Wordless Wednesday: The seafood restaurant
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Happy holidays kiddos!
School’s out! Good luck mums 🍷🍷🍷 
Silent Sunday: Expat kids (on EZ Bags)
Wordless Wednesday: Spot the mistake
You might want to think twice about sending your kids to the tutors at megabrain.ae! 
A cold call from the world-wide web
If there’s something that strikes the fear of god in me, it’s a Trojan horse, trotting round my computer and grazing on the contents of my hard drive.
It’s probably because I know it would leave my computer, a lifeline in both my expat and professional existence, with an electronic version of the bubonic plague, that would signal the death knell to every single file stored on my laptop.
When I overheard my mother on the phone today, talking about Trojan horses in a raised, slightly alarmed voice, my ears pricked up.
Trojan horses, malevolent worms – the stuff of nightmares!
“Which computer?” I heard her say, irately. “We’ve got at least four here.” (My mum worked in computers from day one, when they were so big they filled an entire floor and had to be fed with tickertape).
But, it turns out, spending decades as a programmer isn’t enough to make you 100 per cent sure that the disembodied female voice on the line, telling you there’s a malicious virus she can fix, is actually a hacker.
My mum put the phone on speaker volume so I could hear.
“I’m calling from the world-wide web,” said the woman.
“The main server. Have you heard of www?” she asked. (Erm, yes!)
I know it sounds obvious now, but at the time, there’s a little bit of you that thinks, goodness, the world-wide web is actually calling us! (It’s a very clever piece of technology, after all.)
The woman, who even appeared to have my mother’s computer IP address, told her to switch the PC on so she could save vital software from being damaged.
Thank goodness my mum didn’t, and at this point I started waving my arms frantically, then practically yelling, “Put the phone down!” – which she did.
It rang again.
The caller tried one last time to persuade us, then didn’t bother us again. But, you can really see how some people would be taken in, and either end up getting hacked, or parting with money to fix the fake ‘problem’.
Be warned – it’s a scam lots of people have fallen for, and the hoaxers, usually with Indian accents, sometimes claim to be from Microsoft, or Windows – slightly more convincing than the world-wide web’s main server, wherever on earth that is! (Does anyone know, out of interest?)
Silent Sunday: Online shopping
Thought fashion endorsements were the realm of supermodels and celebrities? Not any more. If you just happened to be looking for an Afghan hat, you might stumble across this website selling them. This was a tricky one to photograph, and in case you can’t read the tagline, it says: “Original Wool Afghan hat as seen on TV worn by the Taliban!”
Thank you to my friend, who came across this while researching the name of the hat worn by Afghan men for an article (pakol, in case you were curious)
Greedy grannies gone wild
Whenever I’m back in the UK, it’s always noticeable that people don’t smile – or even make eye contact – when they pass each other in the street.
Sometimes I test this out: I attempt to meet the eyes of a mother passing by with her children and give them a friendly smile. More often than not, the mum keeps her gaze fixed straight ahead (though to be fair, she’s probably too busy making sure her kids don’t tumble off the narrow pavement into the road – or thinks I’m a lunatic).
But today was different. My mum and I popped into Starbucks and as we walked in, an elderly lady who was leaving gave us the biggest Cheshire cat grin I’ve ever seen. Totally unprompted.
Broad smile: I’m quids in! (There are virtually no silver expats in Dubai, so I enjoy seeing British Grannies)
Then some young girls, aged no more than 12 or 13, arrived and asked if a £20 note had been handed in.
“Yes, but we gave it to the old lady,” replied the woman behind the counter. “She said it was hers and I believed her!”
Well, you would, wouldn’t you? The pensioner looked just like someone’s doting grandmother, with a creaky hip, sensible shoes and blue-rinse blow dry.
My mum and I sat down to drink our tea, laughing quietly that the opportunistic Granny with the triumphant grin must have seen her chance and grabbed it with both hands. She’d probably hopped straight on a bus flashing her bus pass by now, we thought.
But, to our surprise, she returned, having been rounded up by the young girls in their teeny-tiny shorts and their pubescent spotty boyfriends.
“How dare you?” she roared at the youngsters as she was accused of stealing their note [which they shakily said they’d left on a seat – the boyfriends, at this point, backing off in the direction of the muffins].
She had a story ready but, unfortunately, it had more holes in it than a sieve and the money was handed over to the girls, before everyone went on their way.
I felt rather sorry for her, with hard times n’ all in the UK recently, and there was a high chance she was just really confused, so I gave her a smile when we passed again later – but this time I just got the standard ear-to-ear blank look in return.
Better luck next time, love!
Basking in a golden glow
I went to London last week for a celebration with friends. Our joint 160th birthday – quite something, we thought, as we munched on red lentil, pepper and olive burgers at Mildred’s in Soho and kept our eyes peeled for Olympic athletes on the razzle.
To get there, I meandered along Regent Street, sans kids, and found myself stopping not just to peer at leisure into shop windows, but to take photos – something I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing 15 years ago, when I used to charge along this famous street at a furious pace, my eyes fixed firmly on the pavement, to get to work. (“Look up”, I now always say to friends visiting London – I missed so much by hurrying.)
This time, looking up was never in any doubt. The street is bedecked with flags, row upon row of them draped the whole way along the road. Fluttering above the hustle and bustle of the throngs of shoppers.
Obviously this isn’t the photo I took, which came out too dark… an impressive display of the national colours of the 205 competing nations, don’t you think?
Post boxes have been painted gold in the hometowns of Team GB’s gold-winning athletes
In place of the mildly pushy people you so often come across in London, we’ve seen thousands of volunteers on the streets, who worked so hard for the duration of the Olympics and won it the accolade of The Friendly Games. So marked was the shift in the usually reserved national mood that the impossible was achieved: Londoners even started talking to one another on the tube.
All so different from a year ago, when we watched teenagers forming queues to pillage clothes shops and DH and I sat in a pub and wondered if rioters might actually burst in.
Who would have guessed the weather would even co-operate: after the wettest period since Noah’s Ark, the sun shone – and London is now, rightly so, basking in the golden glow of its two-week success story.
This sign isn’t anything to do with the games, but its wording made me smile, especially with the Olympic Isles looking so picturesque at the moment
People-watching in summertime
Pretty girls are walking by in cut-off denim shorts and bikini tops, heading for the surf in high spirits. The atmosphere is laid-back. Casual. Anything goes.
A bright yellow, almost sunny-looking police car just drove by, followed by a slightly battered red vehicle with a surfboard on top.
There are elderly people doing their weekly shop, noticeable because their faces look weather-beaten and wrinkled. But they’re smiling and relaxed. As are the throngs of scantily-clad shoppers and beach-goers who are milling around, some sipping on a ‘flat white’ before resuming their Saturday-afternoon activities. Others heading straight for the waves.
If this doesn’t sound like the Middle East, you’re right. I’m far, far away, in Sydney, Australia (a country I fell in love with 10 years ago when I spent three months here as a backpacker), and I’m writing this post while people-watching at a cafe in Manly.
My body thinks it’s the middle of the night – such is the jet lag when you fly for nearly 14 hours straight. But it’s worth it: I love the vibe here – the way it shouts ‘Life is better in board shorts!’ I love jumping on and off ferries to get to Sydney’s beachside suburbs, the opera house, harbour bridge, botanic gardens, pie shops and the fact zebra crossings actually work.
Best of all is spending some quality time with DH [whispers: without the kids]. I literally ‘went to work’ with DH, tagging along on his 5-day trip to Australia and New Zealand. He’s flown on to Auckland now, which I chose not to do because I’m a complete amateur when it comes to jet lag. He’s used to it and not phased by doing both countries in 72 hours.
So now I’m solo in Sydney. Just me and the credit card. And a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, before DH gets back tomorrow night!
Good-bye plastic bags
I’m not turning into an eco-warrior, I promise (with two small boys I’m far too worn out), but a comment from a good friend of mine on my last post is really worth elaborating on.
The nifty stunt she told me about combines two of my favourite things (bags and making lists), and, if you live in the Middle East, is coming to a supermarket near you soon.
As I mentioned, here in the UAE we are, for various reasons, consuming more than our fair share of the world. And when it comes to plastic shopping bags, the statistics are eye-poppingly bad.
The UAE is using more than 20 billion plastic bags annually, a figure that’s sparked such intense debate within the emirates that the Minister for Environment has ordered the country to go cold turkey by 2013: that’s right, by next year the UAE is to be plastic-bag free.
To promote Tide laundry detergent, the creative brains at Dubai advertising agency Leo Burnett came up with this reusable shopping bag that doubles as a grocery list.
Resembling a notepad, you write your list on the bag (fruit & veg, milk, bread, sellotape), then wash it afterwards and it’s ready for the next shopping trip. Elegantly simple, huh? The customers, fashion editors and bloggers who were sent the Tide Smart Bag (along with a marker pen and a box of the detergent) were impressed too, and so the plan is to make the bags available around the region.
If anyone from Tide just happens to be reading this (I’m tagging you now, 5 times), please send me one – I’m in the supermarket practically every other day and would be a great walking advert. Plus I reckon the bag could be a sanity saver too as the kids could doodle on it rather than pestering me for cartoon-character-endorsed junk food at every turn.
Customised and eco-chic, even I might remember to take this bag to the supermarket if it had my list written on it.