Friday around town

scraping bubbly cheese onto my plate

Did a little exploring this weekend. First up was the Ripe Market at Zabeel Park. While it's advertised as an organic farmers market, after visiting, I'd describe it more as a single veggie stand surrounded by a lot of craft and food booths. That said, it had a nice vibe- a big mix of nationalities all out enjoying lovely weather and a nice park and some really yummy food choices. I sampled homemade honey nougat, a cheese I can't pronounce, a dark chocolate and banana snack food that may be the thing that brings me back, houmous, olive oil, pickles... And then, I settled on raclette for breakfast. It's a Swiss delight, kind of in the fondue family if you're not familiar. They heat a hunk of cheese using a clever device until it gets brown and bubbly and then scrape that cheese off and on top of something like crusty bread and salty meat. I paired it with a Pakistani mango lassi (yogurt shake) from the Moti Roti booth- and learned that Moti means fat and Roti is a flatbread, they make their flatbreads fat by wrapping them around some sort of spicy filling. I could have selected grilled sausages from my favorite Australian butcher, poutine or crepes from the Maple Leaf, the Canadian place, all manner of Lebanese street food, burgers, and I can't actually remember what other choices. All in all, produce-wise, it's not going to hold a candle to say, picking blueberries in Michigan or getting the first, perfectly ripe Brigham City peaches at the SLC Downtown Farmers' Market, but once I let go of my hopes for abundant fruit/veggie options, I enjoyed people watching, sampling and eating on a bench in a pretty park quite a bit.

my weak sketch of the bit of my daily drive between 2 palaces

On my way home, still fairly early on a Friday morning, the perfect time to take a "Sunday drive" as it were, I cut through some back streets surrounding the royal palaces, stables, and a whole neighborhood (Zabeel 2) that I can only guess is full of people with some "wasta" (aka clout/ connections/ prestige). There were signs indicating that photographs are not allowed which is a shame, it's a lovely neighborhood and the palaces are awesome looking- the one has a horse drawn chariot rising from the roof, looking rather like Il Vittoriano in Rome and behind/ beside the other there is a large and elegant mosque. My daily drive to work takes me past an exit marked "Private Access" and then under a roundabout that shoots off to giant palaces- residences for the extended family of His Royal Highness, VP of the nation and ruler of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid, on either side of the road- clearly off limits for me. I can see them down long, landscaped entry roads, however. And in driving around the neighborhood that is semi in the shadow of the palaces, I spotted a peacock and a random pen of well groomed long-haired sheep or goats in amongst the lovely homes, most flying the UAE flags high and proud.

In the afternoon, I took my new foldable bike to the nearby former camel racecourse turned cycle

track. I chose a fold up bike in part for easy transport since I think it's likely that I'll often drive to the places I ride to avoid trying to navigate the street traffic. there are rumored to be several tracks set aside for cycling and I'll be checking them all out in time. This one, Nad al Sheba, has the grandstands left over from camel racing days at 2 different places along the path. The first near where you park, also features changing rooms and a small park and a tiny kids track. I was a little unclear of where to

skyline view from abandoned grandstand

ride and so at first followed some pavement out into an area where there were about a dozen cricket matches in full swing. I realized I was not on the main tracks at that point and veered toward another biker until I spotted the purpose-built paved path with solar lights and painted kilometer markers.There are a couple of loops of various lengths- 4, 6 and 8km, I think. It feels a bit random, cycling a loop in a flat expanse of desert. There's some nice views of the city skyline in one direction and of the fancy new horse racing complex in the other direction, some very ugly power lines, some temporary walls blocking a construction site (and the wind, handily enough), and the second empty grandstand which I stopped to checkout. I think if I start riding the loops with any regularity I'm going to wind up coming up with some sort of "grandstand passing moves", I'll ride like the stands are full and cheering me on!

solar lights, ugly power lines, nice track

new horse racing track view

Going Gold at the Movies

in the Gold Lounge

Since we're suffering a yucky multi day sandstorm (for those of you who haven't seen pictures on FaceBook, I'll put comparison view pictures at the end of this post), I opted to explore one of the things on my Dubai bucket list: going Gold at the movies. I understand that movies with extra nice seats and a full restaurant menu on offer are not exclusive to the UAE but the way they infuse the whole experience with status and luxury here seems to match up nicely with the designer handbags and showy sports cars that are symbolic of a high profile Dubai lifestyle.

We went to see the comic action spy blockbuster, The Kingsmen. Bought tickets online ahead of time. When you show up at the theater, just past the garishly lit popcorn and candy counter for the regular movie goers, there's a smoked glass wall with a simple hostess podium bearing the word

perusing our menus- I guess we could also have been reading magazines

my mini food on slate- served to my recliner

Gold, in gold, of course, on black. We presented our tickets and the glass doors slid open to reveal a lounge. We were invited to have a seat and peruse the menu. I picked a selection of two mini burgers. I could have gone with a mini hot dog or mini potato skins or no end of other bar-food like items classed up by serving them in miniature on a slab of slate with an accompanying mini basket of fries. We also got a popcorn, of course, because it's still the movies. It's just regular popcorn, because why mess with a good thing? After we placed our order in the lounge, we went on into the theater. Oh, except I ran to the loo first and, of course, there were cloth hand towels in a little basket.

There were maybe 40 recliners, stadium seating style so no sight lines are blocked. We took our recliner seats and got our blankets (movie theaters here are just like the ones in the US, always chilly) and shortly they brought our sodas (yes, in other places- heck, even Utah, you can get cocktails, but I am in the Middle East, remember. So no booze, just dry luxury.) We settled in to watch the previews and commercials before the main event and my food arrived (on my personal armrest table) just in time for me to sneak a quick photo before the movie began.

cozied up- blanket and recliner

Some of the naughtiest bits of movies are censored/ cut here. I heard The Wolf of Wall Street was 45 minutes shorter in the UAE. ( I also heard from some people-not fans of the movie- that they wish the film's editors would have made at least 45 minutes worth of cuts if not more.)  Pretty sure nothing was censored in this one- there wasn't much nudity or on screen immoral behavior- a bit of overt suggestion and some violence, but it's a spy action movie after all.

I was a fan of the Gold movie experience! Not sure it was entirely worth the price tag (about $30 per ticket, another $15 or so per person on food) but it was a great splurge for  day when being outside was not so nice and I'm pretty sure I'll splurge again in the future because, well, it's all part of my high rollin' Dubai life!

 

view from balcony post rain in January

same view mid sandstorm yesterday

an apple a day...

My arches have fallen and they can't get up, at least not without fancy orthotic shoe inserts that Sebastian, the German orthotics and prosthetics guy, will have custom made for me Tennessee. I learned that on my consult last weekend at the mall. Yes, I go to the mall for my healthcare. Not
everyone in Dubai does, there are hospitals and clinics all over. On one occasion, I went to see a specialist in a converted home (mini mansion) where limited parking means required valet service. But for most of my healthcare needs, it's the world's largest mall for me, because that's how I roll (or because it was one of the places near my house I was sure I knew how to get to when I first had to make an appointment.)


Healthcare here isn't especially different from healthcare in the US from a consumer point of view- outside of the mall business. I suspect it may be a bit different for the doctors. Talking with a podiatrist last summer, she mentioned that there weren't enough podiatrists in the country to have a society- I guess you need at least 12 practitioners and they couldn't muster that many. Anyhow, I have an insurance policy, provided by my employer. I find a clinic or doctor or hospital that does direct billing (or if I don't I can submit claims for reimbursement) and I go see doctors and have procedures and labs done and whatever.

I just read an article about a phase-in plan to require employers in small companies to provide insurance in Dubai. Larger companies already must and in Abu Dhabi, apparently, they already have mandatory universal insurance coverage. All over the country, Emirati citizens can avail themselves of free government provided healthcare though from what I understand, most prefer a private insurance provider for the greatest choice and highest quality care. It's the many ex-pat laborers who will be covered as this new law becomes mandatory. It's already the case that you won't be refused emergency care at a hospital.

A few things are different though. For any ongoing prescriptions, the max a doc can prescribe at one time is a 3 month supply so I have to go see my doctor every 3 months. It's a bit of a pain but at the same time, when I call for an appointment, I can usually get in within 24-48 hours of my call if I'd like and the doctors tend to have some evening and weekend hours available too. Though I took advantage of that last week and it led to a small act of rebellion- I parked in a spot that was clearly not designed to be parked in. This is widespread and obnoxious behavior, this wedging your car into any blank space, something I wasn't keen to participate in, but I'd spent 20+ min stuck in traffic inside the parking garage. I was about to be late and was feeling desperate. It was the last evening of the month- long shopping fest and on a weekend evening, that was part of the problem. In the end there were no ill effects (I didn't get a ticket, no one backed into my car and I got over feeling bad about being one of the jerky parkers.)

blurry pic of the space age waiting area

 I've also had a pleasantly international array of medical professionals. My primary care physician is Spanish, her nurse assistant is Filipino, there's the aforementioned German orthotics guy and the podiatrist was Scottish (ingrown toenails sound nicer with a lilt). I can fill my entire prescription right there at the mall clinic (seems to a number of Indian pharmacists) after my appointment. They never seem to have quite enough in stock to cover all 3 months at once, but they write me a note and call me when more stock comes in and it's back to the mall.

The whole process is simultaneously super high tech, efficient and advanced (I get a text immediately after I schedule an appointment, the billing people are in regular real-time contact with insurance people to approve stuff while I wait) and also very small town and casual (the little handwritten  note about the extra meds the pharmacy owes me, the fact that my doc will call me after she gets my labs to chat about them.)

could be a hallway at a medical complex anywhere in the US, huh?

Doing Dubai

I haven't been keeping up with the blog very well, but I'm going to manage at least one January 2015 entry (this one) and hopefully can get back in the habit of writing and reflecting about things here every couple of weeks going forward. I've been busy planning for and then hosting my first full fledged visitors since I've been in the apartment. Andrea came for Christmas within my first month when I was still in the temporary housing and was little more than a tourist myself. That said, we did a pretty good job of exploring and checking out many of the "must do" sights and experiences and I happily re-did many with my sisters last week. Here are a few of my favorite things to enjoy with visitors:

1. The desert safari: Have to take these things with a grain of salt, they're a little "packaged" but still, I think they're a lot of fun. This time we went with the company Arabian Nights and they picked us up at the apartment around 4PM. We shared a land cruiser with some ladies from Saudi Arabia (one of them lives in Abu Dhabi). The safari headed out to the dunes somewhere near the Sharjah/ Dubai border off the Al Ain Road, after letting some air out of the tires for better traction, we dune bashed. This entailed some racing, cresting, dipping and swaying over and down the sides of dunes- some pretty steep- and some squealing and gasping from Sarah and I and the Saudis. Meanwhile Becky sat up front wondering if maybe she could take a turn at driving. We roller coastered our way to a high point to enjoy the golden light of a desert sunset. Next down to the "camp" where

there was an opportunity for a quick camel ride in a circle (mostly just a photo op). One camel was kinda photo bombing Becky and Sarah and seemed to be interested in a little head scratch or something, but no, it turned out that he was interested in trying to take a bite out of Sarah's arm right through his little knit mouth/nose cover. She had a nice camel-tooth bruise going! Following that excitement, it was on to grab a cocktail and get a little henna design applied and take a few puffs of shisha before the tanoura dance show (slightly campy guy who can spin like mad wearing a skirt covered with LED lights) and dinner. Talking with the Saudis over dinner was fun, especially the young woman in 10th grade. She was pretty vocal about the fact that she saw no reason to have to
wear an abaya all the time at home (she was not wearing one on the safari, nor was her mom. Her mom, however, did have her hair covered) and she was pretty bothered about not being able to drive. It sounded like the trip to visit her aunt in the UAE had her feeling pretty envious of some freedoms the ladies enjoy here.  After the whirlwind sampler of vaguely bedouin activities, tidied up for tourist pleasure, they took us home before 10pm. An added bonus, our driver had scored some fresh camel milk from the farm by the camp and he gave us a little bottle to take home and try!

2. Camel races: I wrote an entire post on this after Andrea and I went, it's here. I'll just add that the sisters and I got there too late last week to see any racing. We arrived just after 8:30am. There were training runs going on though, and all the camel handlers took a big interest in 3 yellow haired tourist types taking pictures and looking curious. One group called us over to take pictures and then insisted that the sisters jump atop a camel for photos. Sarah cut her hand a little on the hump handle thingy- she really developed a bit of a camel aversion on this trip.

3. An abra ride across the creek: If you're in the neighborhood, of course, a visit to the souks is also in order, but really, my favorite part is climbing the little beat looking flat bottomed wooden motor

boat with a roof, paying 1AED (roughly 30 cents) and putting across this bustling waterway past the dhows (bigger wooden boats that haul freight throughout the gulf- you can see tall stacks of boxed fridges and washer dryers alongside the moored dhows waiting to be loaded up) and other abras and tour boats and more. The ride is short but lively. I could go back and forth over and over, people watching and boat watching.

Turns out this post could go on and on if I had more energy. There are more "enjoy with visitors" things on my list than I anticipated. I see more posts ahead on maybe some of these


4. Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi- breathtaking

5. Frying Pan Food Tour- not for the picky eater or those with dietary restrictions though 

6.  Sheik Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding meal or tour- mentioned in the food post but they are so much more than the meals

7. Something luxurious- a spa treatment, gold cappuccino at Emirates Palace, high tea- I've dabbled in luxury adventures but this is a bit of a weak area for me, will have to work on up-ing my Dubai high life knowledge, it'll be research, right?

8. Burj Khalifa observation deck (sunset, or now they also do sunrise) combined with seeing the Burj from my apartment and seeing the fountains at the base- one of my favorite viewing places is from Souk ah Bahar or from the walkway between Souk al Bahar and The Palace hotel (which proved to be a decent place to watch for over the top cars in valet one of the nights we visited.)

9. Beach!

10. Falcon Hospital in Abu Dhabi- a neat new-to-me thing we checked out last week...

Yes more posts are needed.

The Tale of Two Trees

Plant Street Canadian imports

Coulda been a contender!

The "tree trek"- to fetch a Christmas tree- is a time honored tradition for me. Last year, my first Christmas season in Dubai, I took the metro to a trippy garden store and bought a leggy local plant to stand in for a pine. This year, I heard that there might be trees worth checking out on "Plant Street" in the Satwa neighborhood. I mentioned Satwa in a recent post, declaring it  my new favorite neighborhood for all of the fabric and trim shops but I hadn't yet seen this "Plant Street"- in quotation marks because while that's what people call it, that's not it's name on a map, it's Hubaida Street near the Iranian Hospital, which is, by the way, partially covered in beautiful tile work. So off I went. The one major drawback to Satwa is the lack of parking and the metro wasn't going to be an option here. I found a place on a side street and walked on over. There were trucks of cut pines all the way from Canada mostly. They were selling for roughly $100US and up and we're pretty uniform in size and shape ( about 5-6 ft tall and

loading up the tree, city skyline

very triangular). There were takers for sure but I didn't want to go that route. I considered a pomegranate sapling because I loved my pomegranate tree at my house in Vegas, but it was really a baby and I didn't think a pot on my 14th floor balcony was going to be an environment where it would thrive and fruit. I did ask if they had any other pomegranates, just out of curiosity, and learned that if I wanted say, a dozen, anything would be possible. Bulk buying can be customized. For one, nope, they had what they had. Might have something different in a few weeks. The bushier fig plant was a contender but for similar reasons, rejected. An interestingly woven lucky bamboo plant challenged me to think about where I might hang ornaments but in the end, I couldn't resist the little table top pine in a pot. Also, I had no clue how I would have lugged the heavier potted fig back to my back street parking spot. As it was, it was pretty funny to stroll down the block, past the Indian cafe, hugging a tiny pine. As the sun set over the city, I packed up my tree. I needed to stop for gas on the way home and I had a nice exchange with the man working at the pump. He shyly asked,

Riding with a fir

Madam, is that a tree for Christmas, I ask because I have just yesterday also found one tree for Christmas...

Me: Yes, yes it is. So you celebrate Christmas? (many people here are Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim and don't)

Him (earnestly, with hand on heart): Madam, I am Roman Catholic

Me: Well let me wish you a very Merry Christmas then

Him (extending his hand to shake): And to you as well, and in advance, may I also wish you a happy new year!


With that happy wish, I brought my little tree home, set it up near my faux fireplace, made of cardboard wine and small furniture boxes. I created it in a fit of maniacal craftiness.

both trees

The very next morning in the elevator I ran into a fellow ZU faculty member with an apartment a few floors up but only until February when he's moving on to new things. 

Martin: Right then, have you got the holidays sorted, tree and all?

Me: Just picked up a tiny table top pine last night!

Martin: Rubbish, you must have the posh 6 foot tree I've got. I'm getting rid of everything. Fancy a set of golf clubs too?

So I am now the proud owner of a used faux evergreen that came with a set of fancy lights that cycle through all kinds of twinkling patterns and a truly ridiculous amount of tinsel garland. And a table top live pine (quite a relief that now the pressure if off to keep the little table top pine alive until next December). It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, the halls are decked, fa la la la.

the cardboard fireplace

the end of bad hair season

I've started seeing pictures and hearing stories from friends and family about snow and freezing temps in the US. Meanwhile here in the sandbox, it's become glorious outside after a long sweaty summer. I'm not trying to gloat (much). This is our reward for surviving months of swampy heat, humidity and bad hair days. Most people are pretty surprised when I mention the humidity. I was surprised when by it when I started looking into living here. I guess it's due to living on the Arabian Gulf. We get so much humidity, actually, that sometimes we have fog.

We also get rain, kind of infrequently, but it's not unheard of and actually, rainy days are on the rise due to a program of cloud seeding. I'd heard of cloud seeding schemes only as a hoax used to swindle desperate farmers out of the last of their money during the dust bowl days in the US but apparently the technology has come a long way. The UAE has a Cloud Seeding Operations Section at the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology and, for the past 15 years, has been using primarily salts and/or trace amounts of silver iodide to make it rain up in here (more often out in the emirates closer to the mountains where they have dams and reservoirs to fill.). They need a good shaped cloud to start with and the right updraft conditions, then they send the pilots up to shoot up the clouds. Kinda cool, even if I don't much like precipitation.

Another weather-ish phenomena we get is the sandstorm! Now I've seem Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, and the Mission Impossible movie set in Dubai and I expected a Hollywood style wall of sand, roiling it's way toward the city. I was both relieved and a little disappointed to witness my first sandstorm. I had to clarify with several people, "So is this a sandstorm, then?" when I looked outside and the sky was kind of yellowish green and gritty looking. I did see one sort of roll in from the desert from my apartment balcony one day. It wasn't a wall but there was clearly blue sky in one direction and not in the other... and then the not-blue-sky bits just kind of expanded. The picture on the left is more or less the same view as the picture on the right, just in the middle of a sandstorm. Looks a little like the fog, huh? It's thicker and dirtier and leaves behind more of a mess.

But this past month, no rain, no fog, no sandstorms and big drops in humidity. It's beach weather by day, sitting out by the creek weather at night. This is the season to visit, my friends!

Halloween

For my first Halloween in the Middle East, I wanted to go for a bit of a local flare so I decided to dress as Cleopatra and to try to evoke a little "curse of the mummy" spookiness. I knew, from arriving last year in early December, that Christmas gets a lot of play, the shops are full of twinkling trees and Santas, there are events featuring fake snow and real penguins, and so on. But how was a made-in-America holiday featuring witches, ghosts and devils gonna fly in a fairly religious country?  There were no bags of candy corns showing up on shelves in August, even 3 weeks out, in early October, when I went in search of a plastic skull for my meathead, I was told to come back in a week or two for Halloween items. I knew I'd have to improvise.

First, I made a cat mummy. I was going to just shape him out of plastic grocery bags, pillow filler and packing tape, but then I kinda liked the look of the packing tape and, it turns out that they don't really sell gauze strips here. Gauze pads, clever gauze tubes to slip over all kinds of wounds, ace bandages, but no rolls of gauze to wrap a mummy cat. so his final outer layer is packing tape.

I had a sheet I was prepared to tear into strips to make my larger human mummy project but it was going to take way more grocery bags than i had on hand to shape this guy. Water bottles, milk bottles, a plastic bucket that had been filled with candy, a shoe box, a packing box, a thin synthetic IKEA comforter that didn't fit my beds... my mummy is a regular recyclers dream and is about the size of a 10 year old.

I did find some Halloween decorations in stores- a surprisingly good selection at the Choithrams which is an Indian owned chain? We made canoptic jars (for the storage of organs in the mummification process) from Pringles cans and salt dough, I covered boxes with craft paper and hieroglyphics for bricks, used crumpled pieces of brown paper bags (covered with more hieroglyphics) to finger paint out messages in blood red paint from the cursed, taped spiders and webs to the wall and called it decorated.

A few grocery stores sold traditional bright orange jack-o-lantern style pumpkins imported from the US but they were going for about $5 per pound, and pumpkins are pretty heavy fruit. I decided to take advantage of some other more local produce options and to try out carving a papaya and pineapple. Also, we picked up a few local pumpkins, kind of a yellow/ green color and typically a bit smaller than US jack-o-lanterns, but pretty good carvers. The papaya was a nice surprise- the orange flesh inside glowed really vibrantly. And the pineapple stem made for cute "hair". And we could eat the "guts" as we scooped them!

I did my usual food spread with the meathead (in the end my sister sent a plastic skull which arrived just in the nick of time!) and a watermelon brain and the stuffed date roaches (scarab beetles this year). I also added a pyrex dish full of "intestines" (brie and chutney in puff pastry tubes, coiled in the dish in a creepy way) and a friend made witch finger cookies.

Bringing my favorite holiday to Dubai went pretty well! Just wait until next year.