Saturday (Saudi Monday 2/27/10)

My left eye is sore to the touch in the corner and is showing some red smears. Could be from the dust in the air. We are experiencing shamal winds and this is the worst I have seen it. I haven't been taking my walks because of it. Could be that I hit when I was sleeping.

I just finished an interesting book, "Fruitless Fall", by Rowan Jacobson. He chronicles the plight of the honey bee in what we are seeing as a collapse of the commercial apiary industry due to stress on the bees. He points out the importance of those bees for our agricultural abundance and what that collapse is meaning to current productivity and future productivity in agricultural productivity. I was aware that hives were hauled on trucks from here to Canada to pollinate clover fields and other crops, but Jacobson paints that picture as much more expansive that I ever thought. Already there are crops that are no longer available due to the lack of pollinators - in Japan the bees that pollinate pears is extinct and the only way to pollinate the pear trees is by human hands, so women and children climb the trees and go from flower to flower with swabs to pollinate the flowers. Vanilla is now only available now because of human pollination - that is why it is so expensive. He also explained the honey market and how the Chinese have flooded the market with watered down honey - watered down by corn syrup. See my post of several weeks ago where I found honey that was nothing but corn syrup. On top of that the Chinese honey has been heavily laced with pesticidal toxins ingested by the bees and secreted into the honey. Very interesting reading. I want to start a hive now :)

Thursday (Saudi Saturday 2/25/10)

On my morning walk today I spotted, what I think was, a Steppe Eagle in a tree by the spray fields. Magnificent bird. Also spotted three or four new birds for my checklist - two were warblers and the others were wheateaters. The spring migration is starting to move just a little. Over the next two months the migration of birds from Africa to Europe will filter through the Arabian Peninsula providing birders here in the Eastern Province with a kaleidoscope of feathered friends. With the coast just a few kilometers from here and the foliage covering the Aramco compound I am looking forward to seeing many more birds to add to my checklist.

The rest of the day was spent working on my credentials and scoping out the job market. Things don't look great, so I am thankful that I have this work here in Saudi Aramco.

Something that I was thrilled about today was to find out where there was a service in the camp. Remember, the Saudi week is different that much of the world, so Sunday is actually tomorrow (Friday). Wednesdays are Fridays, and a day of abstinence from meat during Lent. Here on the compound, Aramco hires religious counselors for the expats. These counselors are able to serve their congregations just like back home. It's quite a contrast to the world just outside the gate, where only Islam is allowed. It is very strictly observed - no religious objects or services are tolerated. This has been a very strange experience living in a monarchy that is based on Islam. The world back home is so different. To get a sense of it all, two of the consultants and my good friends, one a fishing buddy, are Muslim and are on their hajj to Mecca this weekend. As a Muslim you should make your hajj to Mecca once in your life. They will come back with their heads shaved and hopefully in a better spiritual shape. (I made my trip to Rome and the Vatican during the Jubilee - kind of a pilgrimage like the hajj).

Saudi Friday (Wednesday 2/26/10)

I am getting ready for my trip back home in a couple of weeks. Working on my assignments here, getting them ready for the graphic designer (looks like that will be Lisa) to work on while I am away. I am also trying to find small affordable gifts for the family back home. There is not many crafts and things that are manufactured here. There are some, but most things come from out of the country. There are the camel leather sandals, the analog to the wooden shoes from Holland, and a few other things, but not much. They will make nice silver and gold jewelry to your specs, but it can get expensive with the price of gold these days.

Last night was Tuesday night, time for the BBQ chicken at the Hobby Farm, but darn-it, I was too late again. As soon as I get off work I come back to the room and change clothes, check emails and head out. It's about a three mile walk, so it takes about an hour or less to get there about (6:15 PM) and the chicken is gone by then. I think what I am going to do next week is buy a chicken and bring it with me for the guy to cook for me. The group that I have been having this weekly dinner with hangs around there until they close the gate around 9:00 PM chatting and talking about whatever. The group is made up of a couple of Canadian couples, some folks from the States (Texas mostly). Well traveled and fun to talk with. Last night was particularly enjoyable. Wish Carolyn was here to partake.

#2 Saudi Wednesday

Here is another video.

Saudi wednesday (Monday 3-22-10)

One of the consultants (Jeff) managed to video some of the dune cruising. It will give you some idea of the rush.

Sunday (Saudi Tuesday 2/21/10)

I often talk of shwarma. So what is it? Well, it is Middle Eastern soft taco - sorta. Basically they take chicken breast (I think) and stick it somehow on a big vertical spit and cook it against a gas fire. When you want a shwarma, the cook slices thin pieces off into a tray below the spit. He then takes that and mixes it with some chopped tomatoes, pickles, and maybe some lettuce, puts into an opened pita bread, coats it with mayonnaise and wraps it with some wrapping paper. Now, you can add hot sauce to it if you want (I do) and peal back the paper as you eat down the thing. Here there are shwarma shops all over town, but our favorite one is the one on the corner near where the bus drops us off. Right around the corner is Latif Bakery where the best Zatar is found. Zatar is a small pizza-like dish that uses feta cheese and selected herbs and spices on top. So good! Mmmmm!

Back at the dining hall breakfast is great. I usually get a bowl of cereal, and a couple of eggs, and a croissant, but the waffles are great, too. The tray in the picture is a typical breakfast )Eggs over easy, hash brown patty, cereal, and tea or fresh squeezed OJ. All for just over $2.25! Try that back in Houston and you'll pay 3-4 times that.

SAudi Monday (Saturday 2/20/10)

More photos of the sand cruising adventure - getting ready - deflating tires before heading out onto the sand. Tess hooked us up with this caravan (she's the one with the olive green top), Jeff (in the red shirt) is one of the Beacon consultants, and me (still unaware of what is about to happen).

Saudi Sunday 2/19/10 (Friday)

Did I say that off road vehicles rule here? Holy cow, I found out today why they do rule! Right after lunch I met up with a caravan of 4WD vehicles headed out into the desert for a simple jaunt into the dunes and a cookout on top of dune in the light of a crescent moon and stars aglow away from the lights of the city. A sight quite stark and beautiful, but full of s... in my pants. A long drive out from Dharhan to the southwest put us into an area of sand dunes as far as you could see in any direction. A quick stop after we pull off the road and people pile out and start letting air out of the tires. With that done, we head out over the sand towards some large dunes a mile or so away. Of course, I am in the lead vehicle just enjoying the movement in the up and down movement of the sand front, when start climbing up the gradual back slope of a large dune heading towards the top. As we neared the top I expected to stop and probably get out of the car to just look down the slip slope of the dune (you know, the side that drops down 50 feet or more at a 45 degree angle or more, but we don't stop, we hardly slow down as we cleared the edge and the car starts it's descent down the slip face. That's when I figuratively sh.. in my pants. WOW! what a rush. We continued to cruise around the desert finding better and better slip faces to "slide " down. I was almost like we were sliding down the face in the cars. Marik, the leader of this expedition, was our driver Tess and Jeff were with me in the Toyota Land Cruiser, was a master of the sand. More of Marik later, but the 10 other vehicles in the caravan followed us up and down, over and around the undulating terrain of sand and and occasional date palm. Oh, quite fun.

Saudi Saturday 2/18/10

OMG, I thought that NY cabbies were the scariest driver's in the world, but a trip down into Dammam (part of the three cities that make up the Kobar/Darhrahn/Dammom metroplex) this morning with my friends, the Bests, showed me how aggressive and crazy people drive here. To drive here you have to have nerves of steel, never do you have eye contact with nearby drivers, doing so only gives them the edge in the battle for road space. We were on a major freeway feeder of two lanes (no it was three, no, it was six -it's a very fluid thing). When a crazy driver gets tired of waiting at a long stop light they just pull off the payment and charge off across the desert to bypass the intersection, and this was happening all the time. If a driver misses an exit on the freeway they simply turn around and go back (against the traffic) rather than travel down to the next exit and come back down the correct direction. I saw it happen several times in our drive over to Dammam. It is crazy. My friend has learned to drive very defensively in this environment, much to his credit.

This trip was with some friends that want a bed made to duplicate a bed they saw in upscale catalog back in the States. We were headed to a woodworking shop where the bed will be fabricated. Now, you have to understand that we went into this very large (several square miles) maze of row after row of small shops (workshops) that would be like some of the small business shops and warehouses that you see back in the States that are grouped in a setting like storeroom rental places. (Next time I go there I will bring my camera). The craftsmen are more or less grouped by craft (woodworkers, metalworkers, stoneworkers, auto repair, all sorts of craftsmen/artisans). Talk about clutter! How the Bests found this place is beyond me. Nevertheless, we enter into a world far removed (very far) from OSHA regulated US shops. No protective gear at all. Need I say more. In this particular shop, there are South Asian craftsmen working on incredibly expensive and sophisticated computer controlled machinery (Lathes), as well as some very unsophisticated gear, creating incredible pieces of furniture. There were craftsmen carving detailed scrollwork and trimwork into expensive looking furniture. They made the craft look so easy and effortless (but I know better). Interestingly enough, the son of the proprietor (a Saudi) was a graduate of Lamar University (BBA) back in Beaumont! I will prevail on this shop to carve the legs and fabricate the pieces to a vanity that was stolen from us several years ago. If I can get the the legs and some other carved pieces done here I should be able to complete the fabrication myself back home.

The one thing that is so noticable is the trash. Plastic bags, empty and part full are scattered everywhere. Understand, that this is an industrial area, not a residential area, so trash collection is wanting, but it is like similar industrial areas in places like Mexico, and other countries where labor is cheap and poorly educated about environmental and safety issues. Inside Aramco things are on par with the US and European countries, but once off the compound and into the countryside it is a different world. "The desert will take care of it" is a saying that I have heard repeated here.

Tuesday 2/15/10

Today is President's day back home. For those of you with a holiday: have fun. For those without: grin and bare it, like me. It's boring over here - all week long it is clear, sunny and 80 defrees F and at night it drops down into the 50's now. Sure miss the rain and snow :), not!

Some neat patterns in the sand at the beach last weekend. Will be good for background images. It is just the way the wash from the waves leave patterns. Just cool!

Tonight is barbeque chicken night at the Hobby Farm and I am walking over there (about 2 miles). This is real BBQ chicken like back home, not the stuff that dining hall serves. I'll meet the best's and several of their compadres there for dinner and conversation. I'll catch a ride back to my room with them. I want to get there before dark to walk through the horse stalls. It is a mixture of breeds there, not just Arabians.

Saturday night(Saudi Monday)

Today was a Saudi holiday. The offices were closed and there was work being done on the computers in the office, but I was able to do some work here in Steineke, nevertheless.
Today started out very foggy, but it cleared up by noon. I spent most of the day in this small room - how dreadful. Did manage to get some work done and run some comparisons on computers. took my walk after dinner (6.5 km). Not much excitement. The internet was up and down here today. More up than down.

One of the places I always visit when I go to a grocery store or market is the seafood section. It used to be a great display of the local fish, but today those fish come from all over the world - frozen quickly and air freighted to distant markets. But, here in Saudi Arabia a lot of the fish in the market does come from the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea. There are fish of all kinds: shark, belt fish (ribbon fish), Hamour (grouper), sea brim (sheepshead like fish), stingrays, and so forth and so on. The pictures show the variety of fish in a typical fish market here in Al Kobar.

Ras Tanura is a community on the coast about an hour bus ride from here. Aramco has its main tanker onloading terminal there, so there is a compound adjacent to the terminal. The ships load well offshore. You can easily see them in the Google satellite image. If you zoom in you can find the Aramco compound by the greenery and the long beach facing the Persian Gulf. I went there today to explore the beach and try to fish. The morning was a really beautiful day early on, but around noon the wind picked up and the water became a little rough and by sunset it was rather chilly (I left my jacket back in Dharhan). Signs said no fishing on the beach - damn! I looked down the beach and saw a guy way off fishing so I headed down the beach and started fishing well away from the pampered beach. Beautiful almost white sand, turquoise clear water, cloudless sky above, and temperatures in the 70's. The beach runs like that for about 2 to 3 miles of Aramco compound. I tried to wade out, but the temperatures here for the past couple weeks have been in the 40's at night, so it was a quick spin around to get back up on the dry beach. Using my little ultra light spinning outfit I was throwing a small spoon and getting hits every few casts right on the edge of the grass patches in about 3 feet of water and finally I caught several. They were 2 feet or so long and skinny little needle fish with mean looking teeth. It was really hard to get a hook into that long hard mouth. I would fight one for a few seconds and he would let go. It was fun getting those hits. Nothing else hit my spoon. Water is just too cold.

Took some texture photos of the sand to use in a few backgrounds for presentations.

The housing right along the beachfront was really rather nice. I was told that the sunset was beautiful there, but when I got there I realized that the sun sets in back of the beach - would make for some beautiful sunrises, though. I was too late for the Friday morning breakfast/brunch and the sunrise.

The scene along the beachfront was a scene of contrast here in Saudi Arabia - around the volley ball net was around 8 bikini clad expat teenage girls whooping it up and in the background just yards away were several groups of Saudi women completely clad in their abayas and head coverings walking along the beach. I walked from one end of the beach to the other and back,picking up a few seashells and reading a book as I walked along the wet sand. As the sun was setting I found a coffee bar and sandwich shop over looking the Gulf. That cup of tea there was just wonderful, but would have been even better with a glass of wine. Neat place. Will definitely go back there when the water warms.

Saudi Saturday 2/11/10

I have not been able to post for the past few days due to internet connections here at Steineke Hall. I have raised the issue with the head of the group in hopes that something can be done to improve the connections.

Since then things have been rocking along. Thanks to a good friend and colleague, I was able to use their Vonnage phone to call home. Needless to say Carolyn was upset that I had not called or emailed for a few days. Can't blame her. I was extremely frustrated (see my last blog). Right now everyone is out running errands, so the connection is decent.

Took the bus into Kobar to go to the LuLu hypermarket for some provisions. It is a large supermarket like a Super Kroger ot HEB back in Texas, only with a lot of Arabic labels, which make it fun to figure out the right thing to get. Like honey. Today I bought a jar of honey from a local distributor. It looked just fine, but when I got the the room and tasted it it was no more than heavy corn syrup! I'll take it back and stick to the European brands that I know. I did buy a jar from a flea market (for a hefty price) that came from Yemen. I was able to taste it before buying and it was very nice, but could not tell you the source of the necter. There is brand from Australia that I've purchased and it is honey from a Blue Gum tree and another from a Yellow Box tree. Both are quite different in taste - good but not a favorite for my palette. The Black Forest honey (a dark honey) from Europe is really nice, as is the Acacia honey (a light honey) that is a favorite in this part of the world. It is interesting how much of the world's honey comes from China and from the USA. Clover honey - the American standby is found everywhere. I still find the local honeys of Texas my favorite - dark and strong and really full of flavor that changes with the seasons - bits of flavor of the Chinese Tallow, spring wildflowers, fall blooming trees and wildflowers, like goldenrod. The Hill Country honey will have a tinge of Mesquite and other flowering plants the drape those hills. Some apiarist will move their hives to focus on one specific bloom, hence you find the orange blossom honey, the clover honey, and such. One that I really like is a Mesquite honey from Trader Joe's out in California. What are some of your favorites?

Nice day! I is finally warming a little. The past week it has been on the cold side here, not freezing, but in the 40's in the morning, so it was a pleasant excursion. Back in the room for now. Am planning on going back into old Kobar with Omer to do some sketching in the streets. Should be a nice relaxing thing to do.

Monday 2/7/10

Frustration! Frustration! frustration! All of us have really had it with the network that this wifi is hooked up to in Steineke Hall. It is constantly dropping connections and you then have to reboot. I have not been able to get a Skype call home to Carolyn, or anyone, for that matter. I am hoping that the connection lasts long enough for me to write this post before it crashes again. To give you an idea of the frustration: today I came home form the office to Skype Carolyn at 5:00 pm - no connection, so I change clothes and catch the last Aramco bus to a mall 3 miles away to try calling here from a coffee house wifi. I get there just in time to buy a cup of tea so I can use their wifi, but have to sit outside in the cold wind to try my call (the shops close during prayer time) - no luck. The first bus back to the compound is at 6:30 so I wait for the stores to open after prayer time to get some ink for my pen and run over to Ikea to get a dinner and as I leave the cashier to go sit medown he says,"No not there. That's the family section" so I head the other direction to the male section (more on this in another post). I am able to horse my meal down and run to the bus before it pulls away. Otherwise, I would have to wait until 7:00 pm for the next one. I make it back to Steineke Hall, but they don't drop me off there because the street is all torn up for utility work for the next couple of weeks. I have to walk a couple of blocks. I go immediately to the Aramco computer that is inside the firewall and finally get some emails off to Carolyn. It tried several times to Skype her - it would ring a couple of times then just hang up for lack of connection. Tomorrow I will ask to use someone's Vonnage phone at their house to call my dear wife. That's why I am frustrated.

Otherwise, it has been a good day. So far the two projects that I am working are going along better than expected. The weather has been cold and breezy, but clear. Hope all is going well with each of you. Cheers!

Friday 2/5/10

A front pushed in last night around midnight. The wind was blowing about 40 knots out of the NNW and blowing sand and dust - it was like a heavy fog. By the time I woke up this morning the wind had slowed to about 15-20 knots and the skies had clear a little - still a little hazy (see some of the photos). I needed some technical pens to redo a map for my book cover, so I took the bus into Kobar to find them at the Jared Bookstore. Well, this is Friday and most of the stores are closed until 4:00 pm! The place was a ghost town compared to last night. You could shoot a cannon up the corniche road and not hit anything, So what was I to do but take a walk along the breakwater beachfront. Walked a mile or so taking a few pictures. The water was rough, but clear. A few people were out walking, playing cricket, or fishing. Most were from the Phillipines, Pakastan, or India. As I walked through the old section you could get a good look at the construction of the buildings - concrete and cement block. Just would not want to be in these structure in an earthquake. There is little wood used and just a little steel.

Back at the room I tried to do the drawing with the pen that I had, but it was a failure, so I had to catch the 4:30 bus to the mall and found my pens there, so I will do that map. While I was there prayer time came around. Every shop closed their doors and people had to come out into the hallways and sit around until the prayer is over. The only exception was the large Panda Hypermarket (about the size of a small WalMart). It is just impractical to run everyone out of the store, so the cash registers are turned off and the doors are closed, but shoppers can continue to look around and load their carts -just can't check out. It has to be hard on the retailers.

Back at the compound I met a consultant for England who is sets up and repairs mass spectrometers. Some how the conversation hit on fishing. Well you can guess where that went. He's fished all over the world. Quite fun talking with him. We'll probably get into some more conversation, as he is staying in a room on the second floor. BTW, his name is Hall.

Tomorrow is going to be a big busy day for me. I have two projects that I am now working and I will have to get things organized and rolling this week.

One of the photos shows Omer and Anas having a coffee last night.

Take care, all you lovely folks,
Richard

Thursday 1/4/10

It was a pretty good day today. I woke up at 5:00 am and tried to get on the internet to send Carolyn a note, but alas, the internet connection was on the blink (all day long:(), so I headed out to Kobar to the LuLu market for some provisions (honey, tea, nuts, etc.). The LuLu market is a hypermarket and has probably the best produce department in the whole Middle East - produce from all over the world. Next time I am down there I will take some pictures of the produce. I always drop by the seafood department to see what the locals catch and eat (Another photo op the next time I am down there.) At any rate, while looking and examining the fish I stepped aside to allow a customer to get in to see the fish. He was a nice educated Saudi gentlemen a few years younger then I am, in his white thobe. He leaned over and asked me which fish I would pick and I, surprised, looked at him and pointed out the small sheeri fish (I've had them often in the Aramco dining hall). He then asked me the best way to cook the fish, in rather broken English, and I proceeded to tell him one of my favorite recipes for fish of this sort (skinless filets, lightly floured, a tab of salt and pepper, cooked in a cast iron skillet over moderately high heat moistened with a small amount of equal amounts of olive oil and butter for about 2 minutes per side. Served with a sprinkling of Italian parsley [chopped] and about a teaspoon of lemon juice). He was delighted, so he had to walk me over to the meat market to show me the camel meat. From then on we started a wonderful dialogue about food and culture. He told me the merits of camel meat and how to cook it. As we were parting he said that he was sad that my wife was not here he, as he would love to have us over for a wonderful meal with he and his wife. A very welcoming event.

From the market I walked over to the corniche to fish my way back into the heart of Kobar to catch the last morning bus back to the compound. The wind was blowing hard from the south and the tide was moving out - not the best combination, but I had my rod and it is a nice walk along the shoreline, so as I walked along I would cast out into the Gulf. Caught nothing but several clear plastic bags. It is amazing how much trash we toss out as human race. All along the shoreline is plastic debris - it's everywhere you go in this world. So sad. Nevertheless the water is beautiful: clear and blue-green. Just have to find the fish. I've been told that it is too cool this time of year.

This evening a group of us went in to Kobar to shop and get a good meal. There are some in the group of consultants who stay in the hotel/dorm and leave only to go across the street to the dining hall and there are those who are finding every excuse to get out and to Kobar. I am in the latter group. Omer, Ans and I left the larger group to get some things that we needed from the souqs and just as we were getting to the shops the call to prayer started - 15-30 minutes that all the shops close - right in the middle of the main shopping time! So frustrating for some folks. We all got back together later for the best swharma and katar in Kobar. Good food! The three of us decided not to wait for the bus and caught a cab. It was the cab ride from hell. Traffic is heavy on Thursday nights (it is like Saturday) and drivers here are VERY aggressive. This guy weaved his way in and out at speeds nearing the speed of sound, just inches from the other vehicles, radio blaring Arabian hip hop with speakers unable to handle the deep bass of the music. The garbled sound penetrating my head from the back speakers inches away from my head. We asked him take some back roads to keep of the main drag - I think that just made it worse. So glad to back to the compound safe and sound. I'll sleep well tonight, if I don't have nightmares about the crazy cab ride:)

Right now the wind is blowing hard outside. There is a front pushing in and the temperature is supposed to drop down into the lower 40s Saturday morning. For sure we will have dust blowing in if it is coming out of the NNW. If so I'm staying put - inside.
Good night, folks! The photo is the local pickup truck that is everywhere here.

Wednesday 2/4/10

Well, the weekend is here and I am tired. It is windy out there and going to get worse, so the planned fishing trip may be off. We check in the morning, but I don't have much hope.

Went tonight to get a hamburger at the Hobby Farm cafe. It was the best hamburger that I have had here. Pretty darned good. Les took us (Wanda, Omer and me) there in his car as the farm is out on the edge of the compound. There were some nice looking horses there (it is actually the Aramco Arabian Equestrian Center. I might go out there on Friday, when they have a brunch, and have a look around. Steph would love it. The only problem was the fighter jets that flew over on their training flights.

Here is Omer in the picture. He's my fishing buddy

Tuesday

When I was talking to Carrie, back in the Houston office of K-Force she was asking about the rooms in Steineke Hall, so I thought I would post views of my room. It is like a 3 star hotel most any where. Definitely not a 5 star :) It will close in on your after a while, so it is good to get out to the gym, take a long walk or jog, or go into Al Kobar for a shwarma. The pillows, I find, are too bulky and am about to go to Ikea and buy one with less bulk. The water is quite hard - it does not make for good subs when showering and leaves a fine white deposit on dark clothes (like socks that you might wash in your sink). Remember, all water here is processed from sea water throught the desalinization plants up and down the coast. There is no source of fresh water nearby. The room service is generally great. The staff is anxious to help. The room is cleaned everyday. The dining hall is right across the street and the commissary (small grocery store) is just a few steps farther down the road. The gym is about a half mile away. If you are into golf, there is a golf course about as far away as the gym and it encircled by a nice jogging/walking path (approx. 6 km). The compound is quite green with plants and could easily pass for a neighborhood back in Austin or San Antonio (not Houston or East Texas). Outside the compound it is like far West Texas - desert like. We are next to a military airbase, so we get a lot of fighter training flights flying over most all day long and into the evening. Kind of reminds me of the Naval Flight Training Base in Kingsville, Texas.

Monday

Looks like rain is in the forecast. The sky is cloudy and overcast. This will be the first rain that have seen here. Had to stop by the library to check out a bird book for the Middle East so that I could add several new birds to my checklist.

Something I have noticed since coming here is the major shift on the compound in the ratios of expats versus Saudis. When I was here almost twenty years ago the compound was almost exclusively expat. There might have been, at most, 10% Saudi families living here in the compound. Now that ratio is more like 70% Saudi families. It is all part of the Saudization that was started back some twenty years ago. That explains why I am seeing so many BMOs here in the compound, when I saw none before. There are probably fewer than 10 significant management position held by expats. By far the largest population is the population of houseboys, gardeners, laborers, etc. from the Indian Subcontinent. Seems like there is a cleaning man sweeping every block in the area. Every expat house hires a houseboy and a gardener. These guys earn something like $60 a month, I have been told. Consider that a house cleaning maid that come to the house and works for about 6 hours back in Houston makes about $60 each visit. My figures may be a little off, but the ratios are pretty sure.