Justins Saudi Adventure!: Cucumbers & Chicken Wings

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Cucumbers & Chicken Wings

If you read my posting a couple of days ago, you will know what I mean when I say I’ve been a bit of a “Terry” thiw week around the supermarket.

I use a variety of supermarkets in Bahrain such as Aljazira (no honestly it’s really called that!), Luna and Geant. However, when I want imported British foodstuffs (i.e. Proper tea, Bovril, marmalade etc..) I go to a small supermarket call Allosra.

Allosra is an unusual supermarket when it comes to prices. Some items there are bargains (good Terry) whilst some are outrageous (bad Terry).

For instance, BD 3.500 (£5) for one cucumber?! Is it made out of emeralds? Can you smoke it? Hs it been blessed by the Pope? What's the deal here?

I saw some Saudis buying them and I wondered whether I was surrounded by Princes and Princesses doing their supermarket shopping in Bahrain. Who else would pay that much for one cucumber?!

Later the same day I went into Aljazira where you could buy 8 frozen chicken wings for BD 0.280 (40p). That's 5p per wing.

So for the price of 1 Allosra cucumber you could have 100 Aljazira chicken wings.

Frankly, that sort of price is an affront to the chicken. Imagine dying and having your arms sold for only 10p. Talk about adding insult to injury.

I don’t think that the Arab’s have really got the hang of advertising here either. The biggest supplier of chicken is a company called Sadia who have advertising billboards all over the place.
To sell their fine poultry product they use a picture of a smiling, slurping, salivating cartoon chicken serving up a plate of cooked drumsticks. This is obviously a cannibal chicken who likes to roast and eat its own offspring!! Now that’s really adding insult to injury!

P.S. I did try and take a photo of one of the Sadia’s advertising billboards, but as I was about to take the picture, the police decided to come and have a chat with me…they are every bit as suspicious of foreigners with cameras as the Greek Airforce!! I ended up having to go down to the station to have all my documentation checked!!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Interesting to see an advertising billboard in Saudi Arabia written in Portuguese :-) [Sadia is a Brazilian company (sadia means healthy)]. Al Mir, Brazil.; 4 September 2009 at 18:18

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Glossary

Abaya - A long black robe designed to cover all of a woman's body
Haram - "Forbidden"
Istemarah - Car registration
Khalas - Finished, the end
Mushkilla - Problem
Muttawa - Religious policeman, the "authority for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice"
Throbe - Traditional dress for Arabic men
Ghutra - The tea-towel like headscarf worn by men
Iqual - The black band that holds the ghutra in place
Wasta(h) - Having powerful social connections
Insha’allah – God willing
Insha'allah Bakora - Tomorrow god willing ......or definetly not tomorrow in my experience, more likely next month, if you're lucky!
Iqama - Visa

Monty Python Sketch

Although its not anything to do with living in the Middle East, I find the following Monty Python Sketch hilarious and pub lish it in the hope it also brings a smile to your face:

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

ALL:
They won't!

Justins Saudi Adventure!

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Cucumbers & Chicken Wings

1 comment:

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