A glitch in the Matrix? The windowless houses of Riyadh

The photos speaks for themselves, but mind the awkward angles they're taken at, they were shot in a drive-by fashion as I thought to myself that those who put too much effort "covering" up their houses will probably be really pissed-off if they found someone –a foreigner especially- taking photos of the very entity they're "covering" away from voyeuristic intruders!



Let's start with this one, the owner of this house decided to have some windows but with an angle to cut any line of sight! people inside probably suffer from a stiff knick when looking outside the window.



Your average apartment building comes in two window fitting flavours to fit your lifestyle: noisy "window" air-conditioning or a blinded window.



The guy decided to artistically & permanently place a metal sheet in front of the windows adjacent to the main street.



No need for air-flow, single-sided darkened windows.



To be fair, this is how the majority of houses have their windows done, fair enough I assume!



This is from the inside of an apartment building, to come and think about it, methinks the reasoning behind such practice is not to detour nosy neighbours but actually to prevent whose inside from looking outside!



At least this one is different, L-shaped, very very original, remember these are not see-through glass, they're all darkened or "امبزر".



A wall was porpously constructed to hide away the window and block any chances of sight in either direction.



This is another typical in-the-box boxed house.



The little window is for the toilet probably.



Keep the window arches to maintain the architectural visual harmony (if such thing exist) probably; but do with glass! I swear I didn't touch any of the photos with Photoshop, this is sheer reality.



Another creative use of metal sheets in shading one's windows.



One must be fair, this villa have a huge lobby area to the right side covered out with glass, but the rest of the house (especially the sleeping & living quarters) is hidden away as it seems.



Another typical setup, notice the metal shading to the left, this is very common in between most adjacent houses.



Had a change of heart? This one inspired the "glitch in the Matrix" title, from the trap scene when the Machines changed the attributes of a building in order for it not to have any exists (doors, windows ..etc) causing a "glitch" Dejavu.

So… a visual account of a strange phenomenon here in Riyadh, I used to find the huge concrete fences around house to be repelling, but these are nothing compared to being stuck in one of them houses for days & days without a hint of sun shine or allowing a breathe fresh air to replace the AC-intoxicated & rotten air in the house (if you don't mind the desert dust).

The Virgin tea-boy.

His name is Shafiq, our company’s eastern region branch office tea-boy and cleaner, due to the limited scope he have during the day, he usually naps his way out day-long utilizing one of the empty desk spaces available. Shafiq pushes aside the keyboard, mouse & pad of an abandoned PC (the monitor would be too heavy though tempting to be pushed aside) to make room for his arms-cum-pillow, and lay his head venutring into another dimension.

For months, I have failed to recognize the screaming contrast! Here you have a poorly educated man with a subtle job, putting aside a computer connected to the internet that at least would be an entertaining ride not to mention its potential as a learning and life-changing experience!, why? Why he never thought of turning it on instead? perhaps out of fatigue (which I doubt), or out of comfy laziness and lack of ambition, or sheer shyness and humbleness that is intrinsic in south-east Asian cultures… perhaps I was the one who was not motivated enough to offer him to use the PC, after all, it is under my jurisdiction until the IT folks find out about it that it is an abandoned asset…

"Shafiq" I shouted "Do you know how to use a computer" in a cross- gulf-arabic-Tagalug-hindi-urdu-english dialect,
"No" was his answer with sheer shock out of surprise,
"Do you know what’s the internet ?” i reiterated and he replied with an unanticipated "Yes"!

Next step, I needed to fuel his interest So I asked him where he's from and he answered that he's from Bangladesh, no need for search engines, a quick www. & .com pre & post fixes to both ends of “Bangladesh” should lead us somewhere interesting... and it did, it was a Bangladeshi portal. Thanks to auto-foreign text detection, the mystic Bengali script appeared, and the looks at his gazing eyes where a carbon copy of my own when I first experienced the internet back in 1994, maybe with a hint of bitter homesickness I assume.

At the risk of no longer recognizing the sincerity of the motives behind teaching the guy how to use the PC and the internet during his lengthy free times, I cannot help but add that I found it very humorous how he oriented himself to use the mouse… not as funny as my aunt's husband who bought a brand-new computer for his kids back in 1997… he wanted to give it ago, so he picked up the mouse mid-air away from the table, started pointing it at the monitor with intermittent clicks on the mouse in a very hilarious abstract scene of people falling preys of "new" technology in the midst of his kids vivid laughter...

3 weeks onward, Shafiq no longer required my assistance to log him into the computer, as he picked this skill up himself, in fact, he now prints the articles of interest to take home with him, I was astonished today that he started fiddling with MS Office, nibbling a bit with spreadsheets on Excel, digitizing the hand-written handbook that seems to be written by his Mom, but for a 3 week newbie, I must admit it is an impressive progress..

All I hope for now is that he guides himself intellectually through the internet and his use of the computer, to better develop himself and his knowledge... the possibilities are endless…

This entry was written back in early October, Yesterday I came to know that the “vigilant” IT department has already identified the unassigned and unused asset in that particular branch, and so recalled it, leaving our friend stranded with more desk space for him to nap on, and shattering my dream of Shafiq the tea-boy becoming an IT guru in his spare time…