Are we at the movies or in a cafe?

Last night we decided to go to Shatti to watch a movie, as this is one of our favourite past times. And, although we went about 3 times while we were here visiting in May, we thought we knew what we were in for...but were once again surprised and enlightened.

Things we liked:

~ tickets are 3 OMR = AUS$9

~ large diet pepsi + large bag of maltesers + medium mixed popcorn (caramel & plain...yum!) was 1.8 OMR = less than AUS$6

Things we disliked:

~ every ad shown prior to the movie is about cars = gets really boring. And I'm not kidding, it was every single advert before the movie began...

~ the sound is LOUD! Like "is there a boeing 747 in this room?" kinda loud.
~ the courtesy screens show "turn off your GSM" yet this goes unnoticed and everyone is texting/calling/answering calls to their hearts content - no discretion whatsoever!!!

Ever heard of putting your phone on silent? (We even heard the MSN sound over and over again...that alerts you when you have a new IM - WTF?)

~ the guy sitting next to me was burping away, whilst talking to the guy next to him, while sending an sms, then proceeded to make and accept phone calls.

The only thing that made this a different experience to sitting outside at Al Deyar cafe was that Al Deyar has shisha...and we sure could have used a smoke to chill out after this crazy experience :-)