Lost in translation

According to the latest census, the population of Saudi is 27 million, out of which 8 million are expatriates. Basically there are a lot of foreigners like Pakistanis, Indians, Arabs from other countries and Filipinos. Speaking from my point of view, there are so many Pakistanis here in the Kingdom that if I wanted to, I could live here without learning/speaking a word of Arabic, because I would find my own kind every freakin' where... To some people, it's an advantage. They learn only so much Arabic just to get by and nothing more. For example there are over a million Filipinos in the Kingdom. You'll find them working in restaurants, cafes, offices, banks, travel agencies, airports ad nasuseam... so if they wanted, they could live here and conduct their business with minimal Arabic, and that is at the government offices which you don't go that often anyways. I visited someone at the hospital last week who's from Pakistan and has lived here in Riyadh for the last 25 years or so. It was sad seeing the trouble he was going through trying to communicate with the Arabic speaking staff. So I tried to play the interpreter between my Urdu speaking friend and the Arabic speaking administrative staff at the hospital. Lot of expatriates living here complain about how Saudis live in their own impermeable society and circles. I wonder if more of us tried to learn their language and communicated with them, how would things turn out? After all, it's their country you're living in!