WOHOOO!

So it's 4:44 a.m. now and I decide to update my lovely blog... Thanks everyone for the comments and replies, really appreciate it :)

Been a great day and week in general... Thanks to all the people I met and hanged out with for making it so good!

OK, where to start, hmm, OK should start with what is still fresh in my memory, was at Peppermint again, season-closing gig and what a party it was! Fortunately it was on a weeknight, thus, it wasn’t as packed as it usually is when held on Friday nights. That meant less posers and losers and MORE space to dance! Was at the front with the ‘ravers’ most of the time and I think I will appear in one or two of the videos that they post on their website. Not bad!

What is bad is that the Municipality has not given any licenses for clubs to have DJs this weekend, Peppermint had a great line-up for Thursday and Friday which is now cancelled, but heck, Marco V. dropped a stunning set, looked like a very friendly guy as well! Smoked quite a bit today and last night (Darren Emerson @ The Apartment, was the 5th birthday party for Time Out Dubai magazine), but I don’t think I will smoke cigarettes that much for a while as no parties are taking place during Ramadan… Bye bye fags, welcome to even more sheeshas ;)

Football-wise, thanks to my lovely sister and ‘that’ SMS buddy for keeping me updated today regarding the game while I was warming-up for the gig, Liverpool have FINALLY won, and we actually played well. We played against Newcastle United, a team where we usually have no major headaches beating; we had enough scares at the back and Newcastle had 3 penalty appeals, but overall they didn’t threaten much and we wasted chance after chance, our new Dutch dude Kuyt finally broke his duck and scored, although he should’ve come out of the game with a couple or even three but heck, he works his damn ass off every game, fighting for every ball, etc. but the highlight of the match was a moment of utter brilliance by our midfield maestro Xabi Alonso, who has been struggling with form since the start of the season but he’s been one of our best players in the last 3 games. He neatly won possession back in our half, took a few steps, looked up twice before unleashing a beast of a shot from his own half which went in despite Newcastle’s goalie desperate attempt to save it. We didn’t play THAT good but overall we are going in the right direction thankfully :).

By the way, the valet parking service at the Mina A’Salam hotel is horrible. Had to wait for my car for 15 – 20 minutes, and when it FINALLY came an idiot driving behind my car it (Another one of the valet parking staff) touched the rear bumper of my car, I mean how retarded can one be to do such thing? Thankfully nothing was damaged in either car but it was pretty stupid. I know that they sometimes have to park the cars on the other side of the road but heck, why do they have 20 men literally standing there doing nothing? When I was looking for someone to give my parking ticket to one of them three bored-looking parkers rushed my way! Why don’t they provide better service by having a few of them stay in the massive parking lot across the road and phoning them or something whenever a guest gives them the ticket? Anyway, I heard worse stories happening with stupid valet parking staff, if only extra parking spaces are created, a place like Madinat Jumeirah for instance or Mercato definitely needs bigger parking facilities, too late though to do anything about it.

Also since we are talking about service and quality, what is it with Japengo at Madinat Jumeirah?! I went there with S & S before heading to Peppermint with yet another S, but Japengo wasn’t even in our original plans. We arrived at Madinat at around 9, and after getting lost for some time we decided to head to the Meat Company only to be told that we’d have to wait for an hour, went to Trader Vic’s and was told that it is full until at least 11 pm, we went to the very casual and laid-back Italian restaurant (Tuscana) and it was the same case… We went to Japengo and were surprised about how empty it compared to the other outlets that are all situated within 50 years of Japengo. But we learned the hard way why the place is aweful! The service is bad, the music is bad, there are way too many waiters around the restaurant, much more than needed. There is no back-of house area so we saw waiters polishing glasses in front of us and some other bored ones chatting for quite a while. Also something which pisses me off, I worked as a waiter before and I know that if it is the same waiter who takes and serves the order then he or she should know which order goes to whom when they’re serving, or at least ASK before placing anything on the table, when our drinks came the waiter just put them randomly without asking, we quickly changed the glasses but even when it came to the last glass which was obvious to whom it would go he served it to the wrong person… Hmm! A place called Japengo which has Japanese & Chinese food (And some Mediterranean as well) should have some music reflecting the former two, but I don’t think that Mariah Carey, Ragheb Alama and Kelly Rowland do that! The guy doing the juices kept on blabbing on the phone while working, a couple sat on a table nearby and they decided to leave for some reason, the manager was standing around talking and God knows how many waiters, did anyone bother to ask them why they left or if they want to change tables or whatever? NO! To be fair though we feared the worst for our food but it seems that the food made up for the service. It wasn’t perfect of the highest quality but it was good enough, at least way better than the abysmal service staff!

I guess I will sign off… Can barely see infront of me anymore and I am kaputt as our fellow German friends say… Guess I will have more to talk about tomorrow…

Take care everyone :)