Category Archives: Expat

Back to reality: A yellow weekend

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There’s nothing quite like a howling sandstorm outside and the sound of your kids howling and fighting inside to bring you back to reality with a bump.

When you're surrounded by sand, being engulfed by a shamal (sandstorm) is inevitable from time to time


The stay-at-home or risk-a-crowded-mall forecast for the weekend was for gusting sand to continue buffeting the UAE until Monday – and it gusts everywhere. Step outside, and you inhale sand into your lungs – causing hospital admissions to surge as people with respiratory complaints find themselves gasping for breath.

Blowing sand gets into your ears, in your eyes and up your nostrils. Your scalp feels gritty and your skin is exfoliated by nature’s loofah.

Everything outside is covered with a coating of dust, making the garden look like a scene from the nuclear-war movie Threads and sand even gets indoors, through gaps under doors and air conditioning ducts. Heaven forbid you accidentally leave a window open, and you come home to find the whole room’s been landscaped.

Dubai this weekend: A Mission Impossible 4-style sandstorm - stay safe peeps


On the roads, visibility is reduced, quite drastically at times, with reports that visibility on one of Dubai’s busiest roads was so low at one point that some drivers had difficulty staying on the motorway. In another part of Dubai, there was so much sand on the road, it was being moved with a bulldozer.

When it’s all over, the blue skies return, as though nothing ever happened, and then the big clean up can begin.

Yes, sometimes it does feel like we’re living in a giant dust ball.

Talking of inclement weather, the boys were playing on an inflatable slide at a park the other day and this safety notice made me laugh. Kids take note!

The to-do list that keeps growing

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Last week was my first whole week at home in a little while, following a stint of work – but, and I’ve always said this, getting back to one’s housewifely/motherly duties is when the hard work really starts.

I had so many plans for the week. BIG plans.

Top of the to-do list was sorting out our clothes – not just mine, which are now so crammed into the wardrobe I can’t even see what’s there, but also the boys’ clothes. Their baby clothes (they’re 3 and 6 now) were to be given away, their shoes tried on and organised and their t-shirts filed in size order.

The guest-room vision: No Disney characters in sight

I was then going to move into our spare room and redecorate so visitors don’t have to sleep with giant Winnie-the-Pooh stickers above their heads, choosing muted, gender-neutral tones picked at leisure while browsing the paint store.

I was going to go jogging every other day, and cook several low-carb, low-fat dishes – stashing extra portions in the freezer. I saw myself making vegetable soup with the radio on in the kitchen and eating it for lunch, with a brown roll, every day. I was sure I’d lose at least 2lb and feel great.

I was going to reply to emails dating back to 2010, get passport photos taken of LB and start writing an article for a friend who’s doing a jolly good job raising awareness of coeliac disease in the UAE.

Oh, the optimism.

What I’d forgotten was that DH was home for 4 days last week, the school day is over in a blink and the kids are always so ecstatic I’m not working, they won’t let me out of their sight. Needless to say, our clothes are still clogging up the wardrobes, the article didn’t get written, I’m still a hopeless pen-pal and I didn’t even buy the paint.

So what did I achieve?

● I hung out with the boys and marvelled as BB miraculously started to read [proud moment – he can be challenging]

● Ate chips and a giant pastry-rich vol au vent at the Belgium Beer Cafe on a date night with DH

● Drank tea with friends in Costa Coffee and Starbucks

● Went down the road to Silicon Oasis to catch up with friends I haven’t seen for a year

● Enjoyed seeing my in-laws who surprised us with a visit from Beirut, where heavy rain had stalled work on the house they’re building

● Had my hair chemically straightened

● Power-walked round the block, once

Wonderfully sociable, even if nothing got ticked off the list.

There’s always this week, though DH has just got back, it’s LB’s half-term and, snow-permitting, we’ve got more visitors arriving on Tuesday for a week-long sleepover with Winnie the Pooh.

INSPIRATION: Dubai’s Desperate Housewife; PHOTO CREDIT: New Bedroom Designs

Dubai bloopers

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When you live in a society as multicultural as Dubai, it’s inevitable that the English language is often used to hilarious effect.

It happens all the time, even at home. A friend recently told me about a phonecall she received from their housemaid.

Painters (who the week before were probably laying paving, and the week before that were fixing the electrics) had somehow spilt paint all over her husband’s car.

Their housemaid called my friend at work to spill the beans: “Sir is hot!” announced the maid, referring to my friend’s understandably irate husband.

“He’s very hot!”

But it’s not just in everyday conversation that words get mixed up. Signs with poor English can be found all over the UAE. Even buildings, government departments and important websites are riddled with grammatical errors and laugh-out-loud typos.

Take, for example, the Dubai Police website.

“Dear driver,” it says under Traffic Awareness. “Expect the sudden stop of the car in front of you, in any emergency.”

Elsewhere, it cautions drivers to follow “Traffic Sins” and, under Travel Tips, helpfully recommends: “Do not look like tourists at airports”.

Here are some more of my favourite bloopers (some of them a bit rude, so click away now if you’re easily offended or would rather not snigger in the back row with me!):

● “Parking in backside” – directing drivers to parking spaces behind buildings

● “Fishing and Getting Closer are Prohibited – at Khalid Port in Sharjah

● “No need for stress, as all matters are beyond the control of anyone” – a reassuring tip on the Dubai Police website

● Al Dhaid – a large agricultural town and the name of a gardening company I’m not sure I’d trust to keep my grass alive

● Al Boom Gas – a gas supplier, say no more

● Housewaif – on wife’s residence visa

● “Taking drugs or alcoholics: These should not be brought to work” – on the Ministry of Labour website

● “Erection Going On, Stay Away” – sign on a construction site in International City (thankfully not used during the making of Burj Khalifa, tee-hee)

To be fair, if most expatriates tried to write anything in Arabic, the official language here, the results would be equally amusing – and funny sign-spotting is a great hobby to have.

When the desert freezes over

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In Dubai right now, the conversation on everyone’s (blue-tinged) lips is the same: the cold windy weather that’s whipping up dust storms galore.

It’s all relative, of course (in the UK, 17 degrees might be considered a chilly summer’s day), but the cool temperatures that are currently hitting our normally balmy city are having a far-reaching effect.

Spotted around the UAE today:

– Mums in winter clothes bought in 1992 (and a man wearing a shawl at the supermarket)

– Security men kitted out with ear muffs

– Nannies (the brave ones) sporting hoodies and hopping from foot to foot at the playarea while watching fleeced-up kids

– School guards swaddled in layers and resembling Arctic explorers

– Tourists fiddling with the air-conditioning units in their hotel rooms to see if they double up as heaters

– Those same visitors then heading to Starbucks for a hot chocolate, rueing the week they chose for a winter-sun holiday

– Cricketers, here for the England vs Pakistan Test match, wondering if they’re playing in, um, England

– Cats sniffing the air outside, turning their noses up and heading straight back indoors

– Business men grappling with their appendages – steady on – their ties, I mean, flapping in the wind at right angles

– Camels wearing leg warmers (joke!)

Given that Dubai plays host to more nationalities than the Olympics, there are two camps among residents: the ‘C’mon get over it! Just man-up…this is not cold” brigade and the “Brrrrr, it’s absolutely freezing’ camp.

You might think we’re all wimps but, believe it or not, the temperature in the UAE’s mountainous regions was set to dip to an almost freezing 1°C today, according to the forecast – and, even more surprisingly, did you know it can even snow in the desert?

Almost three years ago to the day, on the night of January 24-25th 2009, twenty centimetres of snow covered the peak of Mount Jebel Jais in Ras al-Khaimah, one of the UAE’s emirates.

Dubai, meanwhile, is abuzz with ‘will-it, won’t-it’ actually rain? There’s been a few drops already – more like a dog shaking off water than a downpour – but the consensus is it’s going to rain on Monday, meaning the highways will be aglow with hazard lights and cars stopped on the side of the road not knowing what to do.

Puddle-loving kids will be in their element, my own included. Some real puddles to jump in are such a novelty after months of running through the garden sprinklers pretending it’s raining (for the sweetest account of how exciting rain is for kids here, pop over to Mrs Dubai – you’ll love it, I promise, especially if you have little-uns).

As for which cold-weather camp I fall in – well, I’m absolutely loving the climate change, but, yes, I’m feeling it. Dubai’s hot weather thins your blood, you know.

PHOTO CREDIT: Emirates 24/7 News

The airport run

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I don’t know about you, but the school holiday/Christmas combo wore me out – if I’d propped my eyelids open with cocktail sticks, I would still have fallen asleep.

And as BB’s school goes back a week later than nearly every other school in the world, I decided to take him home to his grandparents in England so they could do some advanced babysitting.

So here we are – in chilly Surrey (it’s 7 degrees and I arrived in flip-flops!), having got here by the skin of our teeth.

Suffice to say, our tickets – which were meant to be confirmed, weren’t – so standby it was, again. We tried four different flights over 24 hours, which involved lots of waiting (and you know how painful this can be with a small child in tow – personally I’d rather sit on those cocktail sticks), plus trotting backwards and forwards to the airport in a taxi.

On day 1, after our first crack-of-dawn attempt to get away, the taxi driver didn’t quite get that all we’d achieved that morning was an airport breakfast, and from the yawning I was doing presumed we’d just got off an international flight. So I went along with it. Later that day, we had afternoon tea at the airport too.

On day 2, after an even earlier start, the boarding pass fairy smiled on us and, with less than 45 minutes until take-off, we set off on a high-speed chase through passports and security to the gate – me dragging BB and our bags along at speed past Dubai International’s endless bling bling stores.

While everyone else settled down to enjoy a good movie, BB and I watched the map and counted down the minutes. "Look, Mummy - the front of the airplane has reached England. Are we in the front?"

The airplane, of course, was parked in the furthest-away spot, in the overflow parking by the airport fence, and we had to get to it by bus. As BB whined about how long the bus ride was taking – with eight hours of playing Tray Up/Tray Down, Light On/Light Off on the actual flight to go – my mood plummeted further.

The final hurdle was a seating problem. Having got the last two seats, BB and I were sitting in separate parts of the aircraft – and while I would have loved someone else, and even paid them good money, to sit next to him, this obviously wasn’t going to work. So I enlisted the help of a kindly cabin boy to ask passengers if they wouldn’t mind moving.

The shuffle that ensued resulted in a young man being left without a seat and, it was at this point, that my over-tired, over-active mind whirled into action, with visions of BB and I being deplaned.

“She doesn’t look like a terrorist,” I imagined the other passengers thinking, as I pictured us being marched off the aircraft. “Surely not with a child. Maybe they’re drug mules. No, the mother must be drunk. That’s it! She’s drunk – and in charge of a small boy! Disgraceful!”

Thankfully, my nice cabin boy returned and found the young man a seat – and we were on our way.

And so that’s how my relaxing break began. Just don’t get me started about the flight itself!

Our life on the small screen

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My humble and tiny corner of the blogosphere has kept me busy this year, providing a creative outlet and distraction for me and, I really hope, some entertaining insight into life in Dubai for people who’ve read it.

And a huge thank you for reading.

My goal when I started this blog was to attract one or two readers who aren’t related to me and, amazingly, I’ve achieved that!

Desert dwelling: Sandy pastures outside our compound

One of the fascinating things about blogging is being able to track the readership via your ‘blog stats’. I keep an eye on these because it’s fun to find out where traffic is coming from and also good to know if anything dodgy is going on.

Talking of which, I should probably change the title of my post Things that get you in trouble in Dubai (yes, sex on the beach!), because when people Google ‘sex in Dubai’ they blaze a trail to yours truly.

The seedy side of the internet aside, the blog stats also tell me which are the most popular posts – and I have to admit, I’m fascinated to see which posts about desert living people are most interested in; which nugget of expat knowledge has been most valuable; which parenting challenge has struck a chord.

As it happens, none of the above.

My most popular post has nothing to do with expat life — or kids for that matter.

A half-mile-high skyscraper, known as the Burj Khalifa, is responsible for a whopping 6,340 hits, nearly half the hits on my blog.

Watch out: No job too big, or too small

The second-most popular post was Expat brats: The signs to look out for, closely followed by Happy 40th birthday UAE (thanks to the photo of the blinged-out BMW) and the Dubai driving post with tips on how to be a roadhog.

Of course it would be silly to spend far too long online looking for a good picture of the world’s tallest building just to get another peak in my blog stats. So jettisoning the image I just found, I’ll leave you with a photo of something I saw parked near us recently that made me laugh (and wonder if I should hide).

That’s it for 2011. I have to get ready now for the black-tie-do taking place tonight on board the Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2), moored here in Dubai, and I’m hoping they’ve filled the swimming pool with pink champagne.

Just kidding.

We don’t have a babysitter so we’ll be taking the kids up the road to a party in our compound – within stumbling distance home, so the perfect night out, if you ask me.

Thank you again for taking the time to read about us here in Dubai. Wishing you a very happy new year!

A blow-out on the highway

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Coming home this evening, with the kids in the back of the car, I had a scary experience that’s left me rather shaken – so a bit of a serious post, this one, with some advice for fellow expats who share the UAE’s roads with drivers from around 180 different nations.

It was just after dark, rush-hour and the traffic was heavy. We were on one of Dubai’s eight-lane highways, which you have no choice but to take from where we live – to get to school, to the park, to the mall, pretty much anywhere.

In front to the left was a van, travelling at speed despite being old-looking and probably not road-worthy in other parts of the world. I expect it had one of those misspelt stickers on the back: ‘Am I driving safe? If no please call *insert driver’s mobile number*’

Good luck calling this number

The van blew a tyre – that I know, because I saw a flame shoot out from a back wheel – then I’m guessing the driver hit the brakes, because he lost control and swerved dangerously – careering across the highway, right into our oncoming path.

I narrowly avoided hitting him as he ploughed across several lanes and, thank god, the cars behind us didn’t slam into the back of us, either. The whole episode played out in slow-motion and I shook like a leaf all the way home.

DH, who I phoned straight away, promises me that if we’d crashed, it wouldn’t have been as bad as I’m morbidly imagining as everyone was (hopefully) slowing down, and it probably seemed worse because it was dark, but even so, it felt like a close call, if you ask me, and I held the kids close when we got home.

It made me think: would I know what to do if our car blew a tyre on the highway? Do you know? I just looked it up and here’s what I found:

DO NOT slam on the brakes (like van man instinctively did tonight) as this may throw you into a spin. Keep a firm grip on the steering wheel and do not over steer to correct any swerve or pull. Try to point the car as straight as possible and let the car slow itself down. Put your indicator on and drift towards the shoulder. When all four wheels are off the highway, brake lightly and cautiously until you stop.

Stay safe peeps.

PHOTO CREDIT: Living the Travel Channel

The run on sellotape

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Christmas when you’re living overseas can be a funny thing.

On the upside, here in Dubai you’ve got champagne brunches, take-out turkeys from five-star hotels, child-friendly beach clubs with the sunshine to enjoy them and the fact everywhere’s open on Christmas Day.

My in-laws, who are staying with us and looking to buy property, were able to view apartments with a real-estate agent after we’d opened presents – and could even have gone on to Ikea.

Christmas morning at Circles: But there was no pulling the wool over BB's eyes: "That's not Santa, that's Uncle James!'


On the downside, you’re far from family back home, there are no seasonal specials of Doctor Who or Family Fortunes on the TV, some people think it doesn’t feel festive unless it’s cold and miserable outside and, being a Muslim country, there’s not a baby Jesus in sight, plus you might not officially have the day off work.

And this year – just like the previous two years – there was another curveball for unsuspecting Christmas shoppers, summed up by a friend of mine on Facebook as follows:

“No time to finish shopping, no days off to speak of, no Bacardi (don’t worry, I’ve got vodka) and no husband …. But it was the ‘no sellotape’ that pushed me over the edge.”

Yes, the local supermarket had, once again, failed to order extra supplies, which probably meant there was no sellotape left anywhere in Dubai – leaving, I can only imagine, thousands of expats with presents to wrap frantically wondering if they’d have to use Pritt stick instead.

I called my friend straight away, because as I mentioned before, I have a son who uses rolls of the stuff to tape his toys to the floor so they don’t get cleared away, and so I buy industrial quantities and stash it away.

Next year, I bet loads more expats with stockings to stuff will do the same – as I said, it can be a funny ole time Christmas in Dubai, and apologies for blogging about sellotape, again!

Desert dress sense: A fashion opportunity

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Last night I went to a Christmas party wearing my Ugg boots – a purchase I persuaded DH to buy from the knock-off markets of Shanghai.

Worn without socks - talking of which, I'd been here two years before buying a pair of socks


Their first outing since their arrival months ago, they are, of course, about as necessary as ice scrapers and anti-freeze are in the desert.

But my friend who held the party said there would be snow on the ground (and there was, in the form of fake snow sprinkles!) so it seemed too good a fashion opportunity to miss, even if by the end of the night my feet and half my legs had suffocated in their fur-lined encasings.

It goes without saying that fashion in the desert is biased towards the summer season: flips flops, shorts, maxi dresses and summer tops are year-round staples. Women own tops for fat days, tops for thin days. Short-sleeve tops that aren’t too revealing for the mall, T-shirts that hide underarm stubble, ‘look at my curvy body’ spaghetti tops and ‘I can be sensible’ light-weight tops that hide your bra straps for work.

And another essential in the land of eternal summer: bikinis – which have categories all of their own.

Needed in all colours

On the upside, all these items are easy to pack if you’re coming to Dubai on holiday, but when you live here – rather like eating cheese and tomato sarnies with no mayo for lunch every day – it’s easy to get bored of your summer wardrobe and long to wear a sleeve, boots, a winter coat, layers and a scarf for a change.

Hence my joy at wearing the Uggs last night, putting a sweater on to go to a cinema with chilly air-conditioning, and covering up in the cooler evenings. Ironically, the clothes stores here are full of wooly winter stock, which all looks so tempting but is really only of any use if you’re travelling to cooler climes.

This all leads me to a question I’ve been asked several times by people coming to visit us here: what is appropriate clothing in a Muslim country?

Most ‘normal’ clothing is tolerated in Dubai as long as it is not too outrageous – although to be respectful of the UAE culture, some people only wear tops that cover their shoulders to go shopping.

And you wouldn’t want to reveal your midriff or your ‘bits that are best left hidden’ in public as this would cause offence. You might have heard about the British shopper who was reportedly wearing see-through clothing at the mall and received a stern warning from an Arab lady. Angered by the ‘dress down’ – and to everyone’s amazement – the shopper stripped to her bikini. Needless to say, the police were called and she was arrested.

On the beach, bikinis are fine, topless or thongs are not. And while under-dressers (ie, people who jump into the sea in their y-fronts) risk ending up with a caution from the beach police, over-dressers are also being targeted. Over-dressers are fully clothed men who come to the beach not to swim or sunbathe, but for ‘other’ reasons. Labourers who work in Dubai, they’ve gained a reputation for staring at women in bikinis and apparently even photographing them with their mobiles and groping them underwater! (it’s never happened to me, I should add!)

Two veiled Emirati women in traditional Islamic dress cross paths with a Western woman wearing a revealing frock at the horse races in Dubai

Jet-setting grandparents

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As I mentioned earlier this week, BB’s class is nearing the end of a Unit of Enquiry (the lingo in the international curriculum) into how things have changed over time.

We’ve all worked quite hard on this, completing a questionnaire asking things like, ‘Did you have a television back in your day? Or a washing machine?’, working on a poster as homework and going along with the premise that our kids think we’re really quite old.

With a shared love of train sets, BB and his Grandad can hang out for hours

They’ve even had grandparents into the school to meet the class and talk about life in the past.

This led BB to come home asking me why his grandparents don’t live with us.

Imagining one big happy household crammed full to the rafters with his Nanny and Grandad from England and his Jiddo and Tata from Lebanon, he thought this would be a marvellous set up for everyone.

“Well, dear, we do try to see them as much as possible,” I replied “and we’re really very lucky that you have such jet-setting grandparents.”

“Ummm,” he sighed, a little dejectedly, clearly not persuaded that this was enough. And then dropped a clanger, said in a way only cheeky but affectionate little boys can get away with:

“If Grandad lived with us, I could count the hairs on his head.”