Coz you’re there for me Part twooooo-oooooo

Well I have to say it’s been absolutely ages since I felt genuinely sorry for myself. That, and not wanting to use up my precious writing ideas on my blog when I have two years of a masters degree to fill up, means I’ve been a little mean about my blog posting topics. And this week, despite my best intentions, it will be no different, because yet again I managed to run headlong into the catchphrase that invades my life on a regular basis, entitled “Why can’t we make friends in Dubai?”

Coffee-shop-tastic: The stuff expat dreams are made of (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have blogged on this subject extensively (so much so that I haven’t provided a link in case I’m repeating myself) and I’m sure there are those of you heartily sick of hearing about it. I’m sick of hearing about it. And I’m not particularly bothered about it any more, if truth be told. But last week, I met a friend of a friend who has only recently arrived in Dubai, and it threw the whole thing back up in my face. The woman in question has been here less than six months and in that time managed to infiltrate a whole collection of my friend’s friends, plus make a whole set of her own. She knows everyone. And their husbands. She is going to birthday parties and camping and Christmas and all manner of things that I must admit, whilst I wouldn’t expect an invite from the friend in question because our friendship hasn’t shaped itself this way, would be nice to get from somebody.

Don’t get me wrong. I have friends, plenty, particularly now that I am involved again in the Dark Arts (otherwise known as theatre). But I seem to have failed dismally on the playdate front, and therefore on the ‘family friends’ side of things too, that means we might actually get invited to camping and boat trips and waterpark outings and other such fun weekend activities.

In the early days, I admit I was fussy. And socially a little awkward. And I didn’t have children which automatically put me at a disadvantage because most other people we met did. But then we did have children. Oops, no we didn’t, we had one child. Singular. Which again puts me in a bit of a situation, because most mummies like their play dates to have a convenient older or younger sibling attached for theirs to play with. And, in all fairness, I like to keep a nice house and refuse to invite my son’s toddler friends over with a hyperactive 5 year old in tow who is going to wreck the furniture and bully the cats because they are bored. But it’s not all my fault, because I have tried to break the ice with mums on several occasions and for some reason it never seems to work. At the soft play area a few weeks back we were sitting having a snack on the table next to a couple of mums from nursery who I see every day and I said hello and introduced myself (just in case they didn’t know who I was after nearly a year of drop offs and pick ups) and you know what? They nodded and then went back to their conversation as if I ceased to exist. The children were all playing together and they just let me sit next to them like a ninny. Why would they do that? It’s two versus one, it’s socially polite for them to ask me to join them, not let me hang there like a nerd at the school disco waiting to be asked to dance.

But this is the story of my life in Dubai. WHAT DID I DO WRONG? Am I such an utter social misfit that I cannot be let loose in public? Do people think I’m a)too weird b)too caustically challenged c)too anally retentive to enjoy breakfast/brunch/beach outings/bbqs/birthday parties/other things beginning with ‘b’? I know my husband charms the pants off most people he ever meets so it can’t be him that’s the problem. Maybe (she dreams) I’m just too attractive or clever or confident for the average person to handle.

Or maybe I just prefer a more organic approach to friendship, and still, after all this time as an expat, can’t be doing with making my life a continuous round of speed-play-dating in order to ‘fit in’. Meeting my friend’s friend (FF?) last week was a little like being on a job interview. She quizzed me about everything, from what I did with my time whilst my son was at nursery (tricky: do I admit to being a gym bunny and indulging in blogging and shopping inbetween house maintenance and supermarket trips or do I try to make myself sound more meaningful?) to what schools I had picked out for him (the wrong one, apparently), to whether I would want my husband to remarry if I died. As I slurped on the second glass of sauv blanc I got the distinct feeling I hadn’t got the job – that I’d been sloppy in my responses, as little too down-to-earth for her liking, and like a teenage boy on their first date, just a bit too eager to be funny.

Thing is, I am funny. And down to earth. And a bit lazy sometimes, when I’m not working my arse off to achieve something for myself or my family. I am a little weird, and caustically challenged, and somewhat anally retentive. But I want people to like me because I’m different, and therefore a little interesting, not because I’m the same. It shouldn’t stop me from going to brunches or meeting for coffee or gathering at the soft play area and yet I don’t seem to have been able to tap into what I have officially dubbed ‘The Coven Concept’ in Dubai at all.

What the hell, I was never a girl’s girl. But in the UK, over the years, I did make friends with a lot of other girls who weren’t girl’s girls either. Sometimes even in groups. On weekends my husband and I did things with other couples and no doubt when we return we will do so again, with all of our children in tow as well. I am not completely incapable of forming friendships and we seem able to have our share of fun with our friends when we see them. But for some reason I never quite nailed it in Dubai, and now I fear it’s too late. The new people coming in are new. They do newbie things and meet other newbie people and their eyebrows shoot to the backs of their heads when you say you’ve been here six years, and they assume you already have people to go camping with and have bbqs with and spend school holidays with hanging out by the pool. To a certain extent they are right to assume we have other things going on. They are in a totally different place to us psychologically and it’s hard to not end up in a weird sort of ‘parenting/public information’ role. For anyone who is not new to Dubai our place in their lives is usually relegated to the occasional dinner rather than a group gathering. On the rare occasions we are invited somewhere we are usually the outsiders in an otherwise well-established group of friends, which isn’t easy to break into either, unless you have balls of steel like my FF of course.

So, I don’t know how she’s done it, but clearly I can’t, or won’t, or don’t need to enough to make it happen. And maybe that’s the point here. We have a nice life, we have a few people we enjoy spending time with, and we have our weekends together to enjoy just the three of us which is precious in its own way. I look forward to a day when we are surrounded by enough friends and family to pick and choose how to spend our time, but if that is not Dubai then so be it. As the great Whitney said, it’s not right, but it’s okay.

Lucky seven

Next week sees us mark the start of our 7th year in Dubai. SEVENTH. When I say to people I arrived in 2006 it really doesn’t seem very long ago. When I think of how I was a newlywed barely into my 30s and now my 40s are hurtling towards me at a rate of knots, I start to wonder where the decade went. When I realise I have entered my fifth cycle of friends in the space of roughly as many years (1. the ones I met when I arrived, 2. the ones I worked with, 3. the ones I met after having a baby, 4. the ones I met when my son started nursery, 5. the ones I met through theatre) I feel a little exhausted by the whole process.

Living abroad can be exciting, it can be depressing, it can be mediocre or even boring at times, and tremendously educational and fun at others. Depending on what you are doing or where life is taking you depends on how you feel about the whole expat experience at any given point. Dubai hasn’t been considered a hardship posting for years. But even for the mere housewife, between the times on the beach or in the mall or drinking coffee (which seems to be the general perception of my life even by the people who live here), it can be pretty hard work. If the summer heat doesn’t get you the incessant packing up and shipping out to escape it every year will. If living in the lap of luxury seems too good to be true it’s because there are hours and hours and hours of household management to keep it that way. If the ‘work hard, play hard’ ethic seemed like fun in your twenties then it’s a lot more like hard work a decade or two later to pull the same stunt whilst holding down a family – and a UK 10 dress size, a permanently perfect mani/pedi, a wardrobe full of up to the minute fashion and quite possibly a job. And then there’s the whole love ’em and leave ’em friend issue – the people you meet and like and fill your life with until they up and leave six months, a year, two years later and you have to work to find new ones all over again.

The gap between the different societies and nationalities that live here looms large. Miscommunication and misunderstanding of cultural differences make up 90% of why things take so long and can get so stressful. Of course, the other 10% is because a lot of people here are total shysters. That doesn’t make life any easier either, although with six years under my belt now it’s certainly getting easier to spot them. Experience has also taught me that everything takes far, far longer than planned – the Spanish ‘mañana’ has nothing on the arabic ‘inshallah‘. This particular trait appears to be cross-cultural, spanning across the entire spectrum of customer care – from trying to buy a bottle of water to wondering which decade your house will be finished in.

Dubai is a brilliant place to live – until it isn’t. After six years I have learned that when things go wrong, however big or small, it will take five times as long, be three times as expensive, and cause twice as much stress to put it right as it would do at home. The best thing to do, I have discovered, is really enjoy the bits inbetween. No doubt it is a great life we have here and when I try to imagine my life in the UK had we not come, I’m not sure where we would have been instead. Our house would have been smaller, for sure, as would my shoe collection – but there’s other things that would have been different too. I would most likely have still been on the corporate treadmill instead of realising a dream to teach, and to write. We would never have experienced living somewhere so different and life would be less rich for that. But most importantly and against all medical odds, I have a child. Yes, Dubai is a hard place to live sometimes, but it gave me my son, and there is no guarantee the stars would have aligned to make that happen anywhere else in the world. When I see the decades of pleasure I will have from this one simple act, six years doesn’t seem all that much to give in return.

Belt up

The trouble with living somewhere perpetually sunny with more money than you can shake a stick at, is that complacency tends to top the list of undesirable characteristics developed within approximately six months of arrival. Topped off with a healthy dose of ignorance and stupidity, and my guess is that’s how you end up with all the unbelievable idiots driving round this city.

I could go on about the bad driving in Dubai forever. It is an endless source of amazement which never ceases to astound me and terrify me in equal parts. However, today I want to talk about the very special collection of people who not only endanger their own lives but those of their children.

You spend nine months making them, an indeterminate amount of time giving birth to them, and the rest of your life nurturing them. So WHY THE F*CK would you let them romp around your car with no seatbelt on?

The original 50th percentile male Hybrid III's...

Buckle up, dummies

In my time here, I have witnessed so many bad examples it makes me want to weep. A few months ago I saw a child sticking out of the sunroof up to his waist, whilst the driver sped along at a steady 40km/h. A couple of weeks back I watched no less than seven children and four adults climb out of a car at a gas station, my favourite being the two tweens that were squashed into the very small boot just waiting to be rear-ended and disabled for life. I have witnessed a woman holding her baby in the front seat. Just holding her. No babyseat, just her mother’s arms to protect her from flying through the windscreen. Last year I saw a little boy of about eight sitting on his dad’s lap, steering the car as they drove along. I know he was steering because his father had a cigarette in one hand and a phone in the other. Countless times I have seen children clambering around in the back with no belts on. And best of all, children – and I mean children, not teens – driving golf buggies and quad bikes along main roads in our neighbourhood, completely unaccompanied by anyone old enough to hold a licence or understand the rules of the road.

All nationalities, all income levels, there is no exception it would seem. Whether it’s ‘treating’ the child, taking a chance, or simply the logistics of not enough seats in the car, complacency has leaked into every corner of society. I would love to know what goes through a parent’s mind when they decide to put their child in mortal danger. Because as far as I can tell it must be something along the lines of “they’ll be alright, I’m such a great driver what could possibly go wrong?” How ridiculous, for the sake of a couple of extra seconds strapping them in. It seems all the more shocking coming from a country where you aren’t allowed to leave the hospital with your baby unless you produce a car seat. It’s terrifying for the rest of us too, when a car with unsecured children in it is driving towards us or alongside us, often at high speed. One false move on anyone’s part and those children, the innocent ones, will be the ones who suffer the most. I hate having that responsibility – and I don’t see why I have to be burdened with it when so many people know better.

For some, of course, it is actually down to a lack of education. Britain in the 1970s, 80s and even the early 90s knew no better either – I distinctly remember long road trips where I and my sisters would turn our seatbelts into a sort of competition to see who could get out of them first, and for years I drove around four people in the back of my mini (!) without any thought that they might fly through the front window in the event of an emergency stop, killing me in the process. And of course there is nothing illegal about a lot of what we see here with regards to passengers in cars. UAE law says that a child under 10 must not be in the front, and front seat passengers must wear safety belts. There is no law regarding rear passengers which I suppose is why we see so many children without restraints. These days, I am fully aware of how much peril they are in, in the event of an accident, but many parts of the world are not quite so well informed. Maybe if they had seem some of the shocking campaigns run on our TV stations in the past decade or so they would better understand the dangers.

So if this neglect is truly out of ignorance, from not knowing or understanding what a car crash whilst travelling at even 30km/hr can do to its passengers, then it’s time to spread the word and strive for change. One woman is doing just that, campaigning for better awareness and trying to change the view here that rear passenger seatbelts are just an optional extra. In such a diverse population, it is difficult to make change, to create understanding. But it is so important that we do, because these children will not get a second chance.

Arrogance or ignorance, neither will save lives. Seatbelts will.

(Footnote: After writing this yesterday, what a coincidence that I witnessed a black and yellow Chevrolet driving through Motor City this morning – complete with huge ‘Buckle up in the back’ slogans pasted all over it. Can only hope there is more than one out there but it was great to see the website in motion, literally.)

…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.

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.

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.

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’.

Incy Wincy Spider…

In the spirit of Halloween, tonight I give you my horror story…

I may have grown up in the country but as anyone who knows me will attest, I am very much a city girl. I do not ‘do’ Nature. But over the years it would appear it has a habit of finding me anyway. Living in the desert, or a civilised version thereof, you wouldn’t think there was much to worry about. It’s not Australia where packs of spiders wait for you underneath the toilet seat and snakes steal children in the night. But I am discovering lately how wrong my assumptions were about Dubai being Nature-free.

When we moved to here, we lived on the 27th floor of a brand new apartment block in the middle of the building site that was Dubai Marina at the time. It did not occur to me that I would have to deal with any kind of flora or fauna whilst residing there, and I was right – aside from our two cats, nothing else bothered us. When we moved to a villa, little desert beasties suddenly appeared on my radar for the first time. Ants, ants everywhere, and not just annoying ants but carnivorous ones that can smell you a mile away and suddenly attack you while you sip on a beer in the garden, nipping your feet, ankles, and anywhere else they can get to you. Then the mosquitoes arrived. Dubai didn’t have mosquitoes five years ago, or not so we noticed on the 27th floor. I guess the addition of thousands of water sprinklers everywhere and those lovely ‘lakes’ you see all around the new developments have aided their reproduction, to a point where we have regular fogging treatment in our current development just to control the problem.

But neither ants nor mosquitoes are particularly bothersome if you have enough lotion on and ensure you light every citronella candle within a five-mile radius. Slightly more revolting are the little critters that can make it into the house through the cracks under doors and pipe outlets, or by hitching a ride in boxes or deliveries. There are the little jumping spiders that are harmless and easy to kill, but freak you out when they leap. There are the annoying beetle things that don’t seem to serve any function at all except to die everywhere and be used as amusing playthings by my cats.

And then there are the real pests, the ones you just do not want to see. I remember being home alone at 8 months pregnant and opening the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen, only to have dozens of cockroaches pour down the door, fall out onto my bare feet and scatter to the four corners of the room. I shut the door and tried not to give birth before all too quickly remembering that the spray required to exterminate the critters was in said cupboard. (Note: Do not keep insect killer in the place most likely to harbour the problem.) Having summoned up the courage to reopen the door it then occurred to me if I had to empty the cat litter tray with gloves on and avoid hair dye on my scalp, that I probably shouldn’t be spraying Pif Paf. At least not in the quantities I had planned. One panic call to my cleaner later and she came to my rescue, followed swiftly by pest control.

We’ve also had a nest in our garden parasol, which although it was admittedly some time since it had been opened, surprised us all by yielding sleeping baby bats that plopped onto the patio one by one, narrowly missing my husband in the process. Friends of ours have had both red back spiders in the garden and a scorpion who decided to wander into the house one night. Luckily for them they had an Australian guest for dinner who knew exactly how to get rid of the thing. Another useful note: In case of emergency, always make sure you know an Australian.

Our current house has been sprayed inside and out so that (allegedly) nothing can live. But it hasn’t stopped the super-bugs from mounting an attack. And I mean super. There seem to be a new breed of insect invading now that are really, really out of my comfort zone, because they are all enormous. As yet (touch wood) none of these creatures appears to have made it past the front door, and I intend for it to stay that way because they frighten the bejeezus out of me.

First up is the giant moth. Sitting outside having lunch one day, my husband said ‘is that moth bothering you?’ I replied I couldn’t see a moth. Then he pointed out the ten centimetre long BIRD that was resting on our parasol stand. It was so big you could hear its wings flapping as it took off. It made me feel quite ill and also explained the never-ending moth holes that we seem to acquire on our clothes. At that size they must get through a t-shirt a day.

Next up are the giant wasps. A small mound of sand appeared outside our front door one morning last month with a tiny hole in the top. I assumed that it contained an insect that we might want to get rid of, so got the Pif Paf out and did the decent thing. The next day the mound doubled in size. Nothing else happened for a few days but after about a week a wasp that looked like three English wasps joined together took up residence. Pest control were called again, and we learnt that destroying these wasp nests is not enough. These guys keep returning to the same nest site over and over until they die. So let me tell you, we were pretty ruthless about that one.

But finally, my biggest fear. You see, I don’t like spiders. I can cope with small jumping ones and I can cope with small crawling ones but anything larger than my big toenail starts to panic me, and the palm of the hand sort of size actually makes me physically sick. I haven’t put an image on this entry because I can’t look at them, and I’m even scared of dead ones in case they come back to life and get me. I am aware of the existence of Red Backs and lately, it appears, the Huntsman has also invaded Dubai. But honestly, I prefer not to think about it and make sure the garden and garage are sprayed regularly to discourage any unwanted visitors. So when my housekeeper came in a few weeks ago from the bin area with all the colour drained from her face, saying ‘big spider madam, come see’, I knew myself well enough not to do anything of the sort. The bin area. The one place I had forgotten to get treated and possibly the best hidey-hole of all. I called pest control but by the time they arrived the thing had disappeared. I asked my housekeeper to describe the spider to them and she held up two hands. They then sprayed the entire bin area and along the front of our house and the next two houses after that. That really was all the information I needed, but I did a little more research purely to reassure myself, because I seemed to remember reading somewhere that due to their exoskeletal structure, spiders actually can’t grow that big.

However, it would appear that they can. They are called Camel Spiders. According to the net, they are in the UAE and can grow up to EIGHT INCHES in size. That’s pretty much all I know. I actually haven’t googled them because I’m terrified of seeing what they look like and knowing one of them was quite possibly near my house. In fact my husband has banned me from looking them up even to write this blog entry, and I don’t blame him. It could put me in therapy for months or at the very least straight on a plane out of here. So if my facts are a little inaccurate please feel free to correct me.

What I did discover during my limited research was that there had apparently been one lurking by a pool in a nearby villa complex. Someone’s husband had gone for a swim and nearly stepped on it on the way out. The pool guy apparently tried to catch it with a net but it was too big to fit, so they had to sweep it into a box and wait for pest control to come. They really are that big. And they bite. I have no idea if they are poisonous and have no intention of ever getting near enough to one to find out, but here’s the catch with these bastards: apparently, they follow you. Well actually, they don’t follow you, they follow shade, and have a top speed of 10MPH, which is frankly a terrifying speed for something that’s already more scary than one animal has any right to be. So if you happen to see one and run away and you’re facing the wrong direction, it will feel like it’s chasing you because it’s trying to stay in your shadow. HOW FREAKY IS THAT?!

This post is sponsored by: Never. Going. Desert. Camping.

A perfect day

And here it is. The reason why we all come (apart from tax free salaries obviously). The winter has arrived in all it’s glory, and for the next four months we can enjoy endless warm sunny days spent perfecting our tans and eating BBQ food and forgetting entirely why we hate the place so much from June (May? April?) to September.

Today was shared equally between the polo club swimming pool, the garden and the park outside our back gate. My son thinks it’s Christmas, he’s had more fresh air, fun and exercise than in the last six weeks put together. So have I. We are out to dinner tonight and I am actually looking forward to sitting outside sipping a chilled glass of something and letting my hair blow in the breeze, rather than wondering what to wear that will cover up my swollen ankles and show the least amount of sweat.

This particular time of year is precious and short lived, an approximate six week period when the evenings are light enough and warm enough to enjoy a sundowner with my husband whilst we give our son his dinner, and when the days aren’t so scorching hot that you need to seek shade like some demented insect everytime you go outside. Everyone is more social, more relaxed. Visitors flood in and the city takes on a completely different personality as the tourists take over and the rest of us finally realise we can come out of hibernation and start enjoying the outdoors again.

Due to a serious lack of friends and family coming to visit us this year (yes, I am bitter and yes, it was a dig), we are deprived of our usual excuses to hang out in all the touristy places and instead we are in the rather unusual position of being able to please ourselves when it comes to how we spend this wonderful season. And so I am slowly filling our calendar with BBQs and brunches, dinners and drinks, and trips to the desert and the beach in order to make the most of it.

Somewhere in and amongst all of this, we have to find time to celebrate Thanksgiving too, and so rather bizarrely I have spent a few mornings in the past week planning a turkey dinner and buying Fall decorations for the house, which of course seems completely at odds with what the weather is doing. But by Thanksgiving the weather will have changed again. Living in a desert that is so brutally hot for half the year, the assumption is that it won’t get cold, but in actual fact, it can get pretty nippy in the winter. Indeed, by December there will be a chill in the air that, for us natives at least, will make evenings too cold for strappy dresses alone and it will be time to bring a cardie and stick on your Ugg boots to keep yourself warm. (For shame, everyone wears boots as soon as the temperature drops below 70 here, declaring it ‘cold’, although personally I think it has more to do with being completely and utterly bored by the summer clothes we’ve been wearing since March than actually feeling anything remotely resembling cold.)

I don’t know how many more winters we will have in Dubai but it’s time to start enjoying them before we return to winters spent in perpetual darkness in the frozen wastelands of northern Europe. Too many years have rushed by in a haze of visitors, work and babies, and I feel that now is our time to really enjoy it, before it is too late. So here is my winter 2011 manifesto, a list of ways to make the most of our life here and enjoy the great outdoors in the best way Dubai can offer:
I will take the opportunity to relax by the pool for half an hour after my gym session, instead of heading home in a blind panic to the cool of our air conditioning. I will take my son to the beach every weekend until Christmas, a promise I fail to live up to every year but this year I really mean it. I will make the most of the romantic candlelit dinners by the sea with my husband and of dinners with friends in the garden. I will eat out of doors whenever possible even though I have to go through the hassle of lighting up a million torches and candles to ward off mosquitoes and see what the hell it is I’m eating. Having spent my formative years holidaying in France and Spain, and having been known to indulge in the occasional pub garden in the UK, it feels distinctly odd even after six winters here to have to enjoy all this warm weather in the dark, but I will dine outside every night I am able until it is too cold to feel my toes. I will spend time with my family and take the simple pleasure of watching my son giggling non-stop as my husband runs around with him.

In short, I will feel the joy that Dubai tends to strip away simply by being hotter than hell for half the year, and when I get on a plane at Christmas I will bring that joy along with my suntan. I will let the cold English countryside sting my eyes and ears and I will don my hat and gloves to make snowmen in Salem, and know that if I try hard enough, I really can have the best of both worlds.

Where's my ruby slippers?

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

Category Archives: Living in Dubai