Frugal Expat

How We Were Kicked Out Of The Park?

The beautiful park on Friday afternoon

It was a great sunny and windy Friday yesterday. So my friends and I decided to have a late BBQ lunch at the park.   

Close to my home is an open park which is generally packed with kids and families on weekends. To our delight, the park this time was not crowded as there was only handful of “park dwellers” who were mostly couples.   

Anyway, we simply bought this instant disposable grill pack because we are only an occasional “park dweller”. Also, it is very reasonable as it costs approximately US$3 only for the small pack and there is no cleaning required.   

Instant disposable BBQ grill

Twenty minutes later my friend started to grill the pork bellies which she marinated in her special BBQ sauce concoction. All of us were hungry so we drooled for every piece of cooked barbeque meat. Half way to our BBQ cooking process, our attention (and hunger) was distracted by the police car’s siren. Then I realized that the people on the other side of the park were actually staring on our area. There were us and two other couples only on our side.   

Yummy pork BBQ

 So I turned around to see what they were staring at. Then I saw one policeman in a luminous green vest approaching the second couple while the first couple started taking their steps already to leave.   

Well, at that point of time, I just thought that perhaps the policeman sensed that the second couple was into some inappropriate intimate behaviour hence they were approached. Then maybe the first couple left too because it terrified them.   

Before I even found the answer to my curiosity, I saw this young handsome policeman walking towards us also.   

At that instant, my mind was already soaring with thoughts of possible offense which perhaps we committed.   

Maybe barbequing was not allowed in park (though impossible because we saw people grilling and roasting meats in the park on many occasions).   

Or maybe because we were grilling a pork meat.   

Eventually the young policeman came closer and informed us to leave. He said “not allowed”. We asked for any reasons but he didn’t replied.   

After he left, I saw the other handful of “park dwellers” packing their things too. And so we did.   

Then minutes later the park was empty.   

We could not fathom any other reasons for being kicked out from the park except that on that day, it was still the mourning period. The government declared a 3-days mourning due to the tragic loss of Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president’s younger brother. (Click here for details).   

As we walked past the park, we saw the UAE flags still at half-mask.     

So our BBQ lunch ended a lunch at home. We finished grilling the remaining pork belly meat in our George Foreman indoor grilling stove (luckily we had this!)   

Our George Foreman indoor grilling stove