There was an initiative to have a number of the local streets coated with an additional layer of tarmac.
A simple enough task you’d think?
However, rather than warn people in advance that such an event was going to take place – such as, by putting signs up on lampposts or flyers under windscreen wipers informing residents not to park in certain spots on particular dates – the tarmac team opted to just turn up on the day unannounced.
Surprisingly for them they found that there were many inconveniently parked cars on the various streets earmarked for a new lick of asphalt.
So how did they approach this oversight in their planning?
Well, they used a three pronged attack strategy:
1) They rang every doorbell they could find for approximately three hours straight trying to locate the owners of the “in-the-way” vehicles.
I can personally testify to having put my head under my pillow in an embattled effort to sleep through the constant ringing.
But that didn’t work for them, so …
2) Second, they attempted to drag the offending cars off the road and onto the pavement. This took a huge amount of effort and they seemed to give up after only a couple of cars.
Plus, I’m sceptical as to how happy your average Saudi would have been to come home and find that a worker had dragged his car, with the handbrake still on, some ten metres and then bumped it up a kerb.
So that also didn’t work. And then …
3) They just gave up trying to move the cars and, much to my twisted delight, opted to simply tarmac around any parked cars they found on the streets.
I had thought that they’d come back another day and fill these gaps in but it’s been some months now and I still don’t have to walk very far before I’ll be confronted by a huge “car-shaped” pothole glaring at me from the side of the road.
So, ladies and gentlemen, can we have a round of applause for this unique approach to problem solving?
January 14, 2007 at 4:45 pm |
The way they do things in KSA, sometimes makes me think it’s all spontaneous work and they just pick a location to work on out of the blue when they feel like it.
Don’t wait for them though; they obviously have more important things to do, like break up 1KM patches of the Dammam-Jubail highway and take 6 months to refix them, forcing daily commuters to use tight, rough, often dangerous local traffic lanes.
January 14, 2007 at 6:14 pm |
True.
Or, busy re-naming streets to ensure that current rulership is reflected by suitably large enough roads.
January 15, 2007 at 12:12 am |
That’s …
… I’m still looking for the right word.
January 15, 2007 at 6:40 pm |
Ingenious?
January 16, 2007 at 3:58 pm |
I wonder how much it’ll cost me to et my name on one of those street signs…
Sam St…or Sam Rd. is easier for expats and much easier to pronounce than the 30 letter abbreviated names they got on those boards.
January 16, 2007 at 4:59 pm |
Short of marrying into the royal family or discovering a new number between one and ten and having it named after you, I don’t think you’ve got much chance Sam :/
Alternatively, you could create a new soft drink, build a huge factory for it, and although not officially preserved in the road signage, taxi drivers would know your street as Fizzy Sam Street or Sam Cola Street.
July 28, 2011 at 9:11 pm |
[...] referred to this ingenious approach to road repairs some years back when I first arrived but having recently witnessed another couple of belters, I [...]