a spendthrift shopping!

I felt the vibration of my mobile when the doors of the Dubai Metro closed and gained momentum for its journey from Khaleed Bin Al Waleed, the Bur Dubai station. It was my friend at the other end. He asked " Buddy, Where you now? Just wait there at Bur Dubai. I will come there and pick you up. I left my office". It's often that he comes out with a last minute plan, I thought and said "Nops man, I've already started from Bur Dubai". I told him that I will get down at Deira City Center and will reaching there in a few minutes.

I managed to walk some distance with my bag when I received another call from him and we agreed to meet at the nearby Virgin Mega Store. It was on the first floor and I saw him at the book section. He loves to read a lot and he always found time and money for his favorite books until I introduced him to the torrent sites. Now...he spends more time downloading all those books than reading. He seemed busy with his Blackberry and was typing something and it was the names of all those books that he wanted to download. To my surprise, he had noted more than 30 titles of B-books and he was smiling at me and that smile felt like a thank you note and now he is saving lots of money without purchasing new books.

I told him that my shoulders are aching because of my bag. He told me to wait a couple of minutes and saved another 100 bucks by noting down more titles while I checked out the twin sisters in identical pink outfits, standing in the nearby music section, enjoying some new English album releases and chirping away at each other like some nice birds. I tried acting cool forgetting my shoulder pain. Suddenly he interrupted me, pointing towards the title "101 ways to write killer Resumes" and smiled. Immediately I whipped out my mobile and started snapping away at the cover pages, saving myself some money. At last we came out of the shop and headed towards Sharaf DG, the electronics shop. He took the bag from my shoulders and entered the shop and I knew where he was heading towards. The Camera section! It was for the fifth time in this week I am accompanying him to the shop. I also liked to check out the new gadgets but on that particular day I was too exhausted and cursed him in my mind. As usual, he checked out both Nikon and Canon DSLR's and took some close ups and portraits of mine and distant snaps to check the clarity difference. No sales person attended us because they knew that our next step is to pretend discussing with each other like professional photographers and heading to the exit, saying that we will come back next day.

Stepping out of the shop only because of my compulsion, we went to the basement parking where the machine which validates our parking tickets. They started charging for parking from last day onwards which was already introduced a month ago and was free of cost to make the customers used to it. The security asked us to validate our ticket. He checked his back pockets in which he usually keeps the ticket, later his front pockets, shirts pockets, wallet and again the back pockets. He asked me whether I have seen the tickets and I said, I didn't along with checking my pockets for a confirmation. Before the security we both made some movements of Michael Jackson, checking our pockets and wallet and said him we lost the ticket. He pressed a key on the machine and told us to pay and collect the new ticket. On the screen what we saw is "Loss or Damage of the ticket- 150 AED". Seeing this he was shocked, stepped back and 1.50 in changes which I took out of my wallet fell on the floor. The security gave us a leaflet where the details are mentioned. Only for four hours, the parking is free and exceeding that time will be charged 20 bucks onwards to 8 plus hours costs 150 AED and over all the same word what we saw on the screen. I felt like high voltage electricity passed through my body and I started checking his pockets and wallet, took his cars key and ran towards it.

It was of no use when I searched in the car and we went to Virgin Mega Store, where he virtually saved hundreds of AEDs and to Sharaf DG where we checked the new brand cams, took closeups, portrait and other gadgets for free. We walked down the way once again and checked every where we went minutes back. We came back to the basement where the security stood and asked to validate or else pay the fine. If I had a chance I would have kicked his face, I thought and walked towards the car and checked. Finally he said, "Dude, I think we will loose 150 AED ". My mind was searching for some crooked ideas and failed to find a good one.

He walked towards the security and I followed him. The security pressed the button and the ugly screen again come off asking his money and I felt like he was about to pay for the names he had noted down. He told me to take the cam and capture the rare event but I got little confused whether he is out of mind. He put a 100 AED first and like a thirsty Vampire, the machine asked another 50 AED which he put later to get the new ticket. We walked towards our car, without saying a word. Before getting into the car, seeing my face, he asked, "Dude, Shall we make a move after our spendthrift shopping?" and we burst out in laughter and I heard the echo our loud laughter and I saw the security standing confused looking at us and he seemed like thinking, we would have gone mad, loosing our money. It continued for another 5 minutes and to stop it he told me, "Dude I think you don't mind to spent money for at least 2 days to buy our daily food and all".