What I know of Saudi before I came here was primarily limited to what I've read, heard about it from others, or seen on television. I was 24 when I first came to Saudi and the first question I asked was: are we allowed to take a bath in Saudi (based of course on Filipino’s penchance of taking a bath everyday regardless of the weather)? Back then, all I know of Saudi is that it’s a huge desert – lifeless, unbreathing and backward.

It was New Year's eve when I landed in Saudi. My feelings were a mixture of fear and melancholy. I had my share of ill treatment from fellow Filipinos who saw me as a threat. I was also coerced by a fellow Asian who thought me -- a young, unmustached Filipino -- as a bed object.

I wrote home almost every week. My family also sent me voice tapes which didn't help in alleviating my sadness because their voice made me cry the more.

And it’s been more than ten years now and Saudi has been, well, a home away from home. I hate Saudi because I’m going to miss it when I finally leave; because it’s been so good to me. Yes, there are difficult Saudis but there are also difficult Filipinos, right? My mother used to say: it’s not really the country, it’s the individual.

A friend once told me that he had a flat tire along the highway and forgot to load a spare tire. Of all the cars that passed by, only an old Saudi badooh stopped and helped him. You see in Saudi, people are always misled by urban legends about Saudi badoohs. As in the rest of the world, we always identify white with good and black with evil. And so a dark-skinned man with yellow-tainted teeth is a crook while a clear-skinned man in decent clothes will always do good. Assumption, as in one movie said, is the mother of all f---ups!

I like, no, I love – and I’m grateful of -- Saudi, the country. It employs me. It showed me my strengths and my limitations. It taught me to appreciate life at its barest essential (the best things in life are, quite simply, the simplest).