ALKHOBAR, 6 August 2004 — Summer has set fire to the Kingdom but in the Eastern Province that’s not a problem. The solution here is to send all the fathers to work by 7 a.m. so they finish early in the afternoon. Then after lunch and a nap, the family piles into the car and goes out to make merry in the cooler hours from sunset until midnight – or later. Unlike some other places in the Kingdom many of the recreational facilities in Alkhobar, Dammam and Dhahran allow parents and children to come and enjoy the fun together.
Most of the seaside in Dammam and Alkhobar is for public use. Every night families picnic, barbecue and play football there using the excellent facilities provided by the municipality. The wedding season is in full swing too. This year has been even better than the last and staff at many wedding halls and hotels are working at maximum pace to accommodate all the parties.
“August is definitely the month for weddings and we will be hosting 33 weddings in 31 days,” said Prashant Sharma, assistant director, Sales and Marketing, Le Gulf Meridien Hotel, Alkhobar. “At each party there will be between 300 and 600 guests so our staff is working overtime to please all the wedding couples. The hotel itself is only a little over half booked, mostly with leisure guests. We have families staying with us who came from Al-Ahsa, Kuwait and Qatar on vacation plus guests of the wedding parties. By Aug. 18 we will start to get much busier, handling an increasing number of events daily as local companies begin holding meetings and seminars again. That is the nature of a successful hotel and I have every confidence that we will rise to the challenge of pleasing both our business and leisure clientele.”
Another venue that is attracting large numbers of visitors is Alrashid Mall. The mall has just concluded its Month of Shopping and National Heritage during which about 25,000 people came to participate in the activities daily. Exhibits from the National Museum and the private collections of Mohamed A. Al-Amer attracted attention, as did the opportunities to win cars, gold bars and appliances. Even with the special events conclude, over 20,000 are still using the recreation facilities at the mall daily.
“Every day we go to a sports program in the morning and then we usually come to Alrashid at night,” said Mohammed A. Al-Anaizy, 16, who was at Alrashid with his cousin. “Most of the time we arrive here with our families but then we go downstairs to play billiards and video games until it’s time to meet up with our little cousins who are playing on the rides upstairs. Some weekends we stay out at Al-Nakheel at Half Moon Beach but that’s too far to go during the weekdays.”
What is the best thing to do in the summertime? Arab News took a recommendation from Azhar, 14 years old. “First, it’s good to travel. I went to the Emirates and then I’ll go to Lebanon with my family before school starts. You can go to the mall and the beach and the amusement park. I think though that the best place we went in the Eastern Province this summer was the Saudi Aramco Exhibit. They’ve got good activities — a funny puppet show and they do henna painting. We tried it several times. It’s great.”
And the Summer Program at the Saudi Aramco Exhibit in Dhahran is really great, amazing, fantastic, stupendous and all the other wonderful adjectives that the dictionary holds. This year the Saudi Aramco staff went all out to combine education with fun and the reaction of the Saudi public has been more than anyone ever imagined. As word of the program spread, a cascade effect took hold with bigger and bigger crowds turning out daily.
“On Monday we received over 9,000 visitors in 6 hours,” said Ali M. Al-Ghamdi, acting director, Exhibits and Public Activities Division, PR Department, Saudi Aramco. “By this evening, we expect that more than 150,000 visitors will have experienced our summer program. We would like to announce that today is the last day of the summer program and we thank everyone who has made it a success. We are already preparing for the Eid Al-Fitr program and we look forward to the community joining us at the Saudi Aramco Exhibit for those activities in November.”
According to Al-Ghamdi, the Saudi Aramco Summer Program, which began in July, has received “unlimited” support from Saudi Aramco’s management. That was evident seeing the good number of staff at the exhibit site and generous gifts given to every child participating in the activities, plus the entire program was free of charge to visitors.
In Saudi Arabia this summer there was no place happier or more filled with excitement than the Saudi Aramco Exhibit. It was a joy to see families together, mothers and father teaching their children new things and sharing a laugh. The movie theater was a big hit. Some children mentioned that the 3-D film “Energy to the World” was the first movie they’d every seen in a theater. And, strange as it may sound, Saudi Aramco Medical Services Organization (SAMSO) turned dental checkups into an amusing game.
The SAMSO team rigged up special equipment called an AcuCam, which is basically a Webcam on a pen-like device that is connected to a monitor. To use the AcuCam the child simply opened her mouth wide and the dentist moved the pen-like device around to allow the teeth to be visualized on the screen.
Large crowds watched as children were painlessly screened by a SAMSO dentist, who pointed out all the good and bad features of the child’s teeth on the monitor. The effect was similar to allowing the child and onlookers to look at her teeth in a large, well-lit mirror. The children could clearly see tartar or cavities in their teeth and so better understand the importance of good oral hygiene. There were “ohhhs” and “yucks” from the crowd depending on how well the child had been brushing.
After joining in with the stage shows, movies, art activities, fire safety demonstrations and Arabian fashion show, visitors to the summer program also had a chance to do something good for others by supporting the families associated with Al-Birr Charitable Society. Saudi Aramco invited Al-Birr to bring handicrafts produced by local families in need, to be sold at the summer program.
“Our purpose through our summer program was to reach out to the community and help the public understand that Saudi Aramco is a part of the community,” said Al-Ghamdi.
“This year we wanted to make a program that would be attractive in some way to everyone. Looking at all the delighted faces of the visitors who came to participate every day has shown me that we have gained far more than we have given.”
