Through the looking glass and what Alice found in Dubai

Tags

Dubai, Gulf, hotel balconies, international workforce, Malls in Dubai, picture, sky-scrapers, travel

I landed in Dubai on a hot, steamy morning and made my way through the shiny lobby to a shiny car which took me to my shiny hotel. My little capsule of cool air proceeded to glide noilessly on the wide road, among other white capsules sailing the river of traffic between silver giants.
I pressed my nose against the glass and looked at the occupants of the other white capsules. Some contained energetic Indians, some bored-looking Russians and some impeccably white-clad locals glued to super phones.

I stayed in one of Dubai’s towering hotels. 
All have alluring balconies lining up against the milky sky. Magnificant balconies, thousands of them all through the silver city. All sealed off. After an hour of pressing my face to the glass in silent desperation, I asked Reception. ‘Government regulation, ma’am’ chirped the pleasant young woman from the Philippines. 

In the evening I rode the metro with the thousands of people who work hard in the city of glass and are barely able to keep their eyes open at the end of a hard, long day. Heads lolling against the glass.

I went to a mall with a huge tank inside. Where some people were diving and others were watching them on the other side.

Pressing their faces against the glass.

Come to Dubai, it’ll be class, oh my my, you can touch the glass!

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7 things about living in the Middle East or Versatile Me

Tags

Are you married?, Cultural differences, Icebreakers, Living in the Middle East, Personal questions, Relationships, Shops, Taxi drivers, traffic, Versatile Award

Ladies and gentlemen,

Now for some breaking news! It appears that my ramblings have not gone unnoticed in Riga as its smartest, funniest expat (who lives at http://expateyeonlatvia.wordpress.com/) has nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! 

So I am to:

• Thank the person who gave you the award& Include a link to their blog

Thanks again, http://expateyeonlatvia.wordpress.com/:)!

• Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly& Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award

I tried!

But versatile as I am, the process of cutting and pasting links& then letting people know they have been nominated had me labouring fruitlessly for about half an hour and then was duly abandoned.

So instead, could I nominate everybody who reads this post for the Versatile Blogger Award? I know it’s not quite how it’s done but I would love it if you could please take me up on this and spare me the misery of endless drafts going to the bin due to excessive pasting.

Living in the Middle East has taught me that rules are optional so instead of telling you 7 things about myself I thought I’d tell you 7 things about living here.

1. There is no such thing as bad coffee (unless you are having it in a hotel for breakfast which is a universal curse so it doesn’t really count)

2. Most men go to the barber weekly

3. The most usual icebreaker is ‘hello, are you married do you have kids how old are you?’  

4. If you think a shop is too small to have what you’re looking for you’re probably right. What you don’t know is that the owner knows somebody who knows somebody who will have it ready for you somewhere.

5. Traffic rules are entirely optional.

6. Nobody uses street addresses. Ever. A typical taxi journey involves the driver staring at you wordlessly as you mumble a street name, then stopping next to a man who’s crouching on the pavement eating pumpkin seeds. The driver asks for directions, the seed eater stares wordlessly. Then he shouts at somebody who’s making a falafel nearby. Who calls his cousin.   

7. ‘With my family” is the default answer to most questions the inquisitive traveller might ask about weekends, holidays or any other form of free time

Love in a Hot Climate or How I Met Your Mother the Bedouin way

Tags

Bedouin, Cultural differences, Dating, How I Met Your Mother, love, Marriage, Men and women, Relationships, Traditions

A is a young bedouin. 

He’s smart and quick and very generous. He taught himself English while working in an airport carrying luggage and glimpsing at a world of incomprehensible men and women in flip flops and sun hats.

A likes peach juice (and always shares it with whoever happens to be around), owns a little house and 10 sheep and wants to know about the world. Europe is particularly baffling.

‘Where do European men meet their women?’ he asks, looking in the side mirror and struggling to supress an embarrassed smile.

“Well, it depends. At work, at university maybe. Parties. How about you? How did you meet your wife?’

“Well, I didn’t. Not before the wedding.’

‘That’s a bit risky. What if you didn’t like her?”

‘Well, I knew everything about her. I’d talked to her brothers. And her father. Her whole village knew her. They told me about her.’

 “Ok. But you still didn’t know her personally. That’s brave.”

“No, it’s not. You trust a complete stranger. You know nothing about their family, taste, history, health or good name. You just see them. That’s a bit risky.’

Oh. I never thought of it this way. In retrospect, maybe I should have consulted a few villagers here and there:)
I finished the rest of my peach juice in silence.

A word a week: Worker

Tags

Bazar, Cairo, Cheaper than Walmart, Merchant, Pictures of Cairo, Silver jewellery, Worker

This picture comes in response to the word challenge on the blog below. I really like the idea of a random word and then pictures that tell its story in so many different ways:

http://suellewellyn2011.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/a-word-a-week-challenge-worker/<
This picture tells the story of a Cairo family of merchants (sorry, can't resist using the word 'merchant', how often does one get to these days?)
The father is having tea and fishing for potential customers. From the comfort of his plastic chair, he eyes non-local looking pedestrians and gets the charming process started.
He approached me by saying I look exactly like his daughter and could I please go in and have a look at her picture, isn't it just extraordinary?
He then entrusted me to his son, a far less adept charmer but a figure of silent determination, who took me inside the "Cheaper than Walmart" Lovely Bazar, despite my polite confession that I was actually looking for a shawerma and could I please go and get it.
Unsurprisingly, there was no picture of the daughter inside. There was a picture of the Pyramids, some t-shirts that said 'I heart Cairo' and some unexpectedly lovely pieces of silver jewellery. Lovely and very possibly cheaper than Walmart, though I’m hardly in a position to comment as the last time I was in one is either never or one blurred afternoon last century.
We parted friends, despite my insufficient potential as a customer and hence 10 minutes of valuable merchant time wasted on me.
I suspect I was forgiven because I look so like the daughter:)

Let it rain, let it rain

Tags

Countryside, Desert, Life in the Middle East, Rain, Water, Weather

It’s been raining for 3 days.

Here, this is as unusual as an April sunny day in the north of Norway. And equally joyous.

Nobody uses umbrellas. What sort of fool would want protection from water?

I once saw a group of customers in a cafe asking for their table to be moved outside when it started to rain.

It took me one year to find an oversized umbrella in an obscure Chinese shop. Not sure why I wanted an umbrella, perhaps because I felt strangely under-equipped for life’s various challenges without one.  

When I first took it to work and parked it in a corner, its modest watery load evaporating quickly, people laughed. Not quite the smartest investment ever.

The other day a driver took me to a meeting somewhere in the countryside.

“Look now, it’s green!”, he cried filled with joy, as the brown hues of the desert on both sides were for once punctuated by small patches of green. .

I always lived in places that view rain as slight inconvenience.

‘Oh, shoot, it’s raining and I was going to wear my suede shoes today!’

I can wear my suede shoes almost every day here. Not today though. 

Today I’m going to wear waterproof shoes as I navigate the little rivers in the streets, try to pretend my huge umbrella is not with me and smile back at the other happy sailors.