Bloggers meetups are awesome, period, and meeting up with Fouad Al Farhan was really awesome. He is absolutely one of my favorite Saudi bloggers, and few weeks ago I interviewed him for Global Voices. I thought he was in Riyadh, which he hates so much, to attend Gitex, but he actually was here for business. We were supposed to meet at Dr. Cafe, but he said he needed a sheesha, something modern coffee shops such as Starbucks and Dr. Cafe don’t serve, so we decided that I should come to his hotel where it is served.

We talked for a couple of hours about many stuff, and it was a good conversations that I enjoyed very much. One of the interesting things Fouad told me was that he does not feel he belongs to this place. “Probably the only place I can call home is the little village my family comes from,” he said. This reminds me with a post I read a few days ago on a friend’s blog. “I think it finally has clicked that I am no longer tied to one location on this planet. I think when you travel enough you realize that you really are part of something much bigger than the state or the country you come from. You are really a ‘global citizen.'”

It was really great meeting Fouad, and next time I visit Jeddah (hopefully this summer inshallah), I’ll make sure to meet him again.

Anthony says that Thomas Friedmns’s book The World Is Flat was not as bad as he imagined it would be. For most people, Friedman is a kind of guy that you either like him, or totally hate him. Well, I don’t like him, but I don’t hate him. So should I read his book?

Even though the current labor minister has been working very hard to solve problems regarding foreign workers in the country, but we still find some awful stories like this: a 16-year-old Pakistani girl was raped, jailed, and then deported to her country. This is really shameful. Such problems are not exclusive to Saudi Arabia; we all read about what happened in Dubai recently. Governments of the GCC states must work seriously to solve these problems before it’s too late.

As the local football season has come to an end last Friday, Markus Paqueta, the manager of the national team, has announced what’s supposed to be his final choice of players who would represent Saudi Arabia in the FIFA World Cup this summer in Germany. So, I thought it would be fun if I posted the names of my favorite 23, hoping you would post your favorites too (this is not only for Saudis; if you are a football fan you can post your choice of players for your favorite team and tag others to do the same too).

Goalkeepers:
Mohammed Al Deaie (Al Hilal); Mabrouk Zayed (Al Ittihad); A’adel Al Musaileem (Al Ahli).

Defenders:
Ahmed Al Dokhi, Hamad Al Montasheri, Usama Al Muwallad (Al Ittiad); Abdul-Aziz Al Khathran (Al Hilal); Kamil Al Mousa (Al Wehda); Ahmed Al Bahri (Al Ittifaq); Hussain Abdul-Ghani, Mohammed Masa’ad (Al Ahli).

Midfielders:
Khaled Azeez, Omar Al Ghamdi, Abdul-Lateef Al Ghannam, Nawaf Al Temyat, Mohammed Al Shelhoub (Al Hilal); Saud Kareeri, Mohammed Nour (Al Ittihad); Taiseer Al Jasim (Al Ahli)

Forwards:
Sami Al Jaber, Yassir Al Qahtani, Ahmed Al Swaileh (Al Hilal); Sa’ad Al Harthi (Al Nassr).

I know that most of Saudi bloggers out there are females, but I thought there might be a few fellow bloggers and football fans who would enjoy this. So, I’d like to tag Al Mohareb, Shahed, and all interested football fans.

P.S. Some of the players mentioned above were on loan to other teams during this season, but I’ve decided to put the names of their original teams here. Is it surprising that my choice contains no players from Al Shabab, the winners of the Saudi league title for this season?

Review: Hind Wa Al Askar by Badria Al Bisher (Arabic).

Take a look at the header of this blog. Yep, you’re right: it’s SAUDIJEANS.ORG! I’ve recently registered the domain, so now you can reach Saudi Jeans using the new URL.

One more thing: comments on this blog are not moderated; so you don’t need my permission to publish yours here. I have never deleted any comment before, no matter how harsh it was, and I hope I’ll never have to (although that seems impossible these days).