Image via Wikipedia

Sometimes Dubai can leave me a little frustrated. It doesn’t mean to. It just can’t help itself. Let me share with you a typical morning at my local supermarket to try and explain. Events occurred real time between 10am and 11am this morning.

“Good morning, do you have any Tomme?”
“Sorry madam?”
“Do you have any Tomme. The french cheese.”
“No, madam, we don’t have any of this cheese.”
(Pointing to a cheese) “What’s that?”
“Ah Madam that is Tomme”
“So you do have it”
“Yes”

Later that same shop…

“Hi, do you have any baby potatoes? There aren’t any on the shelf”
“No madam, sorry we don’t have”
“What, not a single packet?”
“No, no baby potatoes madam”
“When will they be delivered?”
“I’m not sure. (Pause) We have the baby potatoes in the net bags”
“Eh? You do have baby potatoes?”
“Yes madam”
“Where are they?”
“Madam, they are in the warehouse, but they are not the baby potatoes for the microwave.”
“That’s OK, I can take the ones in the net bags, they are fine.”
“But not for microwave”

(DID I MENTION AN F-ING MICROWAVE???)

“That’s fine, I’ll take them. Could you get them for me? Thank you.”

The kind shop assistant returned with the potatoes and then proceeded to check I knew how to boil them without using a microwave. Obviously I either look like a complete moron this morning or an over-privilidged lazy cow who hasn’t cooked for five years. There were no courgettes and I couldn’t find thai red curry paste either but by this point I had lost the will to live so settled for yellow. As usual this means I have completed approximately 78% of my weekly shop in one place and now have to try and find the missing components elsewhere or concoct a slightly eclectic menu based on what I did manage to get. That’s if, of course, I figure out how to work the oven, according to my pal in fruit and veg.
When I return to England my mother will laugh at me salivating over Morrison’s and will wonder why I want to hang out there on a near-daily basis. I hope this post will go some way towards explaining why.