The Shopping Report

The coming summer in Dubai is predicted to be one of the hottest yet and we've already been told to expect temperatures of 54 degrees on a regular basis. Every morning over the past week or so I've noticed as I walk to work that its been getting noticeably warmer. Today at lunchtime it was 34 degrees outside but for some unknown reason they set the air-con at work to 20 degrees which was a bit of a shock to the system. I'm sort-of prepared for summer. I have my tea plantation memsahib umbrella to keep the sun off and I learnt from my experience last summer not to put on make up before I walk to work. If I do, I arrive with my mascara running down my cheeks and looking a lot like Alice Cooper's sister. Not a good look.

Just outside the city area of Dubai there's an area called Al Aweer which up to the 1990s was a farming village . Al Aweer's claim to fame now is that its the site of a huge second hand car yard. The car yard was set up by Dubai Municipality to deal with the import of used cars into the local market. It's big, 14 hectares in total, with lots of dealer showrooms and an auction area. There's every sort of car for sale out there from Kia Rios to stretch Hummers , right up to Lamborghinis. The cars are all second hand and, depending on who you ask, they're either:

· Stolen from Europe, fenced in Dubai and shipped to Africa;
· Stolen from Africa, fenced in Dubai and shipped to Europe;
· Just plain stolen; or
· Completely legitimate imports .

Strangely though, despite all the countries in this part of the world being left hand drive there is what I can only describe as a "less classy" section out the back of the car yard that's full of right hand drive cars. By "less classy" I mean that it's just a area of desert that's been fenced off. The cars in this section are parked in the sand and are being sold by prestigious joints with names like, for example, Kilimanjaro Motors. Walking round this part of the car yard was like being on the set of a Western movie just before the gunfight; deserted, silent, sandy, I half expected some tumbleweed to roll down the street. There were numerous cars with all their interiors removed and the contents, dash, seats, door panels etc stacked on the car roof. The last time I saw this method of vehicle refurbishment was when the local boys were stripping a stolen Monaro in the bush off our bottom track at Waitakere (remember that Rae?) Anyway back to Al Aweer, many of the RHD cars were recognisable shapes but had different brandings for example there was a car that looked like a Prado but was badged as a Cygnus and had a registration sticker on the back window in Chinese characters. Trawling the net threw up the fact that the Cygnus comes from either Japan or Russia. Hmmm…the guys who work in th e less classy area speak Russian, all look like Kostya Tszyu's brother and did not seem like blokes to be trifled with . The place would rank very highly on the 'International Scale of Suss-ness'.

Life in general requires a degree of moral flexibility and that's no exception here in Dubai. When it comes to DVDs, the only people who pay retail in real shops for legitimate DVDs are the certifiably insane or tourists. Everyone else has their own Chinese DVD lady who supplies the latest movies, some even before they've been released in the cinemas. These ladies, and there's an army of them in Dubai, either come round to your apartment or you call them on their mobile and arrange to meet them somewhere like a dark alley or under a lamppost to buy the DVDs. You lurk around the pre arranged meeting spot and the lady will suddenly emerge from the shadows towing an overnight bag jammed full of knock-off DVDs. All very clandestine. All very illegal. All very cheap! The DVDs cost around 10 dirhams each, that's $3. Of course, its caveat emptor and you can end up with such gems as 'The Departed' dubbed entirely in Russian with Chinese subtitles which is no use whatsoever or the film may have subtitles in English that have been generated by Babelfish or something which are totally bizarre and hilarious. Some of the subtitles are better than the movies. Also highly amusing, to me anyway, are the write-ups on the packets the DVDs come in. Let's play a game, try to guess which movie is being described by this blurb taken word for word from the back of the pack. We have some serious movie buffs amongst us.

"Los Angeles: People in the area discovered the dismemberment of a class body with Yan traces of heavy beatings and abuse, expired one day. It is a young woman. This work killing case that caused a furore is the most egregious case of California history. A survey to find out through a series of facts, I will cast her for a modern small girl one-woman or at least might have done."

Answer:'Black Dahlia'. Egregious? For heaven's sake, nobody except DH Bloom QC has actually used the word 'egregious' in the past 150 years! And does anyone know what a 'modern small girl one-woman' is? While I'm asking questions, I heard Brett Lee's Bollywood song on the radio this evening and my question is: "Why?"

Ok, what about this one?

"There is most influence in the United States of black help the eldest brother to tie to is an in uncomfortable position very much recently, at walk sideways and did not hate so long later, just join a soon third-grade magician of regiment recently, makes track for the kill to block up to cut in the FBI under, decide to forsake darkness for light, become the police's stain witness, hand in all gang commit crime of proof in track from the breadth."

It was 'Smoking Aces'. That was easy wasn't it? Fine movie too. It had a 'Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels' feel about it, only American, with a bit of 'Grosse Point Blanc' story line thrown in. Alicia Keys is in it and does a good job as one half of a female hit squad (the 'Queens of the Hotel Hit' from 'Grosse Point Blanc' maybe, except they were Phillipina weren't they?) Anyway I digress, as usual.
Dancers, I finally went to a class last Saturday. The story, and there is one of course, can be found on the Bhuz forum under "Rant alert: Beginners class, is this usual?" I think that gives you an immediate clue about what happened but you won't believe it until you read it.

Off to Jordan with Colin tomorrow for 5 days: one night in the capital Amman, a night at Hammamat Ma'in near the Dead Sea, two nights at Petra and a night in the desert at Wadi Rum.