The EXTREME Kingdom

Thanks to a visa that lasted only for a 15 day period, I went to Bahrain for 2 days this Wednesday. Through the week we, 2 friends from work, were building up to the trip, a long road trip. The drive was, obviously, extremely boring. Lasted for around 5 hours or so. The worst part was the scenery, the lack thereof. It was just open spaces separated by more open spaces. One could spot camels, carcasses of cars, oil wells, and cops once in a while. The desert was real pretty though, the red sand on the horizon was pretty similar to the preset wallpaper on windows xp. And obviously, again, it was really really hot. The customs checks were a farce. They didn’t even check who the passport holders were. The King Fahd Causeway was quite a sight in the night. Anyway, we got to our apartment at around 9. Aptivaa already has around 5 ppl staying there. The extravagance of the city was quite evident in everything one saw there, including the Ferraris, Porsches and some super-sexy cars on the streets. We headed out to get some preliminary drinks at a lounge. Beer in the desert after 2 weeks of any alcohol at all. It really hit the spot. Lingered around for some more drinks there and moved on to a club called F1. Its got nothing much to do with racing, as I found out. It was a pick-up joint where the Filipino women outnumbered the old horny American by a ratio of 4:1. we couldn’t stop laughing at the whole scene there. Thanks to us looking not as rich as the American buggers, the women stayed away. Sooner than later, we got bored and headed home for some teen pathi, where I managed to lose almost every single game. Damn. The next day started off with some blissful shawrmas followed by a visit to the Seef mall, the biggest apparently. Oh and we were driven there by a mal driver, obviously. The mall was extravagant alright and filled with some of the best looking women I’ve ever seen, I’m not kidding. They were heavenly beauties and they didn’t mind flaunting what their mammas gave them. After some shopping, we headed over to some alcohol shopping. Got back, headed to the pool on the roof with our beers and spent a good 2 hours. When we got bored with that, we went down for more alcohol at the apartment. That’s when I managed to spill alcohol on my comp, and now half my keyboard’s sticky. Yuck. After getting nicely high, we went to get some dinner at a nice fancy restaurant with a live band playing good jazz music. While the crowd was clapping solemnly and sipping on their wines, we were acting like hooligans, 3 of us, the initial 3 I talked about. The party then moved to a club which was full of black dudes and European women. One particular extremely drunk chick was talking to me when all of a sudden a really huge black dude walked over and proclaimed he was her boyfriend. That was when I decided to move along and hit the dance floor. Yay. Got really wasted there with the all-you-can-drink deal. After my friend got thrown out of the club because of some reason none of us have been able to remember yet, I went to an Indian dance bar (!!!!!!!) to use the restroom (!!!!!!!!!!!!). the chicks were real hot and the stage had fluttery bollywoody props and wind machines. Old rich horny guys, as mentioned earlier, were having a ball. We had to call it a night after that. Started the return trip to the land of no intoxication with tears in our eyes around noon. Don’t think I’ll be doing this again as long as I’m in Riyadh. And somehow we managed to have enough fun to compensate for the 2 weeks of abstinence (partial). Well, now its back to work on a Saturday. Damn.

The Land of No Intoxication

so this is one of them travel blogs.

the trip started off with one hell of an international flight, my very first, and that too in freaking business class. it rocks!!!! don't know how else to describe it. and this is thanks to the fact that economy is full of people who would usually travel the unreserved compartment in our trains. good enough reason for me though :) the first sight of the country i got form up there wasn't very pleasing, just desert stretched across with absolutely nothing to look at in particular. well, i knew right about then that that was something that i had to get used to. the scariest part when i reached the Riyadh airport were the announcements reiterating the death punishment for drug possession. creepy it was. and when i reached immigration, i kept thinking there would be some weed lying around in my bag somewhere. paranoia. anyway, there were no issues there, except for an extremely long line of ppl who didn't know how to fill out forms.

the taxi that waited for me brought me to my lavish villa in the diplomatic quarters. and once again, there was no scenery on the way. damn. now, lavish is the word for these villas. the entry is restricted by a freaking huge machine gun manned by scary terrorist looking arab dudes. and the guards are mostly mal.

they were happy to see me. the villa... man they're huge. our company;s got 3 of them rented for around 15 odd people. huge structures all set for one hell of a party that i could picture the second i saw them. so my drinking friends were anxiously awaiting my arrival with the hope that i would save them from the lack of alcohol. a short conversation with the mal guard gets me through to a bottle of charayam - arrack - made out of , guess what, dates. and all this happened real fast. had to make small talk with the guy though. 100 riyals for a bottle. 700 for johnny and everything else. saudi fucking arabia does have alcohol my friends. expensive alcohol. we were obviously slightly paranoid about consuming the said liquor though, thanks to the potential threats in drinking arrack and also due to the freaking country's stuck-up-ed-ness. but we go ahead nonetheless. it wasn't half bad. finished a huge plastic bottle by the evening and didnt feel much then. but we knew it was on its way. oh it was fun.

so we head over and play some pool. make complete fools of ourselves. by around 7 in the night, we decide, its time to hit the jacuzzi. woohoo. spent bloody 2 hours in it. heavenly is the word. adding to these, there's a tt table (played a bit today), a swimming pool, darts (!!!!), a sauna, bball court, football on the bball court, a tennis court and a gym that looks real fancy from outside. have to venture inside ASAP. cos the food scene here is a bit too good. a cook makes dinner and lunch. the fridges are stocked with juices and fattening material. tonight, i headed towards the city centre for dinner. saturated fat was consumed shamelessly. its scary when i think about all the weight i might put on if i sit on my arse and do nothing.

anyway, its 0030 now and i shd get some sleep. tomorrow, ya a saturday, is my first day at the bank. mornings are early here, have to leave by 8. damn.

hoping to stay alive and hang on to all my limbs and bodily organs till i return, which i think could be a month and a half later.

P.S. did i tell u the ex-pats stay in the villas around us which means a decent population of scantily clad women at the pool? well, at least that's what I'm hoping for.

Weekends

Don’t know about you, but I start preparing for my weekend even before the sun starts thinking about going down on Friday. Yeah I actually do that. After five whole days of unsatisfying fun, work, wastedness and satisfaction, I look forward to those two days with the whole of my heart. And when Sunday lunch is on the table, my tummy starts to rumble and my head starts to ache. It’s all going to get over, again, just like it did a week back.

What I need is a wholesome weekend. But, what IS a wholesome weekend? If one could define that, life during the weekend wouldn’t be this irritating. Unsatisfying. So today I thought I’d roll myself one and ponder over the opportunities that beckon one during a ‘wholesome’ weekend.

So let’s take a look at what happened this last time. Well, I started off horribly, waking up after 1 on Saturday. Damn. Now that’s almost one-third of my happy hours already gone. But I try to make amends desperately by meeting up with people I hadn’t in sometime. Even if that meant traveling by the local on a hot afternoon in Bombay. Oh, I forgot the lunch with ex-work people. And after the scheduled appointment ends up with me being a bit inebriated, I call for more people to come over for more intoxication-related fun. So that’s Saturday. And Sunday’s been movies and food and nothing else till I thought of indulging myself in this self-introspection.

Mmm.. that definitely doesn’t sound very ‘wholesome’ to me. But I can’t sit down and list out all the things I should or could do. Don’t ask me why. For starters, its horrible boring. So how do I get out of this mess? Well, the rolling stones did say. “You can’t always get what you want”.

Why would I have a blog?

There could be a lot of reasons for this or, on the other hand, there could be hardly anything at all. Ya, that was obvious. I would fall into the second category. Ya, that was obvious. Well, now that I do have one, I really don’t know what to do about it. Its been almost two whole months since I’ve kept coming to this page, staring at a blank black page and thought what the hell i’m supposed to be doing here. Thanks to my super-intellectual super-stud friends’ blogs, its not wrong in saying that I did develop an inferiority complex.

Mmm.. now that the ice has been broken, phew, let me say, “Hey”.