A Random Walk Through Abu Dhabi

B and I walked to the Khalidiyah Mall this morning rather than take the taxi in an attempt to pretend it was exercise and to take a look at the back streets of Abu Dhabi. We needed to stock up on groceries in order to break the chain of perpetual eating out, which is taking it’s toll on the pocketbok and the waistline. Plus, as I mentioned before, Abu Dhabi’s restaurant scene is quite varied but disappointingly tasteless, relying more on the generally excellent ambiance of their physical plants to attract customers rather than the taste of the food. The lure of home cooking had moved high enough up on our priority list to get us off our behinds and do something about it.

Just for fun I took my camera along for the twenty minute or so walk and was not disappointed at that decision. It’s Friday morning, the one common day off work shared by both government offices and private businesses, and shops that are open today generally don’t do so until the afternoon. So our walk was quite enjoyable with very few cars on the road, very few people outdoors and weather nice enough to prevent one from breaking a sweat.

The first interesting thing we came across was a computer store that either sold old antique computer systems or was owned and opererated by the elderly, which made me question if they would even know enough about computers to have a viable business. The store was closed so I could not enter the shop to find out.

We then walked by a grocery store that was either owned and operated by ex-military sharpshooters or was warning us of our fate if we were caught shoplifting. Again, this impeccable local business was closed and I couldn’t find out the answer to that question. Probably they were at the local armory stocking up on theft prevention supplies.

Further on down the road we saw an interesting skyscraper under construction. Obviously, the Pisa Construction company from Italy was requisitioned to build this future Abu Dhabi icon. Fortunately, it seems that it won’t be more than the usual 20 stories tall, which used to be the height limit for all construction projects and gave one the impresion that Abu Dhabi had some sense of city planning. Had the Pisa brothers had a local partner tied to the ruling family, who apparently get to build anything, anywhere and any height they desire, despite the city plannning guidelines, and put up a 50 story tower, I’m afraid it would have bumped into its neighboring building.

We finally arrived at the mall to discover that the LuLu supermarket was promoting it’s vast supply of organically grown fruits and vegetables. The center of the Khalidiyah Mall currently contains a great display of  colorful, fresh, neatly arranged and displayed fruits and vegetables, which instantly caught our eye. We browsed the several aisles of produce, constantly oohing and aahing at the quality food before our eyes. However, there were no bags with which to purchase our treasures nor were ther any supermarket staff on hand to help us.  A security guard quiclky educated us to the fact that these items were on display only and we had to go into the LuLu supermarket, over to their produce section, to purchase the organically grown items.

The trouble is that the organically grown produce in the supermarket was generally outdated, withered, turning brown and wrinkling. Apparently the fresh recently delivered produce goes out on display for several days, where you aren’t allowed to buy it before it’s brought back into the store to sell, which by then it’s basically unedible. Who thought of that marketing strategy?

The longer I live here, the smarter I become, comparaively. Never a dull moment in this country.