THE SECOND DAY OF OUR SEMINAR STARTED OFF ON A BAD NOTE. (Monday, 4th June 2007)
I was driving to the venue already 10 minutes late; the music was at full blast from my IPOD and I was in the groove, ready for anything.
I didn’t expect the power to be off!
Thank you very much Ministry of E & W for embarrassing us in front of the Foreign guests and making us look like a third world country, Bravo.
It wasn’t until 9:15 am that the power was restored and we were back in the auditorium, before then we were fanning our selves with leaflets just to keep cool.
The first thing we were informed was that our group photo had been published in the GDN and Tribune, Cooooool; I have a copy now for my scrap book.
Anyways, the Seminar commenced, and yes, the moron’s continued to ask stupid questions, and yes, they also came up with the dumb ass comments, and of course i was freezing my @$$ off.
By the end of the second day, I had cozied up to three fellow attendees, one from Libya and the other two from Morocco. They were very friendly guys, well mannered and worth getting to know.
Later that day I took the three of them to see the BIC as they were dying to see it.
They were ecstatic.
DAY THREE WAS ANOTHER COLD DAY. (Tuesday, 5th June 2007)
Again I was late, 15 minutes to be precise, and by the time I reached the venue, the seminar had started.
I took my seat under the F’ing cooler and participated where possible.
The Omani delegates were worried about the events that were occurring in the country.
The day was over by 2:30 pm, and we were invited to an informal dinner at 8pm at the ‘Parsian Restaurant’ in Adliya, free food, ‘Yippy’!
I got to know some more people at the dinner, some of them were very nice, but I finally found the talkative one that blurted out shit that I just did not care to hear; it was one of the 9 Bahraini attendees; just my luck he had to be sitting next to me in the restaurant when the fenses were down and my guard was at its weakest.
My luck never fails me, it’s just too bad that it not good luck.
The day ended on a high note as I got to know the American hosts of the event better, they were very nice people. It’s not their fault that their President is an idiot, a moron, an absolute nincompoop.
A Saudi attendee closed off the day with a funny incident that had happened to one of his relatives who at the time of the incident was a delegate in the US.
It went something like this; his relative who had just attended a party at a junction in the US, had decided to take the under ground metro back to where he stayed. When he got onto the train, a passenger got on behind him. This frightened his relative as he had heard some awful stories about the under ground at night. So he took a seat and kept eyeing the guy from time to time just to make sure he was keeping his distance, the guy looked like an East Asian.
When the train stopped at his station, he put his hands in his pocket to make sure his belonging were safe, and realized that his wallet was missing. He turned and look at the guy, who in turn immediately jumped out of the train and started walking fast. Even thought the delegate was afraid he ran after the guy because all he had was in the wallet.
The chase went on for a hundred feet at least before the guy dropped the wallet and disappeared as the Saudi delegate stopped to pick it up.
When he reached his resident, and as he was changing, he noticed that he had two wallets in his pockets.
It seems like the other guy was innocent but had thought the delegate was out to mug his so he discarded his own wallet to stop him from persuading further.
The delegate was later able to contact the guy using the ID in his wallet; he profusely apologized for the confusion.
NOW THAT A FUNNY STORY, hope it’s true.
The last day (Wednesday, 6th June 2007)
I was late yet again, and by the first break I was sitting with the Omani attendees discussing the freak weather that was about to hit the shores of their home country. They had been informed that their flights home had been cancelled and the next available flight would be on Friday.
Our prayers went out to all their family and friends as well as all the Omani citizens.
So the day came and went; we had some VIP guests give us a closing ceremony speech and hand us our 'certificated of attendance' before we were sent off home.
I learnt a lot about the subject matter of the Seminar, but I also learnt that there are some very nice people out there; you just have to take a change, be sociable and take the opportunity to get to know them.
Let your guard down sometimes, it’s worth it.
Citizen X :| This is how i see things... (in layman terms)
