How The Other Half Live

Here we go with week three of five. I used to think starting the week on Sunday was strange, but starting it on Saturday is even stranger. There is no weekend cross-over with the UK, and more importantly, no chance to watch the English football. Ah well, it's not a matter of life and death. Most of the time.

But back to Thursday night. I was invited to a barbecue at a colleague's apartment block, and with nothing better to do - not so much a window in my diary as an entire wall missing - I went along. I drove round, intending to have maybe a shandy at the most, and took a bottle of mango juice as my offering. Going without a bottle of plonk felt a tad awkward, but the host had insisted that this would be fine as he understood the booze acquisition situation. After a torturous half-hour drive in the treacle-like evening traffic, I arrived at the complex of apartments and found my way up onto the roof of the four-storey building. The space not taken up by lift machinery and air conditioning gubbins had been converted into a roof-top terrance, with a stone barbecue, a bar and some tables and chair. A water feature occupied one corner and little blue lights in the floor provided a chic ambience. Luckily, the haziness of the day was starting to disperse, and we were able to enjoy the slight breeze that tickled our faces without having to spit dust out every two minutes.

Being the weak-willed fool that I am, especially after a long week, I was soon plied with a few bottles of Corona beer, a fantastic beverage in this particular climate, and decided I would get a taxi home. I ate a good amount of food, including home-made burgers, coleslaw, chicken kebabs and prawn skewers. The prawns were accompanied by chunks of haloumi, a regional cheese, and I was somewhat surprised how nice it is. It's not very cheesy cheese at all, being creamy and salty, and works well on the grill as it chars more than it melts. By the time the desserts came out I was struggling. My stomach must have shrunk because I was only able to half-finish a small slice of cheesecake and just couldn't even entertain a piece of the splendid-looking, plump apple pie that was offered. I managed to force another beer down my neck, though.

So, with my calorie allowance for the weekend blown out of the water, I relaxed in the cool evening air and talked about politics, kids and the price of camel dung till well after midnight. I met a few more people who were all very pleasant. I managed to sneak a peak in the host's apartment during a beer-run and was immediately struck with shameful envy. The complex is owned and managed by the same company who run my block, but since it is brand new, the spec is much more modern, and much more pleasant. The apartments here are mainly two bedroomed affairs, however, aimed at families rather than singletons. At 12.30 people were starting to drift away or drift off to sleep so we lugged all the paraphenalia and left-over food down to the host's apartment and the party broke up. I shared a car back to the apartment block with another work mate who lives there and went straight to bed. The Martians were thankfully quiet that night.

Friday morning and I had a lovely long lie-in to recharge the batteries and sleep off the beer. I rose at 11am or so, and ordered a cab to take me back to the complex to pick my car up. Friday morning traffic is as light as it ever gets, so the drive took only five minutes. From there I went straight round to the Mega Mart supermarket, which my colleague had pointed out to me the night before, and marched purposefully towards the shop going over the shopping list in my head. I was determined to do it properly this time, and buy some real food to cook. My purposeful stride became a weak limp when I saw the security gaurds at the doors shooing people away as if they were annoying cats. The shop was closing at 11.30am for an hour. Something to do with Friday lunchtime prayers.

Fortunately there is a Costapacket (Starbucks' evil twin) coffee shop next door, so I went in there and had myself a capuccino and a croissant, reading the local English-language paper to pass the time. There were locals and expats sitting side-by-side, enjoying a Friday coffee. There is quite a clever segragation for smokers in there, with a glass partition closing off one side for those who want to add nicotine to the caffeine. On the non-smoking side, the Western expat families stuck out like a sore thumb, and I was minded of the posey expat crew of places like the Lime Tree Cafe in Dubai, with the sunglass-on-head yummy mummies and the flip-flop-adorned dummy daddies ignoring their krazy kiddies as they tore around the place with their gobs emitting a constant, high-pitched screech. I tuned out and read the paper front to back.

That ate the hour up quite nicely, and when I returned, the shooing gaurds had gone and I started my expedition. There was a good mix of local, American and British produce, but it was a constant challenge to monitor the prices of things, especially imported items. There were cereal bars for over five quid a box, for example. This balances out with the cheapness of the fresh produce, so it's fair enough. I went in with the intention of spending 300 Riyals, and left having paid 350. I had enough reasonably-healthy and not-too-processed food for the week, probably more, so I was happy; a real Happy Shopper. It's so much easier and less of a ball-aching chore when you do it for yourself.

Back home, the goods were unloaded. I fancied a bit of gym-time to burn off some excess calories, but found the place was closed. The sign told me it was open again at 4pm, so I returned to the flat and had some lunch/dinner/afternoon sustenance of scrambled eggs. I'd forgotten to buy salt, but it was passable. I spent the next hour or two playing stupid solitaire games on the laptop and watching the Jeremy Kyle show on UKTV, then at 4pm on the dot I headed back up to the gym. It was still empty and officially closed. The doors were all closed but not locked, so I was able to get in, turn on the lights and AC and have a quick blast on the exercise bike. I was half-expecting someone to come and admonish me for daring to exercise unsupervised, but they didn't, and I made sure I turned everything off as I left.

Then it was time to decide what to do for the rest of the day. I toyed with going to see a football match again, but fancied a change and decided a trip to Villagio mall was on the agenda. A bite to eat and a movie was what I hoped to achieve, and I thought this new mall would still be relatively quiet. How wrong I was, and the traffic on the way there should have been a warning. It was mayhem, and I ended up parking a good distance from the entrance. I thought City Centre mall was bad, and had avoided that, but this was the same. I'm slowly learning that Friday evening is the time everyone in Doha gets out and about and hits the malls. Still, a bit of food and a movie would do me good, but I couldn't find a cinema there, even though I had gained the notion of its existence from somewhere. A dream, perhaps. The lack of melting clocks should have been a give-away.

As it was getting on, and it was too late to change my mind and head back for the football game, I had a plate of lukewarm spaghetti in an almost-empty Pizza Express and headed back to the quiet, empty apartment. I texted the wife to see if she would ring me for a chat, but she was out at the end-of-season rugby club thing with the kids (the boy plays rugby), and she couldn't. She reminded me that she was going to a friend's 40th birthday fancy dress party on the following evening, so she couldn't talk to me then, either. One sarcastic reply later and she promised to call me in the afternoon. Thank God these weekends aren't two days, especially with no internet access provided yet. As it turned out, I did watch a movie. Little Miss Sunshine was on one of the movie channels, and even though I probably missed the first half-hour, it passed the time till bedtime.