The Things I Have Seen, part 2
4 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Saturday, May 3 at Saturday, May 03, 2008.
Again sponsored by the iPhone and its surprisingly decent camera, volume two of The Things I Have Seen:
- After doing some hard Cairo time in the land where the pork options were limited to the occasional pizza from Maison Thomas, walking into the special pork-only grocery story here run by the Spinney's supermarket chain - I have dubbed it the Spinney's Forbidden Garden - was an intensely emotional experience. Complete with a "non-Muslims only" sign on the door, the sight of a grocery story where pork infiltrated anything and everything, from the canned soups to the instant noodles and the frozen pizzas....well, i was wiping a tear from the corner of my eye with the intense specialness of it all.
The readers who are living in the West may look at the image below and see nothing interesting, but I guarantee that anybody who has been in the Middle East for a while will see undescribable beauty:
Thank you, Spinney's Forbidden Garden. Just for being there for me.
The best bar in Abu Dhabi is a Filipino place close to the Meridien hotel, rammed full of young Fillipino's getting their party on in an awesome way. Until moving here I had never heard of the whole Filipino cover band culture, but it exists, in an epic way. Never before has a culture and people been more fully proficient in producing excellent cover bands, and this bar in AD (no idea what it's called) is home to one of the finest. A nine-piece group with two backup singers and a dedicated bongo drummer, these guys will rock out on anything from an intensely soulful Bryan Adams number up to a full-throttle version of the Clash's 'Should I Stay or Should I Go'.
The dancefloor is crowded and awash in lasers and strobe lights, and you are likely to be the only white person there on any given night. And never before has a piece of signage fully captured the jubilance and exuberance of a crowd than this one:
As befitting a place awash with petrodollars, you see some pretty frigging insane cars cruising around here, often being driven by kids who look like puberty is a recent reality in their lives. We were stuck behind a Bugatti Veyron in traffic a couple of weeks ago, and the same asshole in a red Ferrari Enzo has cut me off in traffic on more than one occasion.
The best thing about the shit-hot looking 911 below, seen outside the Raffles hotel in Dubai, is that the driver was such a big-shot that the car didn't even have numberplates...
For those thinking of visiting Abu Dhabi sometime around 2018, I might not still be around, but you'll be able to visit what might be the world's most interesting new destination for high-end culture, Saadiyat Island. Here's what the corniche of the 'cultural district' of the island will look like, complete with performing arts centre (furthest), Louvre (middle) and Guggenheim Museum (closest, and completely insane in true Gehry style).
Although Frank totally got his Gehry on with the design for the Guggenheim, the highlight for me is Zaha Hadid's amazing performing arts centre, which spouts out from the land and flows into the water like like a stream of Arabic calligraphy, or the head of a snake, of the coolest toy a 10 year old could ever hope for at Christmas, depending on how you look at it:
- After doing some hard Cairo time in the land where the pork options were limited to the occasional pizza from Maison Thomas, walking into the special pork-only grocery story here run by the Spinney's supermarket chain - I have dubbed it the Spinney's Forbidden Garden - was an intensely emotional experience. Complete with a "non-Muslims only" sign on the door, the sight of a grocery story where pork infiltrated anything and everything, from the canned soups to the instant noodles and the frozen pizzas....well, i was wiping a tear from the corner of my eye with the intense specialness of it all.
The readers who are living in the West may look at the image below and see nothing interesting, but I guarantee that anybody who has been in the Middle East for a while will see undescribable beauty:
Thank you, Spinney's Forbidden Garden. Just for being there for me.The best bar in Abu Dhabi is a Filipino place close to the Meridien hotel, rammed full of young Fillipino's getting their party on in an awesome way. Until moving here I had never heard of the whole Filipino cover band culture, but it exists, in an epic way. Never before has a culture and people been more fully proficient in producing excellent cover bands, and this bar in AD (no idea what it's called) is home to one of the finest. A nine-piece group with two backup singers and a dedicated bongo drummer, these guys will rock out on anything from an intensely soulful Bryan Adams number up to a full-throttle version of the Clash's 'Should I Stay or Should I Go'.
The dancefloor is crowded and awash in lasers and strobe lights, and you are likely to be the only white person there on any given night. And never before has a piece of signage fully captured the jubilance and exuberance of a crowd than this one:
As befitting a place awash with petrodollars, you see some pretty frigging insane cars cruising around here, often being driven by kids who look like puberty is a recent reality in their lives. We were stuck behind a Bugatti Veyron in traffic a couple of weeks ago, and the same asshole in a red Ferrari Enzo has cut me off in traffic on more than one occasion.
The best thing about the shit-hot looking 911 below, seen outside the Raffles hotel in Dubai, is that the driver was such a big-shot that the car didn't even have numberplates...
For those thinking of visiting Abu Dhabi sometime around 2018, I might not still be around, but you'll be able to visit what might be the world's most interesting new destination for high-end culture, Saadiyat Island. Here's what the corniche of the 'cultural district' of the island will look like, complete with performing arts centre (furthest), Louvre (middle) and Guggenheim Museum (closest, and completely insane in true Gehry style).
Although Frank totally got his Gehry on with the design for the Guggenheim, the highlight for me is Zaha Hadid's amazing performing arts centre, which spouts out from the land and flows into the water like like a stream of Arabic calligraphy, or the head of a snake, of the coolest toy a 10 year old could ever hope for at Christmas, depending on how you look at it:
totally with you on the pork awesomeness but trust me the specialness of the 'non-muslims only' section begins to wear off after a while when you realise that pork actually costs astronomical amounts and one can easily buy the cheap-ass mortadella instead and thus also avoid dirty looks from the veiled mother at the checkout counter.
the filipino bars are all over bahrain too but never checked em out. will have to now. saw one in dubai though, in a hotel, it was pretty ridiculous. not a cover band place but instead you got 7 scantiliy clad filipino women and one fat karaoke guy. followed by around an hour of pumpin RnB.
Bugatti Veyron and Ferrari Enzo? Fuck off.
Mmmm.. Guggeinheim, Louvre, NYU, money can buy everything. The Statue of Liberty is getting shipped over there pretty soon I hear.
Not to sound crass but I knew it was Friday when I could wake up to a fat plate of bacon, egg, grilled tomoto, onions and vegemite toast topped with a mug of awesome home pressed coffee... that non Muslim section supplied me with a weekly (semi legal) high...
as for the cover bands... I went along a few times, the bands themselves were fantastic, everything from the standard Guns n Roses, Bon Jovi, Green Day and Metallica through to reworked rock versions of whatever RnB/Hip Hop tracks were floating around atm.
P.S. one criminal food groups I came across was 'beef bacon'. WTF? It tasted like a failed promise.
I completely agree with Westy on the beef bacon statement. I was recently at TGIFridays, ordered the Tennessee bacon burger in the hopes that the bacon in the picture would truly be a bit of porkolicious heaven.
I was so wrong. Turns out the bacon was as fake as the non alcoholic "Cocktails".
Beef bacon is a fraud on the swine-eating public and should be banished.
In my experience, turkey makes for a better bacon substitute. Annika, while you're still in Cairo, try to find the "Turkey Pastrami" they sell in Seoudi supermarkets. It had Megan, Dan and Me all fooled.....