Ditching their devices on digital detox day (haha!)

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During this era of educational dystopia, my kids have started whining endlessly about having to go to actual, physical school. It sets my teeth on edge every time they grimace and say, “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

“Yes, you do,” I reply without fail, feeling cross. I blame all the school closures for this. For making them think it doesn’t matter if they miss school. That going to school is negotiable. 

“Can’t we do online school instead?” they wail.

“No,” I snap, my blood pressure rising. It isn’t up for discussion, in my books. How will they get through life if they think it’s okay to just absent themselves or hide away online the moment they have to do something they don’t want to do. 

I try to explain that the past two years are not the new normal, that the cancellations and closures, the rolling out of bed two minutes before online registration, the virtual classrooms, contract tracing, non-stop masking and threat of exams being suspended are NOT acceptable. But it’s been two years now. That’s quite a long time in their lifetimes.

I want them to learn that showing up – in person – is one of the most important things in life. But maybe I’m just being old school. It’s so hard to impart this lesson when Covid has encouraged a no-show, stay-away culture. 

Anyhow, their constant campaign to skip school was stepped up a notch on Friday, the last day before half-term. I heard all about how half the school would be missing due to being close contacts (probably true), and because lots of parents far nicer than us had given their kids the last day off (really?). They also told me it was digital detox day.

I laughed out loud at their dismay! I could imagine the teachers talking it up, telling the students they’d be on a digital detox the next day, trying to make it sound fun. And my boys visibly whitening, horrified at the prospect of not getting their electronic fix.

“Look, it’s only half a day,” I argued back to them. Fridays in the UAE for the public sector and schools are short, half-days now. Honestly my kids are home at precisely 12.05pm, in weekend mode. I’ve had to start going to the office on Fridays as it’s impossible to get a whole day’s work done with them – and their equally demob-happy friends – in the house.   

Happily (for me), they both went to school on Friday, and suffered (their words) through digital detox morning. I refuse to call it a day when it was only four hours.

“How was it?” I asked Son1 that evening.

“Horrible,” he replied and I found myself wondering if they’d actually switched the entire school wifi off (hehehe). I pictured him holding his phone in the recovery position, raised above his head, desperately hoping it would pick up a signal. 

I was tempted to tell my sons for the umpteenth time that I didn’t have internet as a child, and when I first got on the world wide web at home it was a noisy dial-up connection that crawled along painfully slowly while I grew older waiting for pages to load. But they think that was back in the dark ages.  

Are you on a Wordle winning streak?

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We’ve all seen it by now – those grey, green and yellow boxes infiltrating your Facebook feed like algae in warm weather. 

There are two responses to Wordle posts, I’ve realised: 

1) Wtf is this? Why is everyone spamming social media with these coloured squares?

2) Addicted

A hit sensation seemingly overnight, the free online word game is like Scrabble or Words with Friends, but for 2022. It can also be described as an alphabet version of the classic game Mastermind.

Anyone who has a grasp of five-letter words in the English language can play. Even my kids. It’s ensnared Sudoku fans and crossword fanatics; it’s free and solvable when so much in life at the moment feels insurmountable; and it’s a quick time out – the perfect late-pandemic viral game.

While in the early part of the pandemic, I pored over lose-myself-for-hours jigsaws, at this point, with life getting busy again, time is at a premium, and so the quick nature of Wordle makes it appealing. The platform also only offers one game a day. Once you’re done, that it’s. You have to move on with your day.    

Think of it as a brain snack for those who don’t have the time, patience or energy for anything more consuming. The banana bread of Omicron.

But that’s not to say it isn’t totally absorbing. We now have a fun new family Wordle WhatsApp group, in which competitive streaks are flexed.  

I’ve always been one of our family’s wordsmiths, whereas my brother always had a knack for numbers. Recently, this balance has been upended. When we started out, I was just throwing letters at the squares haphazardly, while my brother, much more methodical than me, finished in fewer tries every time. 

Other family members had paid closer attention to the rules, so knew they could use the same letter more than once.

Then my brother got a Wordle hole-in-one! Although I’m pretty sure he cheated on that one!

Created by software developer Josh Wardle as a lockdown game for his crossword-loving partner, Wordle’s simplicity (it’s ad-free, with no paid upgrades) is its charm. Although let’s see what happens now the New York Times has acquired the popular word game for an undisclosed seven-figure price tag.

Having seriously upped my game to compete with my family and several friends too, here are a few more Wordle observations: 

  • When my first wordle guess is all grey, it’s a bad start to the day
  • There are fewer things more frustrating than guessing a five-letter word that fits perfectly, only to get another grey, green and yellow row
  • If I finish my daily Wordle super early, there’s a 23-hour wait for the next one. Remember waiting a whole week in between TV episodes? It’s a bit like that
  • I’ve thought about trying one of those knock-off apps where you get unlimited games (Got anymore of that Wordle? I need more man), but am resisting in case it spoils the fun
  • I’ve had my eyes opened to the fact that white box emojis mean some people aren’t using dark mode 24/7
  • While mostly an uplifting puzzle, it does come with dispiriting moments. “I did badly today,” a friend told me. “I didn’t even try it yesterday. I was thrown by Grandma Mary getting it in two”
  • If you don’t post your Wordle, did you even do it?

Comedy legend Jack Dee brings much-needed laughs

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Jack Dee (off the telly) was absolutely brilliant when he performed in Dubai the other week.

At this weird time of messed-up schools, kids getting quarantined for Covid in moral education class, and working remotely via zoom and other soulless electronic interfaces, it was so good to get out of the house and laugh, all evening. 🤣

From the getgo with his jokes about staying in the same Dubai hotel as Djokovic to reminding us about the apocalyptic things we USED to worry about (an Ice Age and nuclear war… I remember so well! The movie Threads, anyone?!), I loved every minute. What a relief to escape the misery of modern Covid/climate/cancel-culture obsessed times for a couple of hours.

As a dear friend put it: “Yes, I’ve been talking about the Cold War and CND (remember them?). OK, so the pandemic is seriously un-fun, but there will be a point in time when it’s over. We all got this.”

I must admit, though, that social distancing meant our seats got upgraded to a posh section we would never have spent the money on, making it extra-special. I’m now waiting for Only Fools and Horses – the musical to make it to Dubai.

Laughter is so important, and more relevant than ever.

Back to school … and back home again

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I am beginning to wonder whether my boys will be properly in school ever again – and I mean full-time at school and with PE and activities and a fully stocked canteen where they can eat food not provided me. Maskless in lessons and corridors would be even better.

Have you noticed that some naturally withdrawn children are using their masks to hide behind? It’s like they’ve almost started adopting the masks as their face – like it’s part of their identity, their security blanket. They want to keep the mask on, even while playing sport, or at lunch they want to eat a bite, put the mask back on, take another bite, put it back on. 

The continued policy of masking at school just to be safe – with no end date in sight – makes me terribly worried that being over cautious has a cost, while the benefits are uncertain. 

Anyhow, I digress. Son2’s year got closed down this week, which is what I’d meant to write about. He – and all his friends – are thrilled. He’d left already on his bike when I got the urgent email from school about the closure. The bus kids had already arrived and been ushered straight into quarantine, sending mums back at work into a tailspin. 

I called Son2 to tell him to turnaround, and, of course, the news had travelled fast. 

“Is it true? Is school cancelled?” he whooped with delight down the line. In the background I could hear quite a commotion, like a party had already started. Cheerful voices noisily hollered to each other. Son2 began to cheer. The only thing missing from the jubilation was the sound of glasses clinking.

“Yep, you can come home,” I sighed. “They’ve closed down the whole year.”

“The WHOLE YEAR?” he replied in astonished amazement. 

“Yep, the whole of year eight.”

“Oh! I thought you meant for the rest of the year,” he explained, because honestly the way this term is going with all the cancellations makes anything seems possible. (He admitted later that this scared him a bit – the thought there’d be no more school all year. It’s actually, hopefully, just for a week – adding to the first missed week at the start of school.) 

He arrived back home shortly after, at about 8.05am.`My other son is on study leave, so was also home, but while he can be relied on to study independently, Son2 needed supervising to make sure he actually logged on to online school.

Later that morning, I heard raucous laughter through the wall – it went on long enough that I had to investigate. As I walked in, he quickly flicked his laptop screen from some software he’d been using to mess around with a friend back to the school platform, where I could see a weary-looking teacher talking in a small box at the top. 

“You WEREN’T IN SCHOOL,” I roared, feeling highly annoyed and at the same time utterly defeated. Because it really seems, doesn’t it, that Covid parenting has passed the point of absurdity?

Reading another email from school this evening about PE and extra-curricular activities returning, but “with a cautious approach” to “ensure our pupil’s safety remains a key priority” (the full programme basically not starting until after half term), I found myself ranting to DH about the insanity of cancelling healthy exercise – not to mention how much we’re paying in school fees for all this.

Still, it could be worse – a friend works in the school’s nursery and they’ve had to switch to online nursery. Those parents have all my sympathies! Perhaps we should all follow in the footsteps of the group of 20 mothers from Boston who met up outside a local high school, to stand in a circle – socially distanced, of course – and scream.    

Silent new Sunday: Real weather in Dubai

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Dubai's Burj Khalifa in cloudy weather
As we continue to get used to our Sat-Sun weekend, I’d like to welcome you to a new Sunday series on life in the Big D. Dubai is a city I’ve recently heard described as the Milton Keynes of the Middle East, or Asia’s Skegness, but I hope you’ll agree the place is really quite special. Here’s the Burj Khalifa reflected in full Sunday glory, photographed from Al-Quoz pond park.

Enough already! Please make the disruption stop

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25 of the craziest Covid meaures from the past two pandemic years

The ultra-contagious Omicron mutant continues to cause chaos and disruption here in Dubai, leaving me longing for stability as school dangles by a thread and I wonder if I’ll ever actually see my work colleagues in person again.

As the pandemic drags on, we’re all working from home again, motivation levels perhaps gauged by our cameras all being off on zoom calls. I’ve even heard about people beginning and leaving new jobs without ever seeing their colleagues face-to-face. I mean, if you never actually met your co-workers in real life, did you even work there? 

This week, Son1’s first GCSE thankfully took place without him catching Covid or being a close contact. But after the first paper, he then got quarantined in moral education class the next day. Of all the classes to get quarantined in!

As the lesson neared its end, the announcement came that there was a Covid case in year 11. The kids had to stay confined in the classroom (“Don’t leave the room! Don’t move”) while close contacts were traced. 

The moral education teacher, on the other hand, legged it to her next class. How moral was that, I wondered?! 

Sitting on backless stools in their temporary enclosure (I’m not exactly sure what kind of classroom it was, but Son1 insists there were no chairs), they continued their learning online, like they did from home for the first week of term when the school was closed at the last minute, leading to the all-too-familiar pandemic scramble to adjust child-care arrangements and work schedules. 

Two hours later they were released, the close contacts having been sent home. I did wonder what symptoms the infected student was having – a scratchy throat maybe, itchy nose? God forbid, a bit of a fever. I hate to ask, but was s/he even actually, you know, ill?

Son1, meanwhile, missed his crucial in-person maths lesson while sitting in quarantine, just days before taking the second paper. 

Still, he was actually really lucky. The two brightest kids in the class didn’t even get to sit the exam, due to becoming infected or having to isolate. I can only imagine the disappointment after all the studying they will have done. 

I thought it might be worth compiling a list of some of the craziest, most-lunatic Covid measures I’ve come across. Lest we forget.  

I’m sure you will have some of your own and please do add them in the comments. 

  • When students have been revising in groups at school during study leave, the teachers have had to break the study groups up due to social distancing rules

  • Being sardined into a queue at Heathrow immigration with people arriving from all over the world, then having to legally isolate for 10 days and be visited by Track and Trace

  • Putting padlocks on the gates of outdoor playgrounds and our compound’s basketball court (for 18 months)

  • My parents allowed to go for a walk on a golf course, but if my dad had taken clubs and a ball, it was a criminal offence (could you get a more socially-distanced sport, especially when balls fly off into bunkers?)

  • No butterfly stroke allowed while swimming

  • Being told off in a store for not standing on a yellow circle – when you’re the only customer

  • The one-way system at school with roped fences along corridors, meaning if the kids needed to get next-door, they had to make a circular journey through the whole building, ensuring they passed every person on the way

  • The poor lady who came out the toilet on my husband’s airplane, scrabbled around to put her mask on, fell down the steps and broke her ankle

  • The rule of three in Dubai taxis, so my household-sharing family of four couldn’t ride together and needed two vehicles for the airport run

  • PE lessons and sporting activities currently forced to be suspended at school, just as some immune-boosting, healthful, outdoor exercise in the cooler Dubai weather would be a jolly good thing for the kids

  • The water fountains being taken away at school. And now the canteen closed (food and team sports are about the only things Son2 really enjoys about school)

  • Library books getting sanitized and quarantined for two weeks before being exposed to the next child

  • Having to wear plastic disposable gloves in the supermarket

  • The cubicle-style Perspex screens put up around each desk at work that I continually banged my head on

  • The sign in the elevator telling us to face the wall

  • Having to stand five-feet away from the perimeter of the rugby pitch Son1 plays on, lest from behind masks we breathe on the players all the way across the field

  • Not being allowed to watch our kids play sports at all, leading to some parents standing on step ladders to peer over the wall (not a good look)

  • Rugby tackles only allowed if the player is in your bubble

  • Drones disinfecting Dubai’s streets so we wouldn’t catch Covid from the pavement – and the plastic slippers given to my DH by the Egyptians to wear when inspecting the plane in Cairo, in case he infected the tarmac

  • Neighbours who thought someone jogging by their open window without a mask on risked infecting them

  • British influencers and sunseekers hopping on a plane in the winter of 2020/21 to Dubai, bringing the Kent variant, resulting in the UK government slamming the borders shut to UK expats, a flight ban and six months of Hotel Boris (horse already bolted sprung to mind)

  • Getting back to Britain via an 11-day stopover in an amber or green country, massively increasing the chances of picking up Covid on the way

  • Permits to leave home during the mass house arrest of the UAE’s lockdown

  • Public toilets being closed in the UK, causing people to use bushes, beaches and beauty spots instead

  • A lovely friend not seeing her two sons in New Zealand for two years. How many million light-years of misery have these painful, enforced separations caused? How many?

Dubai works on Friday for first time as weekend shifts

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UAE is the first nation to formalise a workweek shorter than five days – for the public sector at least, and my lucky kids

It was a historic day today – the UAE’s first-ever working Friday as the nation switches to a Saturday-Sunday weekend, rather than Friday-Saturday.

The surprise announcement – that government bodies and schools would operate four-and-a-half days a week, closing at noon on Fridays – came out of the blue in December, and left lots of people scratching their heads. 

Private businesses aren’t mandated to make the change, so if my company hadn’t followed suit, I’d have had different weekends to my kids! (who, needless to say, are thrilled with their super-early finish on Fridays at the end of their gruelling (haha) 4.5-day week.)

It took my company a few weeks to decide, but knowing that my bosses all have children, I was fairly confident we’d make the transition to align with Western calendars, even though we work with other Gulf states that are keeping their Friday-Saturday weekend. The half day on Friday, unfortunately, doesn’t apply to us being in the private sector (booo!).

So how does the new arrangement feel?

Right now, strange! I’d go so far as to say a little bewildering. Definitely confusing. Humans, it seems, are programmed to feel a sense of dislocation when a sudden change to routine is imposed on them. But I feel sure it’s going to be great – a whole extra day to catch up with family and friends at home, and proper Sunday roasts, yay! 

Like many people, my week has consisted of changing days on calendars, shifting appointments and commitments forward by a day and wondering what’s going to happen to Friday brunch.

On several occasions, I had to think really hard about what day it actually was. Take Wednesday (the new hump day) for example. Really it was Tuesday. But with school online and my boss sending us home to work due to the UAE’s high Covid case numbers, it felt like Monday part 3. 

In the grander scheme, the passing of time is neither here nor there in a world where 2022 appears to be shaping up as the third act of 2020.

It’s not the first time that the UAE has swapped the weekend around. The previous switch took place in 2006, via a story in the Gulf News, announcing that the weekend would move from Thursday/Friday to Friday/Saturday. 

I am wondering, however, whether we should relocate to our neighbouring emirate of Sharjah. They’ve gone a step further and adopted a three-day weekend.

On 3 September 1967, traffic in Sweden switched from driving on the left to the right. This also happened in Dubai in the 60s. Can you imagine if it occurred today?!

The return of the dreaded e-learning

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Distance learning is back in Dubai for some schools as Omicron surge upends the start of term

As the Christmas holidays neared their end, the ‘will they?-won’t they?’ game began in households with school-aged sprogs. I’m referring, of course, to the uncertainty over whether schools would reopen amid the spread of Omicron. 

Let’s just say I was super keen for my boys to return to the classroom. They’d only had about a week of schooling in December due to the long National Day holiday, then a three-week school holiday that felt like five weeks. 

There was also the small matter of my 16-yr-old’s GCSEs, the first of which (maths) is next Monday, and his mock – or as he calls them ‘fake’ – exams. (No matter how many times I tell him that if exams are cancelled, they’ll look at his mocks to grade him, he still insists they’re not real!)

At first, the KHDA announced that Dubai schools would reconvene face-to-face. Oh, how I rejoiced. It felt like Christmas again. 

But then came the eleventh-hour URGENT email from school, the day before the start of term. Due to the high number of cases, there weren’t enough staff to open the school. Too many students were also testing positive, having travelled over Christmas or stayed in Dubai, where Omicron is marching forth relentlessly. Home learning would commence the next day for the first week. A circuit breaker, so to speak – and we all know how those go. 

I commiserated with my fellow mum friends and grew nostalgic for simpler, before-Covid times. You know, when you took it for granted that the start of term meant just that, and people used to say “There’s something going around.”

“And you didn’t have to lock yourself indoors for a week if you got something,” my DH, who is currently contained in hotels on all his layovers, sighed. 

I fondly remembered people saying they had “a bit of a cold” and communications that didn’t use the word ‘safe’ every second sentence.

My sons, on the other hand, were thrilled at the school closure. The next morning, they rolled out of bed approximately a minute before online registration. I think my eldest actually logged on from bed.

Thirty minutes later, my youngest – who will barely even let me in his room during remote school, other than for waitress services to deliver teas and snacks – sounded like he was just messing around online with his mates, judging by the raucous laughter I could hear through the wall. My 16-year-old appeared searching for tape.

“Sellotape,” I asked, confused. Surely we were well past the days of craft projects and modelling by year eleven. Weren’t they studying, for – you know – exams?

“Yep,” he replied, banging a drawer shut and opening the one below. He found what he was looking for and grinned. 

“What on earth do you need tape for?”

“To tape up my camera,” he unashamedly admitted, “in case the teacher asks me to put it on.”

“Whaaat?” I almost shrieked, aghast. 

I pity the poor teachers talking to themselves and attempting to engage with a classroom of black squares on their screens all day, I really do.

Son1 on yet another break from online school, in his virtual reality world. Real life is so old fashioned apparently

After the rain: Stunning sunset on 2021

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I’ve watched the sun set plenty of times in Dubai, but after it’s rained and the city is freshly laundered, sunsets can be particularly spectacular. Orange gold stretches far and wide across the desert, and as the sun slips below the horizon, the sky turns vibrant shades of red and pomegranate pink.

This was the last sunset of 2021, and as the year slid away, my dog and I discovered that the sand had turned to quicksand! We had to find firmer ground pretty sharpish! Here’s hoping that the shifting, often shaky ground of 2021 gives way to a more solid normal in 2022.

Wishing everyone a very happy new year!

When it finally rains after two years

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We’d waited two years for this moment! Yes, it must have been late 2019 BC/early 2020 BC when it last rained in Dubai. (BC=Before Covid).

Of course, I chose the exact moment the clouds burst to venture out in the car, to take the 13-yr-old to his basketball camp. We turned onto the new tarmacked road our compound got for Christmas, and I quickly realised we were heading into a storm. The usual cerulean blue sky had turned pigeon grey. The same solemn colour I remembered from London. 

My excitement grew!

A few days previously, the clouds had teased us. There had been talk of rain on the radio. I’d peered out the window. Large puffy clouds resembling cotton wool balls were floating past, but nothing like real weather. It never rained. Not properly. Bucketfuls of sand just got chucked at the car, that’s all.  

But this was the real thing! The heavens, black and swollen with rain, were as squally and dull as the road. The sandy scenery on either side of the quiet desert cut-through to the highway looked moody, laden with anticipation. 

Within minutes, a bolt of lightning flashed. Falling back into a childhood habit, I start counting in my head. A few raindrops splashed onto the tarmac, darkening it in small, irregular splodges, when I got to four.

“Wow!” I exclaimed, even managing to get the attention of the 13-yr-old. 

The downpour, when it came, pounded wildly on the car roof. Being in DH’s car, I didn’t even know where the windscreen wipers were and flicked every lever I could find while keeping my hands firmly on the steering wheel. 

Dubai rarely sees raindrops, but when it does … watch out on the roads

“Take a photo!” I urged as we passed the Burj Khalifa. The steely tower’s tapering needlepoint top – which reaches heights no other manmade structure has ever achieved – had been swallowed by the billowing clouds. In fact, half the concrete-and-glass building had disappeared the cloud cover was so low. 

Then the rainstorm got so intense, the visibility dropped to a few metres. While most cars slowed to a crawl – some putting their hazards on so you could just pick out blinking lights in the monsoon-like rainfall – others aquaplaned perilously along the wet highway at their usual high speed. Delivery drivers on bikes took shelter under the city’s bridges. 

I couldn’t remember the last time Dubai saw such a big storm. With inadequate drainage, the water collected in huge lakes, forming floods the size of swimming pools.

Flashing signs above Sheikh Zayed Road warned drivers to ‘Beware of the ponds’. 

Where a flooded part of the road was impossible to avoid, a bow wave formed at the front of our vehicle like we were a ship on the sea. There was a great whooshing of water and spray splashed up on both sides of the car. 

Suddenly regretting my decision to leave the house, I willed it all to stop! At least until I could get home, and actually enjoy the rare event that is rain in Dubai.