An Unhealthy Obsession With Lulu

Back in London, I used to live a two minute walk from Waitrose.

I mean, there was a decent Sainsbury’s nearby, a Tesco Metro at the bottom of the road and an Asda convenience store close by. Despite its rumoured extravagant pricing policy, the two minute walk was always the deciding factor in where I collected my groceries.

Waitrose it was!

It was all too easy to pop in for anything and everything.

Need a pint of milk? 

No problem. Stroll over to Waitrose. Easy.

But I would always return home with a dozen bags of other items that I hadn’t intended to buy but had decided were also essential while stalking the aisles. A task made all the easier by Waitrose having their own “Essentials” range to guide me to the, well… essential choices. I took the title at face value and stocked up on anything and everything in the range. After all, the items in the range must be essential based upon their vitamin range, high fibre, low sodium, low sugar, and low fat or “good” cholesterol content. Obviously.

I mean, John Lewis wouldn’t put anything “bad” in the range, would they? Come on, they’re too trustworthy, too honourable and too – downright bloody - “British” to do such a bad thing.

So. Following this logic, I would regularly end up eating an entire packet of Waitrose “Essential” Chocolate Malted Milk Biscuits as one of my five portions a day.

Maybe moving to Saudia Arabia would be good for me. Kick my bad habits.

I confess, I knew little about Arabian cuisine before moving here. In my head, I assumed that it would be all grilled meats – mostly lamb - with simple veg, flat breads and hummus. Everywhere out this way eats Hummus don’t they?

I knew or expected little else.

My only other thoughts and ideas about food were influenced by a former colleague – let’s call him Sadat, because that is his name. Upon learning that I was moving here, his eyes glazed over and he appeared to explore all the darkest recessed corners of his mind, reviewing everything he knew about the country, before declaring that “Saudi’s love Biriyani”.

On the flight over from London, I was served a chicken biriyani.

Sadat; I thought of you.

So I arrive and find that everything is kebabed. As I expected. Only it’s mutton not lamb, beef and chickens. Oh, how they like chickens. And it turns out, I had missed the obvious one. Dates. Arabs love dates. Loads of ‘em. With coffee that makes Turkish coffee sound and taste like watery pish.

But the Arab food is nothing when compared to the worldly choice that you can get in the Kingdom. Ignoring the restaurant and take away options, the supermarkets are a revelation. Food from every corner of the globe. America, Britain, Europe, India, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Morocco and Japan. Unsurprising, really, because the only thing that Saudi’s appear to love more than food is “shopping”. So the Supermarkets/Hypermarkets allow both hobbies to be pursued in pleasurable unity. And – as a Waitrose veteran – I have been pulled in.

I have fallen in love. I am in love with Lulu.

Lulu is beautiful. Lulu is bountiful. Lulu is everything a person could ever hope for, want or desire.

Lulu is a Hypermarket.

And she is a mere ten minutes stroll from my apartment… and five of those are through her car park!

Aisle upon aisle of choice and opportunity. Fresh food, tinned food, dried food, chilled food, frozen food. Home wares.  More home wares. Even more home wares. Cosmetics. Toiletries upon toiletries. The floor space goes on and on for ever and ever. Far beyond the horizon and possibly half way across the desert to Riyadh. It is possible that she spans time zones. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never reached the end.

And upstairs. Fashion stores. Boutiques. Phone stores. Electronics stores. Everything!

But – in comparison to UK supermarkets – it all feels a bit disjointed. Every aisle is a revelation because it bears no relation to the aisles either side. At first this is a bit disorientating. I’m a man. I shop by walking around and picking up exactly what I know I want and nothing more. I have no need or desire to browse. I want to get in and get out. As quickly as possible. Just like making love to a beautiful woman…

Joke.

Lulu is a wily and cunning woman. The disjointed and haphazard lay out eventually breaks you down.

Lulu woos you with her aisles.

Oh my dear, dear, beautiful Lulu.

I love your deli, your hot food/Indian snack counter and the biggest display of McVities digestives that I have ever seen framed in an impressive model of Tower Bridge.

But I am less keen on the way that you close all the tills and indiscreetly lower the shutters during prayer times making me wait in a queue for twenty minutes.

But I forgive you. For I love you.

Lulu. Khobar. Dressed Up For Another Night On The Town.

I read a piece recently about obesity around the world last week. It was on the BBC News website but I can’t find it when typing this. I have found an article - see the linky thing below - that uses the map that it referred to, though noting that 35+% of Saudi Arabia’s population are obese. And it didn’t surprise. From day one, I have been struck by the number of overweight Arabs that I see…

GLOBAL OBESITY

And Lulu offers an insight into this. It’s a lifestyle thing.

I was stunned at the range of “shit” that is on offer. I'm European and am fully aware of how much shit is pushed onto the population through advertising and their retail conduits. But in Lulu, every other aisle seems to offer a variation on sweets, confectionery and dairy produce that makes my eyes water, arteries harden and teeth ache. Saudi has really bought into “western” treats. Aisle upon aisle of European and American confectionery before you bring multiple sections dedicated to fresh, packet and preserved Indian and Asian sweets.

OK. Khobar is a very American city. Her influence is everywhere. But it would be stupid, churlish, wrong, petty and too easy to try and lay blame solely at their door. The stuff on sale is not just being bought by the Yanks. After all, most Americans won’t make it to Lulu because their communities and compounds have their own American supermarkets which – I imagine – pander far more directly to their buying habits. Lulu is there for all the communities. And it appears to revel in the junk as much as the wonderful fresh fish, fruit and vegetables on offer.

But. For the most part, I am being good.

McVities may offer a taste of home in the absence of Chocolate Malted Milk but I'm letting myself absorb the Indian options on offer with fresh vegetables and pulses. I know I used to live in Alperton, Tooting and South Harrow, but Lulu’s options are so much more exciting and enticing.

But I'm all too aware that she’s local enough that I could get back into my bad, old Waitrose habit. 

Wish me luck.

Bahrain - Good Intentions & Bad Habits

Monday morning.

I had arranged to do a favour for two colleagues, one of who is over in the UK, the other stuck in Riyadh.

It involved a hop over to Bahrain.

The two kingdoms are linked by the King Fahd Causeway. Built in the 1980’s, it is currently the only land link to Bahrain, although a new project to build a second bridge has been confirmed that will link Bahrain to Qatar to the south (as you all know, Qatar is the current hub of all construction development know that Dubai has slowed down).

The causeway is sixteen miles long with three lanes in each direction and about half a million check points where you have to pay tolls, have your passport and visa checked, where women have to lift their veil and you have the opportunity to visit the Mosque, McDonalds and Costa Coffee. Many of these stops are compulsory, others are not.

For a time, the causeway was best known for being the longest bridge in the World, but China, Thailand and the USA have topped their construction up with Viagra and it now currently only ranks at number 20. In time, other corporate hard-ons will make it droop, flaccid, lanky and impotent to an even lower place in the standings.

The causeway is now best known for its queues. I’m English, I am conditioned to queue. By default, I like the causeway.

Where I stay, we have built up a good relationship with a fine gentleman named Francis. Francis is a taxi driver with a visa that allows him to travel unmolested outside the kingdom. He is the richest man in Khobar because he spends much of his time hopping over the border at close on 500 SAR a time. Knowing the causeway like a brother, he is always good at anticipating and avoiding the worst queue times.

So we set off at 8am in order to reach Bahrain for 10am. Yes. That’s right. 16 miles (OK – closer to 24 by the time you take the two ends into account) in two hours. It’s like being back in London.

The bridge was clear and we made good time until we reached the Saudi border control on the central island. Here, the road opens up to 10 or 12 lanes and you jostle for position.

Queue. Wait. Queue.

You find yourself having the same dilemma as you do in the supermarket. In your heart, you know that whichever queue you choose will be the wrong one.

By that I mean, that the supermarket will change cashier and put in place the 17 year old trainee who is too nervous to ask for help from a supervisor so cannot serve the customer stocking up on wine for the afternoon. Or you discover that three people ahead of you is the moron who has spent their entire trip selecting items without price labels, splitting multi-packs, then having wads and wads of promotional vouchers painstakingly cut from magazines. Only 75% of the vouchers are actually valid but they will happily argue the toss for six hours and talk management into submission to save an extra 10p off Lenor, before paying in coppers and book tokens. The type of moron who won’t pack any of their product away until they have paid for their goods and examined their receipt in painstaking, line by line detail and raised a minimum of 32 queries to the poor cashier. They bring their own bags too. But no matter how much they shuffle the product around, they never quite have enough space to pack all their items allowing them to explain to the whole world in extreme detail how they make the non-recyclable plastic bag they are now being forced to take lesson it’s carbon footprint by re-using it 102 times for other tasks.

We’ve all been there. We have all dreamt up the most repulsive, degrading, dehumanising and painful punishments to bestow on these people while politely gnashing our teeth and smiling in absolute silence.

On the causeway, it’s similar but the border guards that call the shots. I’ve heard a story that having queued for an hour a non-Saudi was turned away to return to the mainland purely because the guard wasn't processing foreigners that day. You are at the mercy of the guards’ whims and moods. 

Everything moves at their pace. Their pace is set to “terminally slow”.

So. Off we go. Take passports. Shuffle passports. Take fee 50 SAR payment. Count fee payment. Recount fee payment. Look confused. Take pencil to work out change from a 100 SAR note. Look for pad to write it down. Find pad. Can’t find pencil they just had. Look everywhere. Walk away to borrow pencil from colleague. Come back and take pad to colleague as deposit on the pencil loan. Look troubled. Play with phone. Maybe phone a friend. Remembers passports. Looks at passports. Stamps passports. Returns pencil to colleague. Looks at pad. Decides to believe “phone a friend advice” and gives 50 SAR change. Looks nervous and waves you on.

Then you go through Customs.

Park car in bay. Open doors and boot. Guard looks in back of car. Reluctantly says “hello” to occupants. Stares in boot. For ages. Even if the boot is empty. Considers whether there is duty to be paid on stale, hot, stagnant air transported across the border in boot of car. Sends you on your way in a manner suggesting that you have imposed on their time rather than the other way round.

Then you reach the same posts in Bahrain. Thankfully, they have a slightly higher setting of “slow”.

All the while, between the various posts, you lean on the horn, frantically shift lanes and cut up as many fellow drivers as you can in the vain hope that you will find the new, keen guard who hasn’t yet been broken by sitting in a hot box for 10 hours shifts 6 days a week and still has a bit of “pace” and enthusiasm for the job in hand.

Francis planned well and we go through in 40 minutes.

But those 40 minutes drag into hours when you are listening to American hit radio. It’s Monday morning. I don’t want eternally chirpy DJs in my life introducing me to Coldplay. I want coffee.

So I reach Bahrain with ten minutes to spare before my appointment.

Thirty minutes later, my work is done and it is time to go home. Except that I have agreed to collect a friend who popped over to Bahrain last Thursday and needs to return to Saudi Arabia to work. We’re a bit late and he calls to say that he is no longer at his hotel but has gone to an Irish/American diner for breakfast.

The Broken

Before I travelled to the Middle East my mate Alex made the observation that I would invariably bump into and meet British expats who were only over here because they are slightly “broken”. I believed it right away and believed it out of hand. I mean, I can hardly say that I am not “broken’. As previous posts have strongly hinted I have only come here to make a break and a change; to shake myself up and most definitely and specifically not work for my previous employer.

So we arrive at the diner to discover that G has been there since it opened and that breakfast consists of Heineken. It is soon apparent that – excluding a mushroom quiche and a steak and kidney pie from a supermarket opposite the diner - most meals since Thursday have had a similar liquid consistency. G is maudlin. G is aware that alcohol does that after a while. G is keen that – whilst he knows he must return – he ekes out the last of the Eid holiday.

It’s Monday morning. It’s 10:50am. I am drinking Heineken for breakfast.

This is Bahrain.

Francis is dispatched to the hotel to collect his luggage but not before he, too, has a swift pint. The timing of sending Francis away is transparently engineered in to get another pint in and so prolong the departure time a little more. G and I discuss what is like to be part of the ‘broken’ set. We touch on events that have led to us working in Saudi Arabia and result in us sitting in a bar drinking beer at 11:20 in the morning. Not particularly deep but relatively honest.

I note to G that I have things that I want to do in the afternoon so will have to leave soon. I argue that my intention is to return for a couple of nights later in the week and have a proper explore. G cannot join me next weekend, so this information spurs him into action to take me on a tour of the best spots so that I know where to come later on…

It’s Monday. It’s not even midday. I am three pints down and starting a pub crawl.

Oh Jeez. Is this Bahrain?

I follow a musician and fine fellow of a man on Facebook and Twitter by the name of Keith Top of the Pops. 

Here he is, here. In this video... With a guitar and loads of his friends. Look. Here:

Most of his status updates include the word ‘Wetherspoons’. I think he would like Bahrain. All the bars serve cider. So on a Monday, without any intention to do so, I appear to be on a pub crawl. I feel as if I am living in the shadow of Keith Top of the Pops life. Except – that even with my dark glasses - I am, inevitably less cool.

I reason that I've been feeling homesick for a few days; so it’s OK to have a bit of fun.

G takes us to a hotel that houses the most happening bar in the Kingdom. I am assured that it rocks and heaves wall to wall with hot women who are allowed to talk to men. We arrive and it’s dark and empty save the smell of last night’s stale booze and cigarettes. We are the only clientèle. We wait for a while, but there are no bar staff.

We move on.

To the seventh floor of another hotel. We get talking with three American’s in the lift. From Idaho and Texas. I get to quote Rainmakers lyrics to them…

“And everyone from Texas is from someplace else”

They agree. Texas is a whole different country.

Look. It's The Rainmakers... Singing "Snakedance". Like I quoted at the American people. Clever, heh:

We follow the Americans into a sports bar with framed rugby tops and Celtic and Rangers football shirts lining the walls. An Australian rugby match is on the telly. One team have won. They appear happy. It seems understandable. G thinks that it's the team supported by that Australian bloke from Gladiators. 

Me - "Er... Can't remember there names. Shadow? Saracen??" 

G looks confused...

Me - "HUNTER!!" 

G - "No. You know. The movie."

Me - "They made a movie? Of the TV show! No way! Bet it's shit."

G - "No. Gladiator! You know with the Australian! Likes a fight"

I'm left blank.

A friendly Bristolian barkeep happily serves us lager. All seems well with the World. The bar is near empty save us and several other American students that our friends from the lift have joined.

I begin to feel so, very tired.

Sensing a slippery slope, I allow Francis to persuade me to leave and return back to Saudi. G can’t face it though. He books himself back into his hotel and Francis returns his luggage back to the hotel from the car; cue a final pint.

It’s 2:30pm. I leave G sitting at a table on the 7^th Floor. Francis assures him that he will return at 10am on Tuesday to collect him.

And then back to the causeway and through all the checks in reverse. The Bahrain bound carriageway is backed up nose to tail for several miles. Francis says it will take them three hours to cross border control. 

It’s busy on our side, too, but we only take ninety minutes to get through the various checks while sitting in a hot and hot tempered queue. I'm in a pleasant, warm alcohol haze. EMF not Coldplay are on the radio. This time it only feels like 40 minutes. Unbelievable.

Back in Khobar, I quickly drain a litre of water and head off the oncoming hang over by having a snooze on the sea front at dusk, letting the sound of the rippling waves lull me into gentle sleep.

And Russell Crowe is a Kiwi. No wonder I was confused.