Category Archives: Expat

Overheard after flying (with kids)

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Last week I was listening in on my two sons and LB’s best friend D, the cutest boy with the most beautiful white-blonde curls.

“Just look at those gorgeous curls,” I always say to his mother, as though she hasn’t noticed!

D’s dad is also a pilot and D had just returned from a trip home to see family in South Africa. We’d just got back from visiting my in-laws in Lebanon and LB and D were over the moon to see each other again.

In between discussing D’s new pirate ship, the three boys started talking about their trip. Obviously, being expat children, seeing family involves an airplane ride and it made me smile how small boys, who know no other way, view the mode of transport that takes them *home*.

BB: “I just got back from Leb-alon.”

LB: “And meeee!”

BB: “What country did you go to D?”

D: “Af-rika!”

BB: “Is that a long way?”

D: “Yes. But my daddy’s airplane went fast! Like this….whoooooosh”, pretending his fingers were an airplane and whizzing them through the air.

LB: “Whooooosh,” for effect.

BB: “But my daddy’s airplane went faster than yours,” his hand turning into a blur of motion as he illustrated high speed.

D: “No, it didn’t! My daddy’s airplane went super-fast!”

Followed by a detailed explanation from BB of the games he played on the in-flight entertainment system.

It’s a funny ole’ lifestyle sometimes, but never seems to phase little boys.

With a ‘need for speed’ already ingrained, heaven help us when they’re 16!

Wishing all my American mom friends a very happy Mother’s Day next weekend!

The pool party

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In my 20s, I had no clue it was possible to finish the weekend so tired! I might have thought I did – what with all those lie-ins, long lunches and pub trips. On Sunday night, as I flopped onto my cream sofa in my single-girl London flat with a take-away and a pile of magazines, I thought I was exhausted.

I was wrong. Oh, how little I knew then!

Fast forward a decade, and my weekends look nothing like they used to.

The little people in my life call the shots. But my tiredness tonight – a happy tiredness I’m glad to say – could also have something to do with the fact that we spent much of the weekend swimming.

I’m also grateful that we’ve moved on from our early days in Dubai, when BB was terrified of water and would rather roast round the edge

The highlight was a pool party – very popular here for obvious reasons. There’s a certain amount of trauma involved, ie, running after two overexcited boys in a bikini – swimming boobs jiggling – in front of at least 20 of the mums and dads from BB’s class. But, pool parties are great fun, especially when they’re catered by a company called Splash ‘n’ Bounce.

A pirate ship bouncy castle had been installed by the pool, with a slide into the water, and inflatables such as a Wild Rocker (which lived up to its name), 4-seater dinghy and kind-looking killer whale were provided to keep the kids amused. Amused is an under-statement. The kids went crazy.

Imagine a water-based episode of the comedy game show ‘It’s a Knockout’ for under 6s and you’ll be thinking along the right lines – the pool wafted by lush palm trees and the mums wearing an array of flatteringly cut swimwear and slipping into pretty, linen dresses in all the colours of the rainbow as the sun went down.

So, whilst I might only have enough energy left tonight to wash the chlorine from my hair, and my fingers started resembling raisins this weekend, I’m feeling pretty lucky that we have such great pools here in Dubai – along with the sunshine to use them (until it gets too hot and they actually have to chill the water!).

Once LB learns to swim too, I’ll be hopping onto a sun lounger and taking the plunge only to frequent one of Dubai’s swim-up bars!

Empty nest syndrome

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Other than bad news from home, if there’s a day in expatland that rocks your boat it’s surely the day visitors leave.

And, having been an expat for nearly a decade now, I’ve realised something: good-byes don’t get any easier.

Departures are generally abrupt and tend to sneak up on you. The day before is normal, full of activity, but with some packing-by-stealth in the evening (so the kids go to bed without a scene).

The next day, the leaving day, can even start quite normally with cups of tea served and some chit-chat. Then, suddenly, suitcases appear downstairs, placed by the door as though standing guard. Before you know it, good-byes are being said and, like a plaster being ripped off, your visitors are gone. Vanished. Whisked off to the airport by DH.

Mum and Dad are, once again, a 7-hour plane ride away

Where there was a book and a pair of reading glasses, there’s now a space. Where there were multiple mugs, there are suddenly empty coasters. Whereas just 12 hours previously my mind was buzzing with arrangements, meal plans and grocery runs, it’s now a void – the lists I made that served as my brain redundant.

As your visitors settle down to an airplane meal and a movie, you realise you hit pause on your expat life, turned down invites, disappeared off the radar so you could enjoy your guests, and now need to pick yourself up and resume day-to-day life. The only trouble is it’s hard to get off the sofa you’ve been so busy entertaining!

The other thing I’ve realised about visitors leaving is that grandchildren take empty nest syndrome to a new, and vocal, level. Oldest son was spirited away by the school bus before The Departure. Youngest son slept through it, then awoke to an echoey-quiet house.

“Where’s Nanny gone? Where’s Grand-da?” he cried, tears rolling down his cheeks. His face crumpled as a frantic search round the house revealed that I hadn’t hidden them.

His sobbing intensified further when he realised his brother had gone back to school (a week earlier than his nursery re-opens).

“I w.a.n.t to go to school,” he pleaded!

With a determined look on his face, he then put his shoes on and marched out the door – and we had no choice but to walk to ‘school’ to prove it was, indeed, locked.

“Where’s Ms Annette? Where’s evwy-one gone?,” he spluttered while standing at the gate in disbelief. “Evwy-one swimming? Nanny and Grand-da swimming too?” he enquired, finally satisfied he’d got to the bottom of it.

“Yes, LB, everyone’s swimming,” I replied to buy some time – thinking to myself, “Yes LB, I know. I feel it too.”

You can take a horse to water…

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The temperature was perfect. Just a hint of summer heat hanging in the air. Turquoise highlights glistened on the surface of the Arabian Gulf and sail boats dotted the horizon.

A kite danced in the sea breeze. There were sculpted bodies in beautiful bikinis. Children playing happily. Mums reading – the sand cushioning their toes with marshmallow softness.

Waves rolled towards the shore, lapping the white sand. Kids squealed as the watery haven moved perpetually closer. The smell of sea salt and sunscreen filled the air.

Expat life at its finest.

Except this Easter weekend, BB wasn’t in the mood for the beach. All he wanted to do was play with his new Lego helicopter, a present from my parents, who’ve just arrived (and are providing the most wonderful distraction at silly o clock, when the kids – on school holidays – leap out of bed).

A bigger hit than the Easter eggs


You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, I’ve realised – especially when the ‘horse’, ie, my oldest son, has suddenly and inexplicably developed a fear of crabs.

And scorpions.

As the rest of us enjoyed some sun, sea and sand and LB busied himself jumping waves – dissolving into laughter every time there was an incoming rush of water – his brother looked on forlornly.

“Mumm-EEE! Can we go home?” he pleaded. “I really W.A.N.T to go home.”

For a few moments at this point, I’m sure I saw a knowing smile flicker across my mum’s face – a kind of ‘been there, experienced that many years ago’ expression that was quickly hidden.

And then, “Mumm-eeee, I don’t like the beach. I just want to go home and sit on the sofa.”

Oh my goodness. I’m raising a couch potato. And there are 15 more days of Easter holidays to go!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Dancing in the rain. Hooray!

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For months now, we’ve been teased.

Women have threatened to dance at wine o clock – wearing fascinators and feathers, their shoulders squared and a far-into-the-distance stare fixed on their botoxed faces.

Scientific puppetmasters have talked about (and possibly carried out) cloud seeding, in which steel lampshade-like ionisers create artificial clouds in the desert sky.

Then, last night, it finally happened: it rained.

And I slept through the whole thing, even the thunder and lightening that I’m told occurred.

It was nothing like a few years ago, when Dubai had hail stones so bad that all the cars were left with an ‘eggshell’ finish and we thought it was the end of the world.

But when we got up this morning, there was a strange darkness creeping round the curtains – Twitter was buzzing with rain tweets from Dubai-ians and the ground was actually wet.

The kids pressed their noses against the window and I joined them, peering out at the marvellous colours: the rain washes all the sand away and so instead of the tans and beiges we’ve been seeing recently, the trees and plants looked green. It’s like seeing your garden in technicolour and appreciating that it’s a lush oasis in the desert, not just a dusty yard.

Even the birds looked like they were dancing!

The world may watch us, rather bemused by our excitement, but when you live in a region where there’s only on average 13cm of rain a year, it’s the equivalent of a white Christmas every time it rains.

Ironically, DH was just off to Toronto and talking about sunscreen. They put it on in the cockpit as they fly over the North Pole apparently. I offered him one of my five or six bottles of sun tan lotion, before waving him off to the airport – and seeing the boys off to school.

Then I sat down with a cup of tea, my eyes glancing skywards at the grey clouds gathered above, and enjoyed an atmospheric, almost romantic (!) couple of hours on the laptop – the ground, by now, completely dry again and not a spot of rain in sight.

Oh well, there’s always next year.

Where I went Wednesday

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I’ve been loving Mrs Dubai’s Wednesday slots – so far, ‘What I wore Wednesday’ and ‘What I ate Wednesday’.

I’m not even going to attempt a ‘What I wore’ meme because if you saw my outfit right now – navy jeans, a black t-shirt (with sequins but quite a few missing), pink strappy heels and a light grey Jimmy Choo bag that DH picked up in the knock-off markets of China – you’d be able to tell a mile off that I’m no fashionista. (Isn’t there something about not wearing navy and black together? Please tell me if I’m committing a heinous fashion crime!)

Since I’ve been running around today, I thought that for my own WIWW post I’d do ‘Where I went Wednesday’ as I’m always interested in what other people get up to, so here goes:

Yes, that's bling on the back of this pimped-out Hummer, stopped next to us at lights today

10am: Town Centre Jumeirah mall. Appointment with a Scottish nutritionist. This is a blog post in itself, so suffice to say: I’m seeing him because my blood sugar levels are all over the place (pre-diabetes apparently, following gestational diabetes twice). He told me last week my diet was ‘CARB-ICIDE’ and gave me a low-carb, cavewoman-style eating plan that’s actually working. 1kg weight loss so far and fewer cravings!

11.30am: Ace Hardware, Festival Centre to buy paint. I’m finally getting round to decorating the spare room and chose a couple of tones of green, with Canyon Dust for the ‘accent’ wall (you’d think, wouldn’t you, that being surrounded by desert would mean I wouldn’t want a sandy colour indoors, but it matched perfectly!) The plan is to create a lush-looking jungle room.

12.30pm: I should have been in Ikea, but DH had had enough.

1pm: Mirdiff City Centre. Quick stop for a low-GI Sumo Salad.

2-5pm: At home. With the kids, while on and off the computer trying to sort out school application admin.

5-6pm: The kitchen. DH took the kids out to get the car washed, while I cooked chicken in lemon-and-herb sauce, with roasted aubergine. I’m not the best cook so don’t be fooled into thinking this sounds delicious. It was ok.

7-8pm: Upstairs. Herding the boys through the bedtime routine and overseeing BB’s Arabic homework (gobsmacked when he actually wrote his name in Arabic – neater than he writes in English).

9pm: Costa Coffee. Stepped out to celebrate finally being paid for work I did 7 months ago, money I never thought I’d see. Hooray!

Quite a busy day in all. Tomorrow this mall rat is staying home.

Show me the way to go home

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Whenever anyone needs directing to our villa here in Dubai, I grab a pen and a piece of paper and start drawing a detailed map with arrows, landmarks and my phone number for when they get lost.

Addresses in Dubai are really basic. There are no street addresses, no zip/post codes or area codes – and no postal service. Our mail goes to a PO box at DH’s company headquarters, so no junk mail through the door at least, but lengthy delays in receiving post if DH isn’t able to check it for a while (just got the Christmas cards, thanks!)

As for finding places, addresses such as “Past the mosque, first right then turn left after the cat sitting on the wall” are commonplace.

If you’re having something delivered, stores often provide a space on the form for you to draw a map to your home to avoid confusion.

Directing people to our villa has another set of problems, however.

In a previous post, I touched on how a massive roundabout by our compound disappeared overnight – probably while drivers were on it – meaning everyone coming home the next day got totally lost.

Getting home has never been the same since. We now have to join a 6-lane highway in the wrong direction, make a u-turn, get on the highway again, do ANOTHER u-turn, then join the highway one last time – passing our compound a total of three times.

Confused? So is everyone who’s ever visited us.

And, because our road is literally at a right angle off a mega-highway, you have to pull onto the motorway hard shoulder – keeping one eye out the whole time that you don’t get rear-ended by a poo truck – then turn right after a brown sign and traverse some rubble before getting onto our road..

Try explaining that to a kamikaze taxi driver who’s never been here before. It’s the ride of your life, I tell you.

Of course, adding 10km onto our route home really annoys everyone so we cheat. For those who know Dubai, we can go through Global Village, but the best thing to do if you’re in a 4by4 – and there are no police around – is to go off road. Here’s what it looks like … (just don’t try this in a car!)

Hold on, put your foot down, head for the bridge and don't stop in the soft sand...

Once you're out from under the bridge and onto harder sand, you don't have to worry about getting stuck, but the tilt makes me feel sea sick

Turning the desert green

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“Have you been inside?” It was the question on all my neighbours’ lips last week.

“Yes, twice today,” I heard mums reply. “There’s even a pork section,” – met with an intake of breath, a smile and a wide-eyed “Really?”

We were excited, you see, because we’ve waited three years for a grocery store to open in our compound here in Dubai.

Not only does it mean we don’t have to do a 10km loop anymore just to get milk, it also puts our community firmly on the map – quite something when you consider that in 2009, there was very little here.

Located outside the city in the desert, our newly built villas had sand lots for gardens when we moved in. The front- and backyards were, to the boys’ delight, literally giant sandpits.

The houses are painted a lemon colour – and with rolling desert for as far as the eye could see beyond our compound, the first impression was of acres of yellow, set against the brilliant blue of the cloudless sky.


For a long time, the only way in was via a bumpy, pot-holed track that 4by4s could just about handle without falling apart, but meant cars had to pick their way along, dodging craters, at a snail’s pace.

The roads around the compound were still under construction and I remember well the traffic layout changing overnight – a whole roundabout (a huge one!) vanished and everyone driving home the next day got completely and utterly lost.

Our compound wasn’t (and still isn’t) connected to a sewerage system or a mains water supply – poo trucks take sewage away and water trucks deliver desalinated water to a storage tank.

While everyone loved their brand-new villas, it did feel rather far and sparse, and calling a taxi in those days was like directing someone who doesn’t speak English, and is really only pretending they understand you, to a needle in a haystack.

The vast expanse of undeveloped desert where the boys play - perfect really!


From humble beginnings, our compound has slowly been added to – the swimming pool finally finished (once they worked out how to fill it with no mains water supply), a playarea, gym and dry cleaners opened, as well as a spa offering manis/pedis, massages and hair appointments. The shop took three years because of an electricity supply problem.

Planning is not always Dubai’s strong point.

How does your garden grow? Waiting for the newly planted clumps of grass to merge. In case you're wondering, an irrigation system automatically waters the whole garden twice a day (and yes, we did leave a sizeable sandpit for the boys round the back)!

““Get those villas up as fast as possible, fill ‘em with expats and we’ll worry about the utilities later,” must have been the developer’s mantra.

Today, our compound is even looking green as most people have landscaped their gardens, either planting clusters of grass that slowly merged to form a lawn, or rolling out instant-gratification ‘carpet grass’.

When our own grass was planted, in clumps, LB’s hair was just sprouting too and the race was on to see if our lawn or his locks would grow first.

The boys’ disappointment that I longed for grass and flowerbeds was quickly forgotten when they discovered the enormous patch of undeveloped desert just outside our compound, which we often zoom across in the SUV for fun. Perfect for kite-flying, excavating and quad-biking, there’s even a ravine with steep sides that the kids (and DH) slide down, nicknamed the Cliffs of Despair.

So that’s the story of our house built on sand. With the pioneering early days now passed, it feels like this corner of the desert has been well and truly conquered – and with the help of an awful lot of water, the desert has even been turned green.

Our lazy (but sweet) expat cat

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We have a cat – a rather rotund black-and-white female moggy who predates both our kids and has never really gotten over the arrival of two rambunctious boys into our formerly quiet household.

Love decorating, love patterns (DH not so much), and look - Chandelle is practically camouflaged ...

Despite being unbelievably lazy, she’s a well-travelled cat. We acquired her as a kitten from an animal rescue charity when DH and I were newly-weds, living in Florida. My husband named her Chandelle, which I know makes her sound like a voluptuous porn star but is, in fact, an aviation manoeuvre (don’t ask me what!).

She went on a three-day road trip from Florida to Minnesota when we moved to Minneapolis, then flew half-way round the world – via a pet hotel in Amsterdam – when we relocated to the Middle East.

Quite a long way for a cat, no? Well, she’s made up for it since by staying put – on our bed. She hardly moves, except for when she’s chased by one of our boys. So content is Chandelle to spend her days lolling on our bedsheets that I actually designed the bedroom to match her. She blends quite well with the black-and-white print of the throw, don’t you think?

For somewhere that gets really very hot in the summer, Dubai is home to loads of pets. You’d be surprised how many people own cats and dogs here – as well as more exotic animals such as lions and tigers (seriously!).

Being Dubai, pampered pets are well catered for, with pooch pedicures, organic shampoos and conditioners, Fursace doggy bags and designer dog gowns just some of the luxuries available at high-end pêt-à-porter boutiques. For £2,000, you can even indulge your pet with a Swarovski crystal-encrusted wooden bed, complete with velvet sheets on which you can have your dog’s name engraved.

Expats are content with feline and canine friends – although we had quite a shock when an escaped giant iguana appeared at our patio door, so big our housemaid was convinced it was a crocodile and started taking photos. But, in Emirati circles, larger exotic animals have always found willing buyers. Lately, illegal African cheetahs have become popular pets among those rich enough to afford one.

I mentioned before that my boss at work peered into a car on National Day at what they thought was a funny-looking dog, but turned out to be an adolescent lion. Well, it’s happened again and here’s the proof. This picture of a tiger hanging out of a car window was taken in the Marina Promenade area and caused a frenzy on social media sites this week … Lovable? Hmm, I’m not sure.

The school assessment

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It might only feel like yesterday that the Little Boy was born, but here in Dubai children can start school at three – providing they pass ‘The Assessment’, in which your kid is expected to perform tricks like a monkey. Except it would probably be easier taking a monkey along than a stroppy three year old.

“We should have got his hair cut,” lamented DH, as I tried to comb LB’s overgrown mop into a tidy style on the morning of his first assessment last week. “And done more prep. A captain I flew with told me they’d done loads of prep with their son.”

“It’s ok,” I retorted. “He’s great with colours – and he knows all our names. Watch,” I said, running through our family names, only hitting a problem when it came to my name. “Cath-wynn,” he replied. Erm, close (she’s our nanny) but no!

“He can hold a pen – and count in no particular order,” I ventured, grasping at straws at this point.

Bittersweet: It's hard to believe that in the autumn I'll have two boys at school!

This assessment – for a nearby school so popular it has a 10-year waiting list – was the easy one out of the two schools we’re applying to because we didn’t have to be there. A teacher came to LB’s nursery and ‘observed him’. All we had to do was get him there by 8 in the morning and keep our fingers crossed that he didn’t bite anyone in front of her.

I knew all along that today’s assessment for his older brother’s school would be harder, for several reasons. It was at 7.45am, we had to go with him, and every time we take him to BB’s school, it’s to ride bikes in the kindergarten play area, not be asked questions by a complete stranger with a clip board in a room full of kids he doesn’t know.

As I filled in a form about LB’s behaviour, routine, strengths and weaknesses, I was acutely aware I’d come across as a complete liar. “He enjoys playing with children,” I put, as LB – who’d just thrown the predicted tantrum over not being allowed to go to the school play area with his brother – clung to me for dear life.

“He’ll play independently,” I wrote, while DH tried to prize him off me, with no luck.

“And his love of Lego suggests a future Norman Foster … That is, if the accuracy he displays when throwing things at his brother’s head doesn’t lead him to play sport competitively,” I toyed with the idea of putting.

With ALL the other kids playing happily, DH and I tried using bribery, coercion and even logic to get him to participate, until finally a teacher came over and asked if he was part of the assessment. “YES … It might not look like it, but yes!” I fumed in my head… “Certainly not here, Mrs Clip Board, at this ungodly hour for the fun of it.”

If it sounds like I was getting stressed, I was.

From this point, it actually got a bit better. He ran through the colours, mumbled a few words, and drew a train. He flunked the numbers and refused to jump when asked (“That’s just silly,” I could tell he was thinking), but it was enough.

They emailed later to say that – pending receipt of his birth certificate, passport, visa, his fourth-cousin-once-removed’s passport, nursery reports from birth, finger print, iris scan and 20 passport photos – Monkey Boy was in.

In return, a G&T at the door would have helped. A lot.