About

Let me get on my soapbox for a second…

I’ve spent a good chunk of my almost 20-year career trying to make sense of how things work – and why stuff is the way it is. It’s been a long journey to an unknown destination marked by wrong turns, traffic jams and the occasional car crash…and believe me, I’ve been in a few!

Somewhere along the way, I found myself travelling on roads that decided – without warning – to take sharp, unexpected turns. Some I chose, some I didn’t…and of course, getting lost was inevitable. The journey has mostly been solitary, and although difficult, I guess it sharpens focus.

Alright, off the soapbox…

I am based in Bahrain and interested in economics and finance – especially through the lens of data. After recently completing my second MSc (which was more econometrics-heavy), I’ve been spending more time working with models, playing with datasets, and trying to pull meaning out of noise.

And really… isn’t that the zeitgeist these days?

The majority of my work experience falls under what people politely call “knowledge work”.

No, I am not a pretentious academic (you can ignore my credentials, really), and I’m certainly not some born-again mathematician or “machine learning specialist” (whatever that means). I just like thinking about things. Especially things that some might find hard to explain, or misunderstand, and in a weird way might be somewhat important.

I served the Central Bank of Bahrain for more than a decade and the experience was immersive. I learned more than I can probably explain and had a front-row seat to a movie that could best be titled GulfEnomics – hence the name of this site.

Most of what you’ll find on this site revolves around the Gulf – its economics, quirks, patterns. Some of it might be technical, some of it just observational. You might even see a few book reviews, or the occasional deep dive into what I think has become a very strange world. It’s all part of trying to see things a little more clearly – and maybe occasionally, say something useful.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, stick around.