Life’s almost too good to be true sometimes. I spent yesterday afternoon sitting on the couch with my feet up, Led Zep CDs playing, eating dates, wearing my official UAE ‘ladies indoor dress’ called a galabeya (think executive mumu but without the pictures of coconut trees and surfboards) and reading the latest Sarah Paretsky murder mystery. Yes, gasp, fiction, it’s a shock to me too. There can be few finer ways to waste an afternoon.
I’m at the gym at 9am every morning, there’s nobody around except the pool attendant who does double duty as the gym fitness instructor. The most I’ve seen him do is adjust the air-con and now that I know where he hides the remote he doesn’t even need to do that. He’s amazed to see anyone in the gym before noon and often waits to hand me a towel before I go in. As he hands me the towel he always gives me a huge smile and there’s a brief conversation along the lines of (“words to the effect of….”):
“Good morning Madam” (You crazy white person)
“Good morning Hassan” (Yeah, but a fit, crazy white person)
Today was, as they say, “fully hectic”. After the gym I walked down to the Creek and caught the abra that goes down to the area where the dhows are loaded further down the Creek from the souq. These dhows are freight boats which sail mainly between the UAE and India, the design which is very Sinbadish, probably hasn’t changed in centuries except for the addition of engines. The freight is delivered to the wharf in trucks and then moved onto the dhows on the backs of crews of Indian labourers. It’s strange to walk along and pass towers of toasters or microwaves stacked up on the wharf. I walked through the spice souq and then sort of got lost, Dubai people will be amazed particularly as I was supposed to be walking in a straight line, but I’ve always warned everyone that I have absolutely no sense of direction. Anyway it was worth it as I found the Dubai public library with their wonderful air-conditioned reading room. I was very pleasantly surprised to see they had the latest edition of Foreign Affairs so I plonked myself down at an empty table to read it. The whole ‘ladies only’ thing then happened, quite a few blokes came in but they wouldn’t sit with me so by the time I left there were about 15 of them jammed around a table made for 6 while I had my own table. That’s the way it works here, a lady, even a Crazy White Person lady should not have her privacy disturbed by unknown males. I finished reading a really good article about the development of relations between Iran and Iraq and then headed out into the heat, it must have been about 1000 degrees, to find the Heritage House and Al Ahmadiya School. And find them I did, eventually. The house has been beautifully restored to show how a wealthy family would have lived in it in the early days. The school is next door to the Heritage House. It was established in 1922 making it one of the first semi-formal schools in Dubai. Formal education in Dubai began in 1956. At the school they show a very interesting video about how during the restoration of the building they had to go back to the old ways of doing things to ensure authenticity. What you can do with ground up coral and gypsum is quite surprising. Like the Heritage House, the school is beautifully presented. I had both places completely to myself which seems a shame as they are both well worth seeing. I took an abra back to the Bur Dubai side. The abra ride costs 50fils which is about 18 cents and has got to be the best value travel buy ever. From there a taxi out to the City Centre mall to do some grocery shopping and then home to do more lying on the couch reading.
The owners of the unsecured wireless network that I’ve been using seem to be on to me and I’m having trouble logging in. I write the emails and move them to the out box. I leave Outlook open all the time when I’m home and if the network pops up, I race over to the laptop and press “Send”. The network was off the air all day yesterday so I had to pay actual money at an internet café, all of $12 for 3 hours.
Questions have been asked and, yes, I do know what make of car hit me at the pedestrian crossing, I just chose not to mention it, ok? Why? Because adding to the whole negative experience of being hit by a car, is the fact that I was hit by a bloody Nissan Sunny. How humiliating. Let us never speak of it again.
Friends on 3 continents who’ve had to put up with me whinging about not seeing the end of The Dirty Dozen will be glad to hear that I’ve bought a cheap copy on DVD and have now seen it through to the end (most of them die).
I’m at the gym at 9am every morning, there’s nobody around except the pool attendant who does double duty as the gym fitness instructor. The most I’ve seen him do is adjust the air-con and now that I know where he hides the remote he doesn’t even need to do that. He’s amazed to see anyone in the gym before noon and often waits to hand me a towel before I go in. As he hands me the towel he always gives me a huge smile and there’s a brief conversation along the lines of (“words to the effect of….”):
“Good morning Madam” (You crazy white person)
“Good morning Hassan” (Yeah, but a fit, crazy white person)
Today was, as they say, “fully hectic”. After the gym I walked down to the Creek and caught the abra that goes down to the area where the dhows are loaded further down the Creek from the souq. These dhows are freight boats which sail mainly between the UAE and India, the design which is very Sinbadish, probably hasn’t changed in centuries except for the addition of engines. The freight is delivered to the wharf in trucks and then moved onto the dhows on the backs of crews of Indian labourers. It’s strange to walk along and pass towers of toasters or microwaves stacked up on the wharf. I walked through the spice souq and then sort of got lost, Dubai people will be amazed particularly as I was supposed to be walking in a straight line, but I’ve always warned everyone that I have absolutely no sense of direction. Anyway it was worth it as I found the Dubai public library with their wonderful air-conditioned reading room. I was very pleasantly surprised to see they had the latest edition of Foreign Affairs so I plonked myself down at an empty table to read it. The whole ‘ladies only’ thing then happened, quite a few blokes came in but they wouldn’t sit with me so by the time I left there were about 15 of them jammed around a table made for 6 while I had my own table. That’s the way it works here, a lady, even a Crazy White Person lady should not have her privacy disturbed by unknown males. I finished reading a really good article about the development of relations between Iran and Iraq and then headed out into the heat, it must have been about 1000 degrees, to find the Heritage House and Al Ahmadiya School. And find them I did, eventually. The house has been beautifully restored to show how a wealthy family would have lived in it in the early days. The school is next door to the Heritage House. It was established in 1922 making it one of the first semi-formal schools in Dubai. Formal education in Dubai began in 1956. At the school they show a very interesting video about how during the restoration of the building they had to go back to the old ways of doing things to ensure authenticity. What you can do with ground up coral and gypsum is quite surprising. Like the Heritage House, the school is beautifully presented. I had both places completely to myself which seems a shame as they are both well worth seeing. I took an abra back to the Bur Dubai side. The abra ride costs 50fils which is about 18 cents and has got to be the best value travel buy ever. From there a taxi out to the City Centre mall to do some grocery shopping and then home to do more lying on the couch reading.
The owners of the unsecured wireless network that I’ve been using seem to be on to me and I’m having trouble logging in. I write the emails and move them to the out box. I leave Outlook open all the time when I’m home and if the network pops up, I race over to the laptop and press “Send”. The network was off the air all day yesterday so I had to pay actual money at an internet café, all of $12 for 3 hours.
Questions have been asked and, yes, I do know what make of car hit me at the pedestrian crossing, I just chose not to mention it, ok? Why? Because adding to the whole negative experience of being hit by a car, is the fact that I was hit by a bloody Nissan Sunny. How humiliating. Let us never speak of it again.
Friends on 3 continents who’ve had to put up with me whinging about not seeing the end of The Dirty Dozen will be glad to hear that I’ve bought a cheap copy on DVD and have now seen it through to the end (most of them die).
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