A surge of social activity marked the end of the year. Yeah. What got into me?

On Thursday night, we went to one of the 2-3 really nice French restaurants in the city, named Bord Eau, located in a big (too big, really) room in the Shangri La Hotel, and then we welcomed (as opposed to fought off) the new year with a little party in the new apartment.

We had been to Bord Eau before. It’s not like eating in Paris … enough little things are off to make you keenly aware than you’re still in Abu Dhabi … but it’s a fair stab at the French experience. Leah had the foie gras appetizer; I had Jerusalem artichoke soup. Leah had the venison special for her main course; I had the duckling (nice flavor, but a little tough).  We knew from our previous trip there that two courses would be plenty of food, and it was.

A curious thing: perhaps 50 people in the room and about 20 of them were … French. We could hear them conversing in their mother tongue. Seems odd. I’m French, and when visiting Abu Dhabi I go to a French restaurant? When in Abu Dhabi, don’t you eat the local cuisine? Leah’s theory is that more than a few French don’t really want to eat anything else. That for as adventurous and ingenious as French cooking is, many French don’t really want to try something that isn’t French. I’m beginning to think she’s right.

On New Year’s Eve, we spent the early afternoon in the madness of the nearest big supermarket, the Lulu “hypermarket” (grander than “super,” see?), which was nearly wall-to-wall people. The staff there could not stock the shelves fast enough to keep up with the demand, and it was sure to pick up as the day went on. We were picking up munchies for our little gathering, and shopping for the week. We each had the day off, which was a big break.

Eventually, there were six of us in the room as the final minutes of the year ticked down. Our guests had brought two bottles of champagne (to add to our one) and a bottle of Italian red, and we were set.

I was keen to listen to a former co-worker, a friend of Leah’s, talk about her work and life in Kabul. Yes, Afghanistan. She works for an NGO there, working on the startup of an English-language wire service. She’s brave or bold or maybe reckless. It’s been fairly quiet, of late, she said, but the Taliban is always out there lurking.

Another of our friends, a young woman from Russia, just got a job in marketing at a huge new hotel in the middle of the city, but it doesn’t yet have its liquor license (despite being owned by a member of the royal family) and that is damaging its business on the food and beverage side. It’s early in the history of the hotel, and everyone has ideas of how to make things work, and it sounds fascinating.

The other four of us … National veterans. And counting our friend from Kabul, that meant five of us who had been at the same newspaper, and spouses of journos know how that is going to turn out. We might stray into other topics … stick our toes in the water of politics or religion, but eventually we’re going to be talking about the paper. We get kinda narrowly focused.

The wine was nice (some of the L’Oupia Minervois we had brought back from France in October), and we had salami and nuts and olives and three types of cheese — a pungent Camembert we had brought back from France; a really nice Brie and an Emmental. All kinds of crackers and a substandard baguette from Lulu.

Just before midnight we tried to get the TV going to see the fireworks show in Dubai at the Burj Khalifa (world’s tallest building; did we mention that?) … but the thing wouldn’t work. Though it had the one time we’d turned it on, three weeks ago. One of our friends had said she didn’t like the whole “countdown” thing, anyway, and we never did get the TV to work … so at about 12:01 we “clinked” our plastic champagne flutes and wished each other a happy new year.

What I miss at this time of year is college football. A batch of games on New Year’s Eve, and scads more on the First … but not in this neck of the woods.

Anyway, we had NYE at home for the second straight year in the UAE. Four of us on the patio of the Teeny Apartment a year ago, and six people inside (it actually was almost cool outside) in the bigger and nicer apartment this year, and I like entertaining on NYE. I’d rather shop before and clean up after … then go somewhere else.