Goal rush at cinemas

The World Cup means a big deal to a great number of people, and rightly so because, after all, it is the greatest sporting spectacular in the world!

In recent weeks, I have spoken to countless people about how they think their teams will perform, called countless venues across the kingdom about their World Cup promotions, and even spent a few hours trying to organise for copies of GulfWeekly's special World Cup edition to be sent around the globe.

Needless to say it's been a hectic few weeks and amidst all the chaos and stress, I completely forgot that the World Cup is meant to be fun and I hadn't had time to plan where I was going to watch it.

This is the point where the editor told me that the games were being broadcast live at Cineco - City Centre Mall. Since I frequent the cinema each week for my review anyway, I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone and review the game!

As I arrived at the cinema, all the hours of painstaking labour seemed to finally have paid off, I was finally due to watch the game instead of just talking about it. I bought my popcorn, my drink and with my ticket in hand, I strutted into the screen like I was king of the world ... at least for a minute anyway.

As soon as I sat down in my seat and fixed my eyes on the screen, I got the sneaking suspicion that something wasn't right. "What could the problem be?" I thought to myself. I had the popcorn, the drink, the right seat, the game was being projected on a huge screen (in crystal clear HD detail), oh yeah, the commentary was in Arabic!

Now don't get me wrong, my Arabic is progressing rather well thanks to some informative conversations with Bahrain's many fine taxi drivers ... and as long as someone is giving me directions or telling me that 'All this was sea' or the weather is 'too much hot', I can understand just fine. But when it comes to watching 90 minutes of football, I'll happily admit that I was more than just a little confused.

Nightmare, after all my hard work it seemed like my World Cup journey had hit yet another huge bump and I had to delay gratification for even longer ... at least so it seemed. I'm not one to complain easily so I thought I'd stick around and give it a go, after all, I'd never seen a game on a screen that size. If you think about it, you don't really need the commentary as long as you can see the action, and see the action I did.

While there was a reported disruption with the signal across several outlets in the kingdom, the giant screen at Cineco kept me in the loop during the whole game, with barely a pause in the audio (which didn't affect me).

The only complaint I have about the experience is that the audience at the cinema were so accustomed to keeping quiet during films, they didn't seem to realise they were watching a football match - this was the one time where screaming random abuse at the screen is OK! However, I did manage to start our own version of the cinema 'Mexican' wave.

We await in earnest for the cinema management to provide complimentary 'vuvuzela' horns!

As for the action on screen between South Africa and Mexico, what a cracker and what a shame the home nation couldn't have held on for victory.

Now that would have started a party across the world.