I apologize for being a huge slacker last week but I’m hoping this and the next post will make up for it as there has been/will be lots going. Where to begin….
As I mentioned in my short hiatus post, I was sick all last week (and the week before) so I didn’t do much during the week. I did make myself struggle through the gym every night but that was about it. Liana was in Kazakhstan all week for work so not only was I sick but the days went by sooooo slow! She is from Australia and has spent the last 5 years in the Gulf…she is not used to cold weather. Our first convo about her trip went something like this: C “How cold is it?”, L “-18 deg”, C “Holy sh*t that’s cold, what are you going to wear?” L “I have a leather jacket, you reckon that’s enough?” HAHAHAHAH. I let her borrow my ski coat which came back from me after my X-mas trip home and quite possibly saved her life. She said she did want to buy one of the gorgeous big furry coats and hats but got realistic as she knew she’d likely never need it again.
Anyway, she flew in Thursday night and by then I was starting to feel like a normal person again (although the cough and crap lasted another 8 or so days…that seems to be what happens when y ou get sick here..sand in the lungs, not good for my asthma, etc). We met at Level for drinks (great rooftop bar very close to both our places) and caught up on the week. She dumped this guy she was seeing while she picked up her bags at the airport, figured she’d kill two birds with one stone. They weren’t exactly dating…they had been on like two proper dates and other than that he just BBM’d her every 2 seconds about how wonderful she was and the only girl for him. The best part was that her dumba** agreed to go out with him to have a face to face break up (she fell for this 2 weeks ago with a different guy) and had to suffer through an hour of monologue about what a great guy he was. After dinner he posted on his facebook about how if you treat a girl like sh*t she loves you and he found one he really cared about and she dumped him. Liana proceeded to “like” his status. Nothing like a good stab in the heart to make it final right? Although he’s still bbming her so maybe she should have stabbed and twisted. I went to Bahrain first thing Friday morning for a friend’s birthday celebration and proceeded to drink a lot for the next two days. Friday started off with a brunch at Ric’s…was supposed to be at the nice hotel in town but it got cancelled due to protestors (I didn’t see much of anything going on…the locals figure it was really due to the large amount of construction occurring.). Anyway…I love Rics so was happy with that, plus it was essentially unlimited mimosas for a few hours. Took a sober up nap after this and then went out for bday dinner where we proceeded to get drunk again, but this time on Sangria. Saturday was a lazy morning/early afternoon followed by an afternoon of drinking and one of my favorite omelet’s. Oh..side note…I gave up cheese for the month of March. I am on day 14 right now and have not cheated once. It hasn’t been as hard as I thought (I eat a LOT of cheese) but the omelet’s without cheese just aren’t the same . I’m thinking I’ll lose at least a pound of two by giving it up for the whole month. I flew back way too early Sunday morning and tried not to die at work. At this point, the normalcy that had returned from being sick was all lost and I felt terrible again…tired and crappy.
Monday I met Oliver for dinner since it had been over a month since I had seen him and wanted to get his thoughts on my future with the firm, what location would be good for me, etc and nice to catch up on each other’s lives. We went to Finz which is a fab seafood restaurant on the water at the Beach Rotana….they had some award winning Australian chef in town for the week that we didn’t know about but was a def bonus. Had some great prawns and called it a night. Since he lives in Dubai now we can’t really do our traditional after dinner Mai Tai at Trader Vic’s which is prob a blessing!
Tuesday night I hit the gym and then met a bunch of people at the Laughter Factory to celebrate another birthday (its birthday month around here!). Once a month, they have a comedy show at the hotel right next to mine and I’ve wanted to go for months but always end up with a conflict or something better. I was really glad I went, they were hysterical. Same format as US..3 acts…however all of them were British and that made it a bit tougher for me. Some of the jokes I did not get, and sometimes the accents were so hard to understand that I missed the jokes. All in all, I caught enough of it to be worth it. The chick that was up second was a riot…..you didn’t expect half of what came out of her mouth to. She started with something like this…..”I usually don’t start out feeling disdain for my audience….but all of you are tan and rich and I f*ckin hate you”. Lol. Good night.
Wednesday was a chill out night..went to Pump (it had been about 10 days and my legs still aren’t completely back to normal! I am going back tonight…we’ll see how I feel tomorrow!) and went to bed early.
Thursday was the start of my 10 day birthday celebration and the night of Usher in Dubai. Work was going really well, day was going by fast and we were getting to leave early (so we wouldn’t miss the concert like the last one in Dubai on a Thursday night) and then at 5:30 I got some really sh*t news that started my weekend on the wrong foot. I’m over it now so don’t want to talk about it but it resulted in a bit of improvising which in the end, turned out okay. I realize this will only make sense to like 3 people but oh well.
So we head up to Dubai around 5:40 and actually make it to our hotel by 7 without getting lost once. VICTORY! We had enough time to eat, down a bottle of wine, get ready and make it to the concert about 5 minutes before it started. It also started right on time at 9pm. This is a first for both of these happening at the same time and I’ve been to about 10 concerts since I’ve been here! The show was amazing….he played some new stuff and some really old stuff (stuff I knew every word to and Liana was like what is that? Who’s the real Usher fan huh?!). The place was packed too. Completely sold out concert which usually doesn’t happen here. We had some friends there but you couldn’t really find anyone so we just watched from the first spot we found and had a great time. Oh…they had a contest on the local radio station for a slogan to put on this guy Flo’s T-Shirt…well Liana’s won! It said “OMG, I have a crusher on Usher”. We saw the printed shirt online and then as I’m standing there taking pics of the stage, this guy walks right in front of me and I was like..no sh*t! It was Flo! So Liana told him he was wearing her idea and got some pics with him. We both though she deserved some sort of prize for the winning entry but she was told his embarrassment for having to wear the shirt was her prize. What kind of crap is that? So when the show let out at 11 there were ppl everywhere and we figured trying to get anywhere in a cab was gonna be impossible. Oliver was unable to get tickets cuz he’s a procrastinator so we went and met him at the Radisson rooftop bar that was about a block away. The rest of the ppl we knew from the show came too. Had a number of drinks here and jammed to the crappy music, I still don’t get why you would play techno when you have a ton of ppl coming from an R&B concert but the UAE is not the land of things that make sense so I usually just let it go. After awhile here we walked a few blocks down to another hotel rooftop bar (very nice!). A guy started following Liana and she kindly tells him that he might want to make a U-turn as he wasn’t going to get anywhere with her. HA!. Oliver and I had a heart to heart about life and love at 2am which was not exactly what I wanted to do when I could barely keep my eyes open but it happened anyway. Liana had been doing her typical rounds (she doesn’t sit still for long!) so we went and found her chatting up two guys and I made her leave with me as I was sooo tired! I woke up Friday morning feeling like death but thankfully got to sleep in. One of Liana’s friends from Qatar was in Dubai so we were meeting her for brunch. Went down near the beach in Dubai and found a place that was still serving breakfast at 2pm. Lol. Thank god places like that exist right? So the three of us are sitting there eating and they are catching up…I am still not really with it yet…still partly pissed off from my bad news and very hungover. It took me about 2 hours to question why Dolly said she was an only child and then talked about her brother for the next hour. Lol. So there are two guys sitting at the table next to us (well it was one guy and his date, and the next I looked over she had been replaced with a dude…speed dating style). So they start telling us about a big MMA (mixed martial arts) fight in Abu Dhabi. I had heard about it earlier in the week but hadn’t planned on being around so didn’t really pay attention. Since we decided not to stay in Dubai and to go back to AD anyway, we figured why not. Got home, napped, went to the gym, did maintenance (Liana and I walked into the salon and clearly there had been no customers for hours….the salon is conveniently in the gym and we were really 2 of 5 ppl at the gym so I guess this makes sense!...Anyway was pretty sweet to have one woman doing my mani, one my pedi and one thredding my eyebrows. Talk about making the most of ones time!). Liana also got her arms waxed for the first time (she thinks they are hairy when really you can barely see anything on her) but the result was super smooth arms and watching her face was quite amusing as well.
By the time we got home, ate and got ready, we had missed the fights so we just went to the after party instead. It was at a hotel I haven’t been too yet and the venue was really nice, big outdoor area and the weather was phenomenal. Both Friday and Saturday were outrageously hot days but the nights were gorgeous. So we walk in and Liana is in heaven….big muscly guys all over the place, the largest group of good looking guys in one place that she had ever seen. So we walk around, talk to some people (including one that after 15 minutes of talking to, tells Liana that they have kissed before, apparently the very first night her and I ever went out…she doesn’t remember and I had lost her by this point so I didn’t know either…was very funny!), get some drinks and then Liana lays her eye on the prize. Bob Sapp. Big black guy. Just her type. We had no idea who he was as neither of us really follows fighting but the guys at the bar next to us kindly filled us in. So Liana gets me to take a picture of them and we start chatting with him. He is not amused by the millions of people who keep interrupting to take photos but seemed quite happy to have found Liana to chat with. And this is where wingwoman of the year starts. First I had to talk to his trainer, Pedro or something for like 30 minutes who was not interesting or maybe I was just not in the mood. He finally realizes I am not interested and leaves..although this was maybe bad because then I was the 3rd wheel and not trying to involve myself in their conversation so I ended up kind of sitting there by myself. Cue the line of men who start making their moves. There were fighters, and trainers and Marines and consultants. It was exhausting as none of them seemed to get the fact that I was not interested. At one point when this especially boring guy was just hanging around forever when I kept looking away, was not starting convo and giving sh*tty one word answers (newsflash guys…this means a girl is not interested)..anyway….I go to Liana loudly, please get me a gun so I can blow my head off. You would think this would solidify that I do not want to talk to him anymore…nope. So all his friends leave and I’m like….go with them. Oh no..I couldn’t possibly leave you alone here. Yes, yes you could, I have survived my life without you to this point and I will survive the rest of my night, even if I sit here and watch drunk ppl do dumb things and talk to no one. It’s better than trying to pretend I want to talk to you. Anyway, I think Liana got the point after that and told her famous fighter dude that she was going to go. FINALLY!!! I was glad she was having a good time with this guy but after hours of nonsense, I couldn’t do it any longer. She may have scored us an invite to his next fight in Austria next month so if that’s the case, will be payment enough for my duties. Ha.
Saturday I slept in pretty late..woke up at 11:45 and meant to get up a few minutes after but fell back to sleep and woke up again at 1:45…oops! Went straight to pool as the sun used to be pretty much done at 3:30ish but that is no longer the case! At 4:15 I left and the sun was still high and bright. It was about 95 deg out and hard to do anything but lay there. Even that had me drenched in sweat. Got a couple good hours of sun and decided it was time to go back to sleep..lol. Took a 2 hour nap..then hit the gym and walked over to Liana’s for take out and a chick flick (that we couldn’t find on tv so mostly just gossiped!) Was home by 11 and completely worn out..got in bed…..was still tossing and turning at 2:45am. Was very frustrating but I guess that’s what I get for sleeping for most of the day!
Headed to pump now..then a chill night. Tonight and tomorrow night are the only nights without plans for the rest of the week so must take advantage. Sorry this was a novel….expect the same next week! I’m capping off the birthday celebrations with skydiving on Saturday so hopefully there is another one. Lol.
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