22nd Gathering

This must have been the best gathering we have had so far! I think everyone enjoyed themselves and we all had a chance to speak with one-another as this time, people themselves started mingling and moving from one “pod” to the next, getting up and walking over to the other end of the very long table that La Chocolat were excellent to arrange for us.

The numbers far exceeded any other we have had I think. There were 19 or 20 people around and most stayed till around 11.15 and carried on talking outside!

Stars of the gathering are undoubtedly our Kuwait guests: Bader from SaviorMachine, Ali from The Stallion and Abdullatif of ForzaQ8.

Quite a number of Bahraini bloggers and some of our contributors/commenters also came, let me list who did, but if I miss someone please forgive me (leave a comment and I’ll update the main list):

Tooners of Hypnotic Verses, Hashim of Al-Fanan Radio, Tariq Khonji whom we have to thank for suggesting this excellent location, Haitham Sabbah who promised that now that he will try harder to come to every gathering! Mahmood Al-Adraj who we tried to land the bill on as he works for American Express :), Yasser of The Joker who has started blogging again after a long absence (altogether now: YAY!) joined by Eyad of Bahraini Rants who likewise restarted blogging (YAY again!) after a nice and restful holiday, Tawfiq Al-Rayyash of the Rayyash’s Chimney, Ali Al-Saeed of QuixotiQ Writings, Hisham Khalifa of Looking for Delmon and Sadeq Al-Shehabi of binShehab… did I miss anyone?

Coupled with these bloggers, other friends came over as well and joined the fun: Yasser introduced us to his friend Mohammed, Marco Montemurro, the Italian guy who did his BSc dissertation on Gulf bloggers! Together with Toberios whom I know from Orbit TV, Fawwaz came with Hisham, and John the Johnster.

Topics of conversation I think covered EVERYTHING! As one side of the table was talking politics, another was talking about filmmaking, while another part were talking about education reforms, life in Kuwait compared to Bahrain, corruption, cars, food, and how Ali just couldn’t refuse hummus whenever he has the chance to inhale it!

The afternoon started quite nicely too, I got a chance to pick up both Ali and Bader from their hotel and drove around a bit to show them the island. We stopped off at Motersports ME so that Bader can drool over the Caterham G7s, sit in them and pretend to drive quite fast! Fortunately for us, I called Ian Best (the owner) who was good enough to stop over at the showroom and give then guys a complete breakdown talk of the car and its capabilities, ending in a promise that if they gave him enough lead time he might be able to organise a good run around the BIC’s F1 track too! Now that’s an incentive for Bader to come to Bahrain again.

Staying with the fast cars theme, I took them on a quick tour to the BIC and took some pictures inside (thanks guys!) and that place was a buzz then as they were preparing for one of their “Test and Tune” night for the first drag race of the season. Tonight’s the night if you like cars and noise, get yourself over there!

It was an excellent night, and I do hope that we will be able to repeat it once again next month too!