BakPakChik Forever

This weekend just proved it ...

"You can take the Chik out of the BakPak, but you can't take the BakPak out of the Chik"

For all my red-LuminaS-Coupe-driving, actual-spa-massage-enjoying, lunching-in-jumeirah, buying-clothes-not-on-sale, post-marriage life, I am still a humble-bee at heart.

I can't do five-star, I just can't.

I felt like such a fake standing in the marbled, sparkling five-star lobby (a feeling that would return in a few hours as we dine next to palstic tourists with orange skin)explaining that nobody asked me to bring my passport. I felt liek a fake knowing that I live just down the raod and yet I want to come and spend the night in a '1100-Dhs-a-night' hotel suite.

A little golf cart drive us to our room that was about fifty feet away from the lobby. How's that for luxury?

The first thing I did was (of coruse)scan the room for souvenirs. Unlike Ross, I don't believe in entitlement to the lamps and salt shakers ... just simply to the amenities. And oh joy! What do I find but Elemis amenities. I know Elemis .. I worked for Elemis. Hence, I take all the Elemis. They line my bathtub at home now!

We ventured out to the beach. We came back with sand between our toes and seashells weighing down my pockets. Dinner was a sad affair, wedged in between a Russian family to my right and a German pair to the left.

The Russian family was orange from too muh sun in too little time. The father was balding and middle aged. The mother was euqally aged and enormously endowed. The kind you look and wonder what you can attribute the size to: saline implants, silicone or hydraulic pumps? The son was a hrmelss (and apparently bored to death) teenager. I feel glad mine weren't the kind of parents who took along the kids on month-long holidays in a foreign country and spent it all going orange on the beach.

We tried to get some shisha after dinner, but theo nyl place with shisha apprently operated between 5:00 and 7:30. Who has shisha between 5:00 and 7:30?!

Back in the hotel room, Arafaat and I flipped channels on the telly and then lay flat on our back looking at the ceiling and giggling at each other. This was so NOT us. Whatodo?

"You know what?" I finally threw in the towel. "Let's just go back home. Let's just fire up our shisha and put in a DVD."

"Let's" he agreed.

And we quickly packed back whatever little luggage we had brought and checked out.

We lasted a total of four and a half hours in five-star luxury.

I wrote this blog entry in my head, with Arafaat driving down Sheikh Zayed Road at 200 kph ... going back home to our own shihsa and our own telly.

You gotta love life when you own a red Lumina S Coupe and share lives/cars with a RacerBoy.