The owner of the largest group of pharmacies chain here in the Kingdom was arrested after he tried to bribe an official in the Ministry of Health to help him to get possession of 200 pharmacies illegally.

According to Arab News daily newspaper, the official immediately called the minister Hamad Al-Mann’a who told the police to handle it. The owner was ready to give 10M SR to settle the deal with the official. The deal was supposed to help the owner to expand his network in the capital mainly, while in other regions he already was taking control of the pharmacies market.

The owner also hoped that this bribery would help him to get rid of the regulations of the MOH on the employment of Saudis. This is good news to pharmacy students like me that we could find a job in the next few years.

I’m just wondering why none of the papers or TVs has revealed the name of the briber. I heard early this year that the owner of that group is a member of the royal family but I really can’t tell if this is true or not. Anyway, only time will tell, or maybe it won’t? who knows?

I use every possible service of Google and I never thought of anything like that. You know what, I don’t care either!

(via Subzero Blue)

Back to football, Turki Bin Khalid, the supervisor of the National Saudi football team, has finally announced that he resigned from his position. However, he revealed no reasons for this decision. For me, it was so clear this is coming, as he already told the press during the Asian Cup that there’s no intention to sack the Dutch coach Gerard Van Der Leem, but after the third match in the cup the president of the SAFF sacked the coach without even asking Bin Khalid for his opinion.

What I can remember clearly is that Turki Bin Khalid was the one who brought Van Der Leem and told the press then that the Dutch coach will stay with us until the 2006 World Cup in Germany. It seems like those guys above Bin Khalid do not understand the job of a football coach. All what they can think about is winning and then the praise of others, even if they had nothing to do with that victory.

I’m really looking forward to that day when someone who really understands football to be the president of our Football Association, but I can’t see that day coming. My earlier post title was “Please Resign,” but I definitely was talking to someone other than Turki Bin Khalid. In fact, he could be a good president for the Saudi Football Association someday.

I’m not pretty sure if Saudi women are getting the rights they deserve here or not, but I know for sure that they are making more headlines lately.

The thing that everybody was talking about last week is about two women who were arrested because they were working at a restaurant behind closed doors. Legally, there is no such thing says women cannot work at restaurants, but as usual, police got it their own way by saying the two women have no “health permission.” Abdul-Rahman Al-Rashed made some really good points related to this issue in his column.

While Saudi women are not allowed to drive cars here, our super girls are enjoying driving all kinds of vehicles abroad on their vacations. A Saudi eye-witness told Asharq Al-Awsat from Beirut “Saudi women are good at driving cars. I was just behind them, and a Saudi girl was driving well all the way to Brummana.”

150 driving licenses from Bahrain, hundreds of licenses from Dubai plus unknown number of international licenses from other parts of the world; all that proves that Saudi women do not need our stupid system to get their very own rides. If they are not allowed to vote; why they will need to drive cars? It’s just the way people are thinking here. I know; this whole thing just sucks!

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The locals page of Asharq Al-Awsat on Saturday was filled with some pretty interesting articles. If you can’t read Arabic, it’s not my fault :) but you can use Ajeeb to translate some, however, I can’t grantee you anything. So, let’s kick off.

“Saudi. Elections. I thought I would never hear these two words at the same sentence.” I read this comment several times by several columnists in the past few weeks, and Husein Shubukshi is making no exception here. He says one can only hope. Where did I read that before? Yeah, I can remember, that was Zaydoun.

Let’s move on and take a look at the Saudi boys who decide to get rid of their Riyadh and go some place where they can dance and have fun. Wait a minute, did I say have fun? At/near Riyadh? You gotta be kiddin’ me! Because as soon as you arrive to your fun spot, you will be followed by some young men who wanted to volunteer to help the Religious Policemen and make sure to ruin your party.

Feel sad about the party? Well, I don’t think you will be sad as much as Hassa’s people (including me) who lost their historical Qaisriah market after it was burnt to the ground by anonymous in 2001. Also, I can’t forget to thank the firemen who helped in destroying our living legend forever.

This photo was taken by a local photographer called Zaki Ghawwas for a place near the city center of my hometown Hassa. If you u-turn the red light you might be able to see Ibrahim Palace, the home of the old Turkish ruler of the city. More photos to come later.