Bilal Durrani : Mall Rat Extraordinaire (Part 2)

Waiter asks me a question after I settle the lunch bill at this place in a mall

Waiter: Do you know what the difference is between a canoe and yourself?
Me: What?
Waiter: Canoes tip more often

Ok, so this didnt really happen. But I have noticed that I'm not tipping as often as I would in Austin. Instead of 15% min, I max out around 10%. Not many people seem to tip around here. I guess it's just one of those things. When you have cheap labor like you do here, you don't get perks like a tip. When you fill up gas at a station, the attendant actually cleans the back and front windshield while filling up the tank for you.

Finally got the postcards mailed as well.

Also met up with an old friend that I haven’t met up for 6 years. Interestingly enough, I forgot to take pictures of him and his fiancé. This is pretty retarded considering I’ve been taking pictures of menus that spelt cappuccino incorrectly.

I went to the Ibn Battuta shopping mall yesterday (I know, I’ve turned into a mall rat). This one was inspired by the muslim traveler of the same name who traveled all the way from Morocco to China in the 1300’s. The mall was broken down into 4 themes. There was Persia, India, Turkey and China. It was almost like Vegas only instead of having to go to different hotels, everything was in one big mall.

The food was great. We settled for a Irani place that had some excellent grill lamb and beef. Those axis of evil guys really have their food straight.

And then there was the Mall of the Emirates, the spot that made so much news becuase of it's indoor ski slope. I didn't bother taking any pictures of the shops because it has all the same stores that I found in every other mall.
Well, it's a big ski slope alright. Looked really nice from the outside. Very fancy.







Yeah...I think I'm done with the malls for now.

Bilal Durrani : Mall Rat Extraordinaire

I’ve turned into a mall rat since I came here. Monday was at another mall. This was called Bur Juman. All the shops there were very classy (read as too expensive for me to bother going in). And perhaps it’s because it was a Monday (the weekend here is just Thursday, although they are planning to change this to Friday-Saturday in September). But that place was dead!!

A handful of window shoppers. Barely any ninja clusters. I must have been in that place for only 40 minutes.

Then I spent about 3 hours trying to get back home. I think I would gotten home faster if I had hopped on one leg with one eye tied behind my back. The good thing about the lack of driving etiquette means that you can drive like a bastard and you won’t be the only one. And of course, always serve out generous helpings of the car horn.

[5/23/2006 1:39 PM ] A Phillipino woman was selling pirated DVDs door to door for 10 Dhs ($2.8) I wasn’t really sure about the quality of them so I didn’t really get any. She wasn' comfy with me taking a picture of her. Wonder why....

It’s not very interesting talking about being stuck in traffic for 3 hours so I’ll just skip that. That pretty much wrapped up the day….

The next day, I decided to go to the Sharjah Souk instead to get some shopping done. This is one of those places that has not been bulldozed and replaced by a mall. My sister wanted some trinkets and stuff, we we decided to check it out from here.










Here are what some of shops had in stock.



Let the haggling commence...
Poor fella in the pic above didnt stand a chance against mum. It was interesting how my mother's seemingly random series of statements actually had a difference on the price. I didnt know if it was because it was the slow season and the guy was desperate or maybe he just wanted her to leave and stop bothering him, she got some good deals out of him.

City of Brotherly Love?

You typically see guys walking around holding hands. That's pretty common here actaully and just a cultural thing. It just means the guys are close freinds.

But don't expect to see any gay pride parades in the UAE anytime soon.

Ridin' around town in a drop-top Toyota echo, Daym it feels good to be a gangsta

These pictures are from the area where my parents stay. It's called Abu Shaghara and it's the used-car sales area of Sharjah. Which explains all the cars parked all over the place. I mean these cars are parked all over the place. On the sidewalks, on the roundabouts (turnabouts for you north-westerners), they're hogging a lane on each street.

Somehow, I’ve managed to get some sleep both nights. I’m not sure how I’m doing this, but I’m sure as hell not going to complain about it.

Dad hooked me up with a rental car (an Echo), which means that I can now drive around and don’t need to count on a cab.

Driving has been an interesting experience here. Pedestrians crossing 4 lane wide highways. Stop signs are optional. I say almost because once the traffic light has been on red for about 5 seconds, it starts to take effect on people. A single lane exit can serve up to 3 cars side by side.

The folks love their car horns here. People honk if you’re going slow, if you’re going fast. They honk when the light changes to green and when it changes back to red. They honk when they turn left and the honk when they turn right. They honk when they’re sad and they honk when they’re happy. They honk when they look up and they honk when they look right. You get the idea…

It’s been a while since I’ve seen so many different ninja clusters. In malls, they primarily travel in clusters. I will have to take some pictures to try and identify several different types of ninja clusters that were spotted. It particularly interesting when the ninjas cross the street at night. Camouflage has its advantages but not in the night while crossing a busy street.

The first mall I sent to was the City Center (above). After recharging with a tall banana mocha (yes, there was banana in it) frap (I like bananas, but not in a mocha I discovered), I was a little more awake and went around checking out the stores.



Bought a book. I don’t think my $500 bucks are going to go very far here.

I wrapped up yesterday with a dish called Nihari (basically a beef stew) at a place called Delhi Restaurant. That was pretty good. You will find a lot of Indian and Pakistani eateries here that serve the authentic stuff. This is because at any given time on the street, in a sample of 100 people, you will find 60 Indians (mostly South Indians, the dot not the feather), 25 Pakistanis, 10 people from other middle eastern countries (Irani, Sudani, Egyptians, Lebanese, etc..) and 5 people who are actually UAE Nationals (citizens of the UAE). You can usually identify the UAE Nationals by their arrogant attitudes, their white flowing dresses and their expensive luxury sports cars. The men wear white robes, women typically wear the black robes called burkhas (the younger women dress a bit more flashy :). So when the men and women stand side-by-side, there is almost like a ying-yang, good vs. evil thing going on here. Only instead of being face to face at the OK corral, the women are typically hauling the children around ( usually a filipino maid is doing that) and the men have their pot bellies leading the way. Ofcourse, I'm generalizing here. Not everyone has a maid there for their children and the UAE locals arn't the only ones allowed to have maids.

I’ll try to get some pictures of these but I’ll have to be discreet. I will get the shit kicked out of me if someone sees me taking pictures of them. I break easy and my insurance won’t cover my medical bills in the UAE.

So it begins...

Moving around pictures on this blog is a pain, so I'm just going to comment about them here


Emirateshad these little lights on the ceiling of the plane to simulate the starry night. I thought this was really cool.

Not a very clear picture, but this is what the plane looked like. Pretty nice. This was the economy class ofcourse.

I think I heard someone throw up right now…..

It’s about 4 am EST. Just forwarded thru the ending of the producers. This was the second movie of the night. It’s starting to all get a little hazy to I wanted to start capturing as much of this day as I could. Can’t really sleep on the airplane.

Right now I’m trying to see if I can access my hotmail account and I much I’m going to have to pay for it. Seems like a cool service, but I rather get skewer by a lamp post than pay any amount just to send an email

I got to the Austin airport a little early. Actually, that’s been the theme of this entire trip. Get to where you are going really really freaking early. Well, the Austin time was reasonable except that that flight got delayed for about half an hour. After some minor turbulence and 30 min of listing to a Moroccan guy complain about his marriage life (while his wife sat across the aisle with his 3 kids), , JFK awaited. And so did the exit registration room. Just a cop. Very helpful. Can’t say much for the witch of an airhostess on delta who insisted with one of the passengers that she could get him arrested for not sitting in his seat then the “fasten seatbelt” sign came up. It was kinda like that soup nazi episode. The lights for the sign would go one and she would start blaring from the PA system up front “sir, get in your seat, now!!”. Ofcourse she was overlooking the fact that the guy was getting out of this seat only because his 3 year old kid kept taking the seat belt off and standing on the seat. The Moroccan guy (I think his name was shakir or something like that) rationalized her behavior my stating she was having a power trip cuz she felt like she was the queen of the skies and he had brown skin. She looked more like the dairy queen to me, but moving on.

After Austin was a wonderful 11 hours in JFK. I used this time to become farily intimate with the airport. For example, I learned of the signature urinals that all seem to have here. I found it interesting that they all have the silhouette of a fly on it. I rationalized it as a target for mention to use to minimize splatter. Other’s mention it might be purely decorative. I took pictures of it so those this can be discussed more carefully. It was also quite painful to find some kind of power outlet in that terminal that was not next to the bathroom entrance.

I had realized when I landed at JFK that I had misplaced by luggage tickets. What I didn’t realized is that I would need those tickets if I would like to get my luggage in Dubai (A minor oversight on my part). Good thing I was one of the first people at the check in counter. After 30 min of terminal hopping, hobbling and several re-directions, I was able to fix this up. Great!! For a moment there, I was worried everything was going too smoothly.

I do believe I got a little help from karma along the way. A Sikh gentleman seemed to be in a pickle because of some flight scheduling and needed to make some calls. Unfortunately the phone booths had decided that tool-free numbers were just not going to cut it. After listening to the wonderful hold-music at the Air India service for 10 mins, he decided to just pay the extra amount and change the ticket. But he was 20 bucks short. Feels good to help a brother out…

I met another traveler at the airport heading to Ireland for a road trip. She hadn’t figured out the details of how she was going to get around the place ( a minor setback), but that’s probably going to be the best part of the adventure (in retrospect I would think). Let’s see if she emails me pics of the place.

Crap. This is going to be a long night…

Sdflkj sf sfskdj

Sorry, got distracted, Uma Thurman kissing scene came on. Watching the producers.

Oh yeah, saw Nanny Mcphee. It was good kiddy movie overall. Just the ending was really lame. These happily ever after endings are just freaking stupid. I mean, cmon, Snow in August. And the only reason he ended up marrying her just because he saw her in a pretty dress. I mean, what an ass.

Smells like someone just cut the cheese..

Anyhoo, I’m going to watch an old episode of Scrubs. It’s about 4:35am.

God, can’t wait to land…

Whoops, felt like some funky terbulance there. Nothing like shaken the shit up to make you feel alive. Woooo, roller coaster baby….

Speaking of turbulance, here is what the food looked like on the plane.

Ok, I don’t like this turbulence anymore. I want this to stop.