Category Archives: Dubai

Reality TV in Dubai

Posted on by

Love it, or hate it, reality TV is coming to Dubai. I can see it now: Jane Jardashian and her diamond-dripping, gin-swilling, double-kissing friends. Their maids, cars, absent oil-exec husbands and tennis coaches – on the small screen, in Dubai’s real-life version of Desperate Housewives.

In fact, it’s surprising it’s taken this long for a Big Rich Texas-type series to be filmed here – anyone who’s spent five minutes in this city will know there’s endless Gucci-clad, high-pitched fodder, living the kind of lifestyle I can only read about in Hello! magazine. Set against a picture-perfect backdrop of sunny skies, skyscrapers and souks, any show about a mansion-lined Bougainvillea Lane is sure to be a hit, right?

Real Housewives of Dubai: They'll be lining up

Real Housewives of Dubai: Line up, auditions coming soon!

Reality TV, though, hasn’t had the best of luck here. Several years ago, I spent a summer befriending a lovely mum, whose TV producer husband was ‘on location’ in the UAE filming Paris Hilton’s Dubai BFF.

“Have you, erm, met her?” I’d ask, hoping to get the low-down on Paris’ handbag shopping. “Has she found a BFF yet?” [checked diary to confirm that, jobless and new in Dubai, I was free nearly every day].

But, in the end, I never even saw the show, as after filming ended, it became embroiled in an $8m legal dispute. A year or so later, it was aired elsewhere in the world, but not by Dubai TV as intended.

More recently, Lord Sugar sent his final 12 Apprentice candidates on a shopping trip to Dubai, briefed to buy eight items (eg, a traditional kandura, an Arabic coffee pot, the UAE flag) at the lowest possible prices. The business hopefuls made some fairly big blunders, however, including mixing up cm and inches and coming away with a flag the size of a napkin.

Kim Kardashian herself has also dropped into Dubai, to, among other things, mix up a banana and strawberry milkshake (read Pleb Celeb: The amazing disappearing Kardashian, from Housewife in Dubai, it’s brilliant). But, again, the curse of reality TV seemed to strike. It was while filming Kim takes Dubai that the cracks in her short-lived marriage started gaping.

I doubt, though, that any of this will put off reality wannabes in Dubai, especially as the gig is paid and the show will ensure exposure in the US and international markets. The producers won’t say what the title is (only that they’re from a well-known American series), but give away plenty of clues in the video clip below as to the nature of the programme: They’re looking, they say, for 8-10 women living a glamorous lifestyle, with fast cars and stunning designer wardrobes, to be the stars.

When they hear I roll in a Ford Explorer and shop in Debenhams, I’m quite sure my phone will ring.

School run survival tips

Posted on by

The daily transfer of your offspring to school is not without its challenges, as every mum knows. Forewarned is forearmed, so if the long summer break has left you feeing a little rusty, here are my back-to-school tips and tricks:

– It might feel like the middle of the night, but get up with plenty of time to spare – this is your chance to get your own back on your sleeping children for all those early starts.

– Shovel on more make-up than you’ve worn all holiday, comb hair and pay special attention to your chosen outfit.

– Ensure school-sized sprogs are fed and have cleaned their teeth, without staining their uniform. Remember, the slightest trace of breakfast cereal or toothpaste will take on a luminous glow at the worst possible moment.

– Channel your inner drill sergeant to get the children out the door.

– Drive your seven-seater to within a hair’s breadth of the school gates, ramming other cars if necessary and double-parking if there’s no room. Just put your hazards on if you’re unsure and look busy, avoiding eye contact at all costs.

– Shepherd the children through the gates – remember, serenely does it. No shouting, or pushing. (You should probably practise gliding the night before.)

cartoon-shopaholic

– Don’t look too happy, or sad. Oversized sunglasses will hide any tears and inky mascara smudges, but a whoop of relief can’t be disguised.

– Have a story ready about the luxury, handmade yurt your family stayed in on holiday. (Yachts are so yesterday.)

– Try not to linger too long– you’re blocking several people in outside the gate, don’t forget, even your best friend.

– Watch the handbags-at-dawn fashionista mums go head-to-head on the school runway and vow to get up even earlier the next morning to wash hair.

– Put them to bed in their school uniforms that night.

Happy school runs everyone!

The 4-year-old’s bedtime shot

Posted on by

Here in the Circles household, we’re trying hard to yank the children’s bedtime (and mine) forward so that when the new term begins in three days’ time, those red-eye early school start times (7.45am) don’t give us jet lag, all over again.

Of course, stopping wild horses in their tracks would be easier.

536794_639927182698099_1374862493_n“C’mon boys, bedtime!” I said last night.

Repeat x10.

“Can we have a day off from shower? We want a day off from shower!”

“No, look how dirty your feet are. Upstairs, now.”

Son1, who is getting more compliant as he gets older, climbs the stairs, leaving Son2 rooted to the sofa.

“I’m NOT going to bed. I’m not.” [pauses for effect]. “I hate you, and I DON’T LIKE your hair!”

Three days Son2, three days…

That’s all.

Ditching the blonde (at last)

Posted on by

I adore my hairdresser. Finding someone in Dubai who can successfully turn a mousey barnet blonde, without any brassiness, bright orange or, heaven forbid, lime green, is like hitting the wheel of colour jackpot.

We’re at that stage in our relationship (over 4 years now) where I can plonk myself into the chair, eye up the pile of magazines, and ask for the usual. “Same again,” I shrug. And she sets to work, with plenty of friendly banter and a cup of tea.

The foils go in. The root colour goes on. All neatly stacked, without leaks or spills. Then off it all comes at the sink, where her quick-fingered assistant scrubs and massages your scalp till your nerve endings dance.

“Curls?” my hairdresser asks. “Or straight?” And, either way, I know the blowdry will be a sculpted work of art compared to my half-hearted efforts to tame my mane at home.

(If you contact me, I’ll even give you her number as I know well that the search for a skilled colourist in Dubai is a mission.)

Healthier-looking hair, but will I miss being blonde?

From high bleach to hamster: Healthier-looking hair, but will I miss being a blonde?

Occasionally, there’s even some drama in the salon, like the time a high-maintenance client whose curls had dropped overnight came back and threatened to call the police (that’s Dubai for you). But, mostly, it’s a predictably relaxing experience, that ends in blonde.

Until yesterday, when – after 30 years – I ditched the bleach and went darker. “I’ve been thinking about your hair,” she said and suggested some (kinder) changes. There was talk about skin tone and base colour, lowlights and ash tones. Much of which caught me off guard, until a photo was produced of a fair-headed model with the most beautiful mix of light-catching colours.

“Okay,” I hastily agreed, throwing all caution to the wind (oh, how I wanted her golden highlights).

So, how did it turn out? After three decades, my new darker look, I’ll admit, is taking some getting used to. There’s depth, and more shine, coupled with the fun of trying different coloured clothing and make-up. Son1 loved it (“I was getting bored with your hair Mummy!”). Son2 cried. DH said he liked it. As for me, after the shock wore off, it’s now growing on me.

Just a few more honey highlights next time, and I think I’ll love it.

Geographical schizophrenia

Posted on by

“I’m hot. Why do we have to live here?” Son1 asks petulantly, after coming in from the heat outdoors.

He looks at me with accusatory, dark-brown eyes, his cheeks flushed red and a bead of sweat trickling down his sticky forehead.

“Well, Daddy got a job here,” I explain, for the umpteenth time. “You know Daddy AND Mummy have to work to pay for all the thing you want, right?

“Besides, it’s our home and we’re very lucky to live here.”

He goes quiet for a few seconds.

“But WHY can’t we live in England?”

At this time of year, Dubai mummies are leafing through their little black book of playdates

At this time of year, Dubai mummies are leafing through their little black books (for playdates)

I explain, again, that, if we moved to England, it wouldn’t be summer all year round. There wouldn’t be fun outings every day, ice cream on demand and late bedtimes. It would rain, a lot.

“And,” I counter, trying to define winter to a child who has no recollection of this particular season, “You’d have to go to school there – and come home in THE DARK.”

I do get it, and I feel it too. Returning to the scorched, dog days of a Dubai summer after spending time in the motherland with family isn’t easy for many expats. It’s infernally hot, most friends won’t surface until school starts, everything is covered in a veil of atom bomb dust and the air is heavy with sand.

But it’ll pass Son1, you know it will. It’s the same each year and, soon, we’ll be dancing to the tune of glorious sunny days, under blue skies, with school in full swing. (Did you hear me whoop?)

In the meantime, darling Son1, could you please STOP whining – I’ve rallied every single 6-8-year-old playmate I can find within a five-mile radius and am on the verge of booking a reality-check trip to the northern hemisphere. In January. THEN, you’ll see, there’s no perfect place to live.

A very special flight

Posted on by

I can’t let our homecoming pass without saying a few words about our flight back: DH was ‘driving’, and while I’ve been his passenger a few times now, it was the first time he’s flown our fledglings in a commercial airliner.

And, yes, it was a great flight, not least because the bribe potential in telling the children that if they didn’t behave, Daddy would ‘land this plane right now’ or put them ‘outside on the wing’ was HUGE. (Sipping celebratory Champagne and nibbling on Godiva chocolates helped too, of course.)

But, if the truth be told, the boys were as good as gold. At the gate, they squished their noses against the terminal window, trying to see through the darkened glass of the cockpit. They (and about 10 other little boys also lined up) were rewarded when DH stuck a sun-tanned arm out his window to wave.

You could tell each awe-struck boy thought the wave was directed at him and when I got talking to an Australia-bound Dad on the full flight later on, we agreed not to burst his son’s bubble. Pilots should wave more, they really should. It makes people so happy.

DH in his office

Airbus A380: DH in his office

On board, we waited patiently for DH to make an announcement (it sounded nothing like him!), and, while I’d instructed Son1 not to go telling everyone, his excitement bubbled over every now and then. “My Daddy’s flying this plane,” he told a flight attendant, *beaming with pride*.

We arrived in Dubai (nice landing, DH!) and were invited to come forward to see what to me looks like the Starship Enterprise. “Just don’t touch anything,” I urged them, as we climbed the stairs to the flight deck. “If you feel like you want to press something, JUST DON’T,” I pleaded, paranoid that they’d set off the emergency slides or a million-dollar fire-hydrant system.

I needn’t have worried; they were awed into silence by the countless screens and switches, and could barely breathe they were so impressed. (Too bad my work doesn’t have the same effect; I swear they think my sole purpose in life is to fetch them things from the supermarket.)

All too soon, it was time to deplane and make our way into Dubai’s cavernous, gleaming airport, where taking the new train triggered fresh excitement. It was well past midnight when the children and I joined the taxi queue. “We don’t want a pink taxi. We want a red one,” they chanted, in unison, demonstrating to me once again that, while my boys will never be interested in any of the girlie things that make me tick, I adore their transport-mad ways.

Home sweet Dubai

Posted on by

We arrived back in the sandpit on Sunday, but it’s taken me until today to resurface – because, despite there being a tiddly three hours’ time difference in summer, I always develop a flu-like case of jet lag when travelling eastwards (pathetic, I know!).

My pilot DH has to put up with me lamenting about needing to sleep, but never at the right time (at bedtime, I’m bog-eyed with a fidgety wakefulness for hours), and believe me, he shakes his head at me, absolutely dumbfounded that anyone could be so utterly *hopeless* at jet lag.

While this should only apply to mums travelling back from the US or Canada, with an 8-hour-plus time change, it's not far off.

She’s travelled back from the US. I have no excuse.

“But I think I was still on a mid-Atlantic time zone after the US,” I protest, with a yawn. “You have to fight it,” he responds, at a loss.

And so it goes on: me plodding through the day, which has a surreal, otherworldly quality when you’ve just landed in the post-apocalyptic 43° heat of the desert, and unable to sleep at night; him business as usual despite having flown to six different time zones while we were away.

Aside from the insomnia (which the kids also have. Ugh.) and the wading through hot treacle, the other thing about arriving back in Dubai after a long period away is the brain dump that takes place while travelling. Simple things, like the route to your local retail centre, making a packed lunch, or locating the cupboard in which mugs are kept, require deep thought, while grocery shopping feels like a thousand-piece 3D puzzle.

Still, even though I drifted onto the highway today in a daze rather than into the supermarket car park, and have climbed the staircase a total of eight times tonight to soothe the two riving insomniacs upstairs, it feels good to be home.

EDITED TO ADD: At 11.30pm and decamped to the children’s room with my laptop, I can now say, hand on heart, jet lag is the SCOURGE of summer travel. Sigh.

Emirates Aviation Experience: Say hello

Posted on by

“C’mon, let’s go in,” I said to DH, who didn’t need that much encouraging, to be honest.

We were about to ride the Emirates Air Line cable car, which crosses London’s River Thames at a vertigo-inducing altitude, when we noticed a small building housing the newly opened aviation experience.

I must have been feeling a bit homesick, because suddenly the idea of paying money (£3 each) to get a little Dubai fix seemed a good idea. It might even be air-conditioned, I reasoned (this was a few weeks ago, during the hot spell).

PicMonkey Collage2

Inside the £4m attraction, we walked round a real-size replica of the A380’s nose and a 165,000-brick Lego engine. I tried an aviation-themed interactive game and decided we didn’t need to sit in the mock economy cabin and put the headsets on to watch the TV screens, as I’ve only spent, like, a MILLION hours sitting in those seats for real. (Now, if it was business class and they were serving champagne ….)

And, I can honestly say I really enjoyed the panoramic video following a suitcase’s journey, from check-in to the plane’s hold via a system of rollercoaster-like conveyor belts.

xxxx

Luggage moves through an amazingly intricate behind-the-scenes structure, with slopes, bends and junctions. (Riding on your case would be so much fun)

But it was upstairs that DH and I had the best time. In one of the A380 simulators, where you can try your hand at flying a superjumbo (sort of).

Though nothing like what pilots actually train in (just the stick, rudder and thrust work), it allows you to take-off, manoeuvre the aircraft and land – or crash, in my case. The high-definition screen and advanced graphics simulate a flight between London Heathrow and Dubai, with weather conditions of your choosing. You could opt for drizzly rain coming into LHR, buttery sunshine in Dubai, or a starry night sky if you want to command a night flight.

My DH isn’t one to boast about what he does so as I took the controls he kept his job quiet, until the staff pretty quickly figured it out and left us to it. But let’s just say that, even with him coaching me, I’m not the most coordinated of pilots.

“Just small corrections,” DH instructed as I attempted to keep the plane on the glide path, while watching the landing lights. Half red and half white is the ideal. Nose up. Left a bit. The runway starts rushing up towards me. Those small corrections rapidly turn into clumsy lurches and I plunge the aircraft into the ground, where it bumps along noiselessly, magically passing through highly pixelated objects.

My second attempt is much the same, and I have to concede that, in the unlikely event that the entire crew of a 380 is struck down by a dodgy prawn, I’m not your hero.

After a while, I hand over to DH to watch and marvel. And then something occurs to me: “Try flying it under Tower Bridge!” Why, the worst that could happen is they’d have to reboot the software.

The simulator costs £40 for a 30-minute session. This isn’t a sponsored post. I actually did spend my birthday riding the Emirates Air Line.

The expat mum endurance test

Posted on by

The best thing about summer leave is, of course, seeing family and friends, and this year, more than any other, I’ve marvelled at how certain members of my tribe are becoming super fit. There’s my sister-in-law who went for a bike ride, and can now do 60 miles from London to Cambridge, and my cousin, who’s doing a triathlon this weekend.

But for us expat mummies, it’s not so easy over the summer, is it? Aside from being ‘on the road’ for 6 weeks or more escaping the Dubai heat, there’s the small matter of all that good food in your home country, the shelves of wine in the supermarket and the ‘holiday’ treats you deserve because you’re solo with the kids.

So, I’ve been having a little think, about some of the endurance contests that expat mums across the world are competing in this summer, so we can pat ourselves on the back too.

Ready, steady….GO:

Pole-position passport queuing: With a child desperate for a wee

Sprint to the toilets: Before the inevitable

The bath-book-bed triathlon: With wide-awake time travellers

The time zone leap: No napping

The sweat-athon (in a British heat wave): Where will you hide?

The cross-country: How many relatives / landmarks / toilets can you visit en-route?

Team-member down: When DH breaks away from the pack and streaks to the finish line a month before you

The last hurdle

The last hurdle

The stamina test: After 5 weeks of children’s activities, August shows up with a wry smile and a “So, how will you entertain ’em for ANOTHER FIVE WEEKS?”

Hitting the wall: How long until the noisy / messy / hazardous things our offspring do to fill their days get too much?

14-hour cycle: Two weeks to go and too tired to go anywhere, the 14-hour cycle of front garden, back garden, side garden kicks in

The home straight: Just THE PACKING still to do [shudders]

Crossing the finish: And time to play beat-the-body-clock again

Good luck everyone – bonus points for putting petrol in yourself.

Watching the world go by

Posted on by

So, I’ve just got back from London’s Heathrow airport, seeing DH who was on a flying visit from Dubai and who I miss terribly during the summer.

I never thought of Heathrow as romantic, but places can surprise you. Plus, when you’re not staring down the barrel of 8 hours in a metal tube with small children, airports can actually be fun – not least because you can watch the travelling public, fresh off the plane from far-flung corners of the world.

Missing you, DH!

So good to see you, DH!

Today, among the crowds, there was the blonde Virgin flight attendant in pillar-box red, who’d climbed onto the highest scarlet heels I’ve ever seen and must have decided her regulation skirt didn’t offer enough leg room (fabulous legs, though, so the short skirt was forgivable).

And a little Japanese boy banging away to his heart’s content on one of the pianos dotted around the airport as part of its ‘Play me, I’m Yours’ scheme. (What were they thinking?)

Funny, though, how when it’s your kid bashing away at a piano, you hear it with your teeth, but when it’s someone else’s child it doesn’t grate so much.

My people-watching reached new heights of hilarity, however, on the airport bus back to my parents’ town. It was a National Express coach service and stopped at Terminal 5, where it was boarded by a lady who actually needed the underground, and a man who hopped on and asked: “I’ve got a car booked with National. Can you help?”

“That’ll be the car rental office you need,” replied the bus driver (who must field dumb questions every day). “Over there.”

I felt kind of sorry for him (intrepid, he wasn’t) and heaven help him when he’s flung into orbit on the M25 motorway.

You might also like: The Six People You Meet in Travel Hell