Every week, I wait for the weekend to come around, and when it does, I just do not feel like going out.
From my bedroom window, I look wistfully at my car in the parking lot as the weekend progresses, hoping to drive to a mall or to the restaurant that serves my favourite finger food. But it seems like so much more fun just to sit at home. Our building parking lot is usually jam-packed over the weekend as nobody moves out of their homes, except of course, for that one couple.
They really must be slaving over the night to have a wonderful day off from work, I tell myself. I see them packing their weekend holiday paraphernalia into their vehicle: Huge insulated picnic boxes, beach mats and an array of plastic bags. They could be heading either to the beach or to the neighbourhood park where they intend to smoke up those marinated sheesh kebabs.
Over the years, I felt that I never seemed to have fun like most other normal people living in Dubai, who have great weekends. Ask anyone how they spent their Friday and you will hear that he or she went for a movie, then had a nice supper at a restaurant on Jumeirah Beach Road and then went driving to Sharjah, well, just for the drive.
“So, what did you do?” my friend turns around and asks and I desperately try to make up fun things I was supposed to have done, not wanting to seem like a nerd who cannot enjoy life even with such wonderful things around him.
I cannot say that I lounged on my couch and watched re-reruns of sad TV shows that seemed funny long time back. So I say such things to impress: “I went to the spice souq and watched their shimmering colours. It was a photo-shoot tour that I went with a group.”
It was the same scenario when I returned from my vacation and people would say, “Wow, you looked relaxed and tanned. It must have been a great vacation”.
How can you explain to people that holidays for expats are not really meant for enjoyment. You can only relax when you return to the UAE a few days earlier to catch your breath.
As I was thinking about my sorry life, a newspaper story about a survey caught my eye. It said that most people in the UAE sit at home over the weekends and lie about what a great time they had.
A hotel chain did the survey for reasons best known to themselves and it showed that half of UAE never goes out of their homes at least twice a month. It did not say what those people did when they did go out, but most probably, they did even more boring stuff than just sitting at home.
It quoted a social media expert, saying that Friday was her sleep-in day. “I just enjoy being at home after a hard week’s work,” she says.
However, a British expat was also quoted and he rubbished the survey, saying that no way people would sit at home over the weekends. Dubai is a very social place, he said.
Feeling happy that half the population is as miserable as I am, we finally dragged ourselves from the couch and went to the biggest mall in the world, over the weekend. My wife said she wanted to see the breathtaking LED display on Burj Khalifa that we had missed on the New Year’s Eve.
We went driving and singing in the various parking levels for about 20 minutes and then everyone said they were tired and wanted to go back home. We all came back, got on the couch and watched TV.
Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@mahmood_saberi
