About Gravy

Live on the coke side of life, originally uploaded by renaissancechambara.

Say the name ‘Bahrain’, just say it.


It gives my mouth a dry, pasty feeling; as if I know I’m going to be having trouble swallowing something. Something harsh and grainy- a kind of bland astringence. It tastes of bleakness, of androgynous indifference. I squeeze my eyes shut and wrinkle my forehead. My throat muscles contract. I try swallowing once, twice, three times- but I can’t. I can’t keep it down. My eyes unwrap, my mouth clicks open, and it all comes pouring out.


It comes out in a thousand brilliant colors, screaming, cheering and whispering all at once. This blurring rush of numbers and figures, places and faces, dialects, signs, camels and street lamps morphing into corvettes and neon baths. Eyes fixed up, pupils unmoving, glaring feverishly, searching for a sign of the clearing distance. Never look down. It stumbles out impatiently, rushing towards the haze blown up by the strength of the sandstorm. It’s carried out on the rattling two wheeled cart, piling itself hand over hand, brick over brick, ignoring the creaking sounds coming from the splintering of the wooden wheels.


Say the name ‘Bahrain’, and this is what you get.

A Short History of the World of Bahrain.

Bahrain, like much of the pseudo-modern world, is a land of contrasts. It’s the rags-to-riches story of the whole Middle East really. The whole region used to be the poorest in the world. Devoid of agriculture and sustainability, Bahrain depended on pearl diving for survival. That is, before modern technology screwed it over by inventing pearl farming. Uh-oh. Luckily, at around the same time, oil was discovered. Who’d a thunk. Oil, in the middle of the desert.

Bahrain was the first country in the gulf to hit oil- and just in time too, cuz there’s only so many things you can do with sand. So this catapulted the tiny kingdom into a palace building, Ferrari buying frenzy. Of course, these palaces weren’t gonna build themselves, and with a population too small to support this boom, Bahrain went oversees to find its many palace builders. And so the importation of cheap labor began. But, alas, they discovered that there’s only so many things you can do with palaces too. That was a sad day. :-(

So, instead of bathing in cash or spreading chocolate on it and trying to eat it, they decided to stick it into things called banks. Bahrain soon became the banking capital of the Middle East; and once again, they looked beyond their borders for workers. Then, one day its big brother Iran decided that he wanted to eat some chocolate-coated money, and so he laid claim to Bahrain being his. Everybody laughed and Iran said that of course, he was kidding. He was then pacified with a couple of tiny desert islands (And I mean tiny). Maybe that’s why their president is so cranky. Ah, if only he knew that chocolate coated money rots your teeth.

So the little island-country of Bahrain grew and grew, importing more foreigners to do its dirty work and more Ferraris to fill the ever-expanding roads. Today, Bahrain is a kingdom of 600,000 people- a third of which are foreigners. This has led to the creation of parallel societies- both in terms of income and culture. It’s what has aided Bahrain in being the most open nation in the Gulf, embracing a myriad of different religions, ethnic groups, languages and traditions. This- coupled with the internal split of its own culture, which is now torn between its traditional mud-dried buildings and shiny new skyscrapers has created an interwoven instability in the country. It’s all these differences meshed together and resting upon themselves that stabilize this society. But how long will this last? Will this web crumble under the burden, or explode from all the pressure being cast on it?

About Me and my F1 Buddies.

One of the perks of working in the hotel business is that everyone needs to sleep. (well, except for Michael Jackson who just plugs in to recharge), but, everyone else needs a place to sleep. And one of the perks of working at a Ritz-Carlton, is that you get to meet lots of famous people that need sleep. And maybe a champagne bath or two.


So this week is when the last Formula 1 tests are scheduled before the start of the season. Its when all the teams fine-tune their shiny new cars and pray to their shiny car gods that this year’s mix of carbon-fiber, engines, and tires are just that little bit better than their competition’s. And it just so happens that these tests are being conducted in the tiny kingdom-state of Bahrain (Sound the royal trumpets please).


So, with us being the fanciest hotel in the land, all the teams and their drivers end up staying here. I am ecstatic. I mean, this is friggin cool. Unfortunately, nobody here shares my enthusiasm cuz, well, nobody knows or cares who these drivers are. But I know. And I care. And this is friggin cool. So far I’ve made a dinner reservation for Jenson Button, welcomed Nick Heindfelds at the airport, and I saw Kimi Raikkonen, David Coulthard, Christian Klein, Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher. Ooh yea.


The thing that struck me about these people is that they’re all so perfectly normal. They’re really young, like, between 20 and 27, and very down to earth. The media builds them up to being some superhuman creatures, and you almost expect to see someone with two heads or a tail poking out of their jeans. But really they’re just normal people who happen to be paid 20 million dollars to drive cars in circles 18 times a year.