…coz you’re there for me tooo-oo-oooo

I moan alot about my lack of friends in Dubai, but it would be a little churlish of me not to mention that I do actually have the odd one or two. I have just enjoyed a fabulous evening with a girlfriend who I met here six years ago as part of a speed friend-ing program set up by my first, very sociable friend in Dubai (codename O). O was a mum, and therefore unlike me had access to a veritable mass of potential friends. She was also way, way more outgoing and friendly than I could ever aspire to being. With that in mind, she and I used to meet for a drink every Wednesday and she would invite unsuspecting school mums to join us for a road test. The rule of thumb was that if we agreed they were still fun after a few glasses of wine, we’d invite them again. Not many made the cut for both of us: rather she ended up with the most amazing social life and I sat on the edges wondering what I could possibly have in common with so many 30-somethings with children. The answer was not a lot, most of the time – as a newly-wed barely out of my 20s they just all seemed terribly grown up and slightly irrelevant. But meeting my friend was a different case, because she, like O, made me feel like I’d found someone to be ‘me’ with. I remember meeting her for the first time, a tall slim blonde waiting on a bench for myself and O outside the Mina A’Salam hotel, looking incredibly stylish and cool. Of course in reality she wasn’t any cooler than me – what she was was a wicked funny Aussie who reminds me more of Bree from Desperate Housewives than anyone else I’ve ever met. The three of us spent a very amusing evening together – and have had many, many more during the relative lifetime we have spent here.

Long term friends in Dubai are hard to come by and harder still to keep hold of as life propels us ever forward. I have been lucky enough to have kept a few close ones for the entire duration of my time here. I don’t see them too often, but like good friends anywhere in the world, I can just pick up where I left off a few months back. Problem is there is always the prospect of them(and maybe one day, me) leaving hanging over our heads, unlike at home. It’s taken me a long, long time to accept that in the expat world, close friends and longevity don’t necessarily go hand in hand. The conclusion I have come to lately, however, is that being an expat is a bit like being single: the longer you go without a long term relationship the more attractive one-night stands start to become. One of the mums from school (because I am now that irrelevant 30-something with kids) and I have recently ‘hooked up’ and get on really well. She is leaving in six months. The old me would have thought ‘what’s the point?’ and not bothered making plans for playdates with the kids or nights out. The new one thinks ‘what the hell’ and I have resolved to simply enjoy her company until she goes.

Another aspect to making friends in an expat community is that you don’t have to know each other very long in order to consider yourself close. A couple who we have known for just over a year recently left Dubai, and we were devastated because we had really enjoyed our time with them and genuinely considered them to be some of our best friends, despite the fact that actually we really don’t know an awful lot about eachother. The shared experience of simply living here plus a shared sense of humour seems to be what counts, and you make good friends in the strangest of circumstances as a result. I met someone at a soft play area about 18 months ago and whilst our kids never play together (in fact they don’t even know each other!) and we don’t have a single thing in common, we really enjoy going out for the occasional glass (read bottle) of wine and having a laugh to ease the day to day grind.

The pressure of course is to be friends, really good friends, with every person you meet. It is a relatively small pool and because you are thrown into it without any form of raft, the instinct is to find as many people as you can and grab onto them with all your might. But now I realise the best way to make friends here is the same as anywhere really – to just let it happen, and like buses, the really good ones will come along when you least expect it. Most will stay long enough to get you from A to B and some will stick around for a longer journey, but long or short-lived, really it’s the companionship along the way that matters. And if you can get to the end and have collected a few that will withstand the long distance friendships they will inevitably become, well then all the better.

I will survive

NOTE: Written last Thursday, 19th January.

Oh. My. God. I am going INSANE. Having recovered from the most extraordinary jetlag in the nick of time, my son started back at nursery last week. Three days later I picked him up to find not one, not two, but FIVE children had thrown up in the classroom, and with that I realised that it was only a matter of time before he too succumbed to this stomach virus that seems to be currently storming through Dubai with unrelenting speed, wiping out everyone in it’s path in plague-like proportions.

Last Wednesday night it hit, spectacularly, at 11pm. At 2am, when everything in a 5 mile radius had been stripped clean, twice, and the little man had passed out exhausted, I crawled into bed with him and spent the remaining hours he lay spreadeagled across 75% of it teetering on the edge, unmoving, poised with a bowl and trying to ignore the crippling pain in my hips and back.

After a night of no sleep, what better way to celebrate than with a day of feeling awful. I’m pretty sure I caught the bug but fought it honourably and managed to limit it’s effects to plain old nausea. Of course I was sick with worry of passing it on, which didn’t help, so I cancelled everything and then felt bad about that too, when my son appeared to make a full recovery by Friday morning.

But oh no, this bug is pure evil. It lay dormant for FOUR DAYS before finally rearing it’s head again on Monday, just as I had gotten used to the idea of having my mornings freed up and having just waved my husband off to foreign climes for the week. And since then I have changed approximately 20 nappies per day, washed my hands in so much of that awful dettol soap that they are cracking up, and have had approximately 12 hours sleep in total. I have not left the house except to go out on an emergency nappy buying mission, I have watched the same DVD of the Wiggles at least 7 times (the little man won’t watch anything else right now), and I have not spoken to anyone over the age of 2 for what feels like months.

I am very lonely. A sick child is not just upsetting but completely isolating too. I have relied on the power of Facebook to keep me sane but it hasn’t worked terribly well, I’m just appearing publicly unhinged instead of keeping it to myself. It’s one of those moments in parenting that no-one can explain to you about beforehand, that you wouldn’t understand even if they did. Of course the priority is my child, and I have to say this has been particularly upsetting to watch because it’s the first time he’s been ill and been able to understand and voice what’s happening to him. But I’m terrified of getting it too, and that is almost as bad as watching him suffer, because I know that being sick and having to be mummy at the same time is misery wrapped up in a box with a cherry on top. And finally, the rather more selfish bit of me is going loopy at being stuck in the house with no break and no time to myself, and I want him so badly to get better so that he can go back to school on Sunday that I’m feeling quite ill with guilt, never mind anything else.

But most of all I want to be rescued because this is so hard, and I know full well there is no rescue, it’s called parenting and I just have to get on with it.

Sunday 22nd January.

It’s over. My son is well and happy and back at school. My husband is home. I have 101 things to do this morning but wanted to finish this post before the feelings fade away and life goes back to normal again. Why? Because last week, in between the endless nappy changes and the tears, we had a ball. Forced together with no-one else to rescue us and unable to leave the house, we did all sorts of activities that I wouldn’t usually do on a day to day basis – cooking, making dressing up costumes and props, attempting huge floor puzzles, building houses with lego, holding tea parties in tents, making collages, assault courses – you name it, we’ve done it this week. And I can truthfully say I’ve had a lot of fun getting to know my son a little more than I did before as we explored all of this together. Not that I’m a terrible mother the rest of the time – it’s just easy to get complacent and let them play with the same old toys while you try your best to organise the rest of life around them.

I know that there were certainly moments last week I wasn’t proud of and I let the tiredness and the stress get to me on more than one occasion – but for the most part, I feel that both my son and I rose admirably to the challenge and we survived, together as a team. It was one of the best and worst weeks of motherhood to date. And although I’m mighty glad to have a quiet, empty house this morning, to be able to go to the bathroom without company, and to drink a cup of tea in its entirety before it gets stone cold, I kind of miss the little fella.

An observation

I am usually so busy dodging potentially life threatening situations driving along the Al Khail road in Dubai that I don’t generally pay attention to what’s going on anywhere except on the road. Yesterday was a rare treat in that my husband was driving, so I got to take a look around me. As we drove through the sandy wasteland that lines the road on either side, I started to actually look and see that it was full of life, easily missed and strangely cinematic to observe. It was Friday, the single day off that many of Dubai’s population are given, the weather was cool and the traffic was as calm as it gets. Construction workers, out of their usual uniforms of blue and dressed in every colour of shirt, trouser, dhoti and sarong, were holding hands with their friends and strolling and laughing along the main stretch, their freshly laundered boiler suits strung like bunting across the makeshift back yards. Underneath the giant electricity pylons whose wires stretch for as far as the eye can see in each direction, groups of young men with energy left to spare after a gruelling week on the building sites of Dubai played countless games of cricket and soccer, each huge hunk of metal hosting a new set of players enjoying the grid-like shade. Interspersed between were the entrepreneurs: a make-shift barber shop erected against a wall where three diligent men worked keenly on their client’s hair whilst another group stood chatting, waiting to take their places on the stools. A snack stand where older men crouched low on their haunches and chewed the fat. No doubt there was more that I didn’t see as we cruised along at 120km/hr, but what I did manage to take in as we passed was genuinely wonderful. A window onto a world we rarely see in Dubai, and know so little about, it was a silent movie worth watching.

There’s no business like showbusiness

During the past twelve months it would appear I have woken up from my post-baby coma and remembered that in a previous life, before Dubai took me over, I used to have a hobby – a passion, even. Theatre has been part of my life since I was born – in fact some would argue before that, as courtesy of my mother, I appeared onstage as a can-canning foetus. Through the years I have veered between performing onstage and working behind the scenes. My tweens and teens were spent in several musical theatre companies, one of which gifted me the best friends I still have today. In my early twenties I switched to backstage, graduating in Technical Theatre Arts from drama school and becoming a stage carpenter and stage manager before being gradually lured away to the more lucrative corporate world of conference and events and eventually abandoning theatre altogether. My late twenties saw a musical theatre revival as I once again returned to tread the boards, and I was privileged to perform at such wonderful places as the magical Minack open air theatre in Cornwall. And then we moved to Dubai, and after several failed attempts in the early days to find anything remotely resembling a group of like minded people, I forgot all about it.

After my son turned one and my brain had stopped leaking little grey cells out of my ears, I wanted to find something to do for myself, and theatre once again became part of my life. This time, in the absence of a musical theatre group in Dubai, I turned to straight drama and enrolled in a course to flex my acting muscles for the first time. And I love it. It’s so different from musical theatre, of course, that I can hardly believe it’s related, but all the years of performing and training and watching the professionals at work have obviously sunk in enough that I would appear to be fairly competent at it. Who would have guessed I could be a drama queen? (Cue shock from family and friends).

So, unashamedly, I am plugging the play I am about to appear in, because I am hoping there are a few Dubai readers out there that might be curious enough to come along and watch.
I can wholeheartedly say that it is one of the best things to have happened to me in Dubai, to have met people who are all the same as me in one sense, but so different in others. To mix with men as well as women of all ages in contrast to my usual ‘female aged 30-45′ dominated world. To meet real characters who are interesting and fun to get to know – a little bit oddball and artsy and the kind of people I can feel comfortable around, and truly be myself. To rediscover a love and a talent that was lost and to finally find somewhere I can belong (oddly, given the nature of the beast, without judgement). And it has challenged me – on stage and off – in a way that coffee mornings and gym sessions do not and cannot.

If there are any actual or potential trailing spouses out there reading this, I can only say that finding something to be passionate about could well be the key to being happy and fulfilled away from home. It’s only taken me five and a half flippin’ years to work this out, of course.

Buy a ticket.

Another year over..

And so here we are, suddenly, at the end of another year. Traditionally the time to reflect on what has been, and start fresh with new ambitions, hopes and dreams for the 12months ahead.

My year began on a sad note, with my grandad passing away after a long struggle against dementia. Despite him being gone from us for a lot longer in reality, I miss him very much and find myself thinking about him a lot this past few days. I think he would have immensely enjoyed seeing my son grow from baby to little boy this year.

The first quarter of the year was tough for a number of reasons, and went by in a haze of sleepless nights and a few too many tears. Spring was a recovery period in one sense but found us the victim of numerous illnesses as my son bought one thing after another home from his first term at nursery. My favourite was the noro virus which we managed to bring back to the UK with us and systematically wipe out half the family a week before my sisters wedding. Fortunately we were all better, if a bit thinner, by the big day.

The summer, despite living out of a suitcase for most of it, was the highlight of this year. We had the most amazing time and it really helped to show us what was important in life. We came back from the trip knowing who we were as a family, what we wanted for ourselves, and with a clear vision of how life should progress. Returning to Dubai again in september was tough and it has been hard to accept that we are still not leaving any time soon. But having resolved to make the most of our beautiful autumn weather, I really feel like we did this year. The weeks leading up to now have been a total joy and really such a lot of fun that in actual fact it was hard to drag ourselves away.

Somewhere around the middle of this year I began writing this blog in a bid to release some of the negativity and loneliness I felt around living as an expat, trailing spouse and mother of one. And as I sit on a sofa somewhere north of Boston listening to the chatter of my family all around, I realise the huge emotional and spiritual journey that I feel I began this year will no doubt continue into the next.

2012 holds much promise for me. I feel that I have begun to make peace with myself in a way that I have struggled to up until now. My role as a mother no longer seems to bind me and terrify me in equal parts, but instead I find myself enjoying it and savouring all the special moments that seemed to evade me for so long. And so this forms resolution no.1 on my list, to continue to grow as a parent and be the best mother I can be, without totally stressing myself out about it in the process.

I also feel our summer hiatus from Dubai, and the inevitable but reluctant return have left a deeper mark than usual on me this year. I know now where we are headed, and with an end game in mind I am better able to accept where we are now, and look toward the future with an optimistic and open mind, all the while acknowledging that the here and now is just as important and worthwhile. So to my resolution no. 2: to enjoy the moment, to make the most of where we are, where we live and our lives as they stand. To plan for the future without wishing away the present. To make the most of our time in Dubai because life will not always be this way. To look forward to the future without missing it so much.

I have lost a lot of friends in Dubai this year, from those moving away to those who dropped off the face of the earth, to those who are no longer around because of sad or exceptional circumstances. I’m not sure I will ever truly accept the nature of expat friendship, in that vein of here one day, gone the next- but I am trying my best to appreciate it really is nothing personal and is simply the nature of the beast. So to resolution no.3: to make friendships where they present themselves, to accept the demise of others, cherish the ones that last, and to pick up the phone to home, to someone I trust with my heart and soul, when it all gets too much.

There have been many moments this year I am not proud of. I have struggled to figure out why they came so thick and fast, and why I seem to lack the self control of others when it comes to expressing myself appropriately to my nearest and dearest. But my resolution no.4 is not to dull these feelings and pretend they are not there, rather to find a better way to show them, and to take advice and help when it is offered instead of brushing it away like an unwanted fluff bunny.

Resolution no.5: get tennis lessons. No deeper meaning to that, I just think given some lessons I’d be pretty good at it.

I have other aspirations for myself for the coming year but find them clashing dangerously with my ‘list of things to do before I’m 40’ and given I have a few more years to achieve them I don’t feel I have to commit to them right now. I also have a ‘list of things to do before we leave Dubai’ formulating, which I am keeping separately from either my 2012 resolutions or my 40 list in the vain hope it falls somewhere between the two to accomplish.

So really I guess my 2012 hopes and dreams boil down to a simple wish: to have fun and relax, be good to my family, kind to myself, and when all else fails go out and hit a few balls. Happy new year to you all.

There’s no Christmas like snow Christmas

I’ve tried. And tried. And tried some more. I cooked a full Thanksgiving dinner to get myself kick started. I relented and even though we’re leaving on the 12th December, I put the tree up. I spent the week going out and doing the festive social thing. I wrote my cards. I even wrapped presents and stuck on the Christmas CD while I did it. But it doesn’t matter what I try, I simply can’t get into the Christmas spirit in the middle of the desert while the temperature is still in the 70s and we’re hanging out by the pool.

Sunset, mum's garden, Christmas 2009

My son has Santa coming to visit his school on Thursday, at which I am helping out, quite possibly against my better judgement (there’s only one person guaranteed to make a toddler cry harder than the school photographer, and that’s Santa). At the moment I feel like the Grinch because I just can’t get excited about someone’s Dad getting sweaty in a Santa suit pretending to have come from the North Pole. Let’s face it, if Santa came to Dubai one would assume that he would stick a pair of red shorts on with a (real)fur trim and swap the hat for a pair of designer shades before making various demands to ‘see Dubai’ including a trip to Wild Wadi and a look at the fountains. Topped off with Friday brunch at the Al Qasr in preparation for the 2 billion mince pies and 400,000 glasses of sherry he’s going have to work through in a few weeks.

Christmas in Dubai is a bit of a confusing time in general. Clearly it’s not a local festival but the shops, hotels and schools are full of it. Music, decorations, the works – sometimes you even see evidence of the actual meaning of Christmas rather than it just being ‘Santa Day’. Today I stumbled across a chocolate filled ‘Prayerful Christmas advent calendar’, which aside from being one of the most gross examples of religious/consumerist Christmas cross-breeding I’ve ever seen, filled me with surprise that it was even allowed. Because despite the odd card with a stable on the front, Christmas in Dubai is basically all about Santa. I wonder if it’s the same everywhere else? It’s hard to tell if it’s because Dubai is such a consumerist environment and because it’s a Muslim country or whether it’s the same everywhere. It’s not something I really paid attention to back in the UK, because I didn’t have kids and Christmas to me was a silly hat and spending a night up in town with my mates. But now I find I am a bit sad about the lack of ‘Christmas’ in Christmas, which is even stranger given I’m not a religious person. Maybe I’m getting old, but I kind of feel that if you’re going to celebrate Christmas, you should at least know the story.

One friend posted on FB last week that his son was playing Elton John in his school’s upcoming Christmas show. So maybe the traditional Nativity play is a thing of the past even if you are in the UK. It’s a shame because I would love to one day see my son dressed as a shepherd, or a King, or the Angel Gabriel (he would make a good Gabriel, I feel; Jesus, not so much, it’s a bit-part at best really) and I think it’s a wonderful way to tell a story that might not have meaning to most of the kids or parents but at least helps create some tradition around the whole thing, and particularly for young children, is the one part of Christmas that isn’t about Santa and presents. How can you find any deeper meaning in being Elton bloody John for crying out loud?

But despite what seems to be a widespread post-modern secularisation-gone-mad of Christmas, and another horrendous and rather stressful travel schedule, I am counting down the days until we fly to the UK, because for me that’s when it really starts. It’s cold, and dark, and wet, and everyone is sick and/or miserable, but around the time I arrive that will all magically transform into ‘feeling Christmassy’ and everyone will begin to embrace the idea of winter rather than fighting it. I will get to my mum’s to find a tree that’s twinklier than even Dubai can pull off on it’s best day, the disco ball in the conservatory will be on a slow rotate to make it ‘snow’ (OH YES THEY DO), and let’s not even talk about the motorized angel on the top of the tree that due to an unfortunate hand motion will forever be known as the wanking fairy. Each night I will stare out at the clear, crisp starry sky from the warmth of the house, and wake up to frosty winter fields, unspoilt and beautiful. I will stamp my feet on the station platform to warm them while I wait to travel up to town in my silly hat and celebrate with my friends. Then off to the US and to the snow, to watch my husband and son playing outside and give them hot chocolates to warm them up when they come in. To decorate our new USA Christmas tree that will sit by a fireplace instead of by the patio doors, and start new traditions as we wrap our presents in the warm instead of in air conditioning. To kiss and hug and laugh with friends and family on both sides of the pond. To see my son light up and fall in love with his grandparents all over again. To hold my niece for the first time. This is Christmas.

“No, it’s not my home address…”

I’ve just wasted another hour of my life on the phone to a UK customer services department, wondering not for the first time how the hell the world is still turning. This time, I made the mistake of ordering some winter clothing for my son online, and had them delivered to my mum’s house. Why did I do this? So that I don’t have to contend with the grossly overinflated prices that this particular brand is subject to in my local shopping mall, so I have more choice in what I am buying that’s actually available in his size, and finally so I don’t have to pack any of it. However, I’m beginning to wish I had just bought it all here and put up with the expense and inconvenience.

I stupidly assumed that all online shopping works the same way as that most wonderful of sites, Amazon: You choose what you want, put it in a virtual basket, pay for it and give a billing address, then tell them where you’d like it to be sent to. Well, apparently not. Apparently, if you shop at Next online, it goes a little more like this: You choose what you want, put it in a virtual basket, pay for it and given a billing address, tell them where you’d like it to be sent to, then they send it there, decline your credit card without telling you, set up an account for you without asking and then email you a month and a half later to tell you you owe them money. Then they refuse your card again, then you call customer services, then they tell you that you have to pay for the goods with a card registered to the delivery address and that the only way for you to pay if you don’t have a card registered to that address is to borrow the money from your mum who does, and perform a completely unnecessary bank transfer to pay her back.

When querying this slightly crazy payment system, I was told it was in the T&Cs when I set up the account. That will be the account I didn’t set up, of course. I actually thought it was pretty strange that they just set up an credit account for me without asking. Most websites that don’t like a my heebeejeebee foreign muck credit card tell you by rejecting you outright; they don’t tend to deliver the goods, send you a catalogue and set up a monthly billing plan. But regardless of what the policy is, the thing I found strangest was that the customer services person in question didn’t seem to wonder why it would be useful to be able to take a foreign credit card for a UK delivery. Or indeed any card not registered to the delivery address. And in fact I did try asking what would happen if I wanted to buy a gift for someone and have it delivered to them, but apparently you can’t do that either, unless you have their credit card details or get it sent to you, both of which sort of defeat the object. It suddenly felt all very familiar – we have often found ourselves rejected from buying in US online stores too because they also adopt the policy that unless you have a US address for your credit card, you can’t shop. Given I can walk into any store in the US and purchase items using the same foreign credit card, I’m not sure what their point is. But rarely have I found this to be the case on a UK website and it really took me by surprise. Maybe I’ve just got too used to buying everything from Amazon.

So, back to my phone call, which by now of course was starting to wind me up a little. I asked if I could change the delivery address on my account to my UAE address I could make the payment. But the answer was no. In fact, they suggested I should have set up the account here, not the UK, and then I wouldn’t have caused myself and them such a problem. Aside from the fact that they don’t even have a UAE website, I DIDN’T SET UP AN ACCOUNT, THEY DID. Also they don’t deliver internationally, so even if I managed to set up an account I didn’t want in a country they don’t cover, they would have charged me in Dirhams and delivered it here. Which of course, is completely futile when I could nip down to the mall and actually go in the shop in half the time.

The point of online shopping, surely, is to be able to acquire items for gifting purposes or because you can’t conveniently walk down the road to buy them. Most people don’t get annoyed by technicalities such as I experienced because most people buy for themselves and in their own country. But given the world is supposed to be getting smaller, there seems to be a distinct lack of understanding with regards to the needs of the people that actually travel it. Maybe I am completely ignorant when it comes to international financing laws, but surely I should, in this day and age, be able to go onto any website, buy something for delivery to an address of my choice, and pay for it however I deem appropriate? And I’m sure there is some hugely technically or legally complicated reason, but if some sites can do it, why can’t everyone? It’s time to put the ‘world wide’ back into WWW, people.

Old Timer

Talking to some recently arrived expats this weekend, it occurred to me that as we hurtle towards the six year mark, we really have been in Dubai quite a long time. An unbelievable amount has changed, so much so that you forget what a dinky little town it still was when we first got here in the Spring of 2006. In fact when we first came to visit, six years ago next month, the Madinat was pretty much brand new, as was the Mall of the Emirates, including the famed Ski Dubai. Everyone was very, very excited about these projects, heralding as they did a new era for Dubai and the start of the boom years. But that was pretty much all there was to get excited about. Downtown Dubai, including the Burj Khalifa, had barely broken ground. There was no sign of a Metro system. Gotham City (aka JBR) was just a glint in the eye of the developers, and in fact barely any of Dubai Marina was built at all. The ‘Original Six’ as they are known to residents of the high rises in the area, were pretty much the ‘only six’ – very few of the other towers that now occupy that part of the Marina were finished, and at the far end there was nothing but empty plots. There were no celebrity chefs (Gordon Ramsay excepted, a pioneer by all accounts), no designer hotels, and certainly no Waitrose.

Burj Khalifa in August 2006

Sheikh Zayed Road may seem daunting to newcomers now but back then it was an actual racetrack which required nerves of steel to negotiate. There was no slow lane on the SZR and no lane discipline (well that still applies). But there were also no speed cameras, meaning no speed limit – just seven lanes of high-speed terror with cars veering wildly to cut in front of you at 180km/hr whilst their drivers sent text messages or read the paper or did their make up. I vividly remember the first time I drove the SZR on my own to go the 40min journey from the Marina to my teacher training college in Bur Dubai (basically one end of Dubai to the other). By the time I arrived I was in such a sweat and had cramp in my hands from gripping the wheel so hard, I swore never again, and in fact I avoided driving that way altogether for the next 9 months.

Roads have altered so much they are barely recognisable to what they were a mere half a decade ago. In fact quite often there was no road. You would be headed to a destination and it would just run out, or the road that had been there the day before would have been moved or blocked, and you had no idea where it had gone or how to get to where you wanted to go. Everything (and I mean everything) was covered in cones and red and white stripey tape and there was yet to be a population explosion of ‘Flag Man’ to warn you of impending road changes that may or may not be life-threatening. I remember one time getting lost and the road running out, and having to turn around to get out – due to a complete lack of signage or security we nearly backed into a 30++ foot deep hole that is now something very tall in Media city.

Everything seemed much further apart because the bits in the middle hadn’t been filled in with shops and houses and office blocks. Driving out to Arabian Ranches was like driving to the end of the world, via the world’s most terrifying roundabout – all six lanes of it with no traffic lights and no speed limit made for a pretty exhilarating experience- now replaced by an extremely civilised (if somewhat dull in comparison) interchange.

There were no fountains to rival the Bellagio, no tallest building in the world, no reclaimed land that could be seen from space. When we first visited in December 2005, the Palm was still being dredged up and the view from the coast was actually of the sea rather than of the twinkly lights of villas and the imposing archway of the Atlantis, although admittedly even then the faint hum of the dredgers was audible and the first cranes had already taken up residence on the trunk.

People were different too. The expat community was only just beginning to explode and many western expats were old-timers who had come to Dubai in the good old days when it really was still a hardship posting. It was like the 80s had never left, the men with mullet hair and every other woman dressed as either Felicity Kendall, Princess Di or Barbie, or some sort of hideous combination of the three. With only 200,000 western expats in the entire city, and a relative handful of places to hang out, everyone looked familiar wherever you went, largely because they were. Old timers and newcomers were definitely two very different breeds though. I reckon the community spirit probably left Dubai around the time we arrived. The new generation that arrived were fast, flashy and hungry – and ever so slightly greedy. I secretly think that it didn’t suit the old school at all, to have their quiet little tax free haven destroyed by the new kids on the block.

Accommodation was scarce and competition fierce as the mass influx of new expats continued. Not like today where every other street has properties for rent or for sale. As they flooded in by the thousands, newcomers were actively encouraged to reside in the newly finished (or not quite finished) areas of ‘New Dubai’ rather than the older, more worn but ultimately better located villas of Jumeirah and Umm Sequim. Landlords charged what they wanted and changed the rules as they pleased. A law was passed to cap rents for three years in row just to try and control the problem of rent inflation. Odd to conceive of now that there was a time where you considered yourself lucky to get the apartment you actually wanted rather than it going to a person who saw it half an hour before you did.

…and five years on in all it's glory

Back then I was also blogging, and I took some time out from writing this post to go back and revisit the ‘me’ of 2006, to get a sense of what it was like to be new again. ‘Rather over-excited’ would be my summary. It’s weird, because all I remember is being dreadfully, desperately homesick, but if you read my blog it sounds like I am having the most amazing time ever! I suppose that sums up the whole experience really – a thrilling and daring adventure to be in this place that was growing by the day, and so full of new things to see and do – but at the same time horribly lonely for friends and family. It’s interesting to see how much of the landscape of Dubai has changed since then, and yet to realise not much has changed at all in terms of our life – there are still enormously exciting and unique opportunities and experiences to be had here, and yet the comfort and familiarity of ‘home’ is still the thing I miss on a near-daily basis. Talking to my friends who are new to the life of expatriatedom, it’s easy to see they are in the full throes of being ‘new’ and it’s really refreshing and rather sweet to observe, because they don’t have years of the annoying stuff about living here to bury before they can be excited about it. They are completely ignorant of some of the more important things they should know, like what will get you put in jail, for example – but at the same time in that period where the culture, the landscape and the history is something to be immersed in before the day to day drudgery of normal life takes over and living here becomes like living anywhere else except with inconvenient dress codes, crap broadband and a longer commute to see your mum.

But honestly, how amazing will it be one day to look back on our time here and know that we watched a city be built around us. It might be difficult and painful at times to live here, and to live away from home, but I guess with a little help from the Newbies, we should be reminded from time to time that it is, as the billboards of Burj Khalifa’s building site used to say, ‘History Rising’.

Lousy day

I choose not to write about being a mother terribly often, I don’t know why but I guess because I don’t believe that my child and our ongoing relationship is particularly interesting to most people, and also because I like to make my world bigger than just him and me occasionally. However today I make an exception because I am having a terrible day, in fact the whole week has been less than ideal – and it’s wearing me down in a big way. I know I am supposed to be the grown up, and the bigger person, but my dear toddler is so unbelievably wilful and stubborn at the moment that it is hard not to completely lose the plot. Everything I do is wrong. Everything I offer, from shoes to food to activities, is not what he wants, unless it is, and in which case you have to offer something else first for him to turn down so that he can say he wants the thing you offered in the first place. Everything is ‘I do it by myself’, even things he cannot possibly do, like climb into his car seat, or do the button up on his shorts, or use a knife to cut up his fruit.

I admit that he has cut three teeth in two weeks and the back molars are now on their way too, which may go a long way to explaining his grouchiness. I have also had visitors here and I’m tired from burning the candle at both ends, so my patience is not at its best. And I know alot of it is simply a)his age and b)just how little boys are. But today I am considering voting myself ‘World’s worst mother’ because I harbour a vague hope that if I do, I can take the rest of the afternoon off from endless negotiation, from using the phrases ‘please don’t do that’, ‘no’, and ‘because I asked you not to’ and from having to swallow my inner child who is screaming right back at my little stroppy cherub to just put the damn shoes on, stop moaning at me all the time, and realise that you have it pretty good actually, little fella.

I have to go and wake him up from his nap now, so I can only hope that he wakes in a better mood than he went to sleep in, and that instead of saying ‘no, mummy!’ and refusing to budge from the bed, he will smile and melt my heart and we can giggle at something wildly unamusing before sitting down in front of the TV and having a thoroughly decadent afternoon of slobbing instead of the age appropriate activities I’m no doubt supposed to be offering but haven’t prepared because I’m too traumatised and tired to think about. In the meantime I can only tell myself that this time will pass, and try to feel a little better for letting a little of it out to my invisible audience.

Exit Stage Left.

Where are my pants

As any long-timer will know, ordering things online for delivery in Dubai has been notoriously difficult to accomplish until the genius invention of Shop and Ship, the launch of which has been a blessing and a curse, depending on if you are my husband’s wallet or not. However, as long as you steer clear of heavy things (delivery is charged by weight) and stick to items that weigh virtually nothing, it’s a great way of getting things that just aren’t available in Dubai. For example, mail order bikinis.

Yes, you read right. Bikinis. You’d think in a country that has year-round sunshine, that there would be plenty of places that sell them, but actually we’re rather short on variety, particularly in the winter season, because bizarrely just as the weather cools down enough to hit the beach, the shops bring out their jumpers and jackets ready for, well, I’m not really sure what

This is not my arse

because it never dips below 65. But anyway, swimwear – in my experience – can only come from three places: Beyond the Beach, which is everywhere in Dubai but unfortunately doesn’t provide the adequate support one needs for a bust more generous than a B cup; Debenhams, which I visited recently to find their holiday shop shrunk to the size of my downstairs toilet; and Harvey Nicks, who only make swimwear for 5’10” size zero AA twenty-somethings. Last time I ventured in their swimwear section the shop assistant actually laughed at me when I asked if there was anything in my size. Which given I’m not exactly large at a UK10 was more than a little rude. Hence mail order is my saviour and it doesn’t come better than Figleaves, in my experience.

So, a few weeks back I ordered a few different tankini and bikini tops for fat days and thin ones and then ordered the knickers to match, and then patiently waited for Shop and Ship to do their bit. Which they did, and lo and behold, five days later, I was the proud owner of…an open bag. All the tops had arrived, but the knickers, along with all the shipping paperwork, had mysteriously disappeared. After an initial ‘Grrrrrrr typical, why can’t anything go smoothly here?’ moment, I made a quick call to Figleaves and a new order was on the way (they really are very good!) whilst they investigated what happened to my pants. The replacements arrived in time for our holiday and I duly forgot all about it.

Until yesterday, when my loving husband turned up with my knickers, freshly delivered from the courier company. It was very nice of them to find them, but WHERE HAVE THEY BEEN? Who has been coveting my pants for the past two weeks? Why give them back? Are they even clean? Who has tried them on? Or were they just sitting on the floor of a delivery van for a fortnight? Do I need to fumigate them and will I ever feel clean when I wear them or will they forever be ‘the frilly polka dot pants that the courier wore’?

Of course the right thing to do is send them back, which will ironically cost me money to post them and probably due to massive confusion, end up with me getting a refund. Maybe next time I’ll stick to being laughed at.

Where's my ruby slippers?

There's no place like home. Especially if you don't live there.

Author Archives: FayeB