brunchathon

friday brunch is a big deal here. the uae work week is sunday through thursday and friday is a day of worship for our muslim friends. so a lot of the ex-pats take advantage of the colossal, decadent brunch buffets on offer. one of the differences in brunch here and the states is that it starts at noon and usually goes until 4 or 5pm (um, i'm pretty sure that's lunch). plus, most of them offer unlimited alcoholic beverages. yesterday's messy event at 'flavours' at the sheraton was no exception. there were many, many bottles of champagne, wasabi martinis, cosmos and a bloody mary bar. the food didn't suck either. this was jeff and my first brunch since we've been here and we've certainly been missing out. we joined a crowd of about of 30 of kathryn and steve's friends (our rugby ball pals).

social butterfly kathryn making the rounds:

louise (the almost birthday girl) and mark (the recent birthday boy) -- it totally looks like mark is checking out louise's bosoms:

the plan was to start at brunch and move to "pj o'reilly's" 'mod party' from 7-9. originally jeff and i figured there was no way in hell we'd be able to complete the buffet/alcohol marathon and still be standing at 9pm. but we accepted the challenge and if anyone was keeping score, i believe we came in 3rd.

at about 5, the party moved from flavours to the cloud 9 cigar bar, then to the tavern bar, then to pj's.

while at the tavern bar, we ran into a guy that we sort of met there last week (he made fun of my wine and bought us drinks) -- dylan, a kiwi who used to drive the ferry from auckland to waiheke (where we spent a lost week in new zealand last year). i didn't get a pic as he slipped out to ship out before i remembered i had a camera.

at the tavern bar - kathryn, louise and some guy i don't think i met (he looks a bit high, huh). actually, i'm not even sure this is the tavern bar - lots of bubbly had been consumed at this point:

steve the rugby player and jennifer the pointy-head (i mean that in a very respectful, nice way):

louise and hubby john:

the mai tais fountain continued to flow at pj's where the band was awesome and it was wall to wall bodies. here's the view from the balcony:

linda (a hasher from malaysia) shakin' her groove thang on stage:

at around 9:30, the party moved to trader vic's, but jeff and i decided to call it a night and ambled back to the apartment. here's the friday night crowd in front of our building:

today i've become one with the couch, but hope to get a wild hair and go to zumba later.

less than 3 weeks and i'm outta here!

t.