Have you ever heard of Afrikaners?
No, I have never heard of such people. Who are they?
Do you prefer hashish or Vegemite?
I've actually never tried either nor do I feel a particularly pressing urge to. I suppose I'd prefer the latter.
If you're happy and you know it and you really want to show it, do you clap your hands, stamp your feet, nod your head or do all three? Maps if possible.
I make maps when I'm happy and I really want to show it. Doing any of the other three options would make me seem like a crazy person (which I kind of am, but I digress).
Are you using the Confundus charm, or are you naturally this mind blowing? 
To quote a girl back from high school in my yearbook who may or may not have had a crush on me (but we'll never know), I am "naturally brilliant".
What do you remember from your time spent living in Saudi Arabia? What was your impression of of the culture, the segments of society to which you were exposed, the weather, the geography, the monarchy, the religious milieu?
I remember a lot of stuff, given that I lived there for 10 years out of my 22-and-counting year life thus far, including most of my 'early formative years'. I always get these questions about KSA and I'm never sure what to answer, mostly because when you live in a place you come to accept its quirks and eccentricities as normal and don't think much of them - and it's only with ex post facto reflection that I can come to realize that the country is a pretty demented and bizarre place. But at the same time I don't regret it and though I'd have good reason to, I don't hate it (and I find myself instinctively defending KSA at times when reading some of the mindless inanities and myths propagated by idiots who have never been there).
I didn't experience much of Saudi culture firsthand, although given the country's bizarre nature, there's little in the way of a unique Saudi culture. I mean, the usual heavily sarcastic joke made by expats is that one comes to 'enjoy the culture' (indicating a total lack thereof in KSA); and most other Arabs tend to look down on Saudis as uncultured desert bedous made rich by oil and now becoming arrogant oil sheikhs. I can recall, positively, camel races (a sport practiced by South Asians, of a very young age, to amuse a crowd of Saudi male dignitaries in comfy chairs) and a camel souq (which is quite interesting).
Eating a typically Saudi meal (kabsa - lamb on rice and vegetables, quite good; served with the dual national drinks of Coke/Pepsi and heavily sugared-up tea) in a tent on the floor is an experience and interesting. The Saudi notion of 'family fun' or 'picnic' is very weird - for poorer families, it can include heading out to the desert and eating picnic
on the side of a busy highway!
Then you have stuff like hanging out in the desert with friends (something which most expats completely stopped doing post-May 2003), shopping in a souq (which totally loses its cultural interest because most shops are owned/run by South Asians) and a sh**tload of crazy quirks (the land border being closed 5x a day for prayer, eating in the dark and behind closed doors in a restaurant closed for prayer, confronting the crazy loonies of the religious police, the rampant hypocrisy of the elites wrt alcohol, the old ridiculousness of censorship in foreign books/magazines you bought - with paid goons who used to black out women's legs, PDA, romantic relationships, alcohol etc, the ubiquitousness of random piles of trash and waste in the middle of cities, dealing with the Saudi middle-class' more than relaxed attitude wrt to actually doing work, living out at night, coping with the insanity of Ramadan month, the former habit of customs opening your bags to search for contraband and notably confiscating my baptism VHS because it had a priest in it, the bureaucratic insanity associated with such regimes etc). Also, there's the issue that, after 2003, we lived in a compound and I went to a school which were guarded by the Saudi National Guard - and that by 2007 we had all come to accept that going to school guarded by the military was all quite normal.
The Saudis I recall - they were quite a few (from my dad's coworkers to people at school to normal social interactions and the like) - were all extremely polite and hospitable people, generally nice and decent people (of course, I was a white male). For anecdotal evidence, I can recall all the times we were offered tea by random people, my dad's coworkers - including military officers - being very friendly with me (when I was a kid), the time a uniformed military officer got out of his car to help us fix a blown tire and their overall pleasant demeanor. Or - even more amusing - that time we took some American friends into the desert, and then randomly fell across a random guy on his camel who took me and my friend on a camel ride, followed by a random guy in his SUV coming out and offering us to hold his falcon!
Of course, I didn't pal around with terrorists (although Saudis really are the first victims of terrorism) and there are unpleasant douchebags and bad apples (notably the religious police thugs). I also reiterate how the Saudi elite (and royal family) are the biggest hypocrites when it comes to alcohol and religious orthodoxy in general; the al-Saud family really are a huge bunch of parasites. For the religious milieu, it can be pretty in-your-face, although the religious police thugs actually piss off Saudis much more than expats (to the point where they need to be protected by police since some have been beat up by Saudis). Saudis you know can often try to convert you to Islam by showering you with Qurans in your language. Then there's the issue of praying five times a day, and what that entails.
The weather is obviously really hot (up to 50c in the summer) but I actually would rather live with Riyadh's dry and boiling hot summers than Ottawa's extreme humidity-heat waves any day. The winter can get cooler, but a pleasant winter's day at 20-25c is great (but desert nights can get very cool). In the summer, you learn to live with the heat, like the Saudis do (by staying indoors and sheltered by AC during the day).
The geography is something you don't think much about, but you need to pause for a moment and realize how spectacular it can be: the vastness of the country, the huge empty spaces, the concentration of urban areas, the vast deserts, the varied desert landscapes. The desert around Riyadh is rocky and mountainous, with few of the usual sand dunes associated with Arabia (I only recall going to a sand dune desert once), but it's quite spectacular in parts (and very boring in other parts, where it's just a flat plateau of lunar-like landscapes). I also strongly advise against adventuring into the desert on your own for obvious reasons; you don't want to end up like the French expats who ventured off the beaten track outside of Mada'in Saleh and got killed my terrorists. Riyadh is quite special, because it's in them middle of the desert originally built around oases and mushroomed out of that beginning in the 1960s-70s, to the point where it's now a huge sprawling mess. Going south from Riyadh towards the military base town of Al-Kharj you can see the very developed artificial agriculture/farms and the advanced irrigation techniques:
And also the fascinating dairy industry (Almarai and Alsafi dairy companies) and their huge complexes and farms in Al-Kharj's region, with cows living in a cool indoor/enclosed area.
I never went to Asir, which is a beautiful and distinctive mountainous (and green) region or Hijaz/Jeddah (besides its airport, which is a monumental sh**thole). It's worth noting, therefore, that KSA is a very diverse country in terms of geography, landscape (both urban and non-urban) and culture. You can go from very traditionalist, poor and homogeneous neighborhoods and small towns to highly modern, Americanized and diverse affluent urban cores - hell, just contrast downtown Riyadh (Olaya) to the old town around Batha (which is officially, or historically, the real downtown Riyadh - just that it's not flashy and American enough now).
(Al-Faisaliyah centre, Al-Mamlaka/Kingdom Tower, old Diriy'ah - the first Saudi capital)
