Thursday, March 26, 2009

Abu Dhabi Nightlife

Last week, I decided to be adventurous and signed up on "http://www.meetup.com/" to get to know people outside of work... This is NOT a dating site- just a way to meet people with similar interests and ideas.

So for our first event, the group decided to go biking near the Corniche. Seven of us showed up and then, it started to rain so we headed to the nearest shelter which happened to be Hilton Hotel. It was quite an interesting group; four guys, three girls, everyone from different countries, half dressed for biking and half for clubbing :P

We went to the Jazz Bar where they were playing live music- it seemed as if all the wealthy expats were there to kick off their weekend (McKinsey-type men in suits, and women in silk blouses or slinky black dresses displaying a lot of cleavage). The "bouncers" were big guys in black and I was stopped and asked to show my ID because they didn't believe I was legal :P Almost everyone ordered a drink with a fancy-sounding name "on the rocks". I asked for dessert (lemon souffle with strawberry ice cream (yummy!) and water).

There was an elementary school teacher from Lebanon, an urban planner from NYC, an interior designer from Paris, a contractor from Pakistan/Malaysia, an oil-rig engineer from India/USA and a cartoon animator from Syria. Conversation ranged from Lion King and Death Note (Japanese anime) to downsizing Walmart and UAE driving woes. The music was pretty loud, so we had to yell in order to hear one another. Someone had a birthday, so they called her up on stage and everyone sang Happy Birthday in slightly tipsy, off-key voices.

I left early but I feel all grown-up now, having hobnobbed with other grown-ups at the Hilton :P

Now, you are obligated to go on meetup.com, meet up with a group and blog about it :P

5 comments:

  1. the peeps i met for the pub quiz i just blogged about were from meetup . com :D

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  2. The cartoon animator! Wow that sounds like a person I would wana talk to..Coool
    Lion King was the first video game I played on my sega game wayyy back :D

    biking? er...I guess I will be wrong here but is it cycling as in riding bicycles? (It's probably something else which I don't know of, sorry for my lack of info. :$ )

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  3. I LOVE The Lion King (all-time favorite Disney movie :D). Biking/cycling... same thing :)

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  4. ahan...Since it was night time so din't think of cycling as a sport..The city I live in, almost everybody cycles :D

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