event attended by thousands of dignitaries. I wasn’t invited, but fellow blogger John Burgess was there and he wrote about it here.

Since I have been offline for the past few days I have not closely followed what has been said about it, but I have written previously about KAUST, way before anyone in the local media had the slightest idea what the acronym KAUST stands for. I have a few more things to say, though, so here it goes.

kaust_logo There is no doubt that if KAUST delivered all of its promises, it will be the most important achievement that King Abdullah will be remembered by, and many people here feel that the king is very determined to make it happen. But not all people are excited, as some are afraid that a huge project like KAUST could be plagued by the three common symptoms of higher education institutions in the country: corruption, bureaucracy and mismanagement. Now I don’t want to be skeptical, but I think a certain amount of skepticism is required to keep people’s feet on the ground in order to turn big dreams like this one into reality.

Nevertheless, most of the initial indications are good. For example, KAUST will be independent from MOHE. Actually I was surprised that MOHE was not involved in the project at all, but it was a good kind of surprise as MOHE never really impressed me. It was Saudi Aramco who engineered this project from scratch. Despite what many people, including some Aramco employees, say about how Aramco changed to the worse after the Americans left, it remains one of the few government bodies that I trust and expect to preform excellently.

Now I have speculated before that megaprojects such as KAUST and the new economic cities might change the culture of the country. However, it seems that such change may not be a result but rather a condition for these projects to success.

For instance, Saudi Arabia used to be a very closed society with a what can be viewed as hostility towards foreign ideas. On the day after groundbreaking, KAUST hosted a special academic symposium discussing the role of the research university in the 21st century, and the keynote speaker was Dr. Charles Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering and President Emeritus of MIT, who said: “science can flourish only in an open environment.”

It is the hope that KAUST would produce a positive effect on the economy, education and culture of the Saudi society, but hope is not enough. This a huge undertaking to our country and there is a lot of hard work to be done here by everyone. Let’s not blow it.

Love/Hate

Let’s face it. Despite what Philips may try to tell (or sell) you, life is not simple. We usually try to simplify it by generalizing and using stereotypes but that doesn’t always work. This has much to do with the fact that we human beings are very complex. We are not simple creatures folks. And this, I believe, where this kind of love/hate relationships come from.

1 – Riyadh
I love it because living in this city has given me opportunities I would never had if I stayed in my beloved hometown back in the EP, but I hate its hypocrisy, rudeness, sharp contrasts, restrictions and traffic jams.

2 – KSU
I love almost nothing about it except that some of my favorite intellectuals such as Khalid Al Dakhil, Hatoon Al Fassi and Matruk Al Faleh supposedly belong to this entity. I hate almost everything about it especially that these very same intellectuals are not allowed to teach here because someone thinks they will corrupt the minds of our youth.

3 – Relationships
I love them because they can provide you with a sense of security and peace that you can’t feel it on your own. I hate them because in a society like ours they are risky, shaky and so complicated you usually have little or no control over how they progress.

4 – Religious TV channels
I love watching them every now and then because they offer a form of entertainment rarely found anywhere else: laughing at something not intended to be funny. I hate them because in most cases they promote a very narrow-minded agenda that would actually hurt the religion they claim to represent.

5 – iPhone
I love the multi-touch large colorful screen, the amazing UI and immediate responsiveness, the SMS app, YouTube, etc. I hate the Apple lock that makes it hard to use for regular people without some hacking and geekery, no SMS forwarding, the inability to copy contacts from the SIM, and few other little things. But now that Apple have to offer the iPhone in France unlocked I hope most of these problems would be solved soon.

Driving While Drunk

You would think that in a country where the consumption of liquor is illegal, drunk driving won’t be a problem to deal with, but Molouk Ba-Isa got some news for you. She, like many who live near King Fahd Causeway, aka the Johnny Walker Bridge, is complaining that they have to deal with impaired drivers every weekend, and it gets much worse during the Eid week every year.

She goes into the details that I’m not sure if most of you need to know, but here is the money quote: “The problem is a lack of enforcement.” On both sides of the causeway, little is done to prevent the potential dangers of drunk drivers. Sadly, some people don’t know how to celebrate without putting others and themselves in danger.

How Dare You Criticize Me?

First you have some people who believe that the government cannot be criticized simply because الشيوخ أبخص, and the government know the interests of the citizens better than themselves. Then you have some officials in the government who believe they cannot be criticized because, well, they are the government, falsely thinking this gives them some kind of immunity. And now you have a Shoura member who believe he and his fellow members cannot be criticized because he claims that almost no one out there know anything about the nature of work they do under that big dome.

However, Abdullah Al Twairgi is not jut asking for immunity, but he also seeks establishing a law to punish those who dare to talk bad about the Shoura Council. Obviously the right honourable member was so offended by an episode of Tash Ma Tash that was aired in Ramadhan and lightly touched on the performance of the council, and now he wants to ban reporters from attending the council discussions until they come up with something that can silence the critics. Way to go doctor!

At least I’m glad I have not elected you.