Sunday, March 19, 2006

A SUNDAY OUTING

On a Friday/Sunday, hubs & I like to sloth out. Hubs works a 6 day week & whatever he wants to do on the 7th day is 100% fine by me. I've called it his Chill Day..............he can chill out, watch DVD's or play his games on the computer...........whatever, it's fine by me. We have breakfast around midday & Hubs cooks the evening meal, as he enjoys doing that on his day off. It's normally a very tasty meal too & I'd offer his services to others, but they couldn't afford him.........hehehehe.
Anyway, around 3pm on Friday, Hubs said we needed to go to Marina Mall, to collect something. I said fine, I'd like to get a coupla things in Carr4, so we can kill 2 flu-free birds with one stone. We left the apartment around 4.30pm I think.
On any normal day, it takes around 10 minutes to drive from our apartment to Marinal Mall. If I get a suicidal taxi, I can do it in 5 minutes & still arrive with all my limbs still attached, but sanity looming very dangerously nearby..........
Hubs & I thought we'd just nut out to the mall & be back in plenty of time for him to prepare another scrumptious meal.
W R O N G !!!
We like to drive along the Corniche, mainly because we consider it to be pretty, with multi-coloured Petunias along the kerb tops & perfectly manicured trees*. The seawater looks so inviting & on the whole, I s'pose one could describe it as picture perfect. On Friday, it wasn't picture perfect. It was totally CHAOTIC! Within 2 seconds of joining the Corniche road, we were swallowed up into the abyss of the worst traffic jam I've ever been in. Every inch of every lane, irrespective of the direction of traffic, was taken up by cars. Traffic flow was reduced to as little as 5 metres at a time. This was mainly because 95% of the population of the UAE decided to go & view the free air show, which just happened to be - yep, you guessed it - along the Corniche! I knew about the show as I'd seen a couple of adverts for it, but never gave it another thought & forgot to tell Hubs, ooops! Motorists with rubber necks & pedestrians battling the sandy winds filled the whole of the Corniche to bursting point. It was quite a sight & it's one that myself & Hubs do not ever want to see or be involved in ever again! Thanks to the Oh So Typical Local Driver, traffic couldn't flow properly because they kept changing lanes every time traffic began to move at a snails pace. The LookAtMeStillCoveredInPlastic brand new 4 x 4 brigade were the worst, swiftly followed by the 7 Series & Tacky Merc that have GAD's** fitted but are never ever used. The absolute Arsehole Of The Traffic Jam award just has to go to the bloke/family in a gold coloured Lexus - complete with blackened windows of course - who insisted on torturing the surrounding motorists (who were brave enough to have their windows open) with his Strangled Cat Playing Bells & Tambourine music. He flitted in & out of lanes for the whole length of the Corniche & every now & again we would get a blast of the cat being strangled. He never got to the end of the road any quicker, like the rest of those jumping lanes all the time. Our leisurely 10min drive took an amazing 1 hour & 45mins! The airshow had long finished before we even got on the road! The majority of traffic was heading for Marina Mall, which pissed on Hubs' battery even more. Once we had arrived, Hubs found the first available parking space & we headed off to where he had to collect his thing. The Mall has doubled in space overnight, so it took a while for us to find this place, but we did & made our way out. I needed to squeeze a kidney & it took some 15 minutes & 2 floors to find a Ladies toilet that didn't have a queue of 20 cross legged females & 37 gawking kids all waiting in turn to use a loo which wasn't occupied by someone doing their weekly ablutions. Jislaaik! (a term of frustration) After a record breaking kidney squeeze (I was getting just a tad desperate by that time) we decided to have a cup of coffee, just to calm our nerves as it were. Another bloody mistake! The new coffee bar looked very inviting & the coffee smelled quite aromatic. It was an hallucination, cos back in the real world, the coffee was weak & tasteless. Bugger!!!

We were both so tired, ratty & stressed from the traffic & hordes of people that cooking just didn't seem so appealing to Hubs. It was almost 8pm by the time we got away from the mall. We stopped at a Subway on the way back, got 2 footlong rolls & made our way home. We had our Subs, some ice-cream & nice cuppee tea, watched Rome & then hit the perch, vowing to never again go out when there's an event (of any kind) in Abu Dhabi!

* I've never seen anyone trimming/pruning or shaping the trees, whether it be during the day or late at night. I've seen the paving being cleaned with an industrial type machine, but no gardeners or suspects with shears..............strange methinks..........very strange!

** GAD Guttra Adjusting Device.............commonly known as a rearview mirror.
Posted by Jayne :: 15:49 :: 1 Had Somminc To Say

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