Our little fishing village that could

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During nearly a decade of airline life, we’ve lived in or near three different cities, and with each move, I’ve noticed a theme:

Our proximity to megamalls and Disney parks.

It’s like we’re destined to live next door to either the country’s most ginormous, cavernous shopping centre or Mickey Mouse himself.

As newlyweds, we set up home in Florida, not far from Orlando and close to more theme parks than you could shake a stick of rock at. Ironically, we didn’t have children then, but that just made park visits a hundred times easier.

Our move to Minneapolis put us in the perfect location for shopping at America’s biggest mall, The Mall of America – which actually has a theme park inside it. You could get married in the mall’s wedding chapel, browse 4.3 miles of store fronts, then ride the rollercoasters and log flume.

Beat this Dubai! A theme park in a mall, at the Mall of America

Beat this Dubai! A theme park in a mall, at the Mall of America, Minneapolis

Here in Dubai, we’re just 20 minutes away from the Dubai Mall, a vast, glitzy megamall and the world’s biggest shopping centre by area – as well as a short drive from the Mall of the Emirates (home to the famous ski slope) and an unfathomable China-themed mall called Dragon Mart, where you can buy anything from cheap toys to gaudy bathroom fittings and forklift trucks.

It’s all a far cry from my days in England when I’d pop to ‘the shops’ – aka The Peacocks Centre, an easy-to-navigate shopping complex that you could skip round, about the size of Dubai Mall’s ice rink.

Some 8.8m visitors flock to Dubai each year to enjoy not just the beach, but the sparkling array of foreign brands on sale here. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the Dubai Mall has been deemed not big enough. There are plans to add another million square feet to the retail giant and – to top this – the city also intends to build a new, bigger, even shinier megamall, called The Mall of the World.

Located in a spanking new, sprawling ‘mega-city’ – to be constructed, where else but just down the road from us. With enough room for a mind-boggling 80 million shoppers a year [I can see my mother rolling her eyes as I write!)

And just as we were digesting the news about the proposed Mohammed bin Rashid City, with its 100 hotels, park, art galleries and a Universal Studios, came the announcement that Dubai is planning another five theme parks. Assuming the projects are completed, there will be parks based on both Hollywood and Bollywood, as well as a marine park, a children’s park and a night safari.

It all rather surpasses the news from a couple of months ago that our city, which in a former life was a fishing settlement, has several flamboyant, pre-crisis style projects up its sleeve, including a replica of the Taj Mahal (only bigger) and a copy of the Egyptian pyramids containing offices and a museum.

There’s never a dull moment in Dubai, a city that thinks big – and as for that debt crisis the size of China? Things appear to be moving on, quicker than you can say ‘refrigerated beach’.

Why build the world's biggest mall once, when you can do it twice? Artists impression of the new Mohammed bin Rashid City, courtesy of thenational.ae

Why build the world’s biggest mall once, when you can do it twice? Artist’s impression of the new Mohammed bin Rashid City, courtesy of The National

Silent Sunday: Love notes

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The relationship between my oldest son, 7, and his adorable Girl Next Door, 6, is a source of fascination to me, because from the moment our lovebirds met (aged 2!), their friendship has shown that boy/girl differences really are hardwired into the brain.

I was reminded of this the other day, when they drew these pictures for each other:

Girl Next Door thinks she’s going to marry BB and doesn’t mind that he only talks about trains and ships. This is the birthday card she made for him – look at the kisses on the track, the hearts coming out the coal and the word ‘Love’ in the smoke stack. Cute!

Girl Next Door thinks she’s going to marry BB and doesn’t mind that he only talks about trains and ships. This is the birthday card she made for him – how cute are the kisses on the track, the hearts coming out the coal and the word ‘Love’ in the smoke?

Here’s the drawing BB did for her. It had a functional purpose – the hole was so he could hang it on her front door handle like a pizza-delivery menu. The words, in case you can’t read them, say: ‘The Titanic sank 100 years ago’. Talk about girls being from Venus, and boys from Pluto!

Here’s the drawing BB did for her. It had a functional purpose – the hole was so he could hang it on her front door handle like a pizza-delivery menu. The words, in case you can’t read them, say: ‘The Titanic sank 100 years ago’. Talk about girls being from Venus, and boys from Pluto!

To work or not to work?

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I’ve been working a lot recently, in an office, with adults who listen and don’t break everything. They don’t shout, fight, or fall off chairs and injure themselves.

Nor do they need help in the toilet.

At the end of the day, my colleagues are still alive, without any assistance from me whatsoever.

I like it. I really like it.

Except I wish I didn’t enjoy it quite so much, because our lives would be so much easier if I didn’t work. If I hadn’t struggled so much with being a stay-at-home mum whose days felt like one long, open-ended project that I was as likely to finish as I was to climb Everest, backwards.

Perhaps if I’d been able to pat myself on the back occasionally for singing the baby to sleep, or dangling a rattle for him to swat, things would have been different.

But the truth is, whilst I love my children more than I ever thought possible, I found it difficult having them barnacled to my ankle/breast/hip 24/7 – and I really missed work.

Anyway, they started growing up, not needing me quite so much. And since it costs money just to stand still in Dubai, going back to work not only stopped me from going round the bend, it also made sense.

What goes up...must come down

What goes up…must come down

So now we juggle. We make complicated arrangements involving my husband, our nanny, and kind mothers who do me an enormous favour and bring my youngest son home from school if needed.

I bark orders as I grab the keys to leave. “Don’t forget, you need to go to school 15 minutes early as it’s ‘Look at your child’s learning journal’ day. And then drop LB and C [our nanny] at the park for the class playdate. Oh and there’s French homework.”

DH looks at me, wanting to throttle me.

(He’s here quite a bit in the day, due to an erratic flying schedule that often sends him away at weekends instead. I know we’re lucky in that respect as one of us is usually around.)

I rush home from work and stuff money into envelopes for school trips/teachers’ gifts. I attempt to come up with the latest demands from school for things I don’t just happen to have lying around (yesterday it was 31 of something…buttons, beans. I sent Lego).

I worry a lot about missing things.

The Festive Sing-a-long. The Winter Festival. “And, oh god, Decoration Day. It’s next week, in the middle of the day [about as convenient as a hole in the head]. I can’t go!” I think to myself.

But it’s the mummy guilt that really gets me.

“Mum, how many days are you working? Why are you working again?” my children ask.

And the line my youngest son came out with this morning: “What takes you so long at work, Mum?”

Those Cosmopolitan magazines that told every female who’d listen in the 70s that it was her right to have it all/have an orgasm/combine motherhood, homemaking and career changed everything, didn’t they?

On being afraid of turbulence

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A couple of days ago, DH and I went on a ‘date night’, something we try to do every few weeks. Usually, we have dinner, sometimes we really push the boat out and see a movie too.

This time, we went to the cinema to see the film ‘Flight’, starring Denzel Washington. We often struggle to find a film we both like the sound of (“I’d rather watch paint dry,” I’ve been known to say), but ‘Flight’ ticked all the boxes that need to be checked for a cinema date night.

There was an aviation theme, obviously. A lot of human interest. And a crash scene at the beginning – for me.

Yes, you read that right.

I can’t explain it (I really can’t), but for some reason I’m fascinated by air crashes. They terrify me, but I always want to know more. What exactly caused it, did anyone survive, what was the chain of events leading up to it?

The film ‘Flight’, I thought (wrongly), might even be a full-length feature version of one of my favourite programmes, Air Crash Investigation, which DH and I have been known to watch in bed.

But the funny thing is: I’m the last person who should be watching these shows, because, there was a time in my life, when I was petrified of flying. I must have been in my mid-20s and it got bad enough that I even considered doing a fear of flying course run by British Airways.
howplanesfly
Little did I know what fate had in store. I married my first love, a pilot, who gave me a couple of flying lessons in Florida. I nearly landed – and would have done if it wasn’t for the fact the ground was coming towards us way too fast (and I wasn’t his worse student, apparently!)

Air travel now is obviously all about the children and tending to their needs for eight.long.hours means there’s no time to think about the fact you’re in a metal tube hurtling through the sky. But, every now and then, I’m reminded that I’m a nervous flyer at heart.

She's still smiling - phew!!

She’s still smiling – phew!!

Specifically, when there’s turbulence.

On our flight to Hong Kong recently (which DH was co-piloting), we started bumping around about half-way through. To me, it was as though things had gotten really choppy up there – and I started feeling anxious.

My champagne was sloshing around. The seat-belt sign pinged on, and stayed on. I was sure I could see the wing bouncing up and down in the dark. I scanned the flight attendants’ faces to make sure they didn’t look worried. My heart rate quickened, my palms became sweaty.

Should I write a note to DH saying ‘I love you’ and wave it in front of the on-board camera, I wondered? No, that would be silly – if there was a problem, he’d be very busy (how my DH laughed later).

And, in my mind – even though I kind of knew the turbulence wasn’t that bad – I could imagine the Air Crash Investigation commentary: “Among the 530 passengers on the ill-fated flight was the first officer’s wife” – the camera panning to a blonde, skinnier version of me sipping wine upstairs, followed by a wedding photo. “Just before the aircraft went into a nosedive, she penned the last words she would ever write.”

I’ve really got to stop watching documentaries about air disasters, haven’t I? Reacting like this to a few air pockets isn’t normal, is it?

Silent Sunday: Happy Birthday UAE

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“It’s a special day today,” piped BB at breakfast this morning. “It’s Dubai’s birthday!” To be precise, it was the UAE’s National Day today, marking forty-one years since the UK’s treaty expired and the separate sheikdoms decided to form an independent union.

Across the emirates, there’s been a celebratory mood for several days now, with lots going on. Then this morning I looked at my phone to find an inspirational text from Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum – it’s not every day that happens!

Having spent more time living in the UAE than anywhere else, my children were quite excited about ‘Dubai’s birthday’. BB made this at a Lego exhibition we went to today.

Having spent more time living in Dubai than anywhere else, my children were quite excited about ‘Dubai’s birthday’ (especially as it means two days off school!). BB made this at a Lego exhibition we went to today.

People decorate their cars and homes with the UAE flag – this was the flag at BB’s school. All the children wore national colours, or national dress, on Thursday to celebrate

People decorate their cars and homes with the UAE flag – this was the flag at BB’s school. All the children wore national colours, or national dress, on Thursday to celebrate

At LB’s school they’ve been learning about the UAE for a few weeks now. I love listening to the class counting in Arabic and naming the seven emirates. I also thought this camel he painted was rather cute!

At LB’s school they’ve been learning about the UAE for a few weeks now. I love listening to the class counting in Arabic and naming the seven emirates. I also thought this camel he painted was rather cute!

Kids, meet Baby Jesus

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While I personally think it’s still too early to put the Christmas tree up, my children disagree. I promised we’d do it today, and at 7 on the dot this morning, the pestering started.

“Mummy, c’mon. Get out of bed,” BB ordered, tugging at the duvet. “You said we’d put the tree up.”

No stopping them: My little helpers decorating the tree early this morning (yawn)

My little helpers throwing baubles at the tree

“Later, BB, later,” I uttered in reply, but to no avail. The kids’ excitement about hanging twinkly lights, baubles and tinsel on a fake tree had taken on the momentum of a runaway train that wasn’t about to be halted by a mummy hoping for a lie-in.

I gave in – and got up. We hauled the decorations from the outside storeroom to the house, dusted them off, and got started (minus the Christmas music – as I said, too blimin’ early).

You would think that living in a Muslim country might mean Christmas would start a little later. Not so. The shops are full of it, their floors adorned with trees and their windows decked out.

But the commercialism aside, it’s definitely harder to convey the true meaning of Christmas here. It’s all a bit of a hush-hush operation at BB’s international school, where they do put on a celebration, but disguised as a ‘winter festival’.

To be honest, my children don’t think beyond the presents – and I was reminded of my shortfall in this department today.

Each year, I bring out a nativity scene that I bought at a Christmas festival. As I was setting it up, LB came over and peered at the figurines: he touched the baby Jesus swaddled in the manger; looked quizzically at the reverent wise men bearing gifts, the proud, tired parents and the guardian angel. Then he reached out and grabbed the cow sitting lowing in the hay.

“Mummy, what is it?” he asked, with a not-so-reverent shine in his eyes. “Is it a farm?”

Mental note to self: make sure that this is the year my children learn the basic story of the nativity.

When visitors come to town

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For the past three weeks, we’ve had guests – first my mother-in-law and then my parents – and whilst I’d love to be able to tell you that we gave them a time-share in the grandchildren to remember, I’m not sure that we did.

Images of my mum floating round a lazy river, cocktail in hand at a pool bar or even relaxing on a lounger with a good book at the Polo Club didn’t materialise – because, to put it simply, life got in the way.

Nothing bad – just general busy-ness, scheduling clashes and a pesky flu bug – but enough to make me concerned that my parents’ visit could possibly be classed as unpaid labour, rather than a holiday.

xxxxxxx

Where would working families be without advanced babysitting from super-grandparents? It’s just too bad they’re thousands of miles away normally

In the line of ‘duty’ this time round:

– The boys got really sick, warranting two days off school for grandson2 and causing untold sleep disruption

– I missed much of the above because of work, leaving The Visitors in charge (as to who had the easier job here, I’m in no doubt – especially the night shifts which, quite frankly, leave me wanting to throw breakfast bowls at the wall)

– After a bad experience in a taxi, and only able to drive as far as Arabian Ranches, my parents are, understandably, loathed to venture out on their own (and I can’t say I blame them), meaning they’re confined to the house if on their own. The pool aside, the only place they can walk to from ours is the mini-mart supermarket and dry cleaners

– The Thanksgiving buffet my DH took them to ended in a monumental and very public puking session courtesy of ‘chunder wonder’ poorly grandson1

– During their stay, they were also bystanders to a flood at grandson1’s birthday party venue and a hospital appointment about his upcoming surgery

– They suffered made it through a children’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, attended by 24 six- and seven-year olds

– DH, our main driver and peace-keeper, succumbed to the bug, mutated it into ‘man-flu’ and developed sciatica too

On the upside, some highlights I hope The Visitors enjoyed:

– Trips to a desert wildlife centre in Sharjah, the pool, a beach resort and Al-Barsha park

– A dhow cruise out into the Gulf and through the heart of Dubai Marina, followed by Arabic food

– For my dad, two glorious days of golf at the DP World Tour Championship, our trump card and just down the road from us

– Business class travel, both ways

What do you think? Do you think they’ll come back? I think they will – for the golf, at least, with their flu jabs topped up.

“A Damas tree ate my house”

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I’ve posted before about turning the desert green and, despite not having green fingers myself, it’s been a real joy watching our garden grow over the past three years.

One of my favourite plants: our eye-popping bougainvillea

And grow it did, from humble sandpit beginnings into a fully-hedged, little oasis of green – helped by an automatic irrigation system that turns sprinklers on twice a day (“rain”, as the children hopefully call it) and drips water onto the thirsty flower beds.

As well as a real grassy lawn and some hardy plants, the other thing that completed our sand lot’s transformation into a lush garden was a wall of trees along the back boundary.

“We’ll plant ten trees,” the landscapers told us (omitting to tell us that they’d position the saplings less than ten inches apart).

“Very fast-growing trees. Very green,” he said, making bushy shapes with his hands.

The tree he was referring to is native to the Arabian Peninsula, has been planted (inexpensively) in communities all over Dubai, and does indeed shoot up to the sky rather like Jack’s beanstalk.

Called Damas trees, they can grow up to 15 metres high and in our garden certainly provided a lot of green foliage, as well as attracting birds and salamanders.

Hedge fund: Our unstoppable, leafy Damas trees, heading upwards at a rapid rate


We weren’t aware of the huge problems these trees can cause until they hit the media a little while ago – and killed my friend’s lawn (right behind us) due to totally blocking out the sun.

The Damas root system, it turns out, is so aggressive in seeking out water and nutrients that it can strangle underground pipes, crack walls, choke drains and stop other plants from growing.

You only have to do a quick search on Google to read headlines such as “A Damas tree ate my house” and to find out that a “Protect your home from Damas tree disaster campaign” was launched recently by a community management company.

Worried, I dug deeper online and on an expat forum read about a villa with 60 Damas trees that had “grown under the ground, around the pool, under our house foundations and are trying to come up in our central hallway,” cracking tiles.

Another post described how Damas roots had infiltrated their downstairs bathroom: “One day, I opened the cupboard under the sink to get some new toothbrushes out for the kids and found a lovely tree inside. The roots were also growing under the bath and had completely cracked the tub,” the post read.

Is it just me, or does this all sound like The Day of the Triffids to you?

I asked our gardeners, the very same people who landscaped our garden with the trees in the first place. “Yes, very bad,” they nodded – and it was agreed they’d topple half of them and prune the rest.

I’m pleased to say, the job is now done. Our Damas trees have been thwarted (for the time being), our neighbour’s lawn can see the light of day, and – after the gardeners went completely nuts with the saw – we’re left with…

Five lollipops!

Rasputin trees: You can’t simply lop the tree off above the ground as it just grows back, leading people to take extreme measures. One person I heard about chopped a Damas tree down, drilled a big hole in the middle of the trunk, poured petrol down and burnt the stump!

On a prettier note, you’d be amazed at the flora and fauna that grows in Dubai, creating explosions of colour in our desert garden

Hey kids, fancy some grass?

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Our neighbouring emirate of Sharjah is a gold mine of things to do with the kids. From the Eye of the Emirates big wheel (the UAE’s smaller-scale version of the London Eye) at Al Qasba to the Classic Car Museum by the airport, the city’s numerous attractions really are hidden gems – and so much quieter than in Dubai.

We found ourselves in Sharjah again the other day, watching desert animals galloping around at Arabia’s Wildlife Centre (located at Sharjah Desert Park, it’s well worth a visit). There’s also a children’s farm, where the kids can pet and feed the animals, and ride ponies and camels at the weekend. While there, I spotted this sign – I know what it’s trying to say, but it did make me smile…

As a postscript, I googled the wildlife centre just now and the website is priceless too! Why, where else can you see animals as dead as a Dodo…?

‘Arabia’s Wildlife Centre is the only ‘zoo’ in Arabia which exhibits all the animals naturally occurring in the Arabian Peninsula, both current and extinct.’

Or get so up-close-and-personal with the inhabitants:

‘The walk-through aviary allows you to get close to the birds and smaller animals and then you find yourself ‘in the cage’ admiring the larger mammals who roam freely in an open environment.’

Don’t be put off, though – as I said, it’s a great place and you’re sure to come out smiling.

Flooding in the desert – yes, really!

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Long-time readers of this blog will know that rain in Dubai can be as exciting as, say, a white Christmas in the west.

It’s always the talk of the town, and is usually prequeled with a will-it, won’t-it, slightly murky lead-up that puts the whole of the emirate on rain watch.

5 drops here, 10 drops there. Radio presenters add to the ripples of anticipation, as listeners text in with rain sightings.

Maybe once or twice a year, it does actually rain – and I nearly always savour the event, however quickly it’s over, from start to finish.

NOT this time.

It began with a hunch, a sort of uneasy feeling that all was not well with our usually sunny world. As a strange darkness crept round the curtains this morning, I morphed into Rain Scrooge.

Puffy rain clouds – meh! We all cast our eyes skywards to witness the perennial blue sky clouding over

“Oh no, not rain!’ I thought to myself. My Dad was going to the golf, and I had lots of driving to do (from point A, to point B, to point C, and then possibly to point D later on).

If you saw how people drive – no, make that aquaplane – when it rains here, you’d understand. And there was also the small matter of not knowing if the wipers on the car would work (they disintegrated on our other car through lack of use).

“Mummy, it’s raining – on Grandad’s golf day,” squealed LB, hurtling up the stairs like a baby elephant.

We peered out the window at the glistening ground and I reassured Dad it woudn’t last – there was no way the golf could be rained off in Dubai – but even though it wasn’t really much of a downpour, chaos was unleashed on the roads.

A puddle on Sheikh Zayed Road made it onto the traffic news, my journey to work took three times as long, and all over Dubai, there were repercussions because of the unique event that is rain in the desert.

Swimming lessons were cancelled due to debris in the pool (a few leaves, perhaps?); Wake-up and Shake-up, a weekly event parents attend at school (don’t ask!), was postponed due to the tennis court being wet.

But the most-trying news was to come. At work, my phone rang with a number I didn’t recognise. It’s BB’s birthday party tomorrow and on the other end was the manager of the venue.

“We’re flooded,” he told me. “This whole side of the Ibn Battuta mall is covered in water. We’re sorry, we can’t do the party.” (I don’t normally swear on the blog, but sometimes an expletive is necessary: @^%^@@@!)

Cue: a day spent finding another venue so as not to disappoint an excited small boy on his seventh birthday (thank you DH for pulling off that one), and contacting 25 mums to let them know.

I mean, seriously, what are the chances of a party venue being flooded in Dubai? It was only a piddling amount of rain.

Pah!

Postscript: BB’s birthday is now at Chuck E. Cheese’s – I can’t believe I’m hosting a party at Chuck E. Cheese’s. Ever since my friend’s boy attended a party there and got his head stuck between the toilet roll and the loo door, I’ve vowed never to enter Chuck E. Cheese’s lair with more than two kids. Wish me luck!