Library

I've spent too much time in the library not to give it a shout out.  For two exhausting semesters I lived in this place.  I mostly went there at night, sometimes all night, and this is reflected in the pictures.  The atmosphere is quiet, cold, cavernous, and a little eerie.  You start to go kind of insane by 5am before the first rays of light peek in and bring you back.

Legendary.

I am weirdly captivated by the Kaust library.  On the one hand it was the backdrop for some of my most trying moments and my mind pushes the thought of it away.  On the other hand, those experiences were so strong that they're like a part of me.  I won't just remember the library after I'm gone, I'll feel it.

I've slept here.

Part of the reason I'll forever feel the library is because it was always so cold.  It's gotten a little better this semester, but that first year was brutal.  It was like Kaust was training us to become extreme engineers, capable of solving problems in the most inhospitable conditions.  I have one pair of jeans and one sweatshirt that I would always put on before going in for a late night.  On one occasion I actually brought my comforter from home.  This upset the security guards.

Another quick story: one night during the first semester a massive storm hit Kaust.  It rained heavily for hours.  It started around midnight so naturally I was in the library.  After one of my friends came in to spread the news, those of us in the library computer lab got up to have a look.  Turns out we didn't have to go far to see the rain because it was leaking through the library roof like a sieve.  It wasn't just trickling, it was gushing.  Steady streams of water were dousing the whole library--a place full of computers and books--and there wasn't much anyone could do about it.  My favorite part was the administration's way of verbally addressing the leaks and deflecting blame from themselves.  "You have to understand that this kind of rain only happens once every 20 years in Saudi Arabia!"  Wait, so you built the university without expecting it to last 20 years?  That's why you didn't waterproof the buildings?  Hilarious.

Where I was when the rain hit.

Faculty and Students

There's an important distinction that needs to be made within Kaust: the administration has been awful while the faculty and students have been wonderful.  The virtues of the faculty and students are what have made this whole thing worth it.  I leave with a great education and I have met some great people.

I offer the highest compliments to the Applied Math program.  In my year and half of work under some very highly respected professors, I have gained so much knowledge that even my undergraduate self seems childish in comparison.  It has made me not just a better mathematician, but a formidable learner.  After what I have accomplished in the classrooms here, I feel there is nothing that my mind cannot handle.

I also have to acknowledge the student body, in particular the friends that I have made along the way.  It's been fun.  In spite of everything gone wrong, it really has been a blast.  The sleepless nights in the library would have been miserable to do alone.  Instead, those were the times where I laughed the most.  I don't know what I would have done without my friends here.

Mold

I promised a follow-up on Saudi Oger, the company responsible for dealing with construction related issues and maintenance.  Saudi Oger also handles a number of other labors on Kaust campus including food services and printing (!), but none of them have so personally affected me as much as maintenance.  I think the best way to relate my observations is through my mold story.

When I first moved into my brand new apartment and went up to the second floor I noticed a large mold colony.  It was teal and black and circular, roughly six feet in diameter.  In the early days, maintenance was flooded with phone calls.  Students everywhere were dialing in to list the problems they had in their homes.  It took me over two weeks to get maintenance to come to my apartment.  While I waited, the mold grew worse and I was given a limitless supply of promises...

"When will your men be able to come?"
"In two or three days, sir, inshallah."

Aaaaaand pause.  Inshallah.  To this day that phrase sends shivers through my body.  Literally it means, "Allah willing,"  but everyone who has been told this by a Kaust representative knows that in this context it actually means, "Whatever you are asking for will almost certainly not happen, unless it is convenient or happens by mere chance.  In any case, I take no responsibility for what I am saying and it's not my fault."  In essence, it has been abused as a cop out.  While I am sure this phrase is used more responsibly and more honorably elsewhere, at Kaust it is the kiss of death.  I cannot tell you how many times I have been stood up by an inshallah, nor do I want to think about it.

The maintenance staff did eventually come to my apartment.  By staff, I mean a battalion of roughly ten men in the most thoroughly worn out clothing I have ever laid eyes on.  I cheerily escorted them up to the second floor and showed them the mold.  They told me, "Oh yes, no problem sir."  More shivers.  That's another tainted phrase.  Whenever Saudi Oger personnel tell you "No problem", beware.  Things are about to get much worse.

I proceeded to watch my non-problematic mold get painted over.  Seriously.  That is not a joke.  These ten men literally painted right over the mold.  That was the solution to my mold problem.  It wasn't even the same color as the paint on the wall.  After about a week the mold peeked through again.  I called maintenance again.  I ran through the maze again.  This time, I told the operator, the men need to remove the mold, not just paint over it.

The next crew Saudi Oger send was more modest.  It consisted of two men in an equally ragged state.  I felt bad for them as I think anyone would, having not grown up seeing workers in such a condition.  I felt even worse for them when I saw how they planned to extract the drywall that was covered in mold.  Their only tool was a rusty hacksaw blade.  And it didn't even have a handle.  They wrapped a paper towel around the blade so as not to cut themselves and took turns slaving away.  I kid you not.  It was the single saddest sight I take home with me from Kaust.  The two guys worked hard and breathed in a cloud of drywall dust and mold particles.  Like their predecessors, however, it was obvious that they were not trained in how to remove mold.  They took out the most densely covered part of the colony, but they left a wide ring of mold in place around it.  I didn't have the heart to stop them.  They patched up the hole and left.

The poor working conditions are a staple of life for Saudi Oger labor.  They usually come from India, Pakistan, or the Philippines on two year contracts, during which their passports are taken.  The pay is small and the standard of living dismal.  Some of the men ride buses in and out of Kaust.  Some live together on campus in barracks with no entertainment and no personal space.  There is not a single such worker that I have spoken to who enjoys what he is doing.  When I ask about it they hastily change the subject or give evasive answers like "We don't have a choice."  And for many of them Saudi Oger is the best option.  This is the most viable way to support their families back home.

I tried several more times over the course of the first semester to have the mold fixed.  Every time I would call in and ask for able workers.  There were none.  Nonetheless men would eventually come, sometimes at random hours.  Twice I came home to see my door open and my apartment filled with unauthorized troops of men.  Two would work while the others sat around.  In another instance I woke up at around midnight to noises on the third floor.  It turned out to be two laborers who had entered my apartment through the third floor balcony.  I was disturbed and demanded that all keys to my apartment be withheld barring my permission.  A rash of thefts had gone around campus targeting computers, external hard drives, and even university lab equipment.  Kaust security shrugged its shoulders at the victims' complaints saying that there was simply no hope of getting it back.

But it gets worse.  The mold in my apartment wasn't truly eliminated until October 2010.  I had mold for over a year.  Despite the countless workers who came and went in my apartment, the mold always returned.  I found out later via a Saudi Oger employee that the men had been instructed not to fix the root cause of an issue unless it was specifically mentioned by the resident.  For example, if I did not explicitly request that maintenance fix a leak that was feeding the mold, the leak would go untreated.  This happened multiple times.  When I requested that the leak be fixed, they worked on the air conditioner, which was dripping condensation.  They both failed to stop the condensation and ignored another leak source--the uninsulated pipes in the floor.  Try to wrap your mind around that.  The company in charge of fixing housing issues was purposely turning a blind eye to housing issues.

In an effort to appeal to the university for help I scheduled a meeting with the then-administrative head of Graduate Affairs.  Immediately after I mentioned that I was there discuss mold I was interrupted and the woman I was meeting with proceeded to tell me that I needed to be patient.  She told me that this school had been built at record speed, that there were bound to be hiccups, that Kaust was doing everything in its power.  It is remarkable to me that "everything in Kaust's power" did not include hiring a company of professionals to remove mold all over campus.  When I mentioned the possible safety issue of mold I was told that Kaust had paid a firm in Jeddah to do a comprehensive analysis on the mold issue.  The results, according to this woman, indicated that the mold was completely harmless.  This meeting took place in the second semester of the university.  Students had been worried about breathing mold for months and the university chose not to announce the results of this supposed analysis.  But why not?!  I voiced my confusion to the Graduate Affairs head and she conceded that, yes, in hindsight it would have been better to assure the students that they were in no danger.  Naturally I asked if I could look at the mold analysis report now.  Her reply?  She could not show me the report because it was classified.  Another priceless moment for the Kaust scrapbook.

This is how things are done at Kaust.

The Heart of the Matter

As a last word on housing, I want to clarify something.  Most of the problems I have detailed are relatively small.  The mold was pretty bad.  So was the indoor rain.  And the air conditioning complications.  But I'm a minimalist by nature and I try to keep even the worst inconveniences in perspective.  So what is my real issue with Kaust housing?

The first part of my distaste stems from the shear volume of problems.  Day by day the place revealed another blemish, another cut corner.  Some of them have been small, but together they add up to a very depressing, very debilitating place to live.  After a while the disrepair is overwhelming.

The second part of my distaste comes from the grand expectations that Kaust established by their tireless propaganda.  If there's one thing that Kaust does with gusto, it's creating an image, and not always a very faithful one.  At every event I attended before coming to campus some representative was telling me how fabulous everything would be.  Housing, among all the other fairytale assets, would be wonderful.  As a member of the founding class, I would have the luxury of moving into a brand new apartment with all my necessary household items provided.  I saw renderings, I saw models, I saw pictures.  None of them were painted carelessly or soaking wet.  In fact, despite numerous promises from Kaust representatives, many apartments were not even ready when the university opened in September 2009.  Female students lived in a hotel in Jeddah and had to take an hour bus ride to and from campus.  Same for much of the faculty.  When the next wave of students came in September 2010, many of the founding class were still in "temporary" housing, sometimes living in rooms that were not designed for occupancy.

But above all, the hardest thing to deal with has been Kaust's negligent attitude toward correcting the housing problems.  After everyone realized just how bad these houses were, much of the blame settled on the original construction company, the Bin Laden group.  Kaust evicted this company and is allegedly filing suit against them.  I applaud Kaust for their decisive action on this front, however this is where my applause stops.  The construction company vacancy was filled by an equally bad mega-contractor called Saudi Oger and since then this name has haunted my dreams.  It's hard to believe how systematically inept and how consistently outrageous a single company can be (more on this in the near future).  Kaust, for their part, refuses to acknowledge the severity of the housing problems and how short Saudi Oger falls of addressing them.  Worse, there is little communication between university higher-ups and the campus inhabitants, hence no accountability.  After a year and a half of heavy-weight issues in my apartment, I still don't know who is ultimately responsible for maintenance operations.

If housing had not been free I don't think I would have stayed.  I feel sorry for subsequent generations of graduates who will be paying for it.  The poor quality, the long list of problems, and the total indifference of Kaust miraculously makes living in a three-story apartment a negative asset.

The Third Floor

If you think about it, or even if you don't, it makes no sense that a single graduate student occupies a three-story apartment.  I hardly ever go up to the third floor.  Based on the large office desk, I assume that Kaust intended for me to study up there.  This makes no sense.  Not only would I have to go up two flights of stairs to get there, but it's the hottest part of the whole place.  And of course, it hasn't been without its share of problems.

Bottom right, in white.  That's a fridge.

The primary problem with this floor is the heat.  It's in constant sunlight, it receives warm air from the two floors below, and the air conditioner is just not capable of keeping it cool.  And the air conditioner drips constantly.  During the overhaul of my apartment it was discovered that this drip was caused by condensation on poorly insulated air ducts.  The hot air was let in through slots between the external bricks where the original builders failed to put mortar.  This ceiling also collapsed due to drywall saturation.

Despite its superfluousness, the third floor has one very nice redeeming feature.  From it one can access a balcony on the roof of the building and look out over campus and the Red Sea.  This side of my apartment faces west, so I can watch the sun set on the coastal horizon.  We rarely have clouds so the evenings usually end in a smooth, uninterrupted canvas of blue sky fading into red, orange, and yellow.

A rare cloudy day.

I think we should end it there.

The Second Floor

Most of the time I spend in my apartment, I spend on the second floor, which consists of a bedroom and a full bathroom.

My hotel room.

The bedroom is the one room in the apartment without any problems.  Actually, just kidding.  Every room has problems.  By far the biggest threat to the bedroom was mold.  For the longest time the air conditioner couldn't go below 77 degrees Fahrenheit and there were leaks in the plumbing.  Warm air + moisture = happy mold.  The stuff was everywhere and I lost a backpack and some juggling beanbags to it.  Mold was all over campus.  Still is.  I don't think there's a single person living on campus that hasn't been affected by it.  There's a lot more to the mold story, but it's far too long to be addressed here.

Another bedroom plague has been noise pollution.  You already know about the fire alarms.  Well there's also construction.  Everyday it continues, and everyday it brings a new din of whirring, cutting, or pounding.  You can hear it echoing through the neighborhood, unless the work is being done right outside your window, in which case it echoes through your bone marrow.  Oh, and work starts very early in the morning.

Serenade with generators and jackhammers.

Compliments that I can give to the bedroom: decent bed, plenty of storage space, air conditioner now works, receives lots of natural light.

As for the bathroom, it embodies everything that is wrong with Kaust housing.  It looks fine, but just beneath the paper thin exterior is a depressing anthology of issues.  It was the spawning point for the mold colony that became a living breathing wallpaper for much of my apartment.  It was the cause of the monsoons on the first and second floors.  It is a study in how to build a 'new' home with approximately no attention to detail.  At one point the entire waterlogged ceiling collapsed.  I was sleeping in the bedroom and I heard a series of crashes.  The drywall fell.  Then the lights fell, exploded, and shorted out.

In the end, it was this bathroom that prompted the complete overhaul of my apartment.  I had to move to temporary housing for a month while I supervised the extrication of moldy drywall, the proper sealing and insulation of pipes, and the correction of carpentry errors.

Good times.

Of course not everything has been fixed, nor will it ever be, but it is in better shape than it was.  For instance, Kaust was gracious enough to give me another ceiling.  They also fixed the shower drainage problems.  And they installed a trap for the toilet.

Most of the remaining problems are aesthetic.  If I were going to be living here longer I would care.  But I'm not, so I don't.  There are irremovable brown stains in the tub, there are scratches and paint smudges on the mirror, not every joint fits neatly, not every gap is closed, the toilet seat can't stay up, the cabinet doors beneath the sink fall off of their rusty hinges.  Water pools in the sink and the wall tiling is still comically bad.

Case in point(s).

But you know what?  One way or another, I'm leaving this place in a week.

The First Floor

The front door opens into an entry corridor.  Signs of sloppy work are immediately apparent.  There are painting smudges and scratches everywhere.  The first closet you come to houses a stacked washer and dryer unit.  I am fortunate in that mine have worked very well and I am thankful for their continued functionality.  Others have been less fortunate and their laundry has had to be outsourced to the Kaust laundry service, often indefinitely, while waiting for repairs or replacement.  Incidentally, repairs are made extremely difficult by the extremely close quarters of the closet, according to at least one maintenance worker.

Just beyond the washer/dryer closet is a half bathroom which I can't say much about because I rarely use it.  It works fine but does not offer the most inviting atmosphere.  There are bits of cement speckled on the wall tiles and an inch long brown smudge on the toilet seat which cannot be removed.  When I first saw this smudge my eyes opened to twice their normal size with disbelief.  Surely that's not what I think it is.  Thankfully, no.  Upon closer inspection I was relieved to find that it was only an errant dash of the sticky lacquer that covers most of the decorative wood surfaces in my apartment.  The air in this bathroom also has a thin piercing quality that makes me think of paint thinner and recently split stone.

Always enjoy explaining this one to guests.

Which brings us to the kitchen.  As always, it looks nice enough...

This is a kitchen.

...and it seems like they meant well.  When I moved in there were dishes galore, a ton of pots, and even some random food, but not nearly enough cabinet space to store it.  In the beginning I tried keeping some of my groceries on the counter, however this turned out to be quite foolish.  Besides taking up the limited counter space, I was losing bread.  Each night that I left bread on the counter, a corner of it would be gone by morning.  This, I discovered, was courtesy of the rats who had established a network of pathways through the kitchen via the holes left by the carpenters who failed to shore up gaps between adjoining surfaces.

The refrigerator and freezer doors also did not close properly.  This led to extensive condensation in both compartments, and the freezer became one big solid cube of ice.  This has since been fixed, as have some problems with the air conditioner over head that caused it to rain for several days on the kitchen floor.  But having maintenance done has always come with a price.  There's always collateral damage.  Because of the maintenance work and "cleaning" done in the kitchen, the oven tops are now rusted over and the glass oven door is etched with blasted sediment.  I have also lost a number of kitchen items in the wake of maintenance crews including dishes, a block of knives, and a bag of chips.

Silver Lining: a drawer organizer I made from boxes.

The last major area of the first floor is the living room, which isn't really an appropriate name because I don't live in it at all.  The center of the floor is covered by a carpet which produces a herd of fibrous pills any time someone walks across it.  One corner of this carpet is dusted with mysterious black flakes that issue from the nearby air conditioning vents.  Encircling the carpet are a couch and two chairs which are extremely firm as well as a massive TV sitting on a coffee table.  The coffee table is meant to sit in the center of the room.  The TV is meant to sit on a nonexistent entertainment center.  At this point, I have stopped asking about the entertainment center.

This is a living room.

As a side note the TV, while impressively large, is not useful.  Kaust provides TV service to its residents via a box that has never worked well.  It loads at a glacial pace and it freezes when the TV has been on for an hour or so.  But even this is irrelevant now because a couple months ago Kaust announced that it would begin charging for a majority of the TV channels.  By 'majority', I mean everything remotely entertaining.  So I can either pay for a low quality service or do without TV.  Needless to say, I did not subscribe.

This concludes Disk One of the Mark Houston Reality Tour.  Please scroll up to insert Disk Two and continue on to the second floor.

Housing

Say hello to Kaust housing.  I have.  And I can't wait to say goodbye.

I know.  It looks nice.  But it isn't.

Any discussion about Kaust would be hopelessly incomplete without a substantial essay on housing and its staggering list of headaches.  The array of problems with the accommodations affect almost everyone on campus and they affect them deeply.  At minimum, housing complaints account for a plurality of the diatribes that I've heard from colleagues.  And it makes sense, after all these are our homes.  We live in them, we eat in them, we work in them, we sleep in them.  We expect a measure of comfort and security in order to sustain our health and morale.  Because our living space is such an integral part of our lives, their shortcomings are especially bothersome.

My own apartment's history ranks among the most plagued with problems.  It is by no means the worst, but it has an extensive sample of the housing faults that have been reported by students and faculty.  As such, my apartment is the perfect case study for a Kaust housing discussion.  The volume of commentary required to faithfully capture the state of housing requires a floor-by-floor critique, but first a few words about the apartment as a whole.

The design is impractical.  I have three small floors stacked one on top of the other so that all of my living space is arranged vertically.  I have to go up or down stairs anytime I want to change rooms.  This is silly.  And think about all the stairs in all of the apartments.  In one building there are about ten apartments.  Each apartment has two or three flights of stairs.  That's a lot of unnecessary stairs.  This means wasted space and wasted material.  If they had built apartments of the same square footage but oriented them horizontally, they could have avoided building all those stairs, made better use of space, and had a more convenient floor plan for the residents.  It also would have made the building's plumbing a lot simpler.

Another apartment wide problem is the pervasive use of gypsum board.  It is constantly absorbing atmospheric moisture and playing host to extensive mold colonies.  Every knowledgeable construction person who has come to inspect my apartment has shaken his head at this.  It is a problem.  It will continue to be a problem.  I have recently had all the gypsum board in my apartment replaced.  No more than a month later, the paint covering the seams between the boards began to crack as the underlying boards swelled and shifted.

The last issue we'll collectively identify as 'water problems'.  The causes are many, but they all result in water showing up in places that it shouldn't be.  At one point, it was "raining" on all three floors of my apartment.  On the third floor it was because hot air that seeped in through holes in the mortar was condensing on uninsulated air ducts.  On the second floor it was because the air conditioner drainage pan was placed in the wrong position.  On the first floor, it was because the pipes on the second floor weren't properly sealed, so every time I took a shower on the second floor a monsoon occurred below.  You can imagine that all of this water caused a lot of damage.  There were piles of ruined gypsum board, soggy blobs of insulation, and ubiquitous mold, not to mention my own disgust with Kaust housing and maintenance.  All of this eventually led to a full-scale overhaul of my apartment.  More on that later.

This ceiling collapsed from water saturation.

The general craftsmanship of this place is sad.  I can't tell you how many times maintenance workers have lamented the senseless mess of pipes and wires hidden by the walls and ceilings, or how many finishing touches were left undone.  It is abundantly clear that the people who constructed this place did so hastily and without much regard for quality.

Par for the course.

Next up, we begin with the first floor.

Printing

Tonight I went to the library to get my homework scanned in order to email it the TA for one of my courses. When I arrived at the printing room at 10:00pm, the doors were locked and the lights were out. In spite of the sign on the door that reads "We are here to help you. Hours: 7:00am - 5:45pm and 7:00pm - 5:45am," there was not a soul in sight. I banged on the doors. I tried to find a contact number. I looked in the bathrooms and the diner. I tried every nearby open door and solicited help from every campus employee I encountered. No one knew where the printing staff was and they were extremely pessimistic about the odds of finding them. They shrugged and advised me casually to come back in the morning to see if someone had shown up. Really? Really?!

Printing-related services have been a sore spot for students for a long time. It isn't feasible for most of us to bring printers to Kaust, so barring access to departmental resources, we have to rely on the library facilities. During the first two semesters there were printer/scanner machines distributed throughout public spaces in the library. These were serviceable, though far from good. The machines were constantly out of ink or out of order entirely. When I questioned library staff about the constant equipment issues they said that the primary problem was that much of this stuff (including spare ink) was on order and it took a really long time for anything to ship to Saudi Arabia. Again...really? Why are we just now ordering spare ink cartridges? No one foresaw that the most heavily used printers on campus for over 400 students might run out of ink?

Well this semester Kaust took steps to remedy these problems by establishing the printing center, collecting all of the previously available printing/scanning equipment into a single room and instituting a printing allowance. The printing allowance makes sense. Even a university as wealthy as Kaust shouldn't let users print with the careless abandon that ran rampant in the first year. Keeping all the printing resources in a centralized location also makes sense, but only if the people who need to use the resources have access to that location.

Understand that in my little episode from earlier, I was prevented from scanning my homework because one person was not there. The printing center was obviously supposed to be open, but the staff member was not there and there was literally no one else who could access that room and its resources to help me. In my inquiries for help I ran across the night manager of campus maintenance. He called the department supervisor in charge of the printing center. This supervisor had no idea that the guy didn't show up, or that the printing center was closed, and she said that there was nothing she could do until morning. How can a university's printing resources be held hostage by one person not coming in to work? There's no backup plan here? And how could no one be aware that the staff member was absent three hours into his shift? I mean, really?

Fortunately for me, the failure of my scanning attempt was not a serious threat to my grade. However, I feel bad for those students who have a more pressing need to scan and print. We are in the shadow of finals and many students have studying to do and projects to complete. Some of these students will be seriously inconvenienced by the inexcusably locked doors of the printing center. They will have no recourse, no one to call, not even an explanation to help them make sense of their defeat. The doors are locked and that's that. Really.

Where's the Fire?

I haven't been motivated to write much lately.  You might say that I had lost my fire.  That changed this morning when I awoke, ironically, to the fire alarm.  I can't say that I was very surprised to hear it.  Fire alarms are very common here on campus.  Hardly a week goes by without hearing one screeching through the air above the neighborhoods of student housing.  It could happen to anyone at any time, and so it has been since the university opened.  This morning it was just my turn.

This is why I did not leave the building or even get out of bed.  I did what every seasoned Kaust student does-- I did my best to sleep in spite of it.  The alarm sounded intermittently for over two hours, but no one came, no one contacted me, and frankly I never expected them to.  Why?  Because this is how things are done at Kaust.  This problem has been in place for over a year.  It has never been fixed, it has never been discussed with the students, and it shows no sign of improvement.  There is absolutely no reason to believe that fire alarms will not simply be a part of everyday life for students on Kaust campus.

For me personally, the primary consequences are these: I can sleep through emergency alarms and my inner drive to continue this blog is rekindled.

A Tour in Pictures

For those who haven't had the pleasure of experiencing Kaust in person, here are some highlights from a virtual walking tour (minus the sweltering heat).

The Beacon: accidental namesake of this blog

The Kaust Beacon is intended to be the emblem of the university.  It looks nice, isn't finished, and it's nocturnal lights function unpredictably.  I'd say it captures the university pretty well.

In case you've forgotten that this is Saudi Arabia...

The Grand Mosque is the most stunning structure on campus.  Walking through its outdoor courtyards of polished stone generates a feeling of wealth and history.

The Canal

Between the canal, the harbor, and the Red Sea Steps, students could conceivably be riding jetskis to class.  This needs to happen.

This is obviously a rec center, right Dad?

The Harbor Sports club is easily the weirdest building on campus.  It looks more like Mission Control and is only redeemed by the fact that it has the lone indoor basketball court on campus, which I'm sure is the praise every architect yearns for.

The Marina: the nicest building that no one visits

Buildings on the peninsula, including the Marina, look nice.  That's all I know about them.  Hopefully this will change.

A bustling neighborhood

Believe it or not, this neighborhood is inhabited.  Kaust is actually short of housing.  More on that in the near future.  Housing is its own massive ball of wax.

kthxbai

An Intro to Kaust: Take Two

Kaust is a university for humans.  It looks like this...

But sometimes it also looks like this...

Or this...

The founders and administration of Kaust seem to be the only ones who are oblivious to these other faces of the university.  But whether they ignore them or not, Kaust has bad parts as well as good, sometimes far in excess of the good.  The bad parts will not go away on their own.  They need to be acknowledged and rectified, like this…

Actually not like that.  This is what Kaust higher-ups usually do when they are forced to recognize the existence of a problem.  They find a way to waste resources while also carefully avoiding the application of a permanent, viable solution.

Kaust is run with a ton of money, limited competence, and virtually no accountability.  Projections for Kaust by the student body are extremely pessimistic.  Unfortunately, they're also realistic.  I'd say its eventual fate is a C-level university.  Others say it shuts down in 20 years.  Let's take a look before it crumbles into the sand.

An Intro to Kaust: Take One

This is King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.  It is a new university in Saudi Arabia whose construction was made possible by the money and the vision of the current monarch, King Abdullah.  It is the host of over 600 masters and doctoral students, as well as a sum of administrators, faculty, and miscellaneous staff that number in the thousands.  Together, these facilities and people comprise an institution, one which cannot function appropriately without either component.  And as Kaust has set forth very lofty goals for its stature and accomplishment, these components must be expected to do far more than just function appropriately.  They must be excellent.

Kaust has many proud supporters.  Its framers are like beaming parents, extolling the university's worth with the abandon of endless optimism for its potential.  They point to the buildings, complimenting the speed of their formation and the beauty of their design.  They speak of the faculty and students, highlighting their immaculate pedigree.  They remark that the resources of the university are absolutely unparalleled in terms of finance, recreation, and opportunity.  Indeed, they paint a very pretty picture of our little school in the desert.

As one of the 600 current students and a member of Kaust's founding class, I have seen this painting many times.  I have heard all the speeches and I have seen all the sights.  But more importantly, I have lived in the buildings and worked with the people.  It is with this experience that I tell you that this painting is a mirage.  That is not to say that it is entirely without substance or merit.  My time here has had its compensations.  But because of the excess of attention paid to these positive points, I do not feel compelled to advertise them further.  Instead I seek to illuminate the aspects of the university that are hidden, to systematically dismantle the illusion of Kaust and to replace it with an image tempered with realism.

That is the purpose of this blog.