weird shit you see driving through the desert part one. Look at this fire, a ruptured pipe line or some such burning away some oil. Oil is like water out here so nobody gives a hoot so it’ll get repaired whenever or when it blows up. Whatever.
Posts Tagged ‘bahrain’
wierd scenes
Saturday, June 12th, 2010Protected: Escape To Victory
Monday, April 5th, 2010litter problem
Friday, March 26th, 2010Normal countries have litter which consists of fag packets, dog shit and McDonald’s (or a combination of all three) whereas Bahrain has discarded motors on the roads and streets like London has chewing gum on pavements. Smashed up motors like the one shown are everywhere. Why? Because they are rich and they cannot drive is my guess. Knackers yard of a place metaphorically and literally.
A Question of Sport
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010The Middle East. Not noted for its sporting prowess in the arena of the any competition. Camel racing maybe. They can also kick a ball and run a bit but what are you going to do stuck out in the desert? There is fuck all to do when its so hot every day. If sitting in the shade and sleeping was an Olympic sport Bahrain would be drowning in a sea of gold medals alas the only sport being played here is the one of religious hypocrisy for which the rewards are much more tangible if a little more private. To be more precise Bahrain does have a crap football team (knocked out this years world cup by NZ), crap athletics team (Beijing winner stripped of medal for being a drug cheat) and crap racing car drivers but it looks like a new crap team is on the horizon – a crap cycling team. These guys are always blocking up the road on my drive home. All of them training hard at being crap and slow although part of me would love Bahrain to achieve something great just once. Surely all those prayers must count for something.
Road to Hell
Monday, March 22nd, 2010Protected: Cycles
Monday, March 22nd, 2010Protected: fuckers
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009Liberty City
Saturday, December 13th, 2008Life in Bahrain is interesting. I have been here a week and it has slightly changed my perceptions of the Middle East and of Muslims. Bahrain is basically a rock with buildings on. The landscape is flat, arid and barren with the north part, Manama, being the only city. Manama is Bahrain and as you go south the buildings fizzle out with just sea and sand at the south. Bahrain is more developed than China and far more civilised which does place it on the sterile side slightly but then sterile is good when you have a young child. It is also very small and the population is 700,000 so its like a village more than a country. In fact, I think of it more like Liberty City with each area having its own character and lots and lots of cars driving aimlessly around. Oh yes, cars, you need a car. I have tried to walk around but its not practical as everything here has been designed with the car in mind so its either sand or road. The landscape is very flat and there are only two ‘sky scrapers’ with most building here being either 10 stories or less and placed arbitrarily around town and its not uncommon for buildings to be next to empty, sandy, voids and these areas allow Liberty City style antics as you can go off road and cut through these places to your destination. Of the 700,000 people that live here one third are expats and most of these are Indian. Then Pakistanis then Filipinos and Thais and then, much further down the list, are the Brits and Aussies with a few American service people dotted around but it works well with the Indians doing the cleaning and the Filipinos ad Thais working in all the shops and the highly paid westerners working in the top jobs. That’s how it was and that’s how it is.
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