This is an Abu-dhabi 80/90's facebook group. I really enjoyed reading it as it perfectly describes my era so happy to post this. I left in 99 and do visit every two years or so but its never been the same.
A group dedicated to everyone who grew up in Abu Dhabi back in the retro 80s and grunge 90s .You know you're one of those people if:
1- Hung out at the tourist club. You remember having Pizza at Tata, Eating 2 Dh fries with watered down ketchup at Snoopy's, or prank calling the receptionist.
2- Thought Hardees made the best burgers ever, although you always wondered why there was no McDs in Abu Dhabi.
3- Hung out at Citi Center.
4- Shopped at Hamdan Center, where you could buy caps that said stuff like Chicago Knicks and Montreal Maple Leafs.
5- Ate at Americana Chicken Tikka.
7- You could tell what school someone went to by what they wore to any of the above locations after school – Al Nahda = funky blue pants, Choueifat = Grey pants (but they got out really late and so u wouldnt see them when you got out), ACS = wear whatever u want.
8- Your parents did their groceries at either Prisunic, Coop or Spinney's.
9- You thought the Chinese buffet at Al Ain Palace was the best deal of all time.
10- You were "cool" if you went to Juke Box Junction or Hemingways.
11- You remember those funky taxis that smelled great all the time. Some of these taxi's would talk and greet you upon entering (as in the actual car and not the driver). Others had disco lights installed in the car. If you were lucky, the cab driver, while driving at 120 Km/h would open the door and spit out some funky looking tobacco thing".
12- Still on the subject of taxis, you have, or know someone who has, ripped a metal taxi ID tag (the one with the guy's name and photo) off the back seat and taken it as a souvenir.
13- You are automatically bi/multi-lingual: You speak whatever you speak, plus a special language that could only be used in taxis or small groceries. Typical sentences include, "rafeeg, sawi seer sida, banad sayara, nazal nafarat".
14- Dubai Channel 33 was your savior, if you were lucky enough to catch it, and that would require very high humidity, or a building size antenna.
15- Morning television on Abu Dhabi TV featured camels racing to a funky repetitive tune (early form of house music). Afternoon TV was random. You'd be in the middle of a cartoon, and just when it gets good, another cartoon starts (early form of mixing).
16- No matter how old you are now, you have a sense of humor that only other Abu Dhabi veterans can relate to.
17- The day Coca Cola arrived in Abu Dubai was one of the most anticipated events of your life at the time.
18- In the first gulf war, all parents collectively came up with the brilliant idea of putting sticky plastic stuff on windows thinking it would save them in case of a chemical attack.
19- At some point you thought La Brioche was authentic French cuisine, but you always thought Arlequin had the best croissants ever, and you still miss them.
20- Instead of having a street number, your building was either named after some random girl (eg Dana Plaza), or the store downstairs (eg. Choietram building). If you didn't live in a building, ie lived in Manaseer or some area like that, then you had to do a lot of talking in the language mentioned in point 13 above.
21- You went through a prolonged skateboarding phase. This involved wearing converse and air walks with a little patch thing on the side so you wouldn't wruin your shoes when you ollied. You practiced by getting your friends to lie down on the ground and ollie'ing over them. In the tourist club, you acid dropped off the stairs next to snoopy's, or launched off the steps in front of the billiards room. If you didnt skateboard, the you most likely belonged to another prominent crew, and wore docksides at some point in your life.
22- If you're a guy, your major daily/weekly events included some kind of big fight (early form of fight club). This could happen within your own school, in which case it was usually a one on one fight that others watched.
You also had inter school fights on weekends that involved many to many. Common reasons included - checking out a girl someone liked, looking at someone the wrong way, or just plan boredom.
Most notable were the fights that involved locals. A local would simply decide he wanted to pick a fight with you. He'd look at the guy next to him and say, "dig bleeb, yeeb el rabi3". usually, the locals would back off and end it in 2 minutes, making it sound like your lucky they have better things to do. But if they actually did "dig bleeb", within less than ten minutes, land cruisers or nissan patrols loaded with the "rabi3" would show up to take you on. Thee fights usually involved 10 or more people attacking one person. Weapon included a 7atta, slippers, or an Anees or Jawal (super sized cell phones). If you fought back, you'd be told stuff like "safrak". Usually, these fights would attract large audiences that would cheer on.
Somehow, although these fights happened outside of school, your principal (3andari, Jihad, etc) would know about it by Saturday morning and you'd get into trouble at school for it too (al nahda - 3 finger slap on face by Jihad. Choueifat - shit from 3andari followed by speech by Germanos followed by detention/suspension).
23- Still on the subject of male entertainment, you have played soccer at least once where the goal posts were either single red trapezium bricks or someone's slippers (n3al).
24- Unless you are one of our pakistani or indian friends, you probably can't speak Urdu/Hindi/etc, but somehow you still came out of Abu Dhabi knowing the lyrics to at least one urdu/hindi/pushto song.
25- You've gotten stuck in traffic atleast once, not because there was traffic, but because two people riding Nissan patrols or land cruisers recognized each other while driving, and decided to stop and catch up. They would park horizontally across the road blocking all traffic until they were done catching up.
26- Unlike most other newspapers, where every paper wants to know who shot you where, UAE newspapers refer to the main players in a story by initials only. You could steal, kill, rape, traffic drugs, and still only have your initials appear in the paper (that doesn't mean you don't get punished for it though, we're only talking newspapers here). Initials were usually composed of a minimum of 4 letters, eg:
Mr. A J K B A N was caught in Abu Dhabi airport with 25 tons of Cocaine. Mr. A J K B A N, a UAE national, was charged with carrying illegal substances and fined dhs 100,000 followed by 25 years in an underground, no air condition cell.
Most entertaining was the classifieds section of Gulf news. Its the only news paper where renters can specify the religion, job, eating preferences, and province of origin of a potential room mate. Here is one taken word for word from Gulf News (really, this is no joke):
1 bed space in C.A/C flat, in Hor Al Anz, available for an Indian (Keralite) nonsmoking vegetarian exec. bachelor working for reputed firm. Call 050-XXXXXXx
(we hid the numbers to avoid high volume prank calls).
Even better are job postings. You can specify sex, nationality and even age. For example (again this is a real life word for word ad):
Accountant, MBA graduate, female, age below 35, preferably hailing from the Philipines, with 3-5 yrs. exp. & familiar with feasibility studies, reqd.
Labels: 80's abu-dhabi, 90's
