Following the western media over the past few years, I have come to the conclusion that something would be wrong if a month or two passed without finding a story on how boys in Saudi Arabia hook up with girls. So, reading this piece from the Washington Post was not surprising at all; it was yet another piece of the “oh my god, other people in other parts of the world have different culture and traditions from us, and they behave according to them” kind. What is unusual about this one is that our hero this time has no problem with publishing his photo with his full name, and I think this has much to do with the happy ending of this story.
5 thoughts on “Following the western media over the past few year…”
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Saudi Jeans 
pretty cool post..how do u find the time to go through international papers to find saudi related articles?
mansur
Actually, I don’t go through all the papers; I use a special kind of news aggregator that notifies me every time there is a news story related to Saudi Arabia.
Hmmm that’s a pretty nice, unexpected ending. Normally I have the unfair generalization that most guys who use Bluetooth are interested in a “5awya for fun” part :P
Man I don’t know why Americans from all the people on earth find it hard to believe that other countries have other traditions and “hook-up” methods :P
Last year my teacher Mr.Davis forced to drag him to an Italian restaurant where Saudi guys and girls go out for dates to prove to him that it happens :
you wrote: oh my god, other people in other parts of the world have different culture and traditions from us, and they behave according to them
These comments are not very fair in my opinion. Instead of seeing it as an effort to teach people in the USA about different cultures because we are interested in it you see something negative. I wonder why?
I went to a local Art Fair this weekend and there were people from India performing. The music was so different it attracted my attention. The singer was a young Indian woman accompanied bye three Indian children and a white man playing the drums. i thought that is the great thing about the USA. See we are exposed to other cultures every single day, the great things is we, unlike many places in the world are free to cross the divide.
I love to learn about other cultures and its not because I think they are peculiar or strange but because I love to learn. There are plenty of rubes here but there are also many of that love the opporunity our nation of immigrants gives us to learn about other.
I live in Washington, DC. When I read that article, I thought what most Americans probably thought, “Why do the Saudis make something so easy so hard?” Instead of just talking to the girl, you go through all this covert rigamarole like you are two spies passing secrets.
The other thing I thought was that Bluetooth was helping you erode traditions that run against human nature. It’s natural for boys and girls to want to meet. It’s unnatural to stop it. And futile.