Safe and sound in Dubai

I’ve said it before, but one of the great joys of living in Dubai is just how safe it is. You never need worry about someone breaking into your house, stealing your stuff, getting mugged... or any of the other revolting criminal activities inflicted on us in South Africa.

It’s wonderful.

I’ve just picked up my credit card, which I left at a bar last night after having a birthday drink with a friend. Stupidly, I signed the slip and forgot to remove the card from the folder. It took one phone call and “of course we have it here, Ma’am.”

Twenty-four hours later and absolutely no unauthorised transactions have taken place on the card. Bless!

The only problem was proving that I am who I said I was.

Manager Dude: Aaah yes, I remember you from yesterday. But for security reasons, I need your ID.

Me: But, of course. I’d be upset if you didn’t. It’s really great that you are so security-conscious. Anyone could just forge my signature and pretend to be me! Thank you for asking. Let me just get my ID out....

(Open purse. No ID)

Me:.... erm, I think I’ve left my Emirates ID is on the photocopy machine at work. Had to copy it for a media function. Wait! I think I have my driver’s licence.

Desperate scratching in purse

Me: .... Oh, I think I left that in my passport.

Manager: Passport is fine. Anything with your name on it.

Me: Except my passport is at home. Maybe I have my South African drivers licence...

Even more desparate scraching - which I realise is in vain, because that’s inside my South African ID book, which is, co-incidentally, right next to my Passport. At home.

Me: Hang on! I know! My laptop! I have a pdf copy of my passport and ID.

Laptop out..press “on”... wait for Mac to boot up, while he stares at me like I’m a little off

Manager: May I offer you a drink in the meantime?

Me: Well, I’d love one, but if I don’t get my card back, I can’t pay for it.

Manager in his smart - but increasingly condescending - 5-star hotel-issue suit just stands there. Eventually, in the bowels of my handbag, I find a crumbled up, very faded photocopy of my SA drivers licence.

Manager: (puts on his glasses) Oui! (he is apparently, French) I see your name and your picture. It looks just like you (God help me).

Me: Ok, you can hand over my card and that glass of Pinot Grigio now, thanks.


But seriously, it is an extraordinarily liberating thing to live without fear and the incessant security-related issues that take up so much of our time and energy back home.

I’ve left my laptop in a taxi and asked the driver to wait while I quickly dash into the supermarket to pick up a few things. He, and my laptop, were waiting when I got out.
You can leave your coffee, your bag and worldly possessions on a table and dash to the loo. It’s there when you get back.

It’s been very hard to get out of that “always-looking-over-your-shoulder” mentality. If I misplace something, I’m embarrassed to say my first thought is that it’s been stolen. The first night I left my bedroom door open (there’s no such thing as burglar bars here) I didn’t sleep a wink, because my mind is still sometimes poisoned by a totally irrational paranoia.
Well, to be fair, it might have been the fear, but it probably also had something to do with the Call-To-Prayer which happens five times a day - and the first one is just before sunrise. Early and loud!! And I live near 4 mosques! At prayer time, it’s like all the Imams (Muslim Priests) are competing against each other to see who can praise God the loudest!
Actually, I’m going to record that and post it on the blog soon for your audio pleasure. Then you’ll see that I am not exaggerating. Not even a nanometer...

Anyhow, I am obviously back in Dubai after a brief, yet wonderful Christmas trip home to see family, friends, and of course my beloved dogs. I really do love this city more and more. And my aunt is visiting from home - SO good to have a family member in my side of the world. I come home to supper, or if she is out, soup/asparagus and a note containing microwaving instructions.

Everyone needs to be looked after sometimes.

Counting Blessings..

Let’s just say that it’s quite easy to get depressed when you are living far away from everyone and everything you know and love. The novelty of living in a new place gradually wears off and one day you wake up to find that Reality (previously just trying to sneak in the back door) is now comfortably entrenched at your kitchen table having coffee from the espresso machine. With milk and one sugar, if you don’t mind, thanks.

But the thing is, just when you think you’ve had enough, something extraordinary happens.

Like a spontaneous trip to Thailand.

Magical, glorious, Thailand.

I’ve never been to the East before, but I had seen loads of footage on the wildlife, so I was uber-excited. (Make that doubly-triply excited after months and months in the desert with only date palms to quench my thirst for something green.)

And Thailand delivered spectacularly. I don’t think that I have ever seen a more beautiful place than Phi-Phi Island (one of the bays is where they filmed the movie “The Beach” with Leo di Caprio.)

It’s so beautiful you feel like your soul has removed your heart and gently placed it on a boat floating to nowhere, slowly bobbing on the most sparklingly-clear, warm water you have ever experienced. And when your heart looks up from the boat and sees the lush, green rainforests hugging the cliffs that plunge into the ocean.... it knows that this is what heaven looks like.

Mother Nature must have been in a brilliant mood when creating Thailand. It feels like she was inspired by the most magnificently poignant symphonies that would only composed millions of years later, ringing in her ears. I certainly heard them when the sun set over the cliffs, leaving the sky painted in colours that make you weep with joy. It’s that incredible. A true paradise.

One of the first things I noticed was that I felt so alive. I bounced out of bed early every morning, scared that I would miss out on something. A bird. A new flower. Breakfast.

I had energy..I could breathe. Trees, as it turns out, will do that to you. I realised that I’ve been starved of life-giving oxygen, and Thailand has trees in abundance. (Sigh). I’ve even come up with my own mathematical equation for this phenomenon (‘cos it’s obviously never been done before...):

No trees = no oxygen = look crap = feel crap = depressed. Or as scientists would probably write it:

NT / NcO2 = UG LE + FC = DP x 10000000.00

Who said I couldn’t do maths?

I also decided to honour the trees, and wrote this little poem which I have cryptically entitled:

“Ode to the Tree”

Oh beautiful tree
How I love thee
You’re making me
Breathe eas-ee
And very hap-pee.

Step aside William Blake.


Clearly all that fresh air has gone to my head! Sorry about that...erm, moving on....

Am back in Dubai now, and was really expecting to hate it. If there is an opposite of the Middle East, it’s Thailand.

But strangely enough, Reality and I are now pretty good mates and regularly have coffee together (except mine’s without the sugar).
I am counting my blessings and they are infinite...
I have friends and a support system here.... My colleagues are amazing and hilarious... There are people doing incredible environmental work in this harsh, barren place... I get to see things I never ever would have. I saw Nellie Furtado in concert this weekend... And I’m going home for Christmas!

I’m happy. I’m refreshed. And I’ve been reminded why I do the work that I do.
Dear God... Planet Earth is Amazing. And I’m so grateful to be alive and experiencing it.
Thank you.

I can't think of a headline for this one...

It was only 33 degrees today....The weather is changing - yahoo!
Actually, it’s been absolutely beautiful the last few days. I discovered that I can even see the sea from my bedroom! I have a room with a view and until the weekend, didn’t even know. Since I arrived in the UAE 6 months ago it’s been hot, humid, hazy and horrible. Now, there are even blue skies and clouds (didn’t know the Middle East was capable of such natural wonders) and you can sit outside in the evenings without looking and feeling like a melted bowl of Haagen Dasz.

The big news is that I have decided to buy a car. I swore blind that I wouldn’t - I am an ardent supporter and lover of public transport - but it is MUCH MUCH more “cost-effective” (like the marketing speak?) to buy a car. Petrol is ridiculously cheap here - about the equivalent of R2.90 per litre. And I can buy a really nice little environmentally-friendly 4x4 brand new - something I would never ever be able to afford at home. You don’t pay a deposit, the interest rate is only about 3-4% and monthly repayments are much less than the monthly cumulative total of my daily ferryings between my apartment and our car-pool rendezvous spot. Have I convinced you yet? Good.

There’s only One Little Problem.

I can’t seem to get my head around this left-hand-side-of-the-road-driving-thing. All the cars are automatic, so I don’t need to worry about changing gears with my right hand or anything like that. It’s just that my brain is stubbornly stuck to the idea that you turn left at a roundabout (traffic circle). And can you believe that none of my friends, or colleagues, will let me drive their cars around parking lots to try and get used to it? They call it “my insurance doesn’t cover anyone else driving.” I call it “rude”. So I’m probably just going to have to get into my new vehicle and, in the immortal words of Nike’s mid- ‘90s campaign, “Just Do It.”

I have to admit that besides the (obvious) financial benefits of buying a car, the best thing will be that I will no longer have to deal with taxi drivers. It may just be me. Or the fact that I am blonde. Either way, I have been proposed to twice.
And don’t get me wrong. I like Pakistani folk as much as the next person, but seriously.......??!!

Driver: “ You beautiful. You married?”

Me: “No. I need to go to Spinney’s on Al Wasl Road.”

Driver: “Children?”

Me: “No. You know Spinneys? Al Wasl Road?”

Driver: “ You need husband. Children good. You beautiful lady. I take you home to Pakistan. You like country.”

Me: [under my breath] “yeah, and can we honeymoon in Sierra Leone then too?”

It can get particularly awkward in peak hour traffic, where there’s nowhere to get out, and nowhere to hide.

They are an interesting lot these taxi drivers, who are typically from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. You get ones that sing along unashamedly to the latest hits on the local Bollywood station. Or ones that are particularly interested in talking about South African cricket (“Hansie Cronje best player. And Alan Donald. Best batsman”).
I once got a taxi driver who INSISTED that I smoke in his car (“I like my customers to feel comfortable”) and despite my persistent protests about it being illegal, stopped at a store and bought me a pack of Marlboros. And then there was the guy who after ten minutes of driving piped up [insert Indian accent, and that beautiful, typical head-bobbing thing here] “It’s getting a little uncomfortable in silence. I put on radio”. I had tears...... Perhaps you needed to be there.

Anyway, there’s one thing that all taxi drivers have in common - and that’s a complete lack of verbs, adverbs or prepositions in their sentences - pretty much everything except the most basic of instructions. I am aware that English is a really difficult language, but you can never ever say to a driver: “at the traffic light, you should do a u-turn because I need to go in at the rear entrance of the building.”

You have to say: “At light, u-turn, back-side building.”

It’s the only way. Anything else is lost in translation.

Fishy Pedicure

Something else I did just to able to say “been there done that”… a pedicure, expertly conducted by a shoal of fish.

Here’s a step-by-step guide, in case you feel like one too:

1. Decide to spend a morning at “Wild Wadi,” a water-theme park with rides on tubes, swimming pools with fake waves etc.
2. After some fun in the sun and a thrilling ride down the “Jumeira Scarer” you will probably be thinking, “gee I would love to have a pedicure round about right now” (as one does).
3. Marvel at how they seem to think of everything here in Dubai as you walk up to “Fisho” – the home of the fishy pedi – right in the middle of Wild Wadi.
4. Pay the entrance fee and wash your feet with the special soap provided.
5. Sit at the edge of a fish tank and slowly dangle your feet and calves into the water.
6. Try not to totally freak out as hundreds of inch-long little fish attack your feet and begin feasting on dead skin cells.
7. Do not embarrass yourself by shrieking loudly at the excruciating ticklishness inflicted by the fish as they suck and nibble away at your feet like they haven’t eaten for a week.
8. Fight the feeling that that this is more than a little creepy.
9. Do not let your mind wander to thoughts of piranhas. Or leeches. [shudder]
10. After a while, you will get used to the feeling.
11. Concentrate on not thinking about leeches.
12. Do not look at your fish-festooned feet.
13. Seriously. They are not piranhas. They’re too small. Really.
14. After twenty minutes, you will be unceremoniously evicted from the fish-tank area.
15. But, as you slip your feet back into your slops, they should feel silky smooth-ish.
16. Go home to ease your bewilderment.
17. Book your next pedicure with your usual lady at “Feet First” in Mall of the Emirates, where there are no fish tanks to be seen anywhere.

For more information AND pictures go to:
http://www.jumeirah.com/en/hotels-and-resorts/wild-wadi/Services--Facilities/FISHO/

Bottomless Bollie and other tales of Brunch

Allow me to introduce you to the Friday Brunch in Dubai....

As the name so cryptically suggests, it concerns food, and in this particular case, LOTS of it.

Friday Brunch is an institution here. Most hotels, restaurants and bars “do brunch”. It’s usually a (fabulous-beyond-words) buffet affair where you pay a set amount and can eat and drink all-you-can between 12h30 and 15h30.

But allow me to put this into perspective: It’s Friday brunch, i.e. it’s on our first day of the weekend, which is also the Islamic Holy Day. And basically, while the Muslims are at Mosque praying, the ex-pats are getting trollied on Bollie. And I DO mean trollied, and I DO mean Bollie - the really expensive bubbly sparkling wine that you can actually legally call “Champagne”.

You may be able to tell that I am speaking from experience. And you’d be correct. I was invited by my aunt and her friends to join in for Friday Brunch last week. Of course, I had read all the ads in the papers and Time Out magazine in which hundreds of restaurants proclaim to “have the best Brunch!”. I’d heard the rumours about these notorious affairs and how completely out-of-hand they can get, so, I was keen to see for myself. I blow-dried my hair, thanked God once again for Bobby Brown’s Under Eye Concealer (it was a long week, ok, I was really tired), slapped on some lipstick, and caught a taxi to my Inaugural Brunch.

I arrived at a scene unlike anything I have ever seen before. All the women were dressed to the nines.. heels, hair, designer outfits, you name it! The tables were decorated with balloons, party hats, fake-plastic tiaras and those hooty-blowy things that you buy for kids parties. Taking into account that this was an Australian restaurant, I chalked this down to the quirky habits of our cousins Down Under. Apparently Brunch is an occasion for themed decor experimentation.

What was truly astounding, however, was the service at this eatery. The food was the obligatory buffet (sushi, seafood, roast, leave-your-diet-at-your apartment, etc etc etc), so no waitrons needed for that. But it was the serving of the drinks that defied all comprehension. No sooner had you taken a mere two sips of Bollinger, than an apron-clad Filipino lass or lad would magically appear to top you up! There were about 200 people all drinking the same thing, at the same time, so how did they know that under-dressed little-old-me “needed” a refill? The Bottomless Bollie was in town and it was taking no prisoners.

There’s nothing quite like having unlimited alcohol at a set price to get people well and truly, um, festive.

By three-thirty in the afternoon, the place, and everyone in it, was unrecognisable. The music (‘70s, 80’s & 90‘s of course), which had been getting progressively louder, was suddenly at nightclub level. The green and red disco lights were turned on, psycadelically reflecting off the mirror ball in the centre of the room, which was apparently everyone’s cue to get up and shake their collective booties - whether in the aisles between the tables, on the tables, or at the bar. Let me just say again.. it was three thirty in the afternoon. Not the morning.

It must also be noted that the average age of ex-pats in Dubai is between 35 and 60. There are no “young things” - employers tend to look for people with experience, so you’re never going to get a bar or club filled with students. The reason I’m mentioning this, is to give you a proper picture. You won’t find twenty-somethings getting-down to JayZee’s latest. Oh no. This was well and truly fully-grown men and women - doing dance moves that really are best left in the decade from which they originated - shrieking “ooooooh, we’re halfway there.... oooooh oooooh, liiiiiiving on a prayerrrrrr!” and “..and I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more......”.

I can assure you, however, that no-one was walking anywhere after this. And certainly not 500-miles.

What a day! From my position as casual observer and small-time participant at this event, I can confirm that Friday Brunch is lots of fun.

But having said that, there is no way in hell that I could do more than one Brunch a month - if that. I don’t care how tempting the ads and posters are. And when they say that Friday Brunch is an institution, they really mean it. You need to go to one to recover.

The plight of animals...

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love animals more than anything. Which makes it all the more strange that I should end up in a country where there is not exactly an abundance of them. Even domestic animals are quite rare, so when I heard about the Dubai Animal Rescue Centre (DARC), I knew I had to go and take a look.

Not surprisingly, I encountered vast amounts of exotic animals (and a few domestic ones) all of whom were former “pets” that had become unwanted. [“Oh mommy, please please please can I have a Andean Alpaca Pleeeeeeeeze? They are SOOOO cute. Daddy can just pay to bring it into the country. I really really want one......".]

Fast forward a few months, and "Valentino", the cold-climate version of a Llama, is now much larger than when she arrived and has a nasty habit of spitting saliva on anyone and anything that comes near her. Can’t send her back home. Now what?

Enter DARC and the incredible woman who has turned her own home into a shelter for these animals who literally have nowhere else to go.

All the animals here have similar stories, and there are none that are indigenous to the Middle East. Meerkats (for crying in a bucket of python poop, what are they doing here????), Capybaras (South America), Iguanas (Indonesia), peacocks (India), Prairie Dogs (USA), Ferrets (wherever, I haven’t got a clue), a pair of owls, species unknown (who keeps an owl? How do you even catch an owl???), tortoises (you have to watch your step everywhere you walk), terrapins, an African Grey Parrot, some antelope, loads of rabbits (long-eared and other varieties), the above-mentioned Alpacas, nine dogs and eight cats.

It’s literally a zoo, in a house, in the middle of the suburbs: small, but immaculate, and each enclosure is lovingly kept in the best condition possible - aircon included. No animal is ever turned away, and the owner does whatever she can, funding it mostly out of her own pocket.

She has a couple of very dedicated volunteers who come in every day - even if it’s just to play with the domestic animals. I spent ages with the cats who behaved more like dogs, just wanting to be petted and loved and picked up and scritched and scratched and were all over me like the rash I would have got if I were allergic to them. Thankfully, I am not.

Sigh. Every now and then my faith in humanity is revived. But I feel compelled to do something to help. Obviously being in television I can create some kind of awareness, (and it’s mostly going to be about attempting to get it into the heads of imbesilic individuals who think that having a wild animal as a pet is acceptable), but on a personal level I would really like to do something. Ideally, DARC needs its own bigger, better property and a regular income that covers expenses for enclosures and food for the animals. Am going to have to be creative about this.... hmmmmmm.....

Something else to keep me awake at night. Not like I have insomnia or anything.

Lead me not into temptation......

Virtually impossible in Dubai, where every street leads to a mall of fabulosity. It’s the holy grail of retail therapy. The centre of the shopping universe. I want everything.....

For the first time in my life I lust after Paris Hilton’s life with her unlimited credit cards. It’s not fair!!! I also wanna!!

The designer stuff is the worst. Having only been exposed to limited ranges of Haute Couture at Nelson Mandela Square, this is a whole new world. God, it’s beautiful. You can smell the difference, never mind see it. It’s causing serious tension in my little unaccustomed head:

Bad me: Oh My God, that’s the most beautiful bag I have ever seen in my life.

Good me: Oh my God, look at the price. Don’t be ridiculous. Put. It. Down.

Bad me: But it will go with everything... last for years, and never go out of fashion.

Good me: It costs 4500 Dirhams. Leave Bloomingdales at once!

Bad me: But, it’s not just a bag. It’s a Jimmy Choo. Everyone will think I’m so sophisticated...

Good me: Out! Out! Leave! Which direction is the exit?

Bad me: ... not to mention a fashionista at the cutting edge of international trends.

Good me: OUT OUT OUT!!!

It’s exhausting.

I would like to assure everyone, however, that despite all the temptation, I have rarely succumbed (says she peering over the rims of her Versace shades). At least I’m not as bad as my friend Kate. We went shopping for gifts on Saturday because we’re both going home to SA for a visit next week. We [bargain] shopped for hours and she went home with six handbags, a good few designer scarves, and a brand new Subaru. Yes, the car. The 4x4 one. She wasn’t even planning it.

'Cos, that’s how we roll here in the Middle East.