One Night In Bahrain I

Alex had noticed me at the lobby when I was asking the hotel receptionist for information on the posters. By judgement of my physical appearance, he thought I could be a Philippina. His was a bartender. As the dining hall was short of staff, he was assigned to give a helping hand. That was where our friendship started.

I was given a dinner in Baisan, as the package of my transit in Bahrain. When I received a call in my room informing me that the food was ready, I was the first client to step into the restaurant. Alex asked me my room number and found out my nationality in the reservation list of Golf Air clients in the computer. Since there were no other guests around, I was very at ease to begin chatting with him and another waiter, who both did not look like locals. Alex, a Christian Filipino, had been working in Bahrain for four years, while his Muslim Bangladesh colleague, two years.

"Why made you decide to come here?"

"The pay, of course."

"You have a family here?"

"My sister is here. Her husband is Muslim and she was converted to Islam."

When we told our year of birth, all of us were actually almost the same age. But Alex said to me,

"Really? But you look like eighteen years old."

That was a flattery to me, but it was still a pleasure to hear that.

"That's because I'm small-sized."

"Not only because you are small-sized, but your face looks young."

"When you see my wrinkles, you won't say that anymore..."

Our conversations were interrupted when other diners also entered the hall.

After dessert, I asked Alex,

"Do you have access to the Internet? We can exchange email address. I like to make friends all over the world."

"Yes, but I don't have an email address. I only chat online. I pay 15 Dinars to have unlimited connection time."

"We'll chat online then. At what time are you usually free? The Malaysia time is 5 hours earlier than here."

"I work from 4pm to 1am. Later, I can bring you to a restaurant to taste Filipino food, and to visit other places."

"I'm going out to see this event now," I showed Alex the photo from my camera. "My flight is at 6.10am tomorrow, I'll have to be at the airport at around 4. I won't have much time to sleep. We'll see then."

"I'll call your room at 12.30, if you aren't sleeping yet."

"Okay, maybe see you later."

"I really hope we can go out together later..."

I left my email address, yahoo messenger identity, contact number and of course, the website address of my blog.

Would I go out with Alex? I had not yet made my final decision.