... That last Thursday morning (July 26), at a little past 9, my Bebe and I drove almost 400 kilometers from Riyadh to Al Khobar for almost three-and-a-half hours, after munching on jubna (oven-cooked cheese-filled oval pies) washed down with soda for a very late breakfast. Along the way, listening to Martin and singing along with him, and sometimes to Regine and Lani, and for a few minutes, to Barbra (her Yentl Cd is really awesome; such soaring vocals).... On arrival in Al Khobar, at a little past lunchtime, and so we went straight to our latest favorite eating place thereat, Casper & Gambini's. And met up with kapatid Chris (he of the Charmed One fame lately) and nephew Julius and friend. [Kapatid, you look even more "progressive" now than ever; hiyang ka sa Eastern!]
"Power lunch" photo courtesy of Charmed One
(at the middle, in pink).
... After the power lunch, we rested awhile.
... We then started the cross to the Kingdom of Bahrain (it called itself a Kingdom just a few years back; it just used to be simply Bahrain before then), via the King Fahd Causeway, a $1.2B series of bridges (there are 3 bridge spans) completed in 1986 at full cost to the Saudi government (could be why, it retained the prerogative to name the Causeway after the monarch at that time). It takes less than half an hour to cross the 25-kilometer Causeway but you spend quite a lot of time (this time, we were there for about an hour), at the Immigration and Customs desks of both Kingdoms, in the middle of the Causeway. The queues have always been remarkably long going into and going out of Bahrain, for the sheer volume of people wanting to spend the weekend in the island nation.
... After leaving the Causeway, we immediately headed to Seef Mall, one of the better-looking malls in Bahrain, and indeed, in the Middle East region, that could rival our very own Ayala malls. Seef Mall has a cineplex of 14 cinemas and two of them are playing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
... And so we checked which one has HP showing earlier (one at 6 and another at 745pm). Cinema 6 was full. We ended up seating almost infront. We loaded up on caramel popcorn and diet Pepsi and off we went on HP's latest adventure fighting Dolores Jane Umbridge (the wickedly saccharine Imelda Staunton of Vera Drake fame).
... We finished after almost two-hours-and-a-half and just decided against watching another film (only Pirates of the Carribean - Dead Man's Chest seemed worth watching but not quite) and just went malling instead. Dropped by a bookstore to get my fill of Oprah's magazines (O and O At Home, which surprisingly, are not available in Riyadh) and this interesting lifestyle mag, Real Simple. I heard the salesclerk tell an obviously Bahraini couple with their kid in tow that the HP and the Deathly Hallows book is out of stock and will possibly be available again after a week.
... We drove back to Al Khobar at a little past 10 in the evening. And after a so-so meal at the newly-opened TGIF at the Al Khobar Corniche, we called it a night.
... The next morning (Friday, July 27), saw my Bebe and I driving through almost 400 kilometers of beige sand, rusty-colored sand, grazing camels, pockets of greenery, and amazingly quiet road back to Riyadh, still singing along to Martin. And because I finally picked up my bilin (from my nephew Julius who was in the Philippines a few weeks before for a break) of Kuh Ledesma, Josh Groban and the Dreamgirls, we listened to them too.
