It's Thursday: Why not kick off the weekend with a Chamas meat fest?

So it's basically one of the best deals around: Chamas, at the Intercon, offers unending meat, tasty salad bar – all deep fried bananas you want – and free-flowing caprihinas for about Dh300. (I say "about" because of the free-flowing you-know-whats.)

Canadian television reviewer tries to explain the popularity of reportedly sh*teous show

"Canadians would probably watch William Shatner make sandwiches or read the phone book."
-Andrew Ryan in The Globe and Mail today, trying to explain why Sh*t My Dad Says is a hit

Overheard at Heathrow Airport, Terminal 5

"Security at the other terminals is okay but here it is mad. I had to take almost everything off."

Mini-review: the Burger King pizza burger

"It had pizza sauce on it, which I wasn't anticipating."
-colleague, after a bite of a "slice"

Snap caption: Not a sign you see every day

Armed Forces Officers Club, Abu Dhabi

So there I was, a 9mm pistol in my hands

I do weird and different things in the UAE: spending too much time in malls, driving for hours in the desert to attend camel shows, checking out hunting exhibitions, dining in five-star hotels and the like. Which is how I found myself at the Caracal Shooting Club the other night, spending Dh230 on a lane and a box of 50 bullets. (Caracal is a made-in-the-UAE gun, by the way)

First of all, picking up a handgun like that is scary. Very scary. Even holding it unloaded freaked me right out. I think pulling such a trigger – slowly! said my patient teacher – is something everyone should do once. If only to put all that violence we are exposed to in video games, on television and in the movies in perspective.

This is a terrible killing machine and I found using it in a controlled environment exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I hope that doesn't make me a bad person. Bring ID. They are located in the Armed Forces Officers Club, open from noon to 10pm except on Fridays, when they are open at 2pm.

Turns out I am an okay shot.

And as always,  it all went down under the watchful eye of a (this time gun-toting) Sheikh Zayed, founder of the nation. 

Overheard in the newsroom

"Hello? I think I ordered food from you. It's been about two-and-a-half hours."