Category Archives: Expat

On being time poor

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“There just aren’t enough hours in the day,” I sighed, before flopping down on the sofa to waste the last hour or so before bed on my Twitter feed. It’s about all I can manage after a day spent cramming in a school run, a commute through heavy Dubai traffic, eight hours of work, dinner and the bedtime shenanigans.

When I watch my children, the thing that really strikes me is they have all.the.time.in.the.world. It’s just not an issue; time is laid out ahead of them like the toilet roll in the Andrex puppy-dog advert – it might undulate and unravel in bursts, but the hours in their day, the days in their week, and the months in their year, are long, seemingly never-ending stretches of glorious time.

At school drop-off, with just minutes to go before the classroom doors slide shut, my younger son can sit rooted to his seat in an indignant protest at me trying to rush him out of the car. He has time to dwardle on the walk in – if there were roses, I’m sure he’d stop to smell them.

Stop the clock! Time thief, be gone

Stop the clock! Time thief, be gone

At the other end of the day, when I have to wrestle homework out of them, the time gods smile on their scowly sweet faces again, and bestow bonus minutes on them. My older son will lose the pencil, break the pencil, need the toilet, suddenly become parched with thirst, and, the one that really irks me, just need five more minutes to finish watching something before starting.

To say they don’t have a sense of urgency is an understatement.

Except time is deceptive. I know that, because somewhere along the way – I think starting in your 20s – time suddenly seems to speed up. So that, by the time you reach your 40s, it’s picked up such a pace that life starts passing, literally, in a blur. I can even find myself coming out in a cold sweat, worried that it’ll suddenly fast-forward another decade in the blink of an eye. (Like it did in my 30s – the ‘lost’ decade of pregnancies, sleepless nights, bottles and nappies.)

“One day,” my mother warned the time-rich, whinging 8-year-old me, “you’ll wish you could be bored again,” she said, sagely. And, you know what, she was right.

Enjoy it kids, before the time thief catches up with you too.

Meet the granny au pairs

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It’s a divisive issue that newcomers to the Middle East soon encounter: ‘Should we or shouldn’t we hire a helper?’ ‘Won’t it feel weird having someone living in our house?’ And, after a prolonged search for someone reliable, ‘Have I developed maid envy?’

For some cultures, whether to hire help at home is a no-brainer. They grew up with live-in staff and fully intend to carry on that tradition. In other families, both parents might be working and an extra pair of hands around the house is an essential cog in the wheel – the glue that keeps the family, with all its comings and goings, functioning.

I wonder how long until she gives in

I wonder how long until she caves in

For others, it’s a complicated decision that often starts with resistance (‘I didn’t have help at home, why should I need it here?’), becomes a grey area where you’ve warmed to the idea (husband’s travelling, baby has colic, school run takes two hours, family are 8,000 miles away), then ends with a full-on, wide-scale search for the right fit for your family.

And, personally, I don’t believe that those who choose to hire a live-in helper do so simply because it’s much cheaper out here and they’d rather be in the salon or handbag shopping.

The decision is usually based on the need for back-up and the realisation that society in the UAE is geared towards having domestic help. (Gyms with childcare facilities – forget it. The assumption is you’ll leave your child at home with the nanny. And a nursery that DOESN’T run on a school-term system with lengthy shut downs for holidays – unlikely. You’ll have to fork out for camp for your tot if you need holidays covered.)

Of course, every family is different, and many expats in the UAE survive perfectly well under their own steam, but if you did want to hire a live-in helper, what are the options? Here are three ways you can outsource some of the countless tasks that keep a family happy, healthy and smiling.

A live-in maid, who helps with the housework and children: Invariably from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Ethiopia or India, a housemaid is a popular choice, despite the fact she’s unlikely to have any childcare qualifications. She’ll need to be sponsored by the head of your family (which means assuming responsibility for her), but if you hire someone whose personality you like, who knows when to take the initiative and when to step back, and is liked by your children, this arrangement can be wonderfully beneficial, for both you and her. Find out more about hiring a housemaid at ExpatWoman’s Maids in Dubai section.

A pampered housekeeper: She’s worked as a housemaid-come-nanny in Dubai for a while, in the Marina or somewhere in the Ranches, and expects perks, from flat-screen TVs to satellite packages, use of the pool, a blind-eye to her boyfriend, Wi-Fi and travel on a national carrier like Emirates rather than a budget airline. When you respond to her ad, she’ll interview you, bringing the conversation to an abrupt end if you reveal you have more than two children.

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Reinventing the au pair: Sonja Franke is a Dubai ‘granny’

A granny au pair: An au pair with a similar background to you might sound like the ideal solution if you’re looking for someone to care for your children while you’re at work. Add the ingredients of age and experience to this female export and your family life could be transformed by a caring, grandmotherly figure.

I didn’t even realise this was a possibility out here, but there’s a German agency that’s providing families all over the world, including the UAE, with mature au pairs, aged between 50 and 70. Many are women who have brought up families of their own and are now keen to travel or learn another language.

It’s a win-win situation for both sides, as the idea of an au pair is based on mutual help. The granny helps with housekeeping and children, and gets free board and lodging in return.

Older women are usually better than younger au pairs because they have more experience of life, says Michaela Hansen, founder of Hamburg’s Granny Au Pair agency. “Families like to take them on because they are reliable, serious and know how to be strict.”

CASE STUDY: “We had fun together in the Range Rover, even in traffic jams”

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After nine months as an au pair in Switzerland, Evelyn jumped at the chance to make Dubai her next stop

Granny au pair Evelyn Eis spent four months in Dubai earlier this year, living with a German family with two boys, aged two and four, in Nadd Al Hamer.

The emirate had long been a source of fascination to Evelyn, making an au pair placement in the UAE a dream come true. “I’ve always been interested in Dubai – a whole new world to me, with its great architectural buildings, warm air and sea, and Arab culture,” she told Circles in the Sand. “I wanted to get to know the emirate better – for myself, rather than hearing about it in the media.

“I had the good fortune to be placed with a kindly German family with two lovable boys. The area in which they live is predominantly local and when I did my buggy walks each morning, people would stop their car and offer me a lift. They weren’t used to seeing an older woman with a child walking the streets and it was so nice to meet such kind locals who wanted to drive me!

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Footie in the park

“I also met men and women from the community at the beautiful neighbourhood park. The women let me see their faces when speaking to me and sometimes we’d arrange to meet the next day. I was invited to visit them in their villas and was introduced to other members of their families, while my two boys played with their children in their house and garden.

“Every day, I’d drive the older boy to school in the morning and pick him up at 2pm. (The younger boy was, in the meantime, with the Indian housemaid.) In the afternoons, I’d take both boys to various activities, ie, football or swimming and, once a week, to meet other German children and their mothers at one of the city’s many parks. The different meeting places were not easy to find, even with a sat-nav. I’d drive between 20-40km just to get there in ‘my’ great-big Range Rover. But the boys were always happy with me in the car, because we had fun together, even in traffic jams. I miss them now!”

Families looking for a ‘Granny’ are encouraged to contact Granny Aupair at info@granny-aupair.com. More about the service can be found at www.granny-aupair.com

Holidays (again)

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It’s the Eid al-Adha holiday here in the UAE, which means – for public sector workers and our children at least – a nine-day holiday, if you count the weekends too.

At Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), Muslims make a special effort to pray and visit the mosque. They also wear new clothes, visit family members and friends, and may sacrifice an animal (a goat or sheep), to commemorate the biblical story of Abraham, who was on the verge of sacrificing his son when God intervened and substituted a ram in the child’s place.

It’s a huge Islamic festival – with days off for the private sector too (three days mid-week) and all the schools out for the whole week. The city has swelled in size, with visitors flocking to Dubai from all over the Gulf and lots of special activities laid on to cater to the crowds. There are fireworks each night down on the beach, the Metro is running until 3am, and, today, the emirate geared up for the start of another 48-hour shopping bonanza.

Coupled with the weather beginning to cool after the long, hot summer, it all makes for an upbeat atmosphere, with a real holiday feel.

Except I haven’t actually felt it yet, because I’ve had to work. My field is publishing, a weekly magazine, that still has to come out, so the editorial staff get days off in lieu (it could be worse, we could be working round-the-clock in retail).

The week began well – no crack-of dawn school start, the easiest drive into work in a long time, and a text message from the RTA promising me free parking all week (sometimes it’s the small things).

By day 2, it was beginning to pall. Leaving the children behind at home was harder than I thought (my DH, who has this movie-star schedule on his airplane, was looking after them); the coffee-stand where I buy my treats for the day had shut; the sandwich lady stopped coming, and then the toilet paper ran out.

The dress code for Eid at work was jeans, so it has felt quite Mufti-style, but with the air-con on arctic, and snow predicted in the office, it’s felt rather odd sitting at my desk feeling cold, while the rest of Dubai heads to the beach.

So, I am grateful to my friend S, for cheering me up today (my last day in the office) and to whom I give my best Eid Facebook post award.

S is an American who I totally respect for the way she’s embracing all the different cultural experiences available to us in this part of the world. Her photo was of a goat hot-hoofing it down the street, having escaped the yard of the family she was lunching with, just as they were getting ready to sacrifice him.

“Two men are running barefoot through the neighbourhood trying to catch our lunch*,” she posted – conjuring up, for me, images of the ‘Tamworth Two’ – the pair of pigs that escaped while being unloaded from a lorry at a British abattoir and were on the run for more than a week. I did wonder, as I looked at the photo, willing the goat to LEG IT.

* To finish the story, the goat was caught, but not eaten for lunch. The family had apparently purchased a truck-full of goats, which were sacrificed to Allah, and the meat was then given to the poor.

happy-eid-ul-adha-goat-facebook-timeline-cover-

Tooth fairy fail

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If you follow this blog, you might know that my older son and his six-year-old Girl Next Door have quite a thing for each other.

They’re in the same class at school, and yesterday, they decided it would be fun to lose milk teeth on the same day.

Son1’s wobbly tooth had been threatening to fall out for about a month, but the sight of red blood petrifies him, so he was ultra careful not to dislodge the tooth, until it finally fell out of its own accord in French class. Girl Next Door is braver: in order to lose her slightly-wobbly pearly white on the same day as her best friend, she worked on it for hours.

Her efforts to forcibly remove her tooth were successful and the pair apparently did a little song and dance in class together, anticipating that the tooth fairy would descend on our street after bedtime.

But the wee pixie must have been having a rough night – might even have been a US government employee and not working – because her visit to our compound didn’t quite go to plan.

By the sixth tooth, the fairy's turned bad

By the sixth tooth, the fairy’s turned bad

8.30pm, Our house
After nearly 14 hours on the go, I’m bribing the boys, knackered-mum-style, to settle down and go to sleep. “Get to bed – if you don’t, the tooth fairy won’t come.” Cue more wailing from my youngest, who always wants me to stay two-going-on-20 more minutes.

They finally go to sleep and I creep back in, money in hand and practically on tippy-toe in my attempt to not make a sound (the finish line – the end-of-the-day sit down – is in sight, hallelujah!).

I shove the crumpled note under Son1’s pillow, and swipe the tissue-wrapped tooth, to store in my silver keepsakes box (like I’m some kind of tribal hunter, collecting trophy teeth for necklaces). But I’m tired, it’s the sixth tooth he’s lost, and I just want to sit down. In my haste, I’ve tucked the note under the corner of the pillow, rather than safely ensconced deeper in.

The next morning, 6.10am
I’m roused from a deep slumber by Son1, who’s standing by the side of the bed looking cross. “Mum, the tooth fairy TOOK my tooth and left NO money!” (Bad-ass fairy). “Oh dear,” I muster, sleepily. “Try the floor, I’m sure it’s there somewhere.”

6.30am, Next door
Girl Next Door comes down the stairs hiding something behind her back and excitedly says: “Mom, guess what the Tooth Fairy brought me?!!”
 It’s then that her mom realises what she’s forgotten to do. Girl Next Door thrusts her arms out from behind her back and, her excitement dissolving into anger, shouts: “NOTHING!!!!! She brought me NOTHING!”

We did eventually find the note in the boys’ bedroom, and I’m quite sure the tardy tooth fairy will fully compensate Girl Next Door tonight, but something tells me our lovebirds won’t be so quick to lose/pull teeth in unison again.

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When the gardeners go berserk

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It’s no secret that in Dubai, most expat households enjoy perks in the form of housemaids and gardeners. It’s something that before you move to the UAE, you think you’d never partake in. Then, after a few months of living in our desert bubble, your long-held notions of self-sufficiency fly out the window.

We’ve had the same gardeners for four years now, which must be the equivalent of about a century in gardening years as most people change landscapers pretty frequently.

I’ve actually grown quite attached to our gardeners. They might have very little English and even less gardening knowledge, but they’re nice to my children, they’ve kept our garden not just alive but manicured in extreme temperatures for four summers, and, let’s not forget, they toil in the heat, with beads of sweat rolling down their foreheads.

They also have very few tools; I’ve watched them planting with their hands, literally scrabbling around in the dirt with their fingers, and have run out to offer them my trowel. When we asked them to prune some tall trees, we discovered their employer doesn’t equip them with a ladder either.

But it never ceases to amaze me what they can achieve with such rudimentary equipment. “We stand on the wall and cut as high as our hands can reach,” the head gardener from Pakistan, who speaks the most English, told me with a grin. And, somehow, this balancing act resulted in our trees being shorn into lollipops.

So, I should have known, when he mentioned to me yesterday that he was going to do some trimming on my favourite tree, that he’d get carried away. I turned my back for five minutes, while getting ready for Son2’s party, and, in that time, he must have grown scissorhands with a high-speed-bordering-on-massacre setting. Scalped is the only word for it.

Oh well, I guess it'll grow back.

The hack-job: Oh well, I guess it’ll grow back in a year or so

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Minecraft: The gaming obsession

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I can’t remember exactly how it started. I think we downloaded the free version as a reward, because some of the children on the school bus were playing it.

Nor can I remember when we upgraded from Minecraft Lite to the full-blown, paid-for game (and lost control). But one thing I am sure of is: my boys are OBSESSED.

Not just in a passing phase sort of way, but in a ‘we could play this 24/7 if you’d ONLY let us’ kind of way.

And, little did I know that the gaming phenomenon would lead to this bizarre conversation with the 5-year-old addict the other day.

“ LB, I’ve ordered the cake for your party on Sunday – it’s a Minecraft cake! Look, I’ll show you,” I said, opening up my computer and clicking on the picture, depicting Minecraft Steve, a creeper, a zombie and some squared-headed animals.

I sat back expectantly, feeling sure I’d trumped last year’s Titanic cake, waiting for the best-cake-ever response from my Minecraft-mad youngest.

“Aw, Mum, I wanted Squid on my cake!” he replied. [Squid, I discovered later, is an eight-tentacled creature, with blueish-teal skin and teeth underneath his pixelated head – who knew!]

“Squid, or IBallisticSquid?” Son1 piped up. … [Eh??????]

And, with that, I realised it was time I found out more about their obsession – because, like a typical Minecraft parent, I’ve been worried recently that it might be rotting their still-developing brains.

The picture on the video game cake - I blame it on LB having an older brother

The picture on the video-game cake – I blame it on LB having an older brother

For those who’ve never come across Minecraft before, it’s relatively simple: the game is set in a virtual world made of cubes of different materials (rock, sand, wood, lava and many more) and the goal is to craft, or build, structures out of these blocks, kind of like digital Lego.

It’s not terribly violent; in ‘survival mode’, you have to catch and slaughter a few animals to get food and the zombies can kill you, but in ‘creative mode’, Minecraft is all about building, exploration, creativity and even working together.

My children are members of a mind-bogglingly large and devoted congregation. The freeform building game has 33 million users, many of whom are youngsters aged between 7 and 15 – mainly boys, who see it as their religion.

I’m assuming my sons are typical here, but if they’re not playing Minecraft, they want to spend an unbelievable amount of time watching YouTube videos of other people playing the game. Minecraft celebrities, such as Stampy Longnose, are well-known in our household, and the boys can link servers to ‘play’ with each other.

Lego-mad from a young age, Son1 was drawn to digital Lego like bees to honey

Lego-mad from a young age, Son1 was drawn to digital Lego like bees to honey

My sons are clearly addicted, however, and forewarned by a friend at work about the lengths these kids will go to (she discovered her teenager was playing for several hours after everyone had gone to bed), we limit the boys’ screen time, much to their chagrin.

You can imagine my dismay, then, when Son1 had to miss swimming at school recently, and told me he’d spent the time playing Minecraft on the computer.

“Really?” I gulped, slightly stunned by this news and annoyed that the school was feeding his habit.

Until I researched it further and found out that the game is actually being used around the world to educate children on everything from science to city planning. It’s been shown to extend kids’ spatial reasoning and constructing skills; and in Sweden, where the game originates from, a school has even made Minecraft compulsory for its 13-year-old students.

So, I’ve decided to fret less over their obsession and take heart in the fact they’re actually collaborating with each other to build these amazingly imaginative worlds and know far more about servers and networks than me. Obviously it’s everything in moderation, but I’m cheered by the news that Minecraft is more than just another video game. I’m also trying to take more of an interest, even in the geeky Minecraft celebrities.

The trouble is, my boys are now attempting to set me a new technical challenge of brain-bending proportions. “Mum, how can we upload videos of us playing Minecraft onto YouTube?”

Stampy Longnose … Squid … you have a lot to answer for.

Questions about heaven

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My 7 year old is beginning to work out that we aren’t immortal and has lots of questions about heaven.

I was walking past the boys’ bedroom tonight, as DH tucked them up, and overheard a rather deep conversation about the after-life, which made me pause and linger outside the door a little longer than I meant to.

“Are you a child or an adult when you go there?” he asked. [Perhaps best not to discuss this at bedtime.]

“And what do you do in heaven?” he continued, resting his chin on the bunk-bed rail. “Are there lots of fun things up there?”

I couldn’t really hear DH’s answers, but Son1 carried on in earnest, his interest clearly piqued.

“How does everyone fit on the cloud?” [I craned my neck at this point to try to hear how DH would explain the metaphysical cloud.]

“Can I take the iPad Daddy?”

 

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8 people you meet on Dubai roads

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As well as the school-run, my experience of driving in Dubai also involves going backwards and forward to work. For the most part, I don’t mind this commute, as I at least get to sit down and listen to my favourite radio station rather than the sound of Boomerang or Disney Junior blaring like a car alarm from the TV.

It’s really more of a bumper-to-bumper crawl than a drive, as the roads in Dubai have become so much busier with the swelling population. Dubai is back, and so are the traffic jams, parking problems and construction road closures (and that’s just the school-run).

It’s during my time on the roads of Dubai that I’ve noticed certain character traits among my fellow commuters, and I feel these should be documented, as there are so many different levels of stupidity behind the steering wheels of fast, powerful cars in the UAE.

Here goes:

The queue jumper: You’ve paid attention to the construction signs and got in the correct lane. Mr Important has ignored them for miles, and now wants to be let in. (Not going to happen).

Driving in Dubai

A fine example of parking in Dubai

The flasher: He appears out of nowhere behind you, intent on making sure there’s no daylight between your back bumper and him. If you don’t get out of his way immediately, he starts flashing his lights, and might even try to sneak round on the hard shoulder. It’s a lane, after all, in his mind.

The stuntman: This one is the wannabe stuntman in a 4×4 driving on two wheels down the emirate’s busiest road, while his pal in a pick-up truck performs handbrake turns. (I’m not making this up, it happened on SZ Road.)

White van man: He’s even more terrifying than the Mr White Van Man you know from home. He last drove a rickshaw and now finds himself licensed and working in Dubai, with Schumacher pretensions. Except his vehicle is not exactly top notch. Packed full of workers, his van has strips of yellow and black caution tape on the back and his own mobile number on the ‘Am I driving safely?’ sticker – and he’s weaving in and out like it’s a slalom race.

Mr No-Rules: Oblivious to everyone around him, he believes indicators are only for Diwali, and thinks nothing of reversing up an exit if he’s missed his turn. He can often be spotted holding his mobile to his left ear with his right hand, texting, eating or clearing out the glove compartment while at the wheel. Rummaging round the back is not beyond him.

The slow poke: For a reason I’ll never fathom, he thinks tootling along in a fast lane at 60km/h is safe driving (or is he actually enjoying staring into his mirror and seeing the traffic behind him peel off in all directions to get round him?).

The road hog: On driving up a one-way street by mistake, it wouldn’t even cross the road hog’s mind to reverse and turn around. Hell, no. The correct course of action in Dubai for those who don’t want to be inconvenienced is to insist the cars driving in the right direction squeeze past you.

The mum-truck: I have to slip her in because we all know who she is. She sits high and proud at the wheel of a 7-seater that’s far too big for her, and can’t park to save her life. She bullies her way around roundabouts, waves people away like she’s on the Yellow Brick Road, and insists on driving 6,270 pounds of metal right up to the school gates, wielding cupcakes.

Silent Sunday: How 7y/o boys think

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Driving along the other day, we find ourselves behind this van. Son1, suddenly displaying great interest in the traffic, pipes up from the back: “Look!” And then without missing a beat, excitedly asks: “D’you think that van explodes a lot?”

Sorry Son1, just a boring old delivery service!

Sorry Son1, no dynamite. Just a boring old delivery service!