Teaching Perl in Saudi Arabia After what seems like an almost endless amount of paperwork, visa applications, immunisations, negotiations, contracts, travel agents, and administrivia, I'm about to fly to Saudi Arabia, to teach Perl to the world's biggest oil company.

Why are they learning Perl? Well, as best I can tell, they're using it for data munging of geological data. That's got a familiar ring to it, in fact I've been seeing a big growth of Perl in Geoscience recently.

On the way back I'm planning to spend a couple of days in Dubai, just because it sounds like such a bizarrely opulent part of the world. World's biggest hotel. World's biggest indoor ski slope. World's biggest shopping mall, and certainly the closest thing we have to Magrathea, with Dubai creating artificial islands in the shapes of palm trees and the world itself. I also hear the diving is pretty good.