KSA Notebook

A few scattered observations as our trip enters its final days:

1) Jeddah – the second largest city in Saudi Arabia, and by the far the most cosmopolitan, progressive, and ethnically mixed – has more public art than I can recall seeing anywhere. Maybe it just stands out more here – when you see a huge vagina in the middle of a roundabout in the most circumspect place on earth, it gets your attention.

2) This drives me crazy: I leave a hotel room in the morning and turn off the lights and the A/C. I come back and all the lights are on, allowing me to see my breath. Oh I hate that so much.

3) “One day there will be no oil.” Chief Economist, National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, on the 6th day of our trip. He is the first to acknowledge this sentiment even obliquely.

4) Security in Riyadh, where we arrived today is much, much tighter than anywhere else we have been. Credit for this observation goes to Payson Tucker and Ted Carstensen.