Roaming Ralf

… and I have been fasting every night since 😉 Except not being able to quickly grab an afternoon donut in the Donut House or a freshly squeezed orange juice around the corner, Ramadan does not make a big difference in daily life. The food and coffee shops are closed now and out of respect nobody eats or drinks in public during the day. The diner is still open, though. But let us start at the beginning: When I arrived, neither the PI of our group, nor my future supervisor was at KAUST. So Rita, one of the group’s researchers, introduced me to everyone who actually was there and over the following few days they introduced me to their research topics. It  was a warm welcome and I pretty quickly settled in. Once David (my supervisor) returned from his holiday we went straight into work. A quick and dirty outline: We have extracted DNA from 33 microbial samples of the northern and southern Red Sea and ranging from 10 m to almost 500 m water depth. After that, we could go on with the library preparation for next generation sequencing. Now, as we have got a gazillion of sequences, we try to make sense of it by applying some bioinformagic on it. Based on the resulting meta-genomic data we eventually want to answer the two questions (1) what is the difference in community composition between the northern and the southern Red Sea and (2) what is actually translated into proteins (we have a readily available meta-transcriptome of the same sample sites). But enough work talk. Some fun facts about the campus and Saudi Arabia: Apparently, King Abdullah decided almost ten years ago, that this whole community including campus, houses, apartments, shops, hospital, schools, fire brigade … you name it … has to be built within 1000 days. And that is exactly what happened. Money did not matter, obviously. Okay, some houses need to be refurbished now, as construction happened just a bit too quick (and sloppy at places). Now, after their fifth year the campus is independent from royal money. Quite a reminder that this place is still part of an absolute monarchy must have been last years announcement that weekend changes from Thursday/Friday to Friday/Saturday with about one week notice (interestingly, the stock markets opened for international trade around the same time). On the campus it does not really matter: Shops are opened daily from soon till late and shopping can be delivered right to the apartment for free, if requested. To get around there are several bus lines, but I have no experience with those, as David gave me his old bike. With this it is a 5 minute ride along the water’s edge to get to the campus. On the campus there is “the spine” which connects all buildings. Along that, there are several snack shops and cafes (closed during Ramadan), IT-store, Government Affairs (where I have to extend my visa and ID every 30 days) and much more. There is also the diner, where they serve from breakfast until dinner. Food is good, international and prices are reasonable. Apart from that, there are many places to dine out like the Golf Course’s restaurant, Yacht Club, Island Recreation Centre and of course all the fast food shops on the Discovery Square (a place next to the campus). Fresh water comes from KAUST’s own desalination plant – and they need a lot of it. Almost everything that photosynthesizes on land relies on irrigation in this area. Surprisingly, it is still pretty humid here – I was not expecting that with the desert at KAUST’s doorstep. This leads me to the recreational activities, say sports. Jogging can be pretty painful even though it is cooling down below 30°C sometimes (going late in the evening). Playing soccer was a surprise, too. It is ab bit like having a rubber band attached to a tree and around your waist plus doubling the gravity. It really took me some time to adjust to the humid heat. But now it is fun: This week alone I have been jogging, played soccer and ultimate frisbee, went swimming twice and took a beginner’s lesson in wind surfing. It is incredible what they have got in store to make use of spare time – and most of it for free. To get to the South Beach for example, there is a water taxi leaving just at my doorstep every full hour. Once there, it is possible to hire all sorts of water fun stuff or just hang out on the beach, play volley ball, get some snacks or swim. This being said, I am quickly going to check on the wind for tomorrow’s wind surfing and then I am off to bed. Stay tuned …