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.