So Thursday is quite the party night in Bahrain, not because it's a thriving college town where no one has class on Friday, but because the weekend in most Muslim nations is Thursday-Friday or Friday-Saturday. Here in Bahrain, many workers work on Saturday as well. Apparently not all deities take the same day of rest after the hard work of creation.
We ended up at the Sea Shell, a small bar reminiscent of the BHP, but complete with a rocking Filipino cover band nailing songs from "I Will Always Love You" to "November Rain." My favorite part of the night was a pretty good rendition of Evanescence - "Bring Me to Life."
There's something more than surreal about listening to a girl from the Philippines rock out to a song by a Gothic chick from Riverside, in a bar full of people from Britain, east asia, and India. There was a middle aged couple holding hands- a Saudi man in full local regalia and a Filipina woman, two random drunk asian guys who kept standing up and spilling their beers, and a weird American who kept buying beads for the female band members- somebody's got to fund those remittances right?
People from all over the world came to the bar to let loose a bit from their 6-day work week. Filipinos, Indians and others all brought to a desert near the cradle of civilization. Summoned to this hot and sandy place by the power of oil. Don't get me wrong, people are here for construction, for software, for cleaning pools, and for business, but if it wasn't for the oil... the Sea Shell would be a lonely place.
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