dinner, shopping, more dinner and strumpets

a couple of nights ago, had a smashing (i sound like a brit already) evening with jeff, his former boss nick (the irishman) and jorge ('the cleaner' or 'f*cking colombian' depending on the day). we started at trader vic's where we consumed half a dozen fruity cocktails, then moseyed over to a swanky fish joint called 'finz', both of which are in the beach rotana hotel. we have a lot of dinners in hotels because that's the only place you can eat and have a glass of wine or beer or zombie or whatever your alcoholic pleasure. NO restaurants serve booze except those in hotels. bummer. can't have a lovely penne rigata without a nice chianti, right? here's a pic i snapped of jorge and nick (nick is the one who is looking bored):

friday jeff and i went shopping - again (i'll get to the strumpets in a minute). believe it or not, i'm kind of shopped out. that's my daily thing and also believe it or not, i don't like spending jeff's money (much). i need a job (karen, darlene - are you listening? isn't there something i could do after hours for merit?) seriously, i need to feel like i have a purpose.

anyway, we set out to shop until we dropped cause we were in search of a crock pot. most stores here have never even heard of crock pots or slow cookers. many, many rice cookers. but no slow cookers. and i need one to make my now nearly famous 'slow cooker pot roast'. so, off we went to the abu dhabi mall which is about a 30 minute stroll from our apartment. but, fridays here are like sundays - they are a day for reflection and prayer (something i'm considering to pass the time). and most of the stores at the mall don't open until 4pm. so we loitered around the food court and consumed lava fries and ice cream until the store called 'jashanmal' opened. i had read on an expat women blog that jashanmal carried slow cookers. low and behold - slow cookers and george foreman grills. one of each, please! then we trekked back to the apartment with our appliance booty and went back out to buy liquor at one of a handful of liquor stores here called 'spinneys' (which when checking out, they quickly bag up the goods in a very conspicuous thick, black plastic bag). supposedly, if the police see you carrying one of these liquor bags, they can stop you and request to see your liquor license (which we don't have yet). after buying 4 bottles of wine for me, we hurried the illegal hooch back to the apartment so as not to get arrested.

off again to purchase this cool little tuffet i saw last week and fell in love with. on the way to the tuffet store, we stopped for a nip (again with the british-isms) at the crowne plaza rooftop bar for some wine, scotch, cigars and a lovely sunset. 

below is a pic of the tuffet - don't you love it? yes, some may say this is an ottoman, but i say its a tuffet.

after jeff hauled the tuffet home on his shoulders, we headed out to an establishment called '49'ers' to meet jorge for dinner (jorge looks a little resigned in this picture, huh).

49'ers is known locally as THE place to find a lady companion. so i insisted we try it out. it was pretty dead when we arrived, but we sat and had some mediocre curry, steak and fries and a very weird banana split for dessert. i always thought banana splits had 3 kinds of ice cream and a bunch of toppings; i've never actually had a banana split before. below is 49'ers version of a banana split:

post pig out, we meandered back into the bar which was heating up with a pretty decent band with two hot chick singers (reminded me a little of shig shag). the bar scene was total asian hooker mania (which would be a great name for a band). i've never seen so many asian girls in bad sparkly dresses and cfm shoes in one place. for every 1 drooling man, there were 10 asian 'beauties'  -- demurely accepting cocktails from dudes with bad hairpieces and pock-marked faces. my two companions were like kids in a candy store ogling giant lollipops. the whole thing was quite surreal (and particularly skeevy) especially considering that (according to jeff and jorge), people can be killed for participating in such an event. the band, though, kicked @ss. we took a couple of pics, but the beefy bouncer said 'no pictures' and tried to confiscate my camera. i think they were called 'big bang' - kind of funny because of the type of place its rumoured to be.

alright, i think i've bored y'all enough for now.

missing texas (and even california at this point).

big, sweaty, goat-smelling hugs from the uae,

tricia