A CITIZEN recounted to me his bitter experience with some of the rest houses on the outskirts of Jeddah. He said the rent they charge for a day is as high as the Himalayas. The rent, according to him, may exceed SR2,000 per day during normal seasons (...)
A FEW days back, a Saudi man deliberately set the car of a woman schoolteacher in Taif ablaze. He had been closely watching the car until he completed his heinous crime. The car was peacefully parked outside the woman's house when the man poured (...)
IN one of my trips to the US, I met with a number of Arabs who worked for a big American company. During the conversation, I asked them about their work hours. They told me that there were no fixed hours but the whole matter was decided by (...)
ABOUT 2.7 million of boys and girls of intermediate and secondary school started their final exams.
The schools all over the Kingdom made tremendous preparations for annual exercise. The teachers and administrators were keen to prepare the (...)
IN a growing phenomenon, a large number of shops are categorically refusing to accept credit cards as a method of payment and ask consumers to pay in cash or through mada-linked debit cards.
I asked a sales clerk in one of the shops why he was (...)
I LOGGED into a website that contains a database of Saudi and expatriate doctors practicing in Saudi Arabia. Patients can make appointments for consultation with any of them at the hospitals they work or their private clinics.
Then I noticed that (...)
ACCORDING to figures released by the General Authority for Statistics (GaStat) recently, there were 58,000 divorces in the Kingdom last year representing about 24 percent of the total number of the marriage contracts, which was put at 158,000 during (...)
WITHOUT doubt, fake products exist in our market. They include clothes, perfumes, watches, bags, shoes and electrical equipment and products.
Some products are not only imitations, but they also do not conform to the approved standard specifications (...)
AMOUNG us there is a group of young men that we are proud of. Though I like to write about the initiatives being carried out by our youth, here I will dwell upon something more important.
We are proud of the youth's contributions to serve their (...)
I AM used to writing about people's sufferings in this column. This time I will write about an unbelievable story of a man in Madinah who received an exorbitant bill from the National Water Company.
This old man lives in a small villa with his wife. (...)
THE Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah warned students and staff against smoking inside the campus, saying violators, including faculty members, would be slapped with a SR200 fine as of next month.
The university will implement this positive decision (...)
LAST July, the Council of Ministers approved the formation of the Kingdom's first e-commerce council. The council will recommend policies and legislation related to e-commerce, motivate it and eliminate hurdles before it.
This step came as part of (...)
IT was extremely painful to remember what happened in Christchurch, New Zealand, last Friday. It was a terrorist crime by all means, which led to the death and injuries to scores of innocent men, women and children, who were inside a mosque waiting (...)
TWO weeks ago when I was in Riyadh, I came across a story, which was also narrated to me by my granddaughters. It was about a horrible accident that one of their friends at school met with.
Muneera was returning with her mother on the school bus. (...)
DURING a seminar on private-public sector cooperation and the role of contractors organized on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Jeddah Chamber for Commerce and Industry, the newly appointed mayor of the city warned (...)
A FEW days ago, I met one of my friends, who is a teacher. I asked him if he had any input on the recently announced plan to improve the quality of general education in the Kingdom.
With a broad face, he replied that he had heard and read about the (...)
WHAT does it mean to live an isolated life in the middle of a crowd? How does it feel to be able to sit among friends yet secluded because your Absher account is suspended and you cannot get any of the government services done?
Such a life is (...)
TO His Excellency, the Minister of Labor.
Dear minister, you know my appreciation for your wonderful efforts aimed at solving the problem of unemployment among Saudis. Now I want to convey to your excellency the opinion of the people, who wish that (...)
MOST streets in Jeddah used to be paved in a way that allowed people to use them without any problem.
For years now, global warming has been contributing to climate change and every region is affected one way or other. Our city too receives rain on (...)
TWO months after I returned from a trip to Turkey, my Saudi bank gave me a surprise. It sent me an automated message notifying that a certain amount was debited to my credit card from Turkey.
The amount was reimbursed earlier as tax deduction by a (...)
A SENIOR official from Makkah police commented on a previous article I wrote about Saudi society. I talked about the bloody street fights that occur in the country in the context of the recent fight in Al-Hamadaniya, where a man was stabbed to death (...)
MANY citizens have failed to recruit domestic workers including housemaids and drivers to help their families. So they started hiring domestic workers who live in the country illegally, instead.
Each year during the month of Ramadan, the demand for (...)
IF you have traveled on London's Metro, then you might have noticed the colorful newspaper in glossy print and with no less than 50 pages, which is distributed free of charge at all metro stations.
Readers are attracted to this newspaper. The first (...)
SAUDI newspapers recently published a report saying that the number of requests to enforce court orders in the first quarter of the current Hijri year reached 219,476. The requests were worth a total of SR70.7 billion. This is an increase of 40 (...)
IF we have a chance to sit with an elder who started his business from the scratch and worked his way up, and listen to his stories of struggles in life and the great efforts he made to earn a living and to build a future for his family, we will (...)