Anyway, I'd like to resurrect my blogging career by discussing something that has been bothering me ever since I noticed it. And I remember the day I noticed it clearly; I was driving with Dr. Annette out to the beach (love the beach) one bright and sunny day, and I was gazing out at the largely barren desert landscape, when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye.....purple.
What?
I turn my head, but it's gone too fast for me to catch it. But then there's another one, and this time I see it clearly.
Yes, folks, it's a purple dumpster. Actually, less purple and more a lovely shade of lavender. And, as you can probably tell from the background of this picture, there is no lavender naturally (or unnaturally) occurring in the cityscape of Jeddah, so this stands out fairly phenomenally.
So, now that I have noticed the first purple dumpster, I start seeing them everywhere. Everywhere. It seems the Municipality of Jeddah decided that, for some reason, their dumpsters weren't colorful, or obvious, enough. They used to be a boring shade of orange. Purple is clearly.... prettier. If that's what you're going for.
But it gets worse. Now that I am noticing this color purple, I have found that it isn't just the dumpsters. No, in fact everything even remotely related to trash removal is this same lovely lavender. That means roadside trash cans, brooms, dusters..... and the trash men. Yessir, the trash men are forced to wear a lovely lavender jumpsuit to deal with the lovely lavender dumpsters and sweep the roads with their lovely lavender sweepers. And I say "forced" because I can't imagine any man in their right minds voluntarily wearing outfits of this Easter-egg purple. It's rather a dainty color. And stands out appallingly. Now a days the garbage-related activity on the street is the first thing I notice.
Who, I ask, is responsible for choosing this color to thematically represent garbage? Who decided that garbage required its own color? And who thought it would be a good idea to have the garbage men match the garbage paraphernalia? And, as an aside, how demeaning is that? Yes, you manual laborers brought in from overseas, not only do you have to work long hours in the hot sun cleaning up garbage, but you will be forced to MATCH that garbage. We're color-coding you now, so that everyone will mark you for a garbage man, EVERYWHERE YOU GO. And it's not even a FLATTERING outfit, it's a dainty purple jumpsuit.
Because this is now the only thing I see as I drive through the streets, I have decided to make a video diary entitled "Jeddah in Lavender". When I find entertaining/unique trash-related occurrences, I will photograph them and post them here. We can play a game: "Find the Garbage"! For example:
Or how about....
Okay, so, it's not really a hard game. But as I find entertaining pictures I will post them here.
By the way, one of my friends knows guys who work at the company that was responsible for arranging to produce all of this stuff. Apparently they had a devil of a time getting metal, plastic and cloth all in the same shade of purple.
And, for that matter, can you imagine being the guy whose job it was to decide on the "new color of Jeddah garbage"?
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