Making Friends and Taking Names

Making Friends and Taking Names

I’ve met some really banging people here in the last week. Most of them are teachers. I’ve been spending most of my days with Khaleel, Cathy, aka Cat D, and Krista, aka Kris P. These ladies are really cool. We get along easily, don’t have to work too hard at hanging out, (you need people like that in your life) and they are really funny all three of them. Khaleel is a Jamaican-New Yorkan. She’s got this great accent that I mimic all the time but should probably stop. I can’t. She’s pretty awesome, kind of sweet but always tells you exactly the truth…cold and harsh as it may come out of her New York state of mouth. Then there’s Cathy. Cat D is half Chinese, half Vietnamese, 100% kick ass British, and completely ridiculous. Every time she talks I laugh. I mimic her British accent too. Partly because it’s cool and partly because mimicking accents is kind of my thing. This girl loves to eat and is well serious about her food. Her family owns a restaurant in London called The New Golden Duck, which by way of her promotions has been pushed to the tip top of my bucket list of places to eat at. She has promised me that we will eat like kings when we go there! When do you ever get that offer in life? Her mom makes Singapore noodles. Yes please. Then there’s Kris P, who is Texan. Um,….enough said. She’s so just like me… except that she doesn’t care too much for fashion, ethnic food or country music…. Ok, she’s not like me at all, but she’s Texan. So, enough said. What I love about Krista, is that she’s really pragmatic. She’s usually the voice of reason for one of my nonsensical rants about whatever at all. Now that I think about it, her unwavering pragmatism actually serves to make me look a bit ludicrous and random…..:)  She’s also hella funny, and she doesn’t take herself too seriously which is brilliant.  I just like hanging out with all of them. They like to have fun, but they’re really laid back. You don’t feel this intense pressure to shop away your last dirham, or drink your liver out of commission. It works because these ladies live in the complex I’ll be moving to in Khalifa City. So I’ve got connections. What kind of connections you say? Support networks. Work out buddies. Can I borrow 2 eggs? Hook me up with the cute, French, military guy on your floor. Can I borrow 5 dirham for the taxi outside because I’m short and the cabbie is giving me the stank eye. Hey girl I’m coming into the building late at night, watch-me-from-your-window-till-I-get-into-my-flat type of connections. You know the kind I mean. I see these ladies everyday. We eat breakfast and chat, share cabs and laughs, and rag on each other all day. Good times. Pretty sure I’ll hang on to these.

Also, I met this Emirati girl last week named Fadaah. She did my henna at Eid Festival, we chatted long, connected, and exchanged numbers. That’s literally how it happened. She’s kind of awesome I would say. She’s beautiful so everywhere we go men open their mouths…Some actually manage to get words out, most do not. They just follow along with their eyes and never actually look away. Since I’ve arrived here, I’ve been flattering myself since because most of the men here are quite stare-ish, always staring and smiling at me. Even if you give them a look that says, “Back off,” they don’t avert their eyes. One even asked me if I wanted to go to Palm Jumeirah with him for the weekend. As if I’m interested in getting bludgeoned and possibly buried alive. Turns out, my few flirtatious encounters are child’s play compared to the number of men Fadaah turned into little boys today. I can’t help but to wonder though what the state of play is here in the realm of dating. Before I came, and even once I got here I kept hearing, “Dating….just don’t do it.”  I was well prepared for that. Because of the cultural norms and local customs, dating publicly in Abu Dhabi is frowned upon especially dating that would include any public display of affection. People allegedly just get married here…and as far as courting goes, well the marriage itself is the beginning and the end…. There’s no first, second, or third date..  Allegedly will be my operative word here so indulge me. I don’t know how these marriages are being arranged though. Are they just that, arranged? Are men walking up to random women and proposing? Are they using match.com? What IS the state of play? I don’t know. However, even as that is indeed the story, picture, and caption of the whole scene, men in this city are obviously flirtatious and wanting to date…. It’s just really, really, scary to think about actually doing it. So for now and possibly later, I’m choosing NOT to think about it. It’s ironic because I’m actually free to date now, no boyfriend at the moment as of 4 days ago, but I’m still restricted by my own fears as well as real or imagined local taboo… That’s all I have to say about that. 

Fadaah owns some tailoring, slash dress making, slash custom abaya shops in the city called Prestige Style. Today on our outing together, we visited her shops and we custom made an abaya for me. I’ll be sure to post some pictures of that as as soon as it’s finished. It’s really elegant and looks beautiful on. When I add the shayla, (head covering) I can almost pass for a local girl! That’s IF and only IF I add some 5 or 6-inch heels, which is what ALL the women here wear. They are quite fancy ladies and the higher the heels, and the longer the eyelashes, and the bigger the designer sunglasses, the better! I’m going to have to practice my heel walking. Right now I am just not cutting it. At all. I mean, it’s ridiculous. 

After the shops, we went to a cafe called Hardwalls, where we smoked shisha and chatted. So, this was my first time smoking shisha and I have to say I enjoyed it. The flavor was mild, like a soft gentle flavored tobacco. When you are pulling the smoke into your mouth, it’s very sweet and mellow. You feel it tighten up your chest if you inhale it too hard or fast, but “if you are gentle with shisha pipe, shisha pipe is gentle with you,” so says Fadaah. I got into it. It was relaxing and the smell is sweet like an extremely mild, fruit-flavored incense. NOTHING like cigarette smoke. It’s really nice to smoke some shisha over good conversation with a new friend.  There’s nothing that feels rushed about the whole scene. The shisha boy comes over periodically to put more hot coals onto the top of your bowl.. Fadaah got very specific with him about which coals to place and just where to put them, and he couldn’t seem to get it right…(she was very irritated with him) Poor dude.  And you just carry on the evening like that. 

You’d think my new friend and I would have tired of each other by then, but she asked me when I could hang again. I said probably Friday. She said she wants to island hop on Friday. So, she invited me to go to the islands of Lulu and Al Maya, also known as Bahraini Island.  I accepted and so to show me how we’d travel on Friday, we jumped in her car and drove to the pier, (which is really just a rocky piece of land that looks like a desert parking lot,) where she showed me that you can either take a jetski or a boat out to the island.  Boat, please…thanks. So, island hopping with Fadaah is happening on Friday. By then we were both yawning, so she swung me back to my hotel. By the way, Fadaah is, like everyone else else on this island, a horrible driver.  She drives much too fast…is far too impatient, and she switches lanes and blows her horn incessantly without any apparent reason. I swear I just pray for my life every time I get into any vehicle here, be it a taxi, bus, or car. The only difference here was that Fadaah blares a random melee of old American tunes and sings, dances, and snaps non-rhythmically along as she races down the streets…… She knows about 5% of the words of each song, loves all of them, and is crazy for Phil Collins….Random I know. She flipped the radio and Sususudio was on and she almost lost it. With huge, overly excited eyes, she says, “Do you know this song?!!”  as if the song came out last week and she was lucky enough to be in the recording studio with Collins as he laid down the track. Laugh out loud, for real this time. Really, I just can’t get enough of this city.