Small town/big city
17 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in A Dubai 'moment', Living in Dubai, made me smile, what's happening to me? Tags: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
In a city that is all about bigger and better, it’s sometimes nice to remember that Dubai is not exactly a sprawling metropolis. We’re always bumping into people we know – at dinner, on weekends away, in the mall – and quite often the circles that people move in are still small enough to induce that feeling of ‘where everybody knows your name’. Sometimes this is not so great – I should imagine complete reinvention is a little difficult – but often it produces a feeling of camaraderie that gives out a warm and welcome glow in such a transient place as here. This is no more obvious than when listening to the radio. Yesterday, a generous amount of airtime was being given to the installation of the new and rather controversial speed camera on Al Hessa Street. You can’t get more local than that, and there was something rather nice about the sense of belonging it gave me, to know exactly what they were talking about and why.
More amazing is that I’m feeling this generous about Dubai in 45 degree heat late on a Thursday afternoon with another eight weeks to go before I escape for the summer. Times, they are a-changin’….
Back to Black
14 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Living in Dubai Tags: Dubai, Dubai Shopping Festival, travel, United Arab Emirates
Several things have recently alerted me to the fact that Dubai may be on the ‘up’ again:
1. I cannot, for love nor money, get a taxi to pick me up from my house after 7pm on the weekend
2. No-one has my dress size or my shoe size in anything expensive
3. I am getting endless phone calls and sms messages from estate agents wishing to buy or rent my house, BUT
4. I don’t seem to be getting as much spam about 75% off sales in Harvey Nicks
5. The DIFC (Dubai’s financial district) is packed full of busy looking suits again
6. The hotels are all fully booked
7. The restaurants are fully booked
8. Everyone is getting just a little bit more rude
9. Everything is getting just a little more expensive
10. Plans for an underwater hotel have just been announced
Yes, you read right. An underwater hotel. It’s true, despite the best link I could find being from the Daily Mail. Ambition clearly is not something this city is short of, even if the pennies have been a little lacking in recent years. And in any case it would seem the announcement of this latest crackpot scheme may well be indicative of Dubai’s apparent recovery. The Dubai Shopping Festival had a record number of visitors this year who collectively spent over AED 10 billion, and according to the latest census there are now also over 2 million residents in Dubai – an all time high. Restaurants and hotels are opening apace, and property prices are on the rise again. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that Dubai is showing signs of recovery. After a few years of very difficult times, it is nice to see our house is now worth comfortably over 50% of what we paid for it for the first time since we moved in.
(No, it’s no good – it still hurst to talk about it. Moving on…)
The Burj al Arab: it all started here (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tourism is most definitely on the rise, with reports of visitor numbers climbing by 9% in the first quarter of 2012. Of course we have Arab Spring to thank for much of that. Whilst many other middle eastern countries are now off the table, Dubai and the UAE in general appear to be politically stable and the city has attracted many regional visitors that may traditionally have gone elsewhere. I should imagine the rotten weather Europe has had to endure so far this spring has also encouraged a larger number of tourists from the west, particularly now the ‘Dubai-bashers’ who took such great delight in reporting nothing but negative and exaggerated stories in the British press in the height of the crash have put a sock in it. Dubai has seemingly regained it’s position as the no.1 destination for shopping, eating, sunbathing and, well – just being rather glamourous, and the punters are flocking in.
And seriously, the city is really flourishing, in new ways as well as old. There are farmer’s markets selling organic locally grown produce, the industrial zone is home to a growing number of galleries, displaying both traditional and contemporary works – and (drumroll) there are large parts of the city that actually look like they are finished. The arts scene, neglected for so long, still has a long way to go – but the sheer number of artists, film makers, actors, musicians, photographers and writers that proliferate my Facebook, and the volume of projects that are being worked on, would suggest the city is getting ready to embrace culture in a new and very different way to anything that has gone before.
When it comes to dining, I can’t count the number of incredible restaurants and bars that have opened this past year or so, and certainly haven’t had time to eat in all of them – but it would also seem every chef and his celebrity dog now wants to get their slice of Dubai. The one exceptional departure has been that of Gordon Ramsey, who paved the way for Michelin-starred food in Dubai with his restaurant ‘Verre’, opening way back in 2001. Ramsey may have gone but he leaves behind a most important legacy: his chefs. In a bold move they’ve taken Ramsay’s old space and claimed it as their own. This is pretty unique in Dubai – ‘home grown’ talent running an independent fine dining restaurant. Most celeb chefs open up, stick their name on the door, and visit once a year. Table 9 is as sure sign as any that the Dubai dining scene is not only back on its feet, but finally starting to mature into something really exciting rather than just a money making machine.
So the city begins to grow a new soul. A very different one from that which was lost during the boom years. It’s true, Dubai’s old heart beats to a different drum and is, I fear, gone, along with so many of the residents that helped build it. The interim years of property booms and money madness were ugly ones. The place was charged with arrogance and selfishness and everything glittered, for sure, but it was not gold. Recent times have been quieter, people have tended to just get on with things, and during the recession it seems the city has reshaped itself and has really grown in some ways – emotionally if not literally. It’s only now things are starting to be on the ‘up’ that I have noticed the mood shift once more. There are signs that of that old personality that I did not like – tempers are a fraction shorter and good manners a littler harder to come by as the city fills up and gets busier, and the ‘Do you have any idea who I ams’ are more prevalent than before. I hope this time, though, that Dubai will try and keep it real. To say no to the shysters and refuse to accept rude and shallow behaviour as the norm. To be generous and accepting and to give back as well as take. Dubai is an amazing city that can continue to grow in all senses of the word. And this time around, as the good times roll, we need to enrich as well as get rich. Now, where’s that taxi?
Coz you’re there for me Part twooooo-oooooo
06 May 2012 4 Comments
in Clearly I'm totally dislikable, It's all about me, Living away from home, Living in Dubai, Trailing Spouse
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.
I can’t get no sleep
28 Apr 2012 2 Comments
in being exhausted has never been so much fun, Parenting, The bags under my eyes count as accessories
My son slept until 6.20am today. I could count the number of times this has happened in the last 31 months on two hands and it would have been perfect…except for the 5am shout out to the masses about some grievance or another that needless to say woke me up with with a start and left me unable to go back to the land of nod. Sod’s law and all that, you might say, but it’s a classic example of the general sleep deprivation that rules our house on a near-daily basis.
There is no doubt that my son is a historically terrible sleeper. When he was a newborn, I used to think I must be doing something wrong that all the other babies around me would sleep, well – like babies. Mine would be staring at the ceiling (or more accurately at a particular spot on the top of the door frame) for hours on end whilst I frantically tried to rock him into the land of nod so I could have five minutes of down time. Once he was asleep, staying asleep was the next challenge. While my friends were busy enjoying a coffee and a chat as their cherubs snored blissfully in buggies, mine would be thrashing about within fifteen minutes flat, demanding attention or food, or both. The other day I watched with horror when a woman wheeled her three month old into the nail spa. Irritation that I would have to now sit and listen to someone else’s small child during the precious few hours I didn’t have to listen to mine was quickly replaced by envy as the baby gently closed his eyes, and as if on cue, fell asleep and stayed asleep while his mother had a full manicure. The stuff of dreams. Only not mine, because I’m never asleep long enough to dream.
One of my favourite books read beautifully by Samuel L Jackson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As my son grew older he adapted to a routine of about four naps a day. Which was great in theory, if only they didn’t last 20 minutes each, approximately the length of time it takes to go to the bathroom, boil the kettle, make a cup of tea you will never get round to drinking and – oh no, that’s it, he’s awake. Night times he learned to sleep with only a few wake ups…until 4.30am. Yes, for an entire summer we were woken before dawn, trying every trick in the book to make him go back to sleep and all in vain. Finally as he turned a year old, he figured out sleeping solidly at night. For six months we rested and enjoyed comparative lie ins until 5.30am. Then at about 15 months his night times got increasingly eventful until finally he decided to stop sleeping altogether. Every hour he would wake up, screaming and crying, and I would have to stay by his bed to get him to sleep again. I implemented the ‘gradual withdrawal’ method to extricate myself from the room, moving a few inches back from the bed every night for over a month until finally he learnt to go to sleep by himself again.
By this point I was actually turning into a zombie. I love my little boy but I love my sleep too. Other mothers would bemoan how they had been woken up at 6am whilst I sat wishing my child would ever sleep until that time. He dropped his naps quickly too, down to a single nap of an hour or so by the time he was 18 months old, and getting rid of that just before he turned two. I actually wept the day he didn’t sleep at lunchtime. I wasn’t ready for the relentlessness of the day without a break, and thought I’d easily have another half year or so before I had to worry about it. Wrong.
Fortunately the big boy bed arrived without too much of a hitch and he now settles quickly at night so we don’t have endless wars at bedtime like some. I must have done something right for this to happen and I am now officially the world expert on sleeping and sleep methods, so many did I try to crack the code. But we still get regularly woken between 5 and 6am, and most nights he throws in a couple of screeches or wails for good measure, that leave our hearts pounding and break up our much-needed sleep. I think now, that his sleeping isn’t so terrible, but that the residual effect of over two years of sleep deprivation means that anything less than an uninterrupted seven hours leaves me exhausted.
Parents of children who sleep do not understand what it is like, to have one that doesn’t. They suggest all kinds of things – over the past couple of years I have been given so much advice my head could burst. “When he starts solids, he’ll sleep through because he won’t be hungry.” (No, he won’t.) “When he starts school he’ll sleep no problem.” (No, he won’t. He’ll be tired but that’s not the same as sleeping.) “Have you tried black out blinds?” (OF COURSE I’VE TRIED BLACKOUT BLINDS!) “Sometimes children sleep better if they have a nap.” (And sometimes they don’t, they just won’t go to bed on time either because they’ve had too much sleep.) “Maybe you should try putting him to bed later.” (No, thanks, I quite like the two hours I have to myself at night before I collapse in a heap.) The problem with all these suggestions – apart from the obvious fact that they don’t work for me – is that they worked for the child of the person concerned. Hence their child sleeps. So back to my original statement, that parents of children who sleep do not understand what it is like, to have one that doesn’t. They only understand what it is like to have one that didn’t used to, but does now. And that is a different thing altogether.
This post wouldn’t be complete of course, without mention of the Sunclock. The magical piece of gadgetry that parents of toddlers and pre-schoolers swear by. So many people recommended this to me and assured me it was the answer to my prayers, that despite my reservations it would ever work I decided to give it a try last month. I was encouraged by my son’s quick grasping of the concept (stars out = go to sleep, sun = wake up) and was even vaguely hopeful that one day I could enjoy a 7am lie-in on the weekend. Although to be honest I would settle for a regular 6am. But folks, here’s the catch: the Sunclock only works on children that were predisposed to sleep in the first place. Children who rise early to count the stars left on the LED display do not qualify. Children that couldn’t care less if the clock has stars on it or a sun and continue to sing at the top of their voices anyway from the second they wake up, do not qualify. Children who you can hear muttering “It says “five, four, seven ‘A’ ‘M’!” do not qualify. I have been experimenting with said clock for three weeks now, just to give it a chance, and have to tell you for anyone with a child who simply doesn’t want or need to sleep any later in the mornings, it’s a heap of crap.
I live in hope that one day my son will sleep until 7am and beyond. I know that it is only another 10 years or so until this is guaranteed to happen. And from today I will never mention again how sleep deprived we are, to avoid any more well meant but unfortunately useless advice coming my way. My child doesn’t need sleep to sleep past dawn. I do. These are the facts and there is nothing anyone can do to change it. So if you see me with bags under my eyes, instead of trying to solve the impossible problem, do me a favour and recommend a decent concealer.
Arachnophobia
20 Apr 2012 3 Comments
in A Dubai 'moment', Scary stuff, Why me?
To anyone who is a Facebook friend of mine, forgive me right now because you have already lived through most of this saga. To anyone who, like me, has severe arachnophobia, you might want to skip reading this post – particularly if you live in Dubai. For anyone that’s left, feel free to continue…
Some of you may recall my earlier post on the various fauna we attract in these parts. Well, guess what folks, we finally got our camel spider close-up. Of course it happened while my husband was away, because my encounters with nature always do, and it happened first thing in the morning, because these sorts of things can’t wait until after I’ve drunk my tea.
I really did try to put a photo on for you but it kept making me feel ill looking at it. So here are some flowers instead
Fortunately our inquisitive and slightly annoying cat alerted me to the issue by sniffing around under the dining table as my son and I ate our breakfast. I glanced down to see what she was swiping at, assuming it was some poor lizard that had somehow found its way in to our hermetically sealed house, and my stomach lurched horribly as I saw a pale brown coloured leg the size of a teaspoon handle sticking out right by my feet. I whipped my son mid-mouthful out of his chair and flew to the other end of the kitchen, frantically trying to find the Pif Paf on the shelf whilst clutching my son and determinedly not taking my eyes off ‘the prize’. Which by now had come out to show itself in full five inch diameter glory. Well, even the cat backed off at that point. I had no clue what I thought I would do with the Pif Paf even if I found it and a thousand thoughts filled my head at once as I a)plotted our escape from the house, never to return, b)wondered if I was scarring my son for life by letting him see me scared shitless and for letting him see what it was that was scaring me, c)debated whether I could ever get near enough to spray the insect killer in any case, d)tried not to throw up and e)cursed my husband for being away whilst I do battle with my version of hell.
Fortunately, right by the Pif Paf was the door to our maid’s room. Despite the early hour (she doesn’t start until after breakfast in the normal run of things) I tapped on her door, cried her name in a somewhat shaky voice, and when she opened up, pointed at the dining table and croaked ‘insect killer’.
Thankfully, there is only one thing that moves faster than a camel spider, and that is our maid. She whipped out the can, a dustpan and the broom and went straight in for the kill. It took three rounds of spray before the thing was finally stunned enough (and crunched up enough) for her to scoop it up in the pan and get it out of the house. Then we heard a lot of banging, followed by her coming back in and announcing “Dead, madam, in the bin” and giggling at the quivering mess that used to be me.
After I had tried to restore a slight sense of normality and joviality into the morning (toast in the playroom anyone, so that we don’t poison ourselves with the smell of bug killer?), I got a description from our maid who had clearly got a lot closer than I had – and immediately called my Aussie friend to get confirmation of its identification (as I have previously noted, it’s always good to have an Australian on hand in these sorts of crises – they don’t get fazed easily and know by heart what can kill you). Identification confirmed, I then concentrated really, really hard on not throwing up for the best part of an hour. I spent all day avoiding putting my feet on the floor when sitting and totally freaked when I trod on some water that had dripped onto the floor from my glass.
The thing is, as anyone here will tell you, camel spiders are not venomous. And therefore, as anyone who clearly has never actually encountered one of these things will tell you, there’s no need to make a fuss. Well I tell you what, I defy anyone not to have been just a tiny bit scared by this thing. I have since discovered our maid is somewhat of an expert in the art of spider killing (although thankfully not all of them in our house), but I have no doubt the giggling was as much of a nervous response as it was hilarity at my green face and shaking hands. And, as anyone who is terrified of the average UK house spider will tell you, there is no point in saying camel spiders are ‘harmless’. For starters, they aren’t harmless. They are massive, fast, and they bite, and if you want to hang around to see what kind of bite you get from a pissed off five inch arachnid then be my guest. I personally didn’t feel the need, just to get a photo and pretend to be all kick-ass about the whole thing. It was absolutely the scariest thing that has ever happened to me in my own house and honestly I’d rather have to deal with a lion popping in for lunch than ever see one of these things ever again.
Pest control have been and gone. We vacated the house for the night and they sprayed inside and out, and all around. Nothing lives and the horror is over. I have elected not to concern myself with how it arrived in our house in the first place. We live in the desert, even though we might forget it from time to time, and it could have got in any number of different ways. What remains to be seen is the effect it, and I, have had on our son. Last night he woke screaming about spiders in the bed, it took 20 minutes for me to coax him back in and I had to stay with him until the morning. We live in hope that the nightmare is a one-off and he will sleep more soundly tonight. But as he has been talking about it all day, on and off, I don’t hold out much hope. I blame myself because there is no doubt he heard me talking about it, on the phone, at lunch, with the maid. And I was probably too honest in telling him why ‘the men’ were coming to spray the house. But on the other hand, I am still thinking about what I saw too, and can’t get it off my mind. So I just hope the memory fades for both of us over time and have to accept the consequences of being marginally less than grown up in my reaction.
As a long-time sufferer, it took arachnophobia to a whole new level I didn’t dream of and it has not inspired me to ‘man up’ next time, merely to get on the fastest plane out of here. I can only fervently hope that we never, ever, ever see one again.
Lucky seven
17 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Emotional, Living away from home, Living in Dubai, Trailing Spouse
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
04 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
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?
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.)
www
01 Apr 2012 2 Comments
in A Dubai 'moment', Stuff going on in my head, Trailing Spouse
One of the most wonderful things about getting older is all the friends you collect as you go through life. This past few weeks have taken some interesting turns, not least because of all the people I have met in the past twenty years (and then some…). I have been so inspired by an old school friend in recent months that I felt compelled to take action and jump start my career, which was rewarded last week with my MA acceptance. Encouraged by a few of the many talented, fun people I have met whilst performing, I have uncovered via the power of Facebook a previously unheard of hotbed of creativity and artistry in Dubai, and begun to experiment with the boundaries of my acting skills (and discovered that apparently there are boundaries to them – good to know). I have ended up co-ordinating ‘background artists’ for a UK TV crew shooting over here, because a friend from college is on the production team and messaged me to ask if I could help. I have shared a rare but precious skype session with an old work colleague in South Africa who never fails to brighten my day. A dear friend from home called me on the telephone, which doesn’t happen very often and was a real treat. Not counting the several friends I have emailed or facebooked just to say hi.
But how much do I take this for granted, that I am in touch with all these people, from school, college, work, my hobbies – and spread all around the world? I’d like to imagine that it’s 100% down to my sparkling personality, but in reality I think it has an awful lot more to do with modern technology. The internet and its merry band of men, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, email, Skype – they keep us in touch with each other no matter where we are of course – but in particular they are a serious contribution towards making expat life much easier than it would have been in days gone past. And I am extremely thankful for that.
Realistically, if I was me now, in the 80′s, I reckon barely half of the people I am in contact with would even receive a Christmas card. Long-distance phone calls would be reserved for family only. I would only have a very small pool of people from which to pick my friends, and it really would be the place where everybody knows my name, for better or for worse. In fact whilst writing this post I did some digging on what life in Dubai was like thirty years ago to try and get a feel for what I would have been up against and it made me realise that back then it was a true hardship posting. In fact it kind of made me a bit ashamed at all the fuss I’ve made about being here.
Sheikh Zayed Road in 1990. 1990!
But then I dug around some more. Yes, it was hot (no A/C back then, of course!) and there was nothing to do – it would seem from these archives that the first coffee shop (cafe, if you will, rather than a roadside pitstop) didn’t even open until 1981 – but it was also a much more caring, social, friendly place to be. There isn’t much I found to read about personal experiences, rather a lot of old photos and some descriptions to go with them – but where there are comments from people it seems they genuinely loved their time here. It was a special and unique experience of a select few rather than the mass exercise in money-making and spending that it has become today. There was room for sisterhood because these expat women had no-one else. They were literally cut off from everyone they knew and loved and only had each other to rely on. I guess that would make you the odd lifelong friend or two.
I wonder what my life would be like if we’d been here then instead of now. Would I have morphed into a ‘Jumeirah Jane’ and partaken in hosting competitive coffee mornings and elaborate dinner parties for my villa compound friends and my husband’s co-workers? Would I ever have been brave enough to come here in the first place, send my kids to UK boarding schools in their teens so they were prepared for ‘real life’, be content not to work – not be able to work – and learn to consider social standing in this tiny community as a career ladder to be climbed? Would I have despaired at the heat, the sand, the basic amenities and the lack of contact with my family and friends back home? Or would I have embraced the kinship of my fellow ‘Janes’ and joined the party? Indeed – would I have been happier without all the technology to remind me of life back home? I wonder if this is why their memories are so fond, that they didn’t have anything to distract from their lives as they stood, and therefore just had to get on with things. I know when I am busy I miss home the least. Detachment from your old life is a very simple way to ease homesickness and so in that sense I wonder if the Trailing spouses of the 80s had a easier in that sense.
Sheikh Zayed Road 2008.
But not being able to Skype, or Facebook, or sms anyone, or email – gosh, if someone took that away from me now I would be utterly distraught. Communication from home fills in my days, colours my world with something other than sand and sun, and makes me feel not quite as ‘foreign’ as I would otherwise. How else would I know about politics, VAT on pasties and snatchels? Not even counting the volume of news I get from my friends on a near-daily basis, filling in the gaps left by living thousands of miles away.
No, I think I’ve got it better. I get to see my niece growing up eight time zones away, my son knows his grandparents and ‘plays’ with them while they watch, and I can still be inspired by someone I was friends with nearly thirty years back living in the depths of the English countryside. My predecessors may have made lifelong friends in Dubai out of a necessity to survive, but I’m kind of glad to have mine spread about – sitting at their computers all around the world, keeping me virtual company and at my disposal whenever I need to laugh or cry or just touch base. All hail the world wide web.
Desperately seeking…nothing, actually.
22 Mar 2012 1 Comment
in Good days, It's all about me
My brain is empty of thought. I have no words. I am not sure why this has happened but I think it’s something to do with being over-taxed. Or taxed at all, I should imagine. There are a thousand things I could write about this week, and indeed a fair few I should write about, but I can’t seem to find the right angle.
And then it occurs to me: Could it be, that for the first time in a fairly long while, I am actually busy and stimulated and…OMG…happy???
Some happy tomatoes
There may be some evidence to suggest this is the case:
1. My son has ceased to pee on the floor and has used the toilet without fail for the past 4 days. This is of course his achievement and not mine – but I also feel that finally I might have got something right and his success is testament to my amazing parenting skills and tireless patience rather than his sole ability to transform from baby to boy in just under two weeks because he was ‘ready’. Hence on Friday, while he is presented with the electric piano that he has coveted in ELC for the past three months, I shall be rewarding myself with an hour in a darkened room being pummelled with essential oils, because hell, I earned it.
2. I am busy. Really busy. And not just with boring house ‘to dos’ but actual projects that are fun and engaging and sociable. And man, that feels good. Of course I also have the boring stuff to do but it doesn’t seem so bad when the rest of the time is filled in with things I actually want to be involved in. My husband is being incredibly supportive about me keep zipping off here and there and I am wondering quite a lot why I moped around for so long doing nothing. I tend to think it’s just my time now, to start to spread my wings again, and I can only say how lucky I feel, that I have the support to be able to do that.
3. On that particular subject, I was offered a place on a Master’s degree course to study professional writing this week and I am completely and utterly thrilled about it.
This last point is, of course, me blowing my own trumpet that I am actually good enough at spouting crap for someone to think I could eventually do it for a living. It came as rather a surprise to me but I’m not arguing with their decision. Panicking slightly, but not arguing. As any of my blog followers who have read my earlier posts will know, I have struggled for a long time to find something meaningful to do, to have something to aim for that (hopefully) has income attached to it whilst still being able to enjoy the benefits of being a stay at home mum and cope with the business of Trailing. It is somewhat ironic that I have ended up a writer, having started writing in part to figure out my place in this world. But it feels like the right thing for me, for the future, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me.
So it would appear I have finally found the answer to my career conundrum, got myself a hobby that I love, and have less child-related stress than I have done in months. The only problem is if I stay this happy about it I’ll have absolutely nothing left to write about and if I stay this busy I’ll have no time to write it either.
Dammit. Boredom, loneliness and misery, where art thou?
In Memoriam
14 Mar 2012 1 Comment
in Bad days, Emotional, Living away from home Tags: Grief Loss and Bereavement
My paternal grandmother passed away yesterday. It did not come as a surprise, she had terminal cancer diagnosed a long while ago, so we all knew it was only a matter of time. But when you are living thousands of miles away a ‘matter of time’ does not have the same meaning. Distance puts an invisible and impenetrable barrier between me and my loved ones. Unless I am ‘lucky’ to be home when death strikes, I cannot help, I cannot support, and I cannot say goodbye when goodbye matters most. Until last year all four of my grandparents were still alive but all over 85, and clearly not going to live forever. With each trip back I have to quietly say my goodbyes to these old people whom I love so much, in case it’s the last time I see them. I strive to make my peace with it but the bottom line is I’m not there.
There is a school of thought that death is easier to cope with if you are far away. You don’t have to deal with any of the nasty, you don’t have to see what’s happening, you don’t have to help, simply because you can’t. There is no way of being with them in an ambulance, or dropping a hot dinner round to their home, brushing their hair, or holding their hand at the bedside. There is no true understanding of what that person is going through, nor the terror, grief and worry of the other people who are there to provide all the support that you can’t. I have no real clue to what my dad has been doing these past months to assist his parents, just as I have no proper understanding of what my mum went through caring for my grandfather before he passed away last year. I am sheltered from all of this. And when a person dies, I am sheltered all over again, from everyone else’s grief, because I am not there to see it.
I toy with the idea of flying back for the funeral but I feel guilty, as if I have just turned up for the easy bit and missed all the hard stuff everyone else has been through. I cannot be part of the process, I can only turn up to the party. But it is not easy sitting here by myself. Grief is a lonely business when you are far away. I might not be able to help or support my family but there is no-one to help me either. A comment from another post I read on this subject said this: “We must be self-reliant in a way most grievers do not have to be…Grieving solo is one of the hardest things to do…(and) can also prevent us from the closure that other people receive from going to the funeral, the wake, the reception.”
And I am discovering for the second time now, that the process for grieving is difficult when you are doing it by yourself. I rely on phone calls and emails to keep me up to date with funeral arrangements, but no-one really wants to talk to me about how they are feeling over the phone, it just isn’t the same. No-one will ask me how I’m doing because they will unconsciously (or consciously) assume that I am somehow less attached for being far away. I will watch other people with less attachment, less history, less loss than me become more involved than I can possibly be in the grieving process because I am not there. I wrote an email and sent text messages to tell my grandmother we loved her but it’s unlikely I’ll ever find the right time to ask if they were delivered before she slipped into her last sleep. I cannot comfort my dad, my sisters, my grandfather. I cannot sit and have a cup of tea with them just to have the company of another human being who is going through the same thing. I cannot hug anyone. No-one can hug me back. I hate that I am not there to help, I resent that I am not there to be part of the grieving, I am devastated that I could not say goodbye when it was truly time.
Every expat must face the possibility of someone they love passing away while they are abroad. We face grief all over again when we return for visits because life has changed unalterably, again, and whilst everyone else has gradually come to accept the change, it is thrown at us like a bucket of cold water. My grandmother (she would have loved that I’m calling her grandmother, and that I’m writing about her, by the way) probably had the most understanding of my situation of all my family. Her own siblings emigrated to California decades ago and she has dealt with all the pleasure and pain that this brings. She was a meddlesome old bat sometimes (and she knew it) who I didn’t always agree with, but she managed to keep herself relevant and even with her great-grandson bouncing around the room claiming all the attention, she would always take time to ask how I was doing, how I was feeling. I write this for her, because I know she would understand where so many others might not, how I am feeling right now. This is my goodbye, Nanna. Rest in Peace.
Nanna & Grandad with my son, summer 2011
