Chan'ad Bahraini

So I went to my first "Ramadan tent" of this year a few days ago. I had not been to that tent before so it was quite nice. For those not familiar, during the month of Ramadan many hotels and cafes in Bahrain set up tents outside near their premises to cater for the extra business they generate each night. The tent provides lots of extra seating, and also allows customers to romanticize about their tent-dwelling ancestors. Some of the tents serve a full buffet dinner, and some of them only have snacks and beverages, but they ALL serve shisha no matter what.

A few months back I had a post about shisha culture in Bahrain, and of the technological advances made in our shisha cafes. Specifically, I talked about how in many of the shisha joints on the island the tables have button that can be pressed to call the waiter. The button sends a radio signal to the kitchen, and a man with shisha coal will coming running to your table to refresh your pipe.

Now at the Ramadan tent I went to a few days ago I witnessed the next ridiculous technological advance. When the waitress came to take our order I noticed she did not write it down on a pad of paper. Instead, she scribbled it down on to the PDA she was carrying around using a stylus!! She then went back to the reception and beamed the order in using the infrared port, or bluetooth, or whatever. Ridiculous! I couldn't stop myself from laughing about it the whole evening. I'm amazed that the managers actually invested in all those PDAs for the waiters, because they must have cost a hefty sum. The sad thing is that despite all the radio buttons and bluetooth PDAs, it still took the waitress a bloody half hour for us to get our bill, because she couldn't remember which table number we were sitting at!!

If only the rest of the industries on the island had such a strong belief in technological advancements. Coming up soon: SMS-shishas ?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28, 2004 at 10/28/2004 01:36:00 pm. Permalink