Television Trials and Tribulations

Okay, so some people have been asking me about TV in Abu Dhabi. I have a story. It was day two, or three here for me and I have decided that the women here are definitely not size XXL. So in order for my ego to survive I need to do something about that. Ramadan has helped because it is illegal to eat, drink, or smoke in public during this holy month. The Muslims are fasting from sunup to sundown. Once the sun reaches a certain point the people come out and celebrate. The malls and businesses are open until 1:00 a.m. and they have great feasts called Iftar.

After browsing through the CO-OP clothing racks and noticing that the XL shirts might fit a medium sized gal back in the states, and then getting all excited when I saw a tent that might fit me marked XXXXXL (yep, count ‘em, I did) FIVE X’s ! I decided it was time to hit the Beach Club. So, I moseyed on over early one morning past the pool and the running stream stocked with Choi fish, through the big glass doors and up the marble winding staircase to the gym. I scanned the area. It looked safe, only a few people, lots of my personal favorite machines, the treadmill, and I began to set myself up to… eh-hem, “workout.”

I strapped on my MP3 player, plugged the headphones into my ears, straddled the conveyer belt and started searching for the way to make the machine go. Ah, yes, “START.” No problem. All was going well for awhile until I began to scan the TV’s mounted on the wall. There were several and I noticed that the screen two treadmills down the row from me was playing Two and a Half Men! Yay! I was so excited to see Charlie and Allen that I decided I must immediately search for their channel on the TV screen on the wall in front of my treadmill.

Eventually I found their channel and then set about multi-tasking to simultaneously unplug my headphones from my MP3 player strapped on my arm, walk, locate the headphone plug on the treadmill, walk, plug the tiny little long silver prong into the tiny little silver prong hole on the treadmill, still walking, when I met with success! Headphones plugged in, but… no sound from my TV on the wall, well apparently that wasn’t going to work, so I decided, still walking, that I should listen to my MP3 player and try to read Allen’s lips, and I then began the task of hooking the darned little silver prong into the little hole in my bouncing MP3 player on my arm, still walking, when suddenly much to my surprise and chagrin, I found my feet deposited on the gym floor. I suppose I’m not much good at multi-tasking when athletics are involved.

Once I wiped the surprise off my face and giggled a little bit with the coordinated woman next to me, I resumed my walk and my search for American TV with Charlie and Allen. About that time a fit young man with a worldly accent came around with a remote and started to mute all of the TV’s in front of me. I asked him if that could have been the reason I couldn’t hear Charlie picking on Allen, at which point, he became oh so helpful and concerned about my welfare and needs.

He started pushing buttons on the monitor screen on my treadmill. Ah ha! TV shows started appearing on the monitor on my treadmill. It took him some time to find the right channel. He needed to go to other TV’s to get the right channel and then he had to push many more buttons on my treadmill, and by this time I probably only had about two minutes left to my 30 minute regime. I managed to smoothly transfer headphones once again from MP3 player to treadmill and…. Yes! I could hear them, Charlie and Allen….speaking…in Arabic. No subtitles. The English channels have Arabic subtitles. So long Charlie and Allen.  Sigh.