The Bahrain Posts - Numero Uno

I feel there will be a lot of reminiscing about Bahrain in the coming weeks. I really really miss it already and it's impossible to pay homage to an experience like the one I've had in one short post so it's going to have to be a series.

The Top 10 things I dislike about Bahrain:
10. The legalisation process for NGOs. One word: "insha'allah". The pain, the searing pain. May God help us.
9. Snotty white expats. Stop complaining, it's a great country, go and get drunk in BJs/JJs like your other stupid friends.
8. Some people's attitudes to foreign workers. They are not your servants, they are also people and you are not better than them because you are Khaleeji or because you are rich.
7. English-language media. The GDN is a fairly primitive tabloid riddled with spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, pro-government bias and very limited opinion pieces. There are 6 Arabic language papers. Lift your game and learn from the UAE.
6. Bahrainisation. A short-term fix to a long-term problem.
5. Roadwork. Please. You are killing me. Why block a busy intersection at 9am on a Sunday morning? Why? WHY? Why block all of Juffair for months? WHYYYYY?
4. The education system, it really needs more than one dimension.
3. The pace of construction, that library was supposed to be finished soon after I ARRIVED and it's still not done :(
2. Saudis (and Kuwaitis and Qataris) invading on the weekends, GO HOME.
1. The speedbumps, they are never painted and your car goes flying randomly.


The Top 20 things I love about Bahrain:
20. Ba7rain Fort. Big, imposing, cool and lit up at night.
19. The cars. Maaaaaaaaaaaan. I wont even list them. Just, the cars.
18. Thobe and '3itra/Shma'3... it looks, cool... just dont wear it too freakin tight :P *cough* Saudis *Cough*
17. Al Bare7 Gallery with the cool little cafe and very nice gallery with different exhibitions and things, wish I went there more.
16. Seef Mall. Not the greatest mall in the world but a great place to people watch and chill, sometimes.
15. Cheap cigarettes. Where else can you get top quality US/Euro smokes for 600 fils (1.2€)? Well the Gulf. Have to quit smoking now though cos cant afford it in Australia of course.
14. Watching football at the Qahwa, with shisha and everybody cheering.
13. Beirout Coffee Shop... I miss Altav, A7med, 3Aboud and the rest. Top quality 3ainab Fa5er shisha for 600 fils (1.2€€) and Laimun Na3na juice for 300 fils (0.6€). And I miss playing tricks, even if I wasnt that good at it.
12. The best shisha and ma3asil in the world. Tafa7tain, 3inab fa5er, you name it, we got it.
11. Tikka and Kabab from Jahan Grills. Whether you eat it in the park, on the roof, in the apartment or in your car, it's good.
10. The Adliya party strip where you can see Lamborghinis, girls in miniskirts and thobed men flashing cash. Specifically:
9. La Ventana. An oasis of cool with paintings on the walls, the hairy eared owner giving us free cake and the best damn sandwiches on the island.
8. Costa Coffee. Free wifi, comfortable seating and the staff are just the friendliest people around really, it's a pity so many people treat them like crap.
7. Lebanese Oven shawarma with EXTRA MINT. I miss you '3azi, my Syrian shawarma friend, you always gave me extra mint even when i didnt ask and said Shu A5bar to me like i was your brother after greeting me in the carpark with a big big smile on your moustachioed face.
6. Mandhi @ Mo7ammed Noor. The food, the people, the experience. Enough said.
5. Jan Burger. The best burgers I have ever eaten in any of the countries I've travelled to and they only cost 800 fils (1.6€)
4. Being a lazy bastard and driving up to just about anywhere, honking your horn and getting service. Thank you to the many Cold Store owners that met my demands with a smile.
3. Ramadhan. Enough said. For more information, check my posts about it in September last year.
2. Hearing the call to prayer at many different times during the day.
1. The people. Some of the most amazing, warm, intelligent, friendly, open-minded, high potential people in the world. Bahrain should be proud of its intellectual product. Whether we were talking about religion, politics, cars, movies, books, AIESEC or just random shit, those conversations will always stay in my heart.

Written: [Anna's Cafe] 9.45am 16th April

You don't really notice places like this unless you walk. I wonder what this calm Filipino lady thinks of me wandering in at this time with my old jeans, flip flops and several day old beard confessing that all I have in my pocket is 600 fils. As expected when I walked past earlier this morning, there is no one here. I wonder how she makes her money. I must come back. There's nothing particularly special about this place apart from the fact that it's not very Bahrain. It's tiny, quaint and hardly patronised yet it still feels more European than Bahraini. It's nto a chain, no wi-fi and no credit cards. No shisha either, it seems, but they do bake their own bread and pastries and things. This would be a paerfect little local to frequent.

It has a very odd style about it. Rounded little hotel lobby-style camel chairs with a mahogany trim. Round pink ashtrays on tiny round black tables, pictures of pasties and cheese on the wall, all the same size and all in a row along the top of the wall. They all look like they're from the mid 90s. Some random fake vines in the corner and square wooden tables with green tablecloths and wooden chairs along the middle. Oh and a ceiling high circular shelving unit adorned with magazines on the bottom and faux wedding cakes at the top. All to the smooth commercial sounds of Radio Bahrain. Yet somehow the quiet mishmash of this place somehow fits together and it feels homely like Costa never could. The Filipino lady also seems pleasant, like a young aunt. I do wonder why the menu refers to it as a Cypress coffee and not Turkish. Political statement or gimmick?

Well you wouldn't call the coffee good yet there's still something enticing about this place. Maybe I'm just craving something different like this after all the cafe chains and shisha joints or maybe I just want to fall in love with a place that's so cosy and so human. The massive windows are a bonus but you wouldn't call the view 'beautiful'. On the other hand, this is the real, typical Manama neighbourhood. Road 3614, faceless grey apartment blocks, vans and old cars frame the dirtyish narrow concrete streets with not footpath. Random corner DVD store with posters of Egyptian and Lebanese posters adorning its window wall. This is Bahrain, or Manama at least. Rusty satellite dishes sit atop roofs of buildings a few stories high, all grey with dirty walls, grate square balconies and AC units sticking out. It's all function. Light colour walls, block the heat, ACs cool and satellite dishes entertain.

There never was a gothic period here, no renaissance. Surviving in the Gulf means protecting your family (women) behind thick walls and cooling your home from the 50 degree summer heat. They don't need flourishes, detail and fancy buildings. They live functionally, always have, maybe always will. They build beautiful monuments to Allah and they aim for their hearts to reflect the same kind of beauty. You don't need European charm for that. Life is simple. You fear God, protect your family, provide food and stave off the heat. Nowadays American TV and Asian labour takes care of the rest. America, a country born of the same functionality and simplicty seems a perfect cultural model for development in that sense.

Lessons from the simple steps

With my right hand first
I open the door to the room where my woman gave birth
To my first born son
Only minutes before
I was in the waiting room, nervous
Moms giving me comfort
Family support
As I approached I could hear him crying
I didn’t notice
That my tears were running
Pictured myself for a moment in the arms of my father
Flashback to the bended shoulders
On which I’d sit
Grabbing his finger
Taking my first step
Would I become like him?
After a certain age bottle up
Stop showing love
But cold handshakes throughout the years
Replaced by hugs
Father whispered in his ears
The family was gathered
Pictures were taken
My hands still shaking
My joy was beyond words
Him in my arms
3 generations of tears running so calm
He came with Gods blessing and grace so we named him Faizan.

As I drive through the half-deserted streets of Manama at 5.30am after one of those difficult nights, listening to a man sing about the deeply personal experience of becoming a father. I can't help but notice things around me.

There's something magical and mysterious about fog, everything seems to be draped in it and things take on a different appearance. The mosque's minaret, shrouded in fog, its lights a beacon to those lost in the fog of life, its morning call to prayer an alarm to those asleep to the Message of Islam. It draws men from all sides, cars parked around it, even at 5.30am, wanting to perform the morning prayer and greet the day inside its holy walls.

An Indian couple, walking along a reasonably wide street but with no real footpath, walking slowly, not in a hurry, deep in conversation, he - dressed in simple slacks and a white shirt, she - wearing a yellow salwar kameez, walking along on a deserted residential street at 5.30am. What does he do here in Bahrain? A menial job to earn menial pay, being treated like dirt by most members of this society, far away from home. Is it of comfort to him, to have his wife by his side at 5.30am on this deserted street? Are they greeting the day together, whatever it may bring?

As I pull up outside my apartment and get ready to get some sleep before another day in the office. I can't help but wonder where is my beacon? My call? My sidewalk partner? Don't get me wrong, I'm in no urgency to find these things, this is not a quarter-life crisis... yet... but I can't help but wonder what new things await. This has certainly been a time of change in my life, nothing momentous has happened but I feel I have changed immeasurably. But in the words of Outlandish, "Looking back on my life, No regret only the sweet journey"... I do hope those words ring true for the rest of it.

Looking back on my life
Life that’s gladly been given to me
Open my eyes and embrace the smile
Given to you & I
Looking back on my life
No regret only the sweet journey
Lessons from the simple steps
Taking by you & I

Dubai ticking time bomb

Thanks to my man Tom, formerly of Zemalek-Cairo fame, soon to be of Abu Dhabi fame, for providing these links and prompting this blogpost.

A very interesting viewpoint aka. leftist/socialist take on the phenomenon that is Dubai.

While the Dubai piece is certainly far from unbiased, and it does lampoon Sheikh Maktoum's gigantic ambitions fairly cleverly, it does also bring up some very interesting points about Dubai's history, srategy, laws and class society.

Historically, the article talks a great deal about Dubai's very humble beginnings, and how, interestingly, it has used many underworld links to ensure the security that it currently enjoys.

Dubai now enjoys high marks from Washington as a partner in the War on Terror and, in particular, as a base for spying on Iran; [26] but it is probable that al-Maktoum, like the other Emirati rulers, still keeps a channel open to radical Islamists. If al-Qaeda so desired, for example, it could presumably turn the Burj Al-Arab and Dubai’s other soaring landmarks into so many towering infernos. Yet so far Dubai is one of the few cities in the region to have entirely avoided car-bombings and attacks on Western tourists: eloquent testament, one might suppose, to the city-state’s continuing role as a money laundry and upscale hideout, like Tangiers in the 1940s or Macao in the 1960s. Dubai’s burgeoning black economy is its insurance policy against the car-bombers and airplane hijackers.

The article also points out how, rather obviously, how much the Gulf economies are reliant on positive fluctuations in the oil price, and how these fluctuations come about:

Every time insurgents blow up a pipeline in the Niger Delta, a martyr drives his truck bomb into a Riyadh housing complex, or Washington and Tel Aviv rattle their sabres at Tehran, the price of oil (and thus Dubai’s ultimate income) increases by some increment of anxiety in the all-important futures market. The Gulf economies, in other words, are now capitalized not just on oil production, but also on the fear of its disruption.

The article also makes a very interesting point of the current guest worker situation, that is of course applicable to all the other Gulf states (though not quite so much as Dubai with its ridiculously tiny single-digit local population).

The unruly voice of labour echoes louder in the deserts of the uae than it might elsewhere. At the end of the day, Dubai is capitalized just as much on cheap labour as it is on expensive oil, and the Maktoums, like their cousins in the other emirates, are exquisitely aware that they reign over a kingdom built on the backs of a South Asian workforce.


The question on everyone's lips of course, is how sustainable this strategy is exactly. Perhaps because the article was published in October of 2006, it fails to mention the impact that the falling value of the US Dollar is currently having on worker morale in the Gulf. If we look simply at the state of the US economy, and the concurrently nosediving interest rates (down 0.75 percentage points last month, and another 0.5 a week later), the picture for the US currency sure looks bleak indeed. Which also means that the outlook for those of us earning Bahraini Dinar, Saudi Rial, Emirati Dirham, or any of the other Gulf currencies pegged to the USD is similarly not good. Particularly for those that are earning these wages in ridiculously tiny amounts, all on the premise of being able to send some home to South/South-East Asia. Now when these currencies begin to depreciate at a great rate to the Indian Rupee and other South/South-East Asian currencies, the trouble begins. Working conditions have not improved, wages have not appreciated in nominal terms and are depreciating now when stacked up in real terms against the wages they are meant to supplicate in the workers' home countries. Combine this with the already simmering discontent of being treated like slaves with no rights to mobilisation, let alone collective bargaining, and you really have a problem. It does indeed seem that, at least in this respect, the Gulf is a ticking time bomb. Food for thought, and we thought sectarian unrest or a strike against Iran were the problems, this seems to be the least of our worries...

Some Reflection

I really do reflect better when discussing my thoughts with someone, I think I need a sounding board for my reflection rather than the solitude more commonly associated with it. For example, I have come to realise some things about myself through a recent conversation with someone close. To start with, I have travelled quite a lot. I've been alive for 22 and a half years and in that time I have been to 22 countries. In just the last year, 2007, I was in 12 different countries and in 2008, already, I have been to 5 different countries. I am fairly impressed with my achievement in this regard and I have to say, it's been a hell of a journey. One outcome of this, however, is that my attitude to travel has changed. I no longer feel the burning desire and excitement upon setting foot in a foreign land. The more you travel, the more different cultures, people and things you see, the more you realise that we are indeed all very similar. This doesn't mean I don't appreciate travel any more, I still love it and strive for it, the beauty of Rome and the Pyramids, the excitement and buzz of Dubai, the heart and soul of Cairo, all these things have reminded me recently that short-time travelling, 'tourism' if you like, is still a very worthwhile adventure. However, I am beginning to understand that my priorities have shifted somewhat.

I am still a nomad. And to me nomadism is not about travelling, it's much broader, it's situational. I now look forward to not short-term experiences but experiencing longer term situations. For instance, the first six months in Bahrain were one type of experience and situation. It was an infatuation of sorts, a burgeoning understanding and love for a country and its people, a passion and drive to move an organisation, to which I've contribute my hard work and my heart for the last 5 years, forward. These last six months are going to be a different kind of situation, the understanding and love has turned to a growing comfort and ease, much like passing the infatuation stage in a relationship and progressing to a stage of comfort and companionship. And having the knowledge that I will be leaving, not only Bahrain, but AIESEC at the end of this term has given me a new perspective on the organisation also, gone is the lust for results and reputation, and the drive to succeed in order to ensure my next position in the network, and it's instead replaced with a deep commitment to ensure that AIESEC Bahrain is in a much better place after I leave, to when I started. These last six months will be more about cherishing the moments, and the people, that have come to define my experience here in Bahrain, rather than a thirst for discovering new things and feelings.

The situational thing goes further. I know when I arrive back in Melbourne, the feelings and emotions I will have will be situational, the situation of arriving back home after a year abroad is a unique one that I have never experienced. Rediscovering my love for my city, my friends and my family, in the flesh, will be a new situation, as will rediscovering how I feel about my academic activities, especially given the absence of AIESEC during the course of them for the 18 months after I arrive. And after that, I will be looking for new, different and more challenging situations. The internship I intend to take after I graduate will be an opportunity for such a thing, as will the many other steps that I will, insha'allah, take during the course of my life in the future. The future is an interesting thing, I think the reason why I've never felt anxious or uncomfortable with it is that, at this point I have enough optimism to know that I will make good decisions and will continue to be presented with good opportunities. May that optimism never fade.

(In other news, Indian music is very good, I have gained too much weight from unhealthy food and lack of exercise, and Support Obama on Super Tuesday for he is the new hope.)

Muharraq

Sitting in my car waiting for shawarma and labneh. Muharraq, another bastion of conseratism in 'liberal' Bahrain. See the cars go past. How many men driving with naqabi (totally covered except for the eyes) wives in the back? Their oblivion to everything but their family, their household. An upright Arab in a suit and a droptop BMW roadster. Indians in old cars. Uniformed expatriates, police? Protecting what? Car horns go off. A dumpster with arabic graffiti, and a love heart.

Yes, there is love here, somewhere. A kid in an AC Milan soccer jersey, Kaka's name emblazoned on the back, coke bottle glasses, ferries garbage to the dumpster. Oasis sings "Dont look back in anger, I heard you say". Veiled women in expensive cars, traffic does a carefully choreographed dance through the narrow street. An Indian man rides past on his bike, balancing juice cups on his handle bars. I wonder how many hours he works a day to support his family that is so far away? I wonder when is the last time he saw them?

Too late for wondering. The food is here.

Balconies and the Moon

If there is one prominent symbol of Ramadan it is the crescent moon. Although it is a symbol of Islam itself, the crescent moons are really all over the place during Ramadan. Following on from the last post about sitting on my balcony at suhoor, I've come to realise that I've been looking at the moon a lot since the beginning of Ramadan. I look at it every night and I am able to really notice the way it changes.... as it waxes and wanes or whatever you call it.

Which led me to realise that this is the first time in my life since I was very young that I actually am living in a place with a balcony. Balconies rock. Here are some photos from mine.

"Dont Trust Girils" and Aussie Breakfast

I have a theory that if you're dumb enough to put a big massive and ridiculously nonsensical slogan on the back of your car window then you're probably dumb enough to misspell it. This theory has so far proved correct in Bahrain. "Dont Trust Girils" and "For Sael". These are just two I saw today but there are many more. Who is Sael and why should I care that the car is for him? And what the hell is Giril? I wouldn't trust anything that sounds like some sort of burrowing rodent either.

The other cool thing that happened today was that we decided to cook in the apartment and it was a multicultural meal. Our apartment has an Aussie, a Dutch and a Chinese living in it and we broke our fast after a big grocery shop and a big cookoff. My "Aussie breakfast" came out first which was of course your quintissential fryup - fried eggs, fried mushrooms, fried tomatoes, fried beef mortadella (instead of bacon) and fried beef sausages (instead of the usual snags)... complete with Vegemite bread. Jorien was shocked that this is the sort of food we eat for breakfast in Australia whereas she eats "fruits, muesli and yoghurt"... mmm boringlicious.

Dingkun made some sort of chilli chicken dish which I couldnt eat much of because I was already super full from the breakfast but the look on Jorien's face when she was told she had to eat something with bones in it and then spit out the bones was priceless (especially when I suggested that the cartilege was the best part). It was only comparable to Dingkun's face when he tried Vegemite for the first time... oh well at least we didn't pull the "it tastes just like Nutella" trick on him.

Stroepwafels for Dutch Dessert completed the meal. Not at all Bahraini but what a great way to break a fast. :D

Suhoor and the First Call to Prayer

One of my favourite parts of Ramadan is the first call to prayer. The morning call is when you are meant to stop eating, drinking and smoking and start fasting. At the moment it happens at around 4am or a little bit later. It will be getting later and later as the month wears on...

My apartment has two balconies facing the street and they are generally good places to chill. One of my favourite parts of the night is to eat something light for suhoor (the last meal) and to go out onto the balcony right before the first call. At this time, the street is pretty quiet, only the occasional car, definitely no traffic so when it's time for the first call, I can hear 3 different calls to prayer from 3 different mosques simultaneously.

The result is really amazing as the calls to prayer emanate from seemingly everywhere around my little balcony. To call it 'atmospheric' doesn't even begin to describe it. For those of us that aren't muslims, that aren't used to something so innately spiritual being around us every day of our lives, it really feels like something different. It puts my mind in a different state, a relaxed but contemplative state. There's something about it that makes me feel at peace with the world, and I love it.

Just one of the things that I love so much about this part of the world.

Ramadan Day 1

So a few people have been asking me the reasons behind my decision to fast this Ramadan and basically there are a lot of reasons:

- I'm in the Gulf, in a very Muslim part of the world. Ramadan here isn't just a decision to not do certain things during certain hours of the day, it's an absolute way of life. The entire country adjusts itself completely. Working hours are shifted, all restaurants/cafes are closed during the day and then open far later. It's illegal to smoke, drink or eat in public. Life revolves around different meal times like iftar and suhoor, it's all that people talk about, decorations are different around the city, Coke has special Ramadan cans, the list goes on... It makes sense to be an active part of this way of life rather than having to work around it by sneaking cigarrettes in the toilet or going home to make lunch from stocked up foodstuffs.

- One of my main goals for coming here was to understand the mentality of the people and to understand the "culture", which is not just eating cool food and wearing fancy clothes, but to really understand why people do things here the way they do them.

- It is a good opportunity to get in touch with a different side of my spirituality, ask myself different questions about who I am, what I believe, what I need from life and what keeps me going day to day.

- It is a good opportunity to take myself to a different limit, challenge myself in a different way.

- The concept behind putting yourself in the shoes of someone who does not eat more than one meal a day, does not have ready access to water or the luxuries of smoking and loud car stereos (a hell of a lot of people in this world) is definitely an interesting concept. From what I understand, this is one of the main concepts behind Ramadan and it certainly makes sense to me.

- But I have to admit, a big lure is the feeling that you're part of a community. Ramadan brings the community together. People ask about each other's health, habits and wellbeing more during this period. People support each other, they take their meals communally and they reflect together. In that sense, it is a wonderful time.

So Day 1.
Apart from the fact that I had to work 12 hours today - starting at 8.30am to clean up the office a bit, had a meeting with a French Embassy representative, had a long planning session with the MC team, did some Exchange-related emailing and spreadsheet research, had a meeting with Tima & Aseeri, half-attended an Exchange team meeting and finally culminating with a meeting with one of our Board members which went til 8pm.

I ended up breaking my fast at Iftar over a can of Coke and a cigarette before the last meeting... and eventually consumed a nice Turkey sandwich at O'Briens. Not bad for my first iftar I guess...

Following this I chilled out at home for a while and then a bunch of us went to La Maison du Cafe to smoke shisha, have the second meal (the name of which I forget) and listen to some nice Ramadan tunes (very soft songs sung by a guy playing an Arabian guitar thingy).

Following this we went back to the apartment to chill out and watched Becker, Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends - a good flash back to 90s sitcoms which were some of the best sitcoms in my opinion.

Then Simi and I went to Beirouti for some Lebanese food for our suhoor (last meal).

Now am lying in my bed at home contemplating my first day of my first real Ramadan and thinking that it was pretty damn good. :)

Welcome to Bahrain - Jorien

I know this is funny because I'm going to use the same photos you used in your blogpost (all of which I stole from you) but I don't care. Welcome to Bahrain, Jorien... it's so exciting that our MC team is finally complete and we are ready to "Rock the Golf" ;)

What a great weekend. As I said in my previous posts, I am going to refrain from update posts so instead here are two highlights.

Chaise - one of the best shishas in Bahrain. It was my definite favourite (this is in doubt now that Isis has come along...) and a place we will definitely return to. Cant wait to have another Fresh Apple + Mint shisha with ice at the bottom.


Thanks for the company guys. I am now thoroughly educated in the art of Egyptian swearing (cursing for the Yanks among us) - thank you Simi + Fix.



The second highlight was the lovely night we spent under the stars next to the Causeway to Muharraq (the one closest to Adliyah). On a rug, flanked by the two cars with the sand on one side and the sea on the other... we took the shishas out for a test run (the baby shisha worked great, Amina), we became addicted to cheese labneh, there was Efes + Barbican. There was various music ranging from Manu Chao, Travis through to Elissa, 'Asha Asha' and some great old party hip hop/rnb from the late 90s (Jagged Edge!). All this took us right through to sunrise.

As usual, I can't remember the conversations that well but I know they were great, as was the company in general and the opportunity to contemplate life while staring across the water at the (small yet interesting) Manama skyline...


On a random note - spent the evening scavenging through the stuff Claude + John left behind to throw away... some hidden gems in there for sure ;-)

OK I am decidedly sick of update blogging. It sucks and it's boring and because I can't be bothered any more that is partly the reason why I've been so lazy lately. So. I'm gonna go back to random thought blogging, that was way more fun.

I'll start with some excerpts from a book I'm reading atm, "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad that got me thinking. Conrad is a fantastic writer, despite this book being heavily criticised by Chinua Achebe for what's perceived as a racist slant (which it certainly does have but not necessarily because Conrad himself was a racist, either way he's a great writer) and the biased picture it paints of Africa.

"... No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence, - that which makes its truth, its meaning - its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, we dream - alone..."

Here the book's narrator, Marlow, who is attempting to tell a story, is lamenting at the fact that it's impossible to express one's own experience in words. This is because of the limitations of language and verbal expression. The frustratinly limited scope of language has always been something I've struggled with and disliked about communicating. How is it possible to communicate a feeling? An emotion? When it's all inside your head (and heart?) and language is so one-dimensional, how can you possibly find "the right words" to express it?

The bit I find most interesting in the above excerpt though is "We live, we dream - alone..." Such a depressing thought but it does make sense. If we are unable to properly express our experiences, feelings and thoughts then how can we properly share them with other people? How can we properly let other people play an active role in our lives? It's like human interaction is a fumbling mess, or some uncontrollable current pulling us all along... Interesting.

"The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words - the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness"

Here Marlow is describing his impending meeting with the mercurial Kurz, a foreigner who has gained unprecedented power and control over the local population. How interesting, considering the previous excerpt, to see Marlow now exalting someone for their gift of expression. I also find interesting "the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness", Kurz is evidently a man who uses expression to disguise his dark and selfish motives. I wonder how many other people in the world there are like Kurz. And I wonder how easy it is to fall into the trap of using the ability to influence people for evil, rather than good.

To cap off this musing, here is a pic of a chilled out moment. Layali Zaman is a coffee shop here in Bahrain that is right by the water. Smoking shisha and sipping coffee/juice by the water on a nice night, staring out at the full moon and the lights in the distance, is really one of those moments to savour.

First 2 weeks in Bahrain

Sorry to those that have been asking for this post for a while but I really haven't had much time to do much apart from work and the endlessly fantastic social calendar.

First thing's first, I am officially MCVPER of AIESEC Bahrain. WoOt. Changeover happened at conference last week and, this week, Sahar and I have been in the office full throttle as the fledgling MC team with big shoes to fill. Go us! And to those that thought AIESEC was taking up enough of my life back home, it is now a paid full-time position looking after external relations, sales and strategic management of an NGO at a national level. Nice.


The AIESEC events calendar has been action-packed, I bought a new suit, shoes and belt for the Bahrain Future Business Leaders Forum (picture above) that happened last week and it was great. A room full of Bahraini students at The Diplomat Conference Centre listened to speeches on Islamic Banking and Entrepreneurship. National Conference followed soon after and was 3 action packed days at the Royal University for Women (smack in the middle of the desert!) with nice sessions including ones run by some external companies.



Apart from the office, the cafes here are pretty sweet for meetings, work or just chilling. Some of my favourites are La Ventana (pictured above), Verandah and Coco's... along with the usual chains (including Costa Coffee, a homegrown Gulf chain). The cafes also have good food, as do many of the other places around. For a population so small, there sure are a lot of places to eat! Some of the best food I've had include burgers, Thai food, Indian food, Tikka, Lebanese food, Egyptian food, mehiawa (fish juice), the list is endless... and fairly inexpensive.



At night there has been a lot of shisha with the guys. There are some really great shisha cafes around here, the one pictured above is Beirout (not the best Shisha but it only costs 500 fils (
A$1.50) and is cool to hang in. I have been slowly destroying my lungs and I feel this trend is set to continue.



The greatest thing I've experienced here so far is definitely the people. Thank you so much to all the guys + gals that have made my first few weeks on the island so amazing, pleasant and welcoming. You guys are fantastic... smart, fun, chilled... Bahrainis should be famous the world over for the coolness. Looking forward to an awesome year of forging new connections and endless fun + chilling. Here's a pic of all the peeps at the BFBLS.


Which brings me to some other special people. Lyna, Claude and John, the outgoing MC team. You guys are seriously amazing, the work that you've done here, your results speak for themselves in the people you have developed (and the bank account too, nice). Despite all the challenges, and yeah they were many... what you have achieved is so fantastic and so totally worth it. AIESEC Bahrain is going to be a MENA powerhouse and it's all because of you guys. Massive massive shoes to fill for Sahar and myself. Thank you for the chilled nights, the great chats, the support, the hectic (and mistimed) transition and the wisdom, guidance and strength you have displayed. It was a humbling experience. Lyna + Claude, I hope to see you both in the States one day. John, I'll see you back here in a month mate, enjoy your travels.

And that's me signing off. I promise to blog more. A promise more to myself than to anyone else.