大咖福利影院

Hello everyone.

I recently moved back to Saudi after a 6 year stint abroad and it's been 4 months since I came back and I am utterly bored and surprised at the changes. When I was younger and lived here, I never had this issue mainly because I was always preoccupied with video games or hanging out with friends and playing video games with them, so the distraction was always there.

Now, I notice that we have this preposterous curfew where you can't find anything after 2 AM. It's become like a ghost town. It's obvious that they don't want anyone to leave the house so what is a person permitted to do for fun here? I personally turned into a hermit and read books, play music, rarely ever leave the house except for the occasional cup of coffee with friends and colleagues.

Most of my friends are living abroad and the ones that aren't have 9 - 5 jobs and getting together with them always ends up in the same conversation, over and over again. Economy's this and thats, some mishaps that happened at work, basically, it's like Groundhog's Day, where you live the same day over and over again.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy discussing the economy, social status of the city, what's wrong, what can be done to correct that, why certain things are a taboo to talk about, consider, or even attempt to fix, things that are far beyond my comprehension.

But lately I'm more of a doer than a talker. So I enjoy doing social things, events, fundraisers, those recent endeavors by Redbull to sponsor local musicians and cater to the shows they are doing in compounds was a brilliant idea before abruptly being disbanded by the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice squad.

For some reason, as of late I can't seem to find anything to contribute to, or to partake in. Perhaps I'm getting lazy or maybe because I'm a local, certain events don't reach my ear anymore.

I'd like to know what the Expats think. See Riyadh through an Expats eyes. I'm pretty sure that most of you know the city better than I do at this point.

I apologize if this seemed like one extremely long rant but I strongly feel that this is an issue that should be addressed. Recreation for Saudi Youth rather than force them to stay home and rot away on the couch in front of a T.V.