The best Filipino cover band in town

Is now gone. These photos were taken at F1, which is a club that has a Filipino cover band called Big Night Out. At first, I laughed my ass off because it was really amusing me to see a bunch of Asians rock out to Nirvana. But soon I learned my options were limited as far as live music is concerned, so I grew to enjoy watching these guys. But as is the case with all expats on the island, contracts are limited. In the case of these guys they were only here for 6 months. They will be missed.
Pop (the lead singer) rockin' out. I have some bad ass video of these guys, but for whatever reason youtube is being a bitch. You'll just have to wait until I come home to see it.
Another good shot of Pop and AJ (the girl.)
Jenn and AJ--of the two, Jenn (the one with the mic) was the better singer, but AJ was there for the boys to look at (if you know what I mean.)

And me an' Pop.

New York Times Drunk In Bahrain

Rachel and I went to F1 to go see our rock band that we always see the other week, and all was normal until a white guy with a huge camera and another white guy with a clipboard walked in. Now it's not uncommon to see guys with cameras at events around the country (especially around the Formula 1 weekend--which happened to be this particular weekend) but 99.9% of the time they are Indian. So I was immediately taken aback when I saw these two crackers walk in, and even more taken aback when the band announced about 20 minutes later that we had guests there from the New York Times. I put two and two together, and after I downed another beer or two I mustered the courage to go talk to these two. Turns out the guy in the photos name is Austin Considine, and he's a freelance writer for the New York Times. He's originally from Indiana, and roughly my age. The other dude (the photographer) was from Canada and not nearly as friendly. So during my bullshit session with this guy (who said he was glad to hear an American voice) I gathered he was here to cover the F1 race. He said his article would be published in the times by the end of May (ADAM, CHECK EVERYDAY FOR THIS AT SPEEDWAY IF THEY SELL THE TIMES) in the travel section. He said very little will be about Bahrain outside of the race, but he was taking notes about the band and the crowd so who knows what he will write. Badass. So anyway, I eventually went back to my table and about an hour and a half later (after I watched those two down a considerable amount of booze) he wandered over to my table and drunkenly asked me if I "was a fan of the diiirrty south" as Ludacris was being spun by the DJ in between band sets. Gotta love drunk journalists:) Anyway, I googled his ass when I got home and lo and behold he was telling the truth. I found many past articles by this guy. How cool is that to run across a New York Times writer in a bar in Bahrain? Sweet.

I wish I was special so I could get one of these

I mean I know I'm special, don't get me wrong. Just ask Rachel or my mom. Or the "special" school I went to. You know, the one with short busses:) Anyway, what you are looking at are custom made Bahrain license plates for the Formula 1 race. That's the Bahrain International Circuit logo in the middle on the plates. And in the first pic, there is a hard-to-see placard under each plate telling what racing team had each specific plate. Bad ass. These would be worth a shit-load and a definite highlight in my plate collection. Too bad they're not for sale. Oh, for those that care, these are on display at the Motorox Cafe (which is pretty cool in itself.)

Welcome to Bahrain, home of the worst drivers on the planet

And most likely because they are trying to emulate the F1 drivers that they see once a year here. I took this photo last week just before the F1 race. They are really big into putting advertisements on the side of buildings that take up 30 floors in this country. Reminds me of Columbus:)

An added bonus to this photo--if you click on it you can see the Arab pimped-out Chevy truck with dubs.

"Dubs on the feet, velvet in the gut, uhhh"

Sunset at the F1 track

The only really positive thing to come out of our visit to the F1 track (see next post) was this cool sunset shot that Rachel got. I really like this photo. It was taken over the overflow parking lot for the Formula One track as we were leaving.

Arabs suck at event planning

Among many other things. Anyway, Rachel and I went to the F1 track the other day to watch a "drifting" event that they were having at the track as a promo for the Grand Prix this month. They also had advertised a British stunt motorcyclist which I was interested in seeing. It was free, and we were bored. So we said fuck it, went, and made it just in time to catch the motorcycle's second show, which was cool--from what we could see.

Ok, time for a rant. The Arabs suck at event planning, case-in-point this "drifting" event. The F1 track is huge, with plenty of grandstand seating for even the largest F1 crowd. So when I was reading about this event, where they promised to have professional car drivers "drifting" and the show bike guy where the admission was free, I expected to see a huge turnout because Arabs by and large are mooches. And I was right. When we got to the track, there were hundreds of people. So, common sense should dictate that free event+lots of marketing=lots of people. Then, common sense most likely would derive that lots of people should =ample area for them to view event. That's where they lack common senses. Instead of doing this event in the infield of the track where people could sit in the stands and everyone could get a clear view they instead did it in the parking lot. They erected a fence that was about 100 yards long that you could stand by of which only about 60 yards provided any type of view of the cars or motorcycle stunts. Besides the short glimpses I got of the motorcycle (see first picture) it really was a waste of time. They took what could have been a nice evening watching cars into a clusterfuck which is what I've learned the Arabs are good at doing.