July 6, 2021 - Tuesday • Meeting With Friends After 1 Year and 6 Months (Late Post)

Ya'll might be wondering why I shut myself out from my friends for 1 1/2 years. It's a long story and I'm not about to discuss it here because it's all in the past. Today, we move on.

My day started out with a hot chocolate from Paul. I decided to get productive and catch up on my video editing as I was behind on my Youtube uploads. It was around 10am during this time and we were meeting at 2pm, which meant I had 2 good hours to spend focused on my work.

Finally at lunch time, I saw my friends (aka my extended family) after what felt like forever. Sitting down and talking about life in general (and i mean the heavy stuff like obstacles, depression, toxic families, moving on, etc) felt so good.

We decided to have lunch at Al Baik - which apparently is a famous fast food chain from Saudi. They recently opened a branch in Dubai mall and the lines have been crazy long. It'll take you an average of 30-45 minutes before you reach the cash register. That day though, it looked like the universe was in our favor and the line was shorter than we anticipated. At the moment, they only have two mains to choose from, the chicken nuggets and the fried shrimps. I heard that they wanted to test out the market for a while which was why they chose to limit the menu to two. The price isn't so bad as well: 15dhs for 10 chicken nuggets and 22 dhs for 10 shrimps and both includes fries, 2 pieces of sauce and a bun.

As for the flavor, I guess it didn't live up to my expectations. I thought there was more. The spicy chicken nuggets were good and the non spicy shrimps pretty much tasted like any other fried shrimp you can find out there. I couldn't taste the spicy shrimps because we were having such a serious and heavy discussion about life while we ate. I have to say though, the meal was a great comfort food 😅

That evening, I wanted to check out the TimeOut Market at Souk Al Bahar and possibly have dinner there too. However, the place was packed and the energy just didn't feel good overall. I ended up going back to Dubai Mall and instead I had dinner at Chinese Palace.

So I guess that's everything. And before I end this blog, here's a couple of things I'm thankful for today:
• The hot chocolate milk at Paul. It was my first time to try it and boy was it good!

• The kind staff at Paul who had the most pleasing energy the moment they greeted us at the entrance.

• The chance to be able to catch up on my video editing.

• Thankful for finally being able to see my friends, catch up and talk about life without judgements. I'm glad to have found people I can be vulnerable with.

• The food from Chinese Palace - I forgot how tasty their meals are!

• And the chance to make decisions and be myself today.

#personal