How to get into the British Club without really trying

...just waiting a long time.

Way before we moved here, we spent a couple of entertaining evenings at The (British) Club -- I still can't bring myself to call it "The Club" -- eating, drinking, and answering trivia questions during Quiz Night. It was fun enough (and cheap enough) that we decided to apply for membership as soon as we moved here, realising that we'd probably be on the bottom of an 8,000-name waiting list. And we pretty much were, until about 8,000 members chose not to renew their membership this past January. Who said economic crises didn't have their positive points?

So we got offered membership, and we took it, even though the British Club is far enough away that it might as well be in Dubai (which is not, contrary to what most of our friends think, the same as Abu Dhabi).

See what I mean? It really is out there in No Man's Land.

But I won't hold that against it. Clever old Sheikh Zayed was generous enough to give the expats a place to play and still keep them (and those nasty western habits like drinking and eating pig) at a distance. So The Club is nextdoor to the former animal market and across the water from a construction zone? Those little things matter a lot less when the beer costs 12 Dhs, the library has a decent stash of lit, and the hairdresser learned her trade in a country where women actually get their hair cut.

The beach is good (especially if you're into barge cranes like I am), the restaurants serve more-than-reasonable food at half the cost of a hotel eatery, kids need to be kept on a leash (ok, not really, but two-foot-tall people aren't allowed on the premises after 8:30 PM). There's a sailing club, a diving section, a drama group, and all sorts of other things to do.

And then there's the bar.

Actually, there are TWO bars -- the bar for expats, and the bar that is, as we were told on our orientation tour last summer, "preferred by some of our, um, local members." That's ClubSpeak for "The Wog Bar." Or maybe for "the bar where you are guaranteed to find an emirati sipping a beer at 11:00 in the morning."

This is the bar we generally like to visit, for a couple of reasons. One, there's a distinctive (and pleasant) lack of stupid music playing. Two, on any given night there will be a group of affable khandoura-clad men having a quiet drink, thus illuminating the ever-present hypocrisy I so enjoy pointing out.