How is Al-Munirah?

I also lived there for a month, its just a studio apartment with basic utensils (I called those useless as only one pot I used for making a tea), I had to wait for rental assistance to be processed otherwise I would be gone sooner. You will have to adjust your hygienic standards if you are like me but you will get used to it.

I rented the car on my third day so I wasn't spending much time at my room and was going to room just to sleep, you have all the facilities there (gym, swimming pool, laundry, tennis court etc.) so it depends how you adjust yourself. Overall it was not that bad and I was lucky that I found the house in outside compound within two weeks of my arrival, I have two colleagues who just found the housing after two months and that also will only be available in Jan 2016.

You may want to rent a car as soon as possible as you will need it for everything, commissary is a 10 minutes walk but you will need to carry stuff on your way back which is not a pleasant experience unless you have a friend with a ride to help you out.

If you are accustomed to drive without rules then it would be an easy job for you, outside Aramco people drive anyway they want, even on some roads the lane markings are not visible, people utilize 1-2 second time between signal turning red and opposite signal turning green to continue crossing or turning on the road, you can expect people to turn left from extreme right lane at the signal, so basically you have to be cautious all the time and watch all sides. But you will quickly adapt to the traffic here and then it will be easy for you to drive here like a pro

I had the Canadian license so it was easy for me, I just gave the car rental company my passport copy with entry stamp page and Canadian driving license and he delivered the car at the main gate, it important to note that once your iqama gets issued then you can't rent the car on your existing driving license, you will have to get your driving license converted to Saudi license to rent the car.