Category Archives: A Dubai ‘moment’

You know you are creating an expat brat when…

I’ve been poorly with the ‘flu over the weekend and so instead of getting some much desired family time I’ve spent most of the past few days curled up in a ball shivering. Whilst flaked out on the sofa I stumbled across this blog post about ‘Things you never said until you lived in Dubai’. It got me thinking about writing something myself but I couldn’t face the computer. Then my husband and son got home from Dubai Mall and – hey presto! The work was done for me.

Me: Where did Daddy take you for lunch?

My son (aged not-quite-three): We went to the Armani cafe

Me: Did you?! And what did you have to eat?

My son: I had a wagyu beefburger and fries and dip dip, but the dip dip was too spicy so I asked the man and he gave me some nice dip dip.

Me: A wagyu beefburger hey? Wow, aren’t you lucky?

Having picked myself up off the floor and raised an eyebrow to my other half, who claimed that ‘all the other restaurants were out of kids food’ I realised with a cackle of amusement and horror (I told you I was feeling ill) that we were indeed raising our own little expat brat. So here for your pleasure are the top 10 signs you might be headed that way too:

English: Dubai Mall

Mummy is this our new car? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. They automatically turn left when they get on the plane

2. ‘Lamborghini’ is one of their first 50 words

3. Princess manicures are a Thursday afternoon ritual

4. Their 3rd birthday party cost more that your first car

5. They refuse to wear any polo shirt that doesn’t have a horse sewn on it

6. They think all beaches come with free ice pops and a man that sprays you when it gets too hot

7. They are on first name terms with the staff at the Polo/Golf/Beach club (or indeed, all three)

8. You buy them the cute little housework set from ELC and they leave it outside the maid’s door

9. They can operate Skype before they are out of nappies

10. They think gold and silver are part of the colour spectrum

Bat Cat

My son has been ill and off school for nearly a week now and while he’s definitely on the mend things are moving quickly from mere boredom to full-on hysteria. This morning, in between breakfast and being forced to take a toy dog for a walk around the living room, I finally managed to get 10 minutes of uninterrupted time on my computer and stumbled across this story  tweeted by the breakfast DJ on Dubai 92 FM. I opened up the link to be greeted by a rather sick/amusing (delete as the mood takes you) tale of a man who converted his dead cat into a helicopter. My son happened to pass by as I was reading the story and saw the picture. Instantly renaming the poor pussy ‘BatCat’ he insisted on looking at the photos and laughing hysterically whilst shrieking ‘BatCat’ at the top of his voice. Upon tweeting Catboy the DJ (there are a lot of cats in this story, sorry) to tell him, he then related the story of BatCat on air and dedicated their ‘Topical Tune of the Day’ to my delighted son, who is still amused and excited in equal doses about the stuffed dead cat that flew on the radio.

I am so proud.

Small town/big city

In a city that is all about bigger and better, it’s sometimes nice to remember that Dubai is not exactly a sprawling metropolis. We’re always bumping into people we know – at dinner, on weekends away, in the mall – and quite often the circles that people move in are still small enough to induce that feeling of ‘where everybody knows your name’. Sometimes this is not so great – I should imagine complete reinvention is a little difficult – but often it produces a feeling of camaraderie that gives out a warm and welcome glow in such a transient place as here. This is no more obvious than when listening to the radio. Yesterday, a generous amount of airtime was being given to the installation of the new and rather controversial speed camera on Al Hessa Street. You can’t get more local than that, and there was something rather nice about the sense of belonging it gave me, to know exactly what they were talking about and why.

More amazing is that I’m feeling this generous about Dubai in 45 degree heat late on a Thursday afternoon with another eight weeks to go before I escape for the summer. Times, they are a-changin’….

Arachnophobia

To anyone who is a Facebook friend of mine, forgive me right now because you have already lived through most of this saga. To anyone who, like me, has severe arachnophobia, you might want to skip reading this post – particularly if you live in Dubai. For anyone that’s left, feel free to continue…

Some of you may recall my earlier post on the various fauna we attract in these parts. Well, guess what folks, we finally got our camel spider close-up. Of course it happened while my husband was away, because my encounters with nature always do, and it happened first thing in the morning, because these sorts of things can’t wait until after I’ve drunk my tea.

A bunch of varying types of flowers at an open...

I really did try to put a photo on for you but it kept making me feel ill looking at it. So here are some flowers instead

Fortunately our inquisitive and slightly annoying cat alerted me to the issue by sniffing around under the dining table as my son and I ate our breakfast. I glanced down to see what she was swiping at, assuming it was some poor lizard that had somehow found its way in to our hermetically sealed house, and my stomach lurched horribly as I saw a pale brown coloured leg the size of a teaspoon handle sticking out right by my feet. I whipped my son mid-mouthful out of his chair and flew to the other end of the kitchen, frantically trying to find the Pif Paf on the shelf whilst clutching my son and determinedly not taking my eyes off ‘the prize’. Which by now had come out to show itself in full five inch diameter glory. Well, even the cat backed off at that point. I had no clue what I thought I would do with the Pif Paf even if I found it and a thousand thoughts filled my head at once as I a)plotted our escape from the house, never to return, b)wondered if I was scarring my son for life by letting him see me scared shitless and for letting him see what it was that was scaring me, c)debated whether I could ever get near enough to spray the insect killer in any case, d)tried not to throw up and e)cursed my husband for being away whilst I do battle with my version of hell.

Fortunately, right by the Pif Paf was the door to our maid’s room. Despite the early hour (she doesn’t start until after breakfast in the normal run of things) I tapped on her door, cried her name in a somewhat shaky voice, and when she opened up, pointed at the dining table and croaked ‘insect killer’.

Thankfully, there is only one thing that moves faster than a camel spider, and that is our maid. She whipped out the can, a dustpan and the broom and went straight in for the kill. It took three rounds of spray before the thing was finally stunned enough (and crunched up enough) for her to scoop it up in the pan and get it out of the house. Then we heard a lot of banging, followed by her coming back in and announcing “Dead, madam, in the bin” and giggling at the quivering mess that used to be me.

After I had tried to restore a slight sense of normality and joviality into the morning (toast in the playroom anyone, so that we don’t poison ourselves with the smell of bug killer?), I got a description from our maid who had clearly got a lot closer than I had – and immediately called my Aussie friend to get confirmation of its identification (as I have previously noted, it’s always good to have an Australian on hand in these sorts of crises – they don’t get fazed easily and know by heart what can kill you). Identification confirmed, I then concentrated really, really hard on not throwing up for the best part of an hour. I spent all day avoiding putting my feet on the floor when sitting and totally freaked when I trod on some water that had dripped onto the floor from my glass.

The thing is, as anyone here will tell you, camel spiders are not venomous. And therefore, as anyone who clearly has never actually encountered one of these things will tell you, there’s no need to make a fuss. Well I tell you what, I defy anyone not to have been just a tiny bit scared by this thing. I have since discovered our maid is somewhat of an expert in the art of spider killing (although thankfully not all of them in our house), but I have no doubt the giggling was as much of a nervous response as it was hilarity at my green face and shaking hands. And, as anyone who is terrified of the average UK house spider will tell you, there is no point in saying camel spiders are ‘harmless’. For starters, they aren’t harmless. They are massive, fast, and they bite, and if you want to hang around to see what kind of bite you get from a pissed off five inch arachnid then be my guest. I personally didn’t feel the need, just to get a photo and pretend to be all kick-ass about the whole thing. It was absolutely the scariest thing that has ever happened to me in my own house and honestly I’d rather have to deal with a lion popping in for lunch than ever see one of these things ever again.

Pest control have been and gone. We vacated the house for the night and they sprayed inside and out, and all around. Nothing lives and the horror is over. I have elected not to concern myself with how it arrived in our house in the first place. We live in the desert, even though we might forget it from time to time, and it could have got in any number of different ways. What remains to be seen is the effect it, and I, have had on our son. Last night he woke screaming about spiders in the bed, it took 20 minutes for me to coax him back in and I had to stay with him until the morning. We live in hope that the nightmare is a one-off and he will sleep more soundly tonight. But as he has been talking about it all day, on and off, I don’t hold out much hope. I blame myself because there is no doubt he heard me talking about it, on the phone, at lunch, with the maid. And I was probably too honest in telling him why ‘the men’ were coming to spray the house. But on the other hand, I am still thinking about what I saw too, and can’t get it off my mind. So I just hope the memory fades for both of us over time and have to accept the consequences of being marginally less than grown up in my reaction.

As a long-time sufferer, it took arachnophobia to a whole new level I didn’t dream of and it has not inspired me to ‘man up’ next time, merely to get on the fastest plane out of here. I can only fervently hope that we never, ever, ever see one again.

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One of the most wonderful things about getting older is all the friends you collect as you go through life. This past few weeks have taken some interesting turns, not least because of all the people I have met in the past twenty years (and then some…). I have been so inspired by an old school friend in recent months that I felt compelled to take action and jump start my career, which was rewarded last week with my MA acceptance. Encouraged by a few of the many talented, fun people I have met whilst performing, I have uncovered via the power of Facebook a previously unheard of hotbed of creativity and artistry in Dubai, and begun to experiment with the boundaries of my acting skills (and discovered that apparently there are boundaries to them – good to know). I have ended up co-ordinating ‘background artists’ for a UK TV crew shooting over here, because a friend from college is on the production team and messaged me to ask if I could help. I have shared a rare but precious skype session with an old work colleague in South Africa who never fails to brighten my day. A dear friend from home called me on the telephone, which doesn’t happen very often and was a real treat. Not counting the several friends I have emailed or facebooked just to say hi.

But how much do I take this for granted, that I am in touch with all these people, from school, college, work, my hobbies – and spread all around the world? I’d like to imagine that it’s 100% down to my sparkling personality, but in reality I think it has an awful lot more to do with modern technology. The internet and its merry band of men, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, email, Skype – they keep us in touch with each other no matter where we are of course – but in particular they are a serious contribution towards making expat life much easier than it would have been in days gone past. And I am extremely thankful for that.

Realistically, if I was me now, in the 80’s, I reckon barely half of the people I am in contact with would even receive a Christmas card. Long-distance phone calls would be reserved for family only. I would only have a very small pool of people from which to pick my friends, and it really would be the place where everybody knows my name, for better or for worse. In fact whilst writing this post I did some digging on what life in Dubai was like thirty years ago to try and get a feel for what I would have been up against and it made me realise that back then it was a true hardship posting. In fact it kind of made me a bit ashamed at all the fuss I’ve made about being here.

Sheikh Zayed Road in 1990

Sheikh Zayed Road in 1990. 1990!

But then I dug around some more. Yes, it was hot (no A/C back then, of course!) and there was nothing to do – it would seem from these archives that the first coffee shop (cafe, if you will, rather than a roadside pitstop) didn’t even open until 1981 – but it was also a much more caring, social, friendly place to be. There isn’t much I found to read about personal experiences, rather a lot of old photos and some descriptions to go with them – but where there are comments from people it seems they genuinely loved their time here. It was a special and unique experience of a select few rather than the mass exercise in money-making and spending that it has become today. There was room for sisterhood because these expat women had no-one else. They were literally cut off from everyone they knew and loved and only had each other to rely on. I guess that would make you the odd lifelong friend or two.

I wonder what my life would be like if we’d been here then instead of now. Would I have morphed into a ‘Jumeirah Jane’ and partaken in hosting competitive coffee mornings and elaborate dinner parties for my villa compound friends and my husband’s co-workers? Would I ever have been brave enough to come here in the first place, send my kids to UK boarding schools in their teens so they were prepared for ‘real life’, be content not to work – not be able to work – and learn to consider social standing in this tiny community as a career ladder to be climbed? Would I have despaired at the heat, the sand, the basic amenities and the lack of contact with my family and friends back home? Or would I have embraced the kinship of my fellow ‘Janes’ and joined the party? Indeed – would I have been happier without all the technology to remind me of life back home? I wonder if this is why their memories are so fond, that they didn’t have anything to distract from their lives as they stood, and therefore just had to get on with things. I know when I am busy I miss home the least. Detachment from your old life is a very simple way to ease homesickness and so in that sense I wonder if the Trailing spouses of the 80s had a easier in that sense.

This is a photo of the skyline of Sheikh Zayed...

Sheikh Zayed Road 2008.

But not being able to Skype, or Facebook, or sms anyone, or email – gosh, if someone took that away from me now I would be utterly distraught. Communication from home fills in my days, colours my world with something other than sand and sun, and makes me feel not quite as ‘foreign’ as I would otherwise. How else would I know about politics, VAT on pasties and snatchels? Not even counting the volume of news I get from my friends on a near-daily basis, filling in the gaps left by living thousands of miles away.

No, I think I’ve got it better. I get to see my niece growing up eight time zones away, my son knows his grandparents and ‘plays’ with them while they watch, and I can still be inspired by someone I was friends with nearly thirty years back living in the depths of the English countryside. My predecessors may have made lifelong friends in Dubai out of a necessity to survive, but I’m kind of glad to have mine spread about – sitting at their computers all around the world, keeping me virtual company and at my disposal whenever I need to laugh or cry or just touch base. All hail the world wide web.

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.

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

bikini bottom

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.

Here we go again

dubai international airport

Image via Wikipedia

Well I hate to break a month of silence with anything less than a gushing post about how fantastic my time away was (because it really, really was amazing), but my goodness, I’m lonely. In a future-self kind of way, because it hasn’t been a nearly long enough period of time since arriving home in Dubai to accumulate anything like the depth of emotion I am feeling about it. But we got back on Thursday, my husband returned to work on Sunday, and for the first time in nearly two months I feel as if I am faced with nothing to do and no-one to see or talk to or spend the day with. My handful of friends here has, as is customary, depleted in stock over the summer. Of those that are left it’s a lottery as to who will run the course for the next 12 months. Returning from a long break away it’s sometimes difficult to pick up expat friendships where they left off, and often its the case that people who were slowly falling off the radar before the summer hiatus simply don’t bother to reinstate themselves and quietly revert to the occasional Facebook message or ‘How are you? It’s been AGES’ text.

But the fact of the matter is that for the whole summer I’ve luxuriated in having family and friends on tap, making arrangements almost every day with different people and going to a whole variety of venues where both I and my son can enjoy ourselves. My husband has been on holiday with us for nearly three weeks and so despite an awful lot of packing and unpacking and travelling around, I have been able, in the interim, to relax and spend some daylight hours being ‘me’ rather than just ‘mummy’. I’ve had a whole load of people to talk to and laugh with and since we’ve been back I feel like I’ve gone social cold turkey. With just a very grumpy, disoriented, jet lagged two year old for company. And it’s not a good feeling after so many weeks of living life full to the brim.

I am hoping that the start of school next week will bring some relief, at least to the ‘who’s going to meltdown first’ battle that my son and I are currently locked in. And of course the weather will start to cool off as well which means that we can go outside again for more than a 20 minute sauna just before the sun goes down. I will settle down and get used to the idea of being here again, which of course is the main reason I am feeling so out of sorts. And my life will build itself up again from nothing, the same as it does each year I return. Already, in the 24 hours since I started writing this post, I’ve had a job offer and been asked to appear in a play, (pretty cool eh?!) so I know that it’s only a matter of time before life gets busy again. And it’s a fact that the Dubai die-hards – actually anyone who’s been here longer than two years will do – will come back from their summers with new incentives, new ideas and hopefully ready to make some new friends because all their old ones left. (Tip: if you’re leaving Dubai, maybe you’d care to run some sort of friend speed-dating event before you go so that all the people you leave behind can benefit from your social network?) Newbies will arrive fresh faced and starry-eyed waiting to pick our brains at the school run. And you never know, somewhere along the line I might just become friends with a few to fill the gaps of those who are gone. The hamster wheel that is Dubai life goes around once more. And despite my reluctance to get involved yet again, I will grit my teeth, jump on and run as fast as my little legs will go, in the hope that the loneliness subsides as quickly as it came.

Dubai time

Clock

Image via Wikipedia

The British have “between 3 and 6pm” or preferably, “3.25pm and don’t be late”

The Spanish have “manyana, manyana” (phonetic because I’m not sure how to do those ‘n’s on my mac) which is fair enough because at least they set expectations.

The South Africans have “just now” (later) or “now now” (right now) which whilst confusing to the rest of us seems to work South African to South African.

The people of Dubai have “I’ll give you a time and then ignore it completely and turn up at a time of my choosing. I will then blame it on the traffic, or the van breaking down, or I won’t give you a reason at all.”

A typical example would be today. I arranged for workmen to come because water was leaking from the bathroom hose. (for those who don’t live in Dubai, this is a shower nozzle-type attachment next to the toilet that is used to..erm…well, ‘clean things up’ before you wipe). They promised to come back ‘very soon’ after the inspection and returned THREE HOURS LATER to turn off the water which by this point was pouring all over the floor.

Also today, I was supposed to open a new bank account. A very nice lady called to say another lady would be calling me straight after we had finished on the phone to go through what I needed to do. One hour and 47 minutes later I received the second phone call. Question: why bother to tell me I would be receiving a phone call immediately, if I wasn’t going to? How is that ever going to be helpful?

Here’s another one. From today. Because just two examples in a day would be churlish and this is the one that really irritates me. The people who emailed me to buy our old baby furniture who said “can we come after 3pm today?” never turned up, so I just assumed they weren’t coming. How naive of me. They have just called to say they are coming NOW. It’s 6.46pm. To me, “after 3pm” would indicate, say, 3.30pm. Or at the latest, 5pm with an apology sms for running late. Not 4 bloody hours later. Why not say “after 6pm”??

Which is where we revert to rule no.2 of Dubai timekeeping, which is the ‘Inshallah’ rule. This basically can be applied to any situation by anyone living in the UAE (you don’t have to speak Arabic to say Inshallah, they teach it to you on the plane) in order to indicate that something may or may not happen but that it’s all in the hands of fate. In the Muslim faith, applied properly, it means ‘God Willing’. But it gets it’s fair share of abuse here by anyone and everyone. It seems to have been rejigged into a polite way of saying “we want to help you/turn up on time/supply you with what you asked for, but we may have over-promised and if we don’t deliver then it’s not our fault”. Technically, my buyers should have said “after 3pm, Inshallah”. Then I would have known to expect them any time between mid afternoon and next Saturday.

So, by the way, they are still not here. And now it’s nearly 7.30pm, way, way, way, way past 3pm, and distinctly not the ‘now’ they promised half an hour ago. To the average person (or just me, if I’m not average) this is borderline rude because it’s my afternoon and my evening dammit and now I’m waiting for these people to turn up before I cook dinner and sit down for the evening and it is SO INCONSIDERATE and so utterly predictable.

And I can guarantee when they get here they will try and barter for the stuff I’m selling even though they probably have more money than Bill Gates. That’s if I answer the door…

Supermarket sweep

Around 200 varieties of Peruvian potatoes were...

Image via Wikipedia

Sometimes Dubai can leave me a little frustrated. It doesn’t mean to. It just can’t help itself. Let me share with you a typical morning at my local supermarket to try and explain. Events occurred real time between 10am and 11am this morning.

“Good morning, do you have any Tomme?”
“Sorry madam?”
“Do you have any Tomme. The french cheese.”
“No, madam, we don’t have any of this cheese.”
(Pointing to a cheese) “What’s that?”
“Ah Madam that is Tomme”
“So you do have it”
“Yes”

Later that same shop…

“Hi, do you have any baby potatoes? There aren’t any on the shelf”
“No madam, sorry we don’t have”
“What, not a single packet?”
“No, no baby potatoes madam”
“When will they be delivered?”
“I’m not sure. (Pause) We have the baby potatoes in the net bags”
“Eh? You do have baby potatoes?”
“Yes madam”
“Where are they?”
“Madam, they are in the warehouse, but they are not the baby potatoes for the microwave.”
“That’s OK, I can take the ones in the net bags, they are fine.”
“But not for microwave”

(DID I MENTION AN F-ING MICROWAVE???)

“That’s fine, I’ll take them. Could you get them for me? Thank you.”

The kind shop assistant returned with the potatoes and then proceeded to check I knew how to boil them without using a microwave. Obviously I either look like a complete moron this morning or an over-privilidged lazy cow who hasn’t cooked for five years. There were no courgettes and I couldn’t find thai red curry paste either but by this point I had lost the will to live so settled for yellow. As usual this means I have completed approximately 78% of my weekly shop in one place and now have to try and find the missing components elsewhere or concoct a slightly eclectic menu based on what I did manage to get. That’s if, of course, I figure out how to work the oven, according to my pal in fruit and veg.
When I return to England my mother will laugh at me salivating over Morrison’s and will wonder why I want to hang out there on a near-daily basis. I hope this post will go some way towards explaining why.