Category Archives: Living in Dubai

Maid in Manhattan…or Mirdiff…

Mop and Bucket

I overheard the most shameful conversation this week between two expats in Starbucks. The women were typical ‘new Dubai’ – all money and no class – glossed and preened and in five inch heels with their leather-tanned legs spilling out of their iddy biddy sundresses, relaxing with their lattes after a stressful morning of dropping the kids off at school. The conversation droned on in typical ‘how was your summer’ fashion and then they started to discuss their maids. How one had sat on her backside all summer (“The lazy bitch! I mean, the house was spotless but she said she didn’t clean the garden furniture because it was hot!”). How the other one was a miserable cow, and how dare she complain about her hours, she gets a good salary (“I pay her good money. She gets Dhs 1600 a month for God’s sake!” – this is the equivalent of a monthly salary of £250/$400). As the conversation progressed, it was revealed that this particular maid had asked to have a break during her day, which started at 7am with giving the kids their breakfast and ended when they were all in bed. It transpired she had dared to ask for longer than an hour’s rest in over twelve hours of what I can only imagine to be absolute hell looking after this woman and her family. The pair of them were bizarrely outraged by this request. I was, having listened to them in utter disbelief for 10 minutes, not only furious but ashamed to have even heard the exchange.

It’s not like I haven’t heard it all before. Maids are the done thing in Dubai. Labour is cheap, accommodation runs into the thousands of square feet and time is short when there’s so much time to be spent on swimming, sunbathing, manicures and shopping. Pretty much everyone that can, does. You might get the odd martyr who insists on doing their own housework but it’s a pretty safe bet to say once you’ve been there and had a maid, you are never going back.

Housemaids mainly come from two places: the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and the bottom line is that they are here to make money to make a better life for themselves and their families. They range in ability, education, and background, but the one thing they all have in common is that they are doing it for the money. Let me repeat: They are not scrubbing our toilets, doing our washing, tidying up toys, washing up, mopping, sweeping, walking the dog, babysitting or cleaning cars in the boiling heat for the love of it. THEY ARE DOING IT FOR THE MONEY.

This means that they will do pretty much anything to keep you happy and stay in your employ, but it doesn’t mean that if you are a total bitch they won’t hate you and disrespect you in private, leading to negative and disruptive behaviour that will eventually come back and bite you on the arse. Something an awful lot of people, the two in the coffee shop included, seem to forget when they hire these women to live in their homes and assume a role in their lives.

I love my maid. She does all the stuff I hate doing and she’s there to give me a break as and when I need one from my little angel. She is an extra pair of eyes and ears and is a reliable babysitter. And she is a lovely person too, softly spoken and smiling and always willing to lend a hand. But she is still doing it for the money. And although I trust her with my son, I know I will never leave him with her for extended periods of time, because part of the ‘keeping you happy’ rule extends to the children too. Keep them happy. Which as anyone who is a parent knows, generally involves letting them have their own way over anything and everything.

This in turn breeds a revolting subset of the community – the expat brat. I have come into contact with a fair few during my teaching career and a few more as a parent. You can always spot them. They are the ones that run to the maid when they are hurt, screaming ‘mummy!’, which would be embarrassing if their mummy was actually there to witness it. They are the ones that stare at you blankly when you say ‘tidy up time’ in the classroom, the ones who cry relentlessly at mother/toddler classes because their nanny is forcing them to do every activity first/best/most often so they can report back to the mummy that was getting her nails done that junior had a good time. They are the ones that cannot do up their shoes, walk up stairs, make their own beds, and, it has been known, not even been able to wipe their own backside. They apparently think it’s ok to hit and scream at the maid and can do it in front of their parents without being admonished. All this and more I have witnessed and it saddens me greatly, but with parental attitudes like the ones I heard at coffee, who can blame them?

And still these women come back for more. They take on our homes, our children, our gripes and our stresses. Many of them leave their own small children behind in their home countries to wait on ours. Others have no husband and no family, so they work in Dubai for as long as they can to make enough money to somehow secure their future. Some, like my maid, are working to pay for a house or land so that they can eventually leave Dubai to raise their own family. In my mind, these women are amazing – so driven and full of ambition to make a better life for themselves and their families that they will put up with almost anything.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t the bad eggs out there. Of course there are. There are thieves, and liars. There are maids that get pregnant and hide it and then ask you to help birth the baby (yes, my neighbour actually delivered her maid’s illegitimate and rather illegal baby in the kitchen). And there will always be people who want an easy life, or resent their lot, or – bottom line – simply aren’t very likeable. Our first maid was a prime example. When we fired her, it was mainly because we didn’t get on with her and she clearly wasn’t interested in working for us. It took us nearly two years to figure out that it was okay to ask her to leave on the basis that both she and us were obviously unhappy, because it didn’t seem like a legitimate reason. But given you are all living under one roof 24/7, it is actually one of the most legitimate reasons of all. We gave her a large severance package and a reference, because despite the fact that she wasn’t right for us, I truly believed she would be right for someone else. I’m not sure there is ever an excuse for treating someone as if they were sub-human, and if you do, what on earth do you expect in return? These women are our employees, and if we were all in an office they would be treated with professionalism, even if they were under-performing. Why should it be so different with someone who lives and works in your home?

Maids, like most people living and working in Dubai, are completely at the mercy of their employers. Your right to stay in the country depends on you holding down your job. It’s not ideal for anyone but it’s certainly a horrible situation to be in if you end up with a family who treats you like their own personal property. The fact that the conversation I heard was being held in public with no regards for how awful it sounded is an indication of how many maids must end up in a situation where they are miserable but held captive because they need the job and they need the money. Indeed, I once interviewed a maid who couldn’t take the job because her employers wouldn’t let her leave without suffering a six month ban from the country. For doing nothing more wrong than handing her notice in. She couldn’t afford the time unpaid so she stayed where she was, unhappy and overworked.

There are endless stories I could relate on this subject, and I am fully aware that whilst this post might seem a little irrelevant to an outsider, in Dubai the maid/madam relationship can be a contentious issue and is often discussed and debated. Maids and their ‘madams’ that don’t see eye to eye are like a couple going through a divorce – there are always two sides to the story and facts are often exaggerated or blown out of proportion – to whose advantage I’m not sure, because it doesn’t seem to make anyone any happier. I know why the maids put up with it but I’m not sure why the expats who they work for do. If they are so bad at their job or so disagreeable as to cause you to hate having them in the room, well then maybe it’s time for a change of staff, or a change of attitude. And lets all remember that we are extremely privileged to be able to have someone working for us at all. If we expect our maids to know exactly what we want from them and give themselves 110% to the job for a measly £250 a month, then I firmly believe we should all put a little effort into being professional and pleasant. Because, (and ladies in the coffee shop, I am talking to YOU) they might be doing it for the money, but manners cost you nothing.

Don’t worry be happy

A diagram of the General Adaptation Syndrome m...

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I have to learn to chill the f*** out. I don’t know how to do it but I really need to learn. It’s a skill that has evaded my capture over the years, and whilst demanding perfection from myself and everyone around me at a quite manic level was pseudo-cool in my teens, vaguely endearing in my 20’s and career-shaping in my early 30’s, I’m beginning to think that being stressed out and anally retentive over everything has run it’s course as being the defining factor of ‘me’ and I’d quite like to acquire a new character trait that is less exhausting and doesn’t make me quite so annoying.

I have already thought about what else I could be and came to the conclusion that there aren’t that many good qualities I possess even in small quantities that I can upsize and still come across as genuine. I tried on ‘witty’ for size but essentially it always defaults to ‘sarcastic’. Similarly, ‘organised’ generally ends up as ‘anal’. I have tried being ‘fun’ through the years, because I would like to be fun, and really, I am a whole lot of fun and I love having fun, but for some reason when people are asked to describe me, they don’t use the word ‘fun’. They say ‘slightly scary’. I have always thought this is grossly unfair. I’m not remotely scary really, once you know me. But this affects me, that people describe me this way. Not old friends, because I know they know better and are just taking the piss. Which doesn’t matter, because deep down I am fun and can take it. Ha ha. But people I’ve met more recently, when they say it, that it’s how they felt when they met me, it worries me, and probably explains alot about why I don’t have too many numbers in my phone in Dubai.

I try to be easy going. I try to be non-scary. I’ve even grown my hair because someone told me not so long ago that it was intimidating. But if truth be known, I’m opinionated and honest and argumentative and it’s hard to see past all that to someone that just wants to be loved and cared about and be entertaining and have a laugh.

Worse still now I am a mother, I find myself constantly trying to be all the things to my son that I want to be to everyone else. I want to be the fun mum, the care-free mum, the mum who is loved by all his friends and who he can trust to tell anything to and to be anyone he wants to be. But there is a fear growing inside of me that I won’t be able to do that. That I’ll be too stressed out over something stupid and inconsequential to listen. That I’ll be too grumpy or bad tempered to be approachable. That I will be the mother in law every girl dreads (although there is possibly a lot of fun to be had in that). That my hopes and expectations for him, for me, for us all, will be too high and pile on too much pressure and I will end up alienating him and everyone else around me. Bottom line: I need to find a way to relax and have fun instead of worrying all the time about everything. Because I recognise the more I stress out about stuff, the more stressed I become.

That last paragraph being the perfect example.

Luckily I married the glass half full guy, the Yin to my Yang. I need to learn to listen to him more because despite the fact that my default is to assume he doesn’t know or understand what is going on in my head, he’s actually very acutely aware of the war that wages between the person I could be vs. the person I want to be. He weathers the storm, and my son is too young to judge me as yet – but I recognise that something needs to change before they both get as sick of me as I am.

Maybe coming to Dubai skewed it a little because it changed the game. Maybe motherhood did the same thing all over again. Motherhood inDubai…maybe that makes things harder too, because the pressure here to be a resoundingly middle class, yummy mummy, entrepreneurial free spirit who owns 2 boutiques, is a size 8 and bakes cakes in her spare time is too much to live up to for the average mortal. And then you add in the competitive element of the children themselves. Heaven forbid in Dubai if your toddler isn’t talking/playing tennis/on the swim squad/doing calculus by the time they are three. And that’s down to you as the mother to secure, adding external and environmental pressures to the internal ones already dancing round my head.

But there’s nothing stopping me changing the way I react to all this except myself. As I creep towards 40 I sense that the only person holding me back from doing or being anything is me. And I keep telling myself that being older, more mature, means that I should be more confident of myself and who I am, and what I am capable of. I don’t need ‘scary’ or ‘perfect’ in order to live my life, so why do I put so much pressure on myself? I’m the oldest child so I reckon that plays a part. Recently I have taken to blaming being the youngest in my school year for quite a few life choices, so maybe that has something to do with it too. And I come from a family of worriers and stress-bods so maybe at the end of it all, it’s down to Nature. But I was once taught that human behaviour is the result of 100% Nature and 100% Nurture. It can’t all be hereditary, and even if it is, surely there is room for change? Surely my ability to just relax can be learnt, and my default tendency to stress out be crushed underfoot? So if that’s the case, how can I begin to change?

There’s only one answer.

It’s up to me. I have to nuture myself into a better place one way or another. I have to learn how to forgive myself for not being perfect, and to not sweat the small stuff. I need to give my loved ones time to grow by themselves, and let go of a few things, and realise that no-one has to get it right first time, all of the time. In fact half the fun is getting it wrong. I need to stop filling my life with angst where there is none, and replace it with things I enjoy that will make me fulfilled. When my life is full and busy doing stuff I enjoy, I don’t fret about all the little things, because I don’t have the time or the inclination. Dubai has historically been a difficult place to do this, because it’s easy to get caught up in the hype that being perfect is actually a career of some sort. It isn’t. It’s not even a hobby. And now I’ve figured this out, it makes it easier to think about what not to do in order to worry less and be happy more. I am going to have a go at being imperfect, and try not to be too stressed about getting it right first time.

Not exactly Mrs Beeton

Title Page of "Beeton's Book of Household...

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My mum, bless her, sent me a load of useful household tips today. I realised halfway through that I would never have any intention of doing any of these things. I am the world’s worst housewife. I love making our home look pretty and I am the original neat freak picture-straightener from hell, but ask me to clean it and I come out in a rash. So given I am in a list making kind of a mood this week, I thought I would put the Desperate Housewife of Dubai spin on the list in question and see what I came up with. Now I fear not only am I a slutty housewife but I also have a drinking problem…So here it is, along with the original list for those who might be slightly less sloth-like.

1. Winter Mocktail for Drivers – Hot, mulled Pomegranate Juice: Heat pomegranate juice with slices of orange, a split vanilla pod and a sachet of mulled wine spices.  Allow to infuse for an hour and serve.
DHD: Heat a bottle of red grape beverage with slices of orange, a split vanilla pod and a sachet of mulled wine spices.  Allow to infuse for an hour, although 10 minutes would do at a pinch, and serve. Call Safer Driver to take you home

2. How to stop an insect bite from itching: Crush an aspirin, mix with enough water to create a paste and apply to infected area. Not suitable for those allergic to aspirin.
DHD: See no.1. Drink enough that you don’t care about the itching and use the aspirin to nurse your head the next morning instead.

3. How to stop boots sagging, creasing or falling over in wardrobe: Empty bottles!  Place inside shoes.
DHD: See no.1. Note: you will need to double the quantities.

4. Three Clever things to do with vinegar:
After chopping onions, scrub your hands with salt and a splash of vinegar to remove smell.
Remove sticky labels from vases and glasses by dampening with vinegar, then leaving for 5 minutes before buffing off with a paper towel.
Bring out bright colours in your washing by adding a cup of white distilled vinegar to the rinse cycle.
DHD: Give a bottle to your maid along with a DVD of Anthea Turner’s ‘The Perfect Housewife‘ and you shouldn’t need to do anything more clever with your own vinegar except sprinkle your chips with it.

5. Frozen Berries: Add a few to drinks instead of ice cubes – they provide a burst of flavour and colour and cool it down without diluting it.
DHD: Stick a bottle of Absolut Rasberri in the freezer about 2 hours before you drink it.

6. Remove coffee and tea stains from favourite mugs: Make a paste of baking soda and a little water. Then gently rub over any marks to remove them
DHD: Fire the maid for not doing the washing up properly then buy new ones. They weren’t this season’s colours anyway.

7. Three uses for fabric softener sheets:
Run a threaded needle through a fabric softener sheet before starting sewing to prevent the thread twisting and knotting.
Clothing gone static? Gently pat yourself down with a fabric softener sheet to get rid of electricity
Freshen up clothes and shoes in wardrobe by storing them alongside fabric softener sheets
DHD: If your clothes have ‘gone static’ then you are shopping in the wrong places.

8. Three uses for everyday items:

Baby oil: Rub a few spots over a dull stainless-steel sink to restore its shine. Also works on chrome trim of kitchen appliances and bathroom fixtures.
DHD: Use in place of sun lotion to get rid of pesky strap marks.

Emery Board: Stained a suede jacket or pair of shoes? Rub the area gently with an emery board, then hold over steaming kettle to remove mark.
DHD: Emery boards belong at the spa. If you have a stain on anything you should obviously throw it away and use it as an excuse to go shopping.

Freezers: Place candles in freezer 2 hours before burning them – will freeze wax and improve lasting power.
DHD: This is Dubai. Clearly your candles will be far too big to get in the freezer and have a burn time of approximately 14 years if our list of dinner party invites has been anything to go by. So I wouldn’t worry.

9. Get rid of troublesome stains: Cranberry or other berry juices; flush with cold water then, using an eye dropper apply a solution of one part white vinegar and two parts water.  Leave to stand for 10 mins then treat with a combination solvent such as Oxyclean and wash as normal.  This technique works for coffee stains too.
DHD: Tub of Vanish and a good day’s work for the housemaid  should do the trick.

10. Two ways with lemons:
Rub half a cut lemon over wooden or plastic cutting board to clean and bleach surface.
Add up to half a cup of lemon juice to a wash cycle instead of bleach to brighten your whites.
DHD:
Vodka and Tonic.
Gin and Tonic.

 

Hope Thief, Dream Stealer and Sucker of All Joy

Late-summer rainstorm in Denmark

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Something unthinkable has happened. Through a series of unfortunate events, the most enthusiastic, optimistic, Dubai-loving Trailing Spouse that I have ever met has lost her Mojo.

And as a loyal friend of five years, what is my reaction? Do I shower her with inane ‘look on the bright side’ chatter, or try to lift her spiritually by quoting something from ‘The Secret’? (Which I should note, as a professional pessimist I have never even picked it up, so for me that would be the ultimate show of friendship).

Of course not.

My gut reaction was simple and selfish. Sheer glee that finally, finally she has seen the light and realised it’s not all pool parties and Jimmy Choos. For five years of our desert life together, she has listened to me lamenting my lot, moaning about my sorry lack of a life and endlessly listing all the things that go wrong on a near weekly basis. She has relentlessly remained upbeat and positive through everything and I can count on one hand the number of times I have ever seen her less than cheerful. She is the antidote to my negativity, she laughs at my tales of woe and gives out good advice whenever I need to get out of some miserable hole I’ve dug myself. And she manages to do all this without being remotely annoying. So how do I repay this ray of sunshine in my life? With a rather mean, incredibly smug ‘now you know how the rest of us feel’ one-liner that has left me feeling like the Dubai version of the Grinch.

A wise and drunken friend of mine once decided that my theme tune should be ‘I’m only happy when it rains’ by Garbage, most likely in response to something I uttered that was typically morose whilst we sofa-danced around his flat in Brixton in the early hours of the morning circa 1995. It’s true, I am not a big believer in the power of positivity and love nothing better than to wallow in misery or anger or loneliness until I am forced to be glad about something once more. I am a few years shy of 40 and have practically no wrinkles, not due to botox but because I rarely smile. Being grumpy is my trademark. If I suddenly found myself to be happy all the time it would literally blow my mind (and several of my friends’ and family’s too no doubt). But that doesn’t mean I should feel good when someone else is dragged down to my level.

So in honour of my friend, I have switched off the negative stream of consciousness for today. I am mentally getting down to KC and the Sunshine band and vow that nothing and no-one will annoy or upset me in any way. Only do me a favour and get your Mojo back soon. This parallel universe won’t last forever and I could do without the laughter lines.

Having It All: Part I

cupcakes!

Image by egg on stilts via Flickr

So what news? Well this week saw the resurrection of a potential business idea that I had put to bed a few months ago due to prohibitive start up costs and the fact that I didn’t actually want to go to work. I mean this literally. I want to work, I just don’t want to go to work. There is a big difference, I now realise, between these two statements. When I say I want to work, it means I want to exercise my brain, interact with a diverse group of people, have responsibility, do something vaguely meaningful and preferably get paid for it. When I say I do not want to go to work, I mean I do not want to put my little boy into full time daycare, get in a car and commute to an office, take four weeks annual leave a year and use it traipsing around the world visiting relatives instead of having a proper holiday, and spend my whole time wishing I was at home instead of missing out on my son’s formative years and paying a nanny to enjoy them instead.

“Why don’t you go back to teaching?” my friends cry. They have a point. I taught for two years in Dubai before I had my son and I loved it. I’m not sure I would like it quite so much now though. Teaching has the holidays, there is no doubt about that, but if you want to be a good teacher, it involves working full time hours even if only part of that is spent in the classroom. Many mothers returning to work do a three or four day week but teaching, particularly nursery school teaching, requires that you are there all five days and that’s not even counting the prep time, staff meetings and other extra-curricular activities like report writing and curriculum planning. It makes no sense at all to me I’m afraid. What is the point in putting my son into school five mornings a week at the age of two and then having no time for him in the afternoons either, solely because I’m busy nurturing other people’s children for a pittance of a pay packet?
There is also the social aspect to consider. Working as a teacher does not exactly provide much adult interaction, and as every stay at home mum will attest, adult interaction is the thing that is missing the most from life when you quit work to have a baby. For the sake of my (and everyone else’s) sanity I cannot teach 3 year olds all day and then come home to a toddler. You have to be a special kind of person to be able to do that and I’m not one of them. I miss people – big people – and teaching would not fulfil my aim to one day have more to talk about than children, mine or anyone else’s. I firmly believe that at this time in my son’s life and mine, I can either be a great teacher or a great mum, but I simply can’t be both.

I could, of course, sit and do nothing. For the past few months since my son began nursery, three mornings a week this is exactly the art I have been perfecting. It’s why I started writing, because I have the time and wanted to kickstart my babybrain again after far too long away from anyone over the age of two. But how long I can sit and do nothing for? I’m not particularly good at doing nothing. Gradually, and without me noticing, it plunges me into a depression and I get lonely and bored and end up spending far too much money. On the other hand three mornings a week really isn’t an awful lot to play with. There are always things that need to be done. ‘Nothing’ always turns into ‘something’. I rarely sit with a coffee and a magazine in my hand during this precious ‘me’ time, but I do go to the gym, I do get to shop for shoes and have coffee with friends, and now I’m thinking about adding in yoga or tennis into the mix. All of which is good for the soul but there is this niggling thought forming that I really should be doing something else like….working.

I remember arriving in Dubai five years ago. I was busy settling into life here and not quite ready to start job hunting. Me and my only friend at the time (another ex-career woman turned Trailing Spouse) decided to hit the social scene full on and went to an ‘Expat Woman’ coffee morning. We arrived at 10am on a Tuesday to find the cafe literally teaming with glossy, tanned, air-kissing women clad uniformly in white jeans who, without exception, ignored us completely. We didn’t make any friends that day but I do remember saying over and over “What the hell do these women do all day long??” So ignorant was I back then of how to be gainfully unemployed. In fact, I myself remained jobless for nearly six months and became something of an expert, turning down all manner of things I didn’t want to do before deciding to retrain. Despite the fact that it was my choice, those six months were the most boring and depressing of my life. When I look back I realise that taking one of those jobs, even if I didn’t want it, may have changed the way I felt about Dubai and living abroad completely. It could have instantly given me friends, a life of my own, financial independence and meaning – all the things I felt got ripped away from me when we left the UK and some of which I am still lacking. I don’t want to make the same mistake again five years on.

But it’s different now. I’m not used to going to work any more, I haven’t worked for two years at all and I’ve not set foot in an office for five. I feel desperately out of touch with things and sense that I’m dangerously close to becoming one of those women at the coffee morning. I feel as if I’m virtually unemployable in the traditional sense, along with thousands of other women I’m sure, who take an elongated leave of absence for one reason or another. Sometimes when I’m in a really dark place it kills me to think of all those years I spent working my butt off to get ahead and I blew it by getting on a plane. Then I think of how I retrained, learnt how to study again, took exams and passed them and then did something I loved for two years and I don’t feel so bad. But there is a big blank space when I start to think about what to do next. Maybe working for myself is the answer.

I’m sure – in fact I know – that a lot of women feel this way after they’ve had children. That’s why there are so many who start their own businesses – interior designers/wedding photographers/cupcake companies – it’s a way to return to work without going to work, to do something you enjoy so that at least when it’s taking up all your time and you’re working into the small hours in order to spend tomorrow afternoon taking the kids to the park, it will seem worth it. It’s tempting to join them, but I worry that the market for ‘mumtrepreneurs’ is becoming saturated, particularly in the more creative fields which is where my experience, skills and interests lie. Of course, the way my friends approach the competition is to be really good at what they do. I guess it doesn’t matter how many people do what you do if you’re the best one at it. These amazing, talented, driven women are my role models who make me feel like I want to stand up, get out and join them.

So now all I need to figure out is what to do. I have one idea that would work nicely in Dubai and someone who is vaguely interested in making it become a reality. The problem is I don’t know whether I should commit to it. Firstly I keep thinking I should make the most of the short time I have to enjoy the early years with my son and worry about what I’m going to do when he’s older. I’m just not sure I will last that long without getting really bored or bankrupting us. The other, slightly larger elephant in the room is the question of how long we will be in Dubai for. Should I make the effort to start something new only to move just as it starts to take off? Worse still, what if it’s successful and I get too comfortable here and don’t want to leave? I can’t believe that is actually a consideration, it sounds ridiculous,but it’s true. We don’t know how long we will be here for and I find it very hard to put that aside and ‘go for it’. It is really difficult to contemplate the idea that I would have to abandon my career again – or worse still, my business.

So maybe alongside the Dubai plan I need to think on a more global scale and choose a path that can lead anywhere, or a business that will travel. As a Trailing Spouse and Wife of a Foreigner this is the most sensible option as it gives me the flexibility I need to pick up and put down whenever and wherever. So, here you go, all you recruitment specialists out there, I know there must be something that will fit the bill:

Wanted: Part-time entrepreneurial global business idea with low to no start up costs required for experienced manager with commitment issues.  Must be financially and emotionally rewarding and fulfil both the creative and organisational aspects of my skill set. Must allow for approximately 12 weeks of travel per year and not interfere with quality time, either with my child or myself. I cannot bake cakes but I would like to have mine and eat it.

I eagerly await your response.

Doo-wah oh those summer nights

big thermometer

Image by Bill McIntyre via Flickr

I loathe summer Dubai summers. I may have mentioned this before. And this probably won’t be the last time either. Whilst I’m sure it’s not news to anyone that summer in the desert can be pretty extreme – we’re talking daytime temperatures of 40 degrees plus, and not that much cooler at night – what most people don’t appreciate is that the worst bit isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity that comes with it. There is nothing, nothing worse than 40 degree heat and 60 percent humidity. If you happen to get caught outside for longer than it takes to lock the car door and make like a bat out of hell for the nearest source of air conditioning, then your throat will dry up, the sweating will start and just as the panic sets in your sunglasses will mist up and leave you thrashing about blindly for the nearest shopping mall. Cooling down can take upwards of half an hour depending on how far away you had to park the car. And of course eventually  you have to leave your freezing haven and get back in said vehicle, which if left in the sun will have reached temperatures high enough to roast a chicken within approximately 30 seconds of you leaving it. My favourite hobby of S/S 2011 is trying to battle with the heat, humidity and a 2 year old. Under normal circumstances him uttering ‘mummy’s hot’ repeatedly in public places might have been encouraged (I harbour an ambition to reach MILF status before I’m 50 but feel it’s best to start the campaign while I’m still in my 30s), but I think everyone gets the real picture when they witness me trying to get him from buggy to car seat through 2 inches of space left by the inconsiderate idiot parked next to me, sweating in places I didn’t know even had glands, sunglasses halfway down my face, and muttering through clenched teeth ‘yes, mummy’s hot’.

You can’t walk, or sit, or even breathe properly when it’s this hot and sticky. Life suddenly goes from being totally peachy: sun shining, wind in your hair, perfect beach-day kind of peachy…to hell. Indoors. All day and all night. No fresh air, just varying degrees of freezing depending on where you are in the house/mall/restaurant (delete as appropriate, these are the only three places to go in summer in Dubai). By early July it’s impossible to even consider going for a swim. Not because the water is too warm. Well, if you’re talking about the sea then actually, by then it’s like swimming in a warm bath and feels distinctly unsanitary for some reason. But the pools are chilled, so you would think it would be an absolute pleasure to shake off the day and jump in. However, particularly if you do ‘mum’ swimming and keep your head above the water at all times, it’s the weirdest sensation, because as your body carves through the cool water you generally forget to take into account the heat outside. A number of times I have realised far too late that my head is busy turning purple and my carefully preserved hair is sticking to it in a style reminiscent of Hitler as I sweat from the neck up like a fat man in a sauna. Of course the answer is to put your head under. Which is fine, until you get out, and realise that you have to get from the pool to the changing rooms via 30 metres of hot tiles and no shade, by which time you are sweating again. Add on 10 minutes of drying your hair followed by having to then get in the car you left in the sun while you went for that lovely refreshing swim…well you get the picture.

I simply loose the ability to function normally in these kind of conditions. And I’m not the only one. Sometime during the month of May, everyone assumes one of three personas which they keep and covet until sometime in the middle of September: Bad-tempered, Crazy, or Stupid. I am in the Bad-tempered camp, which will be no surprise to most people who know me. This unrelenting heat reduces me to a sort of red mist on legs. My sense of humour melts then evaporates into thin air and any decent, nice part of me that once existed (yes, it is in there somewhere) is replaced by a mean, nasty, bad tempered old witch. As part of Team Bad-tempered I automatically assume everyone else I know/meet/am driving behind is either in Camp Crazy or Camp Stupid. The Crazies are that weird but common breed of Dubai resident who seem to think it ‘isn’t that hot’ and wander round in jeans all summer with an emergency pashmina dangling out of their handbag, claiming everywhere shy of 25 degrees is ‘freezing’. I tried being a Crazy for a summer or two but gave up the year I spent my third trimester here. Being heavily pregnant in the desert is about as hardcore as you can get and once you’ve done it there really is no going back to pretending it isn’t unbelievably hot.

Which leaves the Stupids. A whole boatload of people fall into this category. The heat seems to make people extremely dumb. Stupid driving, stupid customer service, stupid people everywhere, walking at half-pace and 5-a breast or crossing roads without looking or riding golf buggies the wrong way on a public main road…I could go on forever about the Stupid people who appear to dominate Dubai at this time of year. They get everywhere. Stupid people who can’t park cars considerately, or queue, or say sorry for being late for an appointment or for damaging your house/car/furniture/whatever it was they were being paid to fix. Stupid people who insist that you ordered the wrong meal/dress size/coffee even though you know you didn’t. Their very existence serving as fuel to the fire of the Bad-tempereds while the Crazies just sit in the sun with a sweater on drinking their lattes.

But it doesn’t last forever. By September the red mist will begin to subside, the Crazies will put their jeans away and get out their maxi dresses and the Stupids will go back into hiding. Some time during October it will suddenly feel pleasant enough to BBQ for dinner without fear of melting the gas grill and I can wear mascara again without welding my eyelashes together if I blink in direct sunlight. By December everyone will have their Uggs out, summer will be a long forgotten nightmare, and we will have four or five glorious months of sunny and warm weather to frolic, cycle and swim in before the whole horror starts over. In the meantime…beam me up Scotty, before I completely lose my sanity, my dignity and my temper.

Spoilt rotten

Housework

Image by Clarkston SCAMP via Flickr

As I sit in my living room gazing at the sun setting over my beautifully manicured garden it occurs to me that I might feasibly miss Dubai one day. Take last weekend as a prime example. We took our son swimming – not to a sightly scabby indoor council pool that’s so full of chlorine you could conduct chemistry experiments in it, but instead to our local – the polo club, where the sunny outdoor pool is surrounded by lush palm trees swaying in the breeze and waiters to bring you cold drinks and fresh towels to order. After our swim we drove home for our son’s tea, bath and bed, and some time later, after an enjoyable cocktail hour in the living room, knocked on the door of the live-in maid’s room, so that she could come and babysit for us while we went to dinner. Dinner was in a 5 star hotel and we enjoyed it so much we decided the hangover would be worth it and foolishly polished off a bottle of wine in addition to the pre-dinner drinks. Given neither of us had to drive the sitter home, and for about five quid we could just slide into a waiting taxi to get ourselves there, it didn’t really matter. While we were gone our maid took care of all the tidying up from the day, so we were able to go out for a big breakfast at the local golf clubhouse rather than spending half of Saturday morning making beds, cleaning the bathroom and emptying the dishwasher.

Now, I am fully aware of how spoilt this sounds. It’s because we are totally and utterly spoilt. We have a maid and a gardener and when occasion demands, a regular handyman and driver. I also have a personal trainer, hairdresser, colourist, massage therapist and a manicurist. I’m considering adding a tennis coach to the list when the weather cools off again in the autumn. I am a stay at home mum and have enough time to sit and write this blog, which can only mean that I’m not busy doing housework during all the spare hours naptime and nursery afford me. Instead I get to go to the gym, swim, shop, meet friends for coffee, and occasionally indulge in reading a book or a newspaper. My house is taken care of, my son is looked after when I need him to be, the garden is maintained and the cars are cleaned. I have a french manicure once a fortnight and it doesn’t get trashed doing washing up. It is undoubtedly a good life, full of privilege, that I try not to take for granted.

But lets be serious here: of course I take it for granted. After 5 years of living like this it’s pretty hard not to. It’s just really, really difficult not to have help in Dubai. People make it very hard for you to do things for yourself. I did try for the first few years. I had a cleaner come in twice a week, the same as in the UK, and did my own washing and ironing. Then I subbed out the ironing because inbetween working and travelling I didn’t have time to do it. Oh alright. I didn’t want to do it. Then, when we realised it was actually more economically sound to have full time help, we got a live-in maid and I gave up doing the washing as well. Ironically, the only time I have to look after the house is when we go on a self-catered holiday. And honestly? I don’t miss it. Who would?

I haven’t ever used a petrol pump in Dubai. Or packed up my own supermarket shopping. Or cleaned my car (although my husband might claim that I could try doing the inside once in a while). This morning at the mall, a lady took my parking ticket from me at the exit and put it in the machine that operates the barrier. Had she been able to shut my car window without cutting her arm off I have no doubt she would have done that as well.

DIY has no meaning here. The term simply does not exist.  Now, I used to be a stage carpenter, so I’m not shy when it comes to power tools. I tried to hang my own curtains in our first apartment but the walls were reinforced concrete and required a heavy duty drill to get through more than 2mm, so after my experiment involving the installation of the pole into the window alcove with two semicircles of little tacks didn’t work, I admitted defeat and got a man in. I used to assemble my own IKEA furniture but then discovered during a subsequent house move you can get someone to do it for you when they deliver it to you (yes, deliver – you don’t have to try and fit 14 bookshelves and a flat pack bed into your car) so don’t ask me where the hammer is. Who would actually volunteer to put IKEA furniture together when someone else will do it?? Last week we had someone come in to change the garden lightbulbs and regrout a few tiles and (inwardly cringing now I actually stop and think about it) it didn’t even occur to me to do it myself.

All this ‘get a man in’ business sounds great. It leaves us free to enjoy the finer things in life instead of spending weekends painting and mowing and cleaning toilets. But there is always another side to every story. It makes us lazy and complacent about certain things. I worry it will spoil my son because no matter how much we try to give him a ‘normal’ life, he can only draw from his own experiences and observations, and the bottom line is, we are all very well looked after and don’t have to lift a finger if we don’t want to. He sees this. And it’s not something I want him getting used to. A friend of mine who I know is extremely rigorous when it comes to her children was only saying today how they have forgotten even the basics of pushing a chair under the table or closing a drawer, because if they don’t do it someone else will.  It happens to anyone who is here for long enough – we stop seeing things the way they really should be and sit back and let someone else do the work.

Paid help is not the same as having family or friends around. They do their job, and do it well – but have no responsibility for us or our feelings or situations. Our maid, however great she is with our son, is not a substitute for grandparents or aunties and uncles. Although he likes her and respects her, I see how naturally relaxed and confident and ‘at home’ he is with my mum and other family members and realise that blood runs very deep even though we might be too young to understand why or how. Maybe he intuitively picks up on my relationship with our maid too. Let’s be honest  – she is as much a ‘part of the family’ as we can make her – but the bottom line is she works for me. There is a line, even if we don’t openly acknowledge it. I have to instruct her on what needs to be done. No matter if she is the only person around, I can’t run to her with my problems, my hopes or fears. She is an employee, not a flatmate.

Having help with everything, all the time, can actually be pretty annoying. There are certain things I like to do my way, the same as anyone else. Well actually, there’s an outside chance I’m a bit more anal than the average person, which probably doesn’t help. But the thing is, when other people are doing things for you constantly, they tend to do it their way, unless you micromanage each and every situation. And when that involves supervising everything you have done for you, from unpacking the shopping to trimming the bushes to banging a nail in the wall, it becomes a chore. So, to add to my illustrious title of Trailing Spouse, I am also a Home Supervisor. I might not work in the traditional sense, but this week alone I have 5 separate sets of people in my employ working at the house in some capacity or another, and all because of a lack of DIY stores and the urban myth that persists here despite a whole load of evidence to the contrary – that it’s easier to ‘get a man in’.

But to be honest, as irritating as it can be sometimes to be relieved of doing anything for myself, it is still one of the true perks of living in Dubai. Returning to the real world after being here for so long will be a real shock to the system, I know this. I’m actually frightened of it. Not having the freedom to go out any time we like, for dinner or drinks or meeting friends – that alone is enough to keep me here until my son is 16 and old enough to babysit himself. Never mind having to iron shirts or put petrol in the car on a freezing cold winter morning. But the bottom line is that when we live near our families and friends, we have a different kind of support. They might not do my washing up but they will know when to offer a hand. They will allow me to feel useful by returning the favour when they need it the most. I am determined my son will not grow up a over-priveledged expat brat, and will learn that toys do not tidy themselves, beds do not make themselves, and sometimes Mummy will put the TV on just so she can cook tea in peace instead of asking someone else to do it. Yes, I will surely miss Dubai. My nails will not look as beautiful, I will have to learn where the wheelie bin is, and accept that a portion of my evenings will be spent reading furniture assembly instructions. But I have no plans to lose my ability to delegate entirely. I like it too much and do not remember tiling the bathroom or weeding my garden in the UK with any particular fondness. I may eventually retire my position of Trailing Spouse but I am very sure my career as Home Supervisor will live on in no matter where we are.

Wherever I lay my hat…

A contemporary Tibetan nomadic tent near Namts...

Image via Wikipedia

Confusion reigns supreme. After a fortnight spent in the UK, I am once again no longer sure if I have been home or if I’ve just arrived back there. I am finally sleeping in a comfortable bed again but long for the fresh cool air I’ve left behind. I have my own kitchen back but I miss my mum. I am happy to be home and yet miss it terribly. In my final act of abandonment I’ve swapped SIM cards and am in some sort of communication purgatory – my friends in the UK no longer sms me, but the Dubai ones don’t know I’m back yet, if indeed they ever noticed I was gone. The cats appear to share my quandary: one minute howling at me for daring to return to what they have officially claimed as their territory in our absence, the next cuddling up and leaving me covered in fur.

Two weeks isn’t a long time. People go on holiday for 2 weeks all the time and I know when you come home it always feels a bit weird. (And sometimes it smells funny too but I bet no-one except me will admit that.) But you open your mail, unpack, stick the heating back on, download your photos and then get up and go to work the next day and life springs back to normal (and you don’t notice the smell any more either). Trouble is for me, my normal isn’t normal. This week, after I’ve unpacked, I’ll be starting the whole thing over, because in 8 weeks we leave Dubai again, this time for the whole summer. It takes an extraordinary amount of logistical planning to leave your home for a whole season, particularly if you are incredibly stupid and married a foreigner. In total, we will be gone for 7 weeks, staying in 6 different locations across 2 continents and flying a total of 28 hours and God knows how many miles. I will be arranging our diary for the trip, coordinating family and friends in Essex, Herts, Surrey, London, New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. I will make plans to see friends travelling from several different states and some from entirely different countries, in addition to attending a wedding, seeing a new baby and celebrating my birthday – all with a 2 year old in tow. I have to think about potty training and big boy beds and whether it’s easier to stick to nappies and cots or try toilets and bedguards. And how do I travel with a cot? Or a bedguard? Or a potty for that matter? How do I carry it all by myself? I need to book cars and taxis and trains and porters to get us from airport to airport and all the bits inbetween without me breaking my back or being committed. I need to pack for warm weather, cool weather, wet weather and beach weather. I need to do online food shopping for the self-catered parts of the trip and book babysitters in 3 different cites. I have to figure out whether to hold a birthday party for my little boy in each country so that everyone gets to celebrate or just leave it until we get back because he’ll never remember it anyway. I can’t even start to think about the effects of this nomadic lifestyle on him because if it takes it toll anywhere near as much on him as it does on me I fear it will scar him for life. I’m exhausted just thinking about it all and I haven’t even got over my jet lag from the last trip yet.

But it has to be done. Why? Because on top of being 45 degrees in the shade, Dubai summers are notoriously lonely. Everyone who can, leaves. For as long as they can. Which pretty much means every Trailing spouse and their many Trailing kids are shipped out just after school finishes and arrive back just in time to get over the jet lag before they go back.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule. Newbies, who think the summer ‘won’t be that bad’, generally plan to stay for most of the summer with a few weeks’ break in the middle. And some people maintain ‘it’s not that hot’ and choose to stay all summer long. Others insist there is plenty to do – which there is, if you like shopping malls and sweating. This will be my sixth Dubai summer and I’ve seen enough to know they are bad, they are hot, there is nothing to do and they are definitely not for me. The first year we were here I stayed for all but 2 weeks. I learned the layout of several malls by heart and went days – no – weeks without talking to anyone between 8am and 7pm except shop assistants. I sank so low I thought I would never recover. Then three summers ago due to a gross miscalculation I spent July and August confined to my house waiting for my baby to arrive, watching my ankles swell to gargantuan proportions in front of the entire box set of Sex and The City and several series of Desperate Housewives. Even the excitement of an impending baby did nothing to lessen the boredom. And last year I thought it would be easier to stay here for most of July rather than travelling with a small baby. It wasn’t. It was long, hot and incredibly lonely and I nearly went completely mad. So personally, I have a mantra about summers in Dubai that goes something like this: Never again, never again, never again.

But the price to pay for my summer escape is this: a permanently temporary feeling. Every year is the same. Summer is approached through the number of weeks spent away from Dubai. Winter plans are determined by visitors and Christmas. The gaps inbetween are filled with ‘real life’, but too often it becomes merely space filler. The answer of course is not to travel so much, but that’s way beyond my comfort zone. I want to see my friends and family, I want to go ‘home’! It’s why I find it so hard to think of returning to work, because four weeks of holiday simply isn’t enough for me while we live so far away. And now I have my son to consider as well, it makes thing even harder. He is growing up in one place but his life is in another. And another. It’s a dilemma I hope will be resolved before he is much older because I want him to know his home and be sure of where that is, where he comes from, his identity. I don’t even mind where ‘home’ ends up being for him, I just know that it isn’t here. For many reasons Dubai can never truly be home, even though we do our best to make it ours we know it is only ever temporary. I always notice the smell.

“Make new friends…

…but keep the old,
the new are silver
the old are gold”

My mum had a sampler with this on it hanging in her kitchen for years. Rather ironically she is no longer in touch with the person who made it for her – despite 20+ years of friendship they simply drifted apart as their lives moved on and their circumstances changed and they finally had nothing left in common. Which just goes to show how hard it is to hang onto your nearest and dearest BFFs in the first place. Add in a few thousand miles and it gets really tough.

I’ve already known most of my BFFs for 20 years, which is frankly terrifying, that we are all that old, or that we were all that young once upon a time – I’m not sure which. The majority of our other halves have all been hanging around for over a decade too, and are part of a huge family that shifts and grows over time, making new connections and cementing old ones. We are sprinkled around the home counties, strewn around the world – the US, South Africa, Spain, Dubai…we come and go from our global adventures, but wherever we go and whatever we do, amazingly for a group of around 30 people, we always manage to feel close. How close, and to whom, changes year on year as our situations and locations change too. And how often we log into Facebook. But I know I could pick up the phone to any one of them, any one at all – and if I was in trouble somehow they would help.

So what is it that makes these friendships last? History, humour, habit…I suspect probably a bit of all of the above. And a whole lot of love. Of course there are other, newer friends whom I love dearly too. It is possible to make new friends because of course, if you know them for long enough, they become old friends too.

So why, why, why is it so damn difficult for me to form lasting friendships in Dubai?

I blame it on me. After all, I don’t really like people. I’m quite fussy about who I spend time with and completely judgemental from the off, so I tend to knock potential friendships on the head before they’ve even had a chance if I don’t think the person quite fits the bill. And I’ve been told I can be a tad intimidating, which is never a good ice breaker… So it’s probably me. But in that case how come I managed to make and keep all these ‘old’ friends and make some new ones along the way as well?? Maybe it’s just a shortage of ‘my type’ of person in Dubai.

You see, my type of friend involves some very high expectations. Permanently in my life, if I decide to keep you, I’ll give you everything I have, every little bit of me. But I expect the same back. And although there have been others who have let me down along the way – and undoubtedly I have dropped a few myself as well – this is where Dubai in particular fails me. It’s a temporary place for most people – somewhere they come to as part of a journey, not to stay and make a life. We form stop-gap releationships. So I can be your friend, and you can be mine, but if something more important comes up, or your life takes a different direction to mine after a while, well, it seems ok here to simply stop being friends.

The thing is, it seems to be something I find incredibly hard to accept. I recently read an article in a women’s magazine which suggested that female friendships alter in importance as the need for that particular person surges or subsides – or are dropped altogether if the relationship is no longer required. I understand how that may be, and can even see parallels in my life that support the theory – but I’m not sure the usual rules apply, or even should apply, when you are living away from home. I have always thought that as expats living abroad, the bonds should not only form faster than average but be stronger too. We experience eachother in a very raw way, and we rely on our friends because there is no-one else. If we are homesick, or going through a bad patch, or having health issues, or sharing good news even – well it’s the people you see every day, who you have proper face time with, who you tend to share those things with first. Facebook status updates and long distance phone calls assume second place.  And as everyone in Dubai (with the exception of about 200,000 locals) is an expat, everyone technically should be in the same boat. So is it a valid excuse to drop someone because circumstances change for one or the other of you? Why, when suddenly you aren’t as convenient or available as you once were, and meeting up or talking involves a little more effort, should the friendship die as quickly as it was born?

Maybe the simple nature of being in such a transient environment makes lasting friendships less important. I probably mind it more than I should and I should probably just cast my net wider, accept less than perfect will do, and take the view that it’s only for a few years anyway and then I can go back to my real life. But is that any easier to handle?  To me, no matter how it comes about, friendship should be about loyalty, longevity and love. Friends, even silver ones, should always have the potential to be upgraded. And honestly, for a place with so much ‘bling’ I seem to be a little short on gold.

Staying relevant

Royal Wedding of William and Catherine Duke & ...

Image by Defence Images via Flickr

So, the royal wedding was beamed live into our living room today. I watched it from start to finish although not so much because I wanted to see it, but more akin to doing homework. We go back to the UK next week and I was terrified if I didn’t see it I would be so out of the loop that I might as well pack up and come back to Dubai!

Staying relevant is hard work when you are away from home for so long. Every time I go back there are more ‘celebrities’ I’ve never heard of made famous by more reality shows I’ve never seen on channels I didn’t even know existed. I have barely a sense of who anyone is in politics anymore and no idea whatsoever of how to operate an oyster card, the TV, or even how to put the rubbish out depending on which London borough I am in. A few summers ago I was reprimanded for ordering a bottle of water to the table whilst out to dinner. Apparently it wasn’t the done thing anymore, when perfectly good tap water would suffice. Well how was I to know?! Last time I dined out in London we drank horrifically expensive water from Fiji and no-one said a word except how much they liked the bottles.

I’ve lost track of whether I should be shopping organic, GM free (is that the same thing?), or just as cheaply as possible given the current economic climate. Although I’m not sure what the current economic climate actually is. I attempted to follow the General Election but failed dismally due to my complete lack of interest on the subject. I don’t know who won Wimbledon last year, I didn’t see Strictly Come Dancing, I don’t know who Catherine Tate is and I’ve missed the Take That ‘Circus’ tour, surely the biggest crime of all.

In short, I am completely in the dark when it comes to a lot of social and cultural references that my friends and family take for granted. It makes me feel pretty alienated when I visit, unless I work really hard to find a few things out before I arrive. The one area of knowledge where I can excel is, bizarrely, fashion. Fashion is something I didn’t even know about before I came to Dubai but it’s fair to say I’ve developed a deep love of shopping since we arrived. Who wouldn’t? Fashion, and designer fashion in particular, is all around me, all the time. Being well-groomed, wearing good clothes and accessorising is an art form here and people aren’t afraid to dress up. Bugger the current economic climate, it’s all about the shoes, darling!

So historically, staying relevant in Dubai has been a little less complicated than maybe elsewhere in the world. For starters, few women in the Trailing Spouse/Trophy Wife/New mother sectors of society talk about anything except themselves, their children, or other people in Dubai – the typical expat bubble syndrome prevails – and the tendency is to simply tune out to what’s going on in the rest of the world. But the recent regional political unrest has begun to reawaken my interest in current affairs. The protests in Egypt, Syria, Libya and beyond has affected large portions of the arab population including many who live and work in Dubai. I have found staying relevant is suddenly more relevant and in order to do so have actually begun reading a newspaper from time to time. A British one of course – which means that suddenly, staying relevant generally has become a little easier.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so lazy and complacent in the first place and picked up a paper before now. Plenty of people I’m sure manage this small feat everyday while they live away from home. I admit, it’s simply not been relevant to me and so I haven’t bothered. However, I realise this is a rather shallow way of viewing things and that’s why I’m slowly changing my habits and re-educating myself on the bigger picture. Today is, for me, a part of this process. And ok, it might not be the most important event happening on the global stage right now, but Kate did look very lovely and it really was a very nice wedding, and I believe it is relevant to say so.