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Posts tagged ‘Dubai’

New sandals

11 April 2010

I kind of feel repulsed by shopping centres. Never liked them. Mostly, being in retail space reinforces the inferiority complex I have along with a certain frisson of je ne sais quoi: I don’t belong. I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why anyone would want to spend time in a cavernous concrete temple of artificiality, and anyway, what do people do once they get there?

I know that some indoor shopping centre contain bookstores, stationery shops and hardware stores, and I certainly enjoy wasting my time among shelves stocked with paper, calligraphy pens and drill bits. Lots of little things arranged together side by side, to form a magical whole. Whenever I’m roaming among aisles of glue and adhesives or comparing wall plug sizes, I always think about what it must be like to perform a stock take in this environment. Imagine spending your afternoon attempting an accurate count of erasers, bath plugs or Lonely Planet Guides?

Personally, I think working in retail would be a death sentence for me. Not only because of my poor social skills and unwillingness to sell anything to anyone, but because standing on my feet for eight hours a day seems is as appealing as a Los Angeles-Sydney non-stop flight seated next to a Philippine Roman Catholic nun. Which, by the way, happened to me. I have no desire to repeat the experience, and certainly not every day of my chosen career.

Still, some people choose to work in retail because they feel good about helping people and enjoy giving customer satisfaction. There is a infinitely small percentage of retail staff that can read me, who can feel the ‘stay away from me’ vibe’ which I emit whenever I start browsing. The remainder of retail workers can be divided into those who follow me unceasingly around the shop and those who look at my appalling dress sense and ignore me therewith.

The latter group of retailers are uniquely to be found in clothing and accessory shops. People working in clothes stores and I, well, we are mutual in our antipathy towards the other party. I consider fashion very low on the ‘list of things a human needs to achieve self-satisfaction and happiness’. It’s down there with ‘meeting a celebrity’ and ‘shaving every workday’. Luckily, human are a rich, varied and surprisingly disappointing species, so there are a plethora of types who couldn’t think of any place better to spend the day than ‘Gap’ or ‘Harvey Nichols’. Good, now you people can serve me.

However, don’t look at me like that. I know I look crap and I’ll never make it into Vogue, but to be fair, I think Anna Wintour would look good as a coat and Karl Lagerfeld is one of the reasons that the Taliban isn’t all wrong about western values. One of my closest friends once said that on a scale from one to ten in dress sense, I scored a zero. Luckily for me, I couldn’t give a toss.

However, I cannot live without sandals. And today I bought some. They are very special. The man told me how wonderful they looked and I asked him to be quiet because this would be the twentieth pair I’ve bought in my life. They just happen to be back in fashion now, so spare me the sycophantic obsequiousness. I’m wearing them about the hotel room because I can.

With any luck, sandals will be in fashion again for the new few years and at least once more in 2023, probably the next time I have to enter a clothing store. Of course, the irony is that my article on Istanbul shopping centres is the most read of all the online pieces I’ve written. Rubbish.

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Hotel art is distressing

10 April 2010

Could you fall asleep, knowing this was in the room?

This week I’m staying in a serviced apartment, something I’ve never done before.

I’m used to flea-ridden, squalid room with torn mosquito nets and a mattresses stuffed with chick peas, so naturally I’m still a little shell shocked after entering my impeccably clean, colour-coordinated room, replete with functioning washing machine, stack of fluffy bath towels and mini fire extinguisher.

Though it’s odd to spend a week in a hotel situated in the same city in which you are currently residing, such is my little adventure. To the friend who hurtfully inferred I may have been kicked out of my rented apartment for questionable hygiene issues, I state here that I am not a liberty to discuss my current predicament with you, but that you should refrain from making such ill-conceived remarks. They have been duly noted.

Still, apart from the genuine weirdness that comes from listening to children squealing up and down the corridor, the gyrating and pulsating foul-mouthed hip hop artist booming from the lounge speakers, and the hideous glow of a million halogen lamps, it’s the art that’s giving me a headache.

Last week, while waiting for a quote at the local print shop, I noticed one of those perky, snappy framed bit of philosophy that pollute so many public workspace. ‘It is disturbs you, it’s art.’ Well, most people disturb me and they’re not art. Most of them are just mistakes and the current product of evolution. Unfortunately, that sniff of intellectual pretence doesn’t hold up to the slightest questioning. You only have to cast a glance at the framed horror hanging in my temporary quarters. It disturbs me. It is vomit-worthy. Art it is not.

I know I’ve been guilty of the throwaway and capricious ‘Oh, I could’ve done that!’ in times past. But I couldn’t have done this schlock of puke, not even if I removed my eyes from their sockets before picking up the brush. Painting is perhaps not the most developed of the arts in the Islamic world (and here I’m assuming the artist is local), but there’s no reason to hang what amounts to a set of blood-drenched ropes across a gold leaf ECG screen in my place of repose.

And wouldn’t you know it? After staring menacingly at the painting for about three minutes, I decided that it had to go, stored next to the ironing board. Neither object was of any worth to me so I thought they could both stay out of sight during my stay, deep within dark bowels of the bedroom cupboard.

No sooner had I removed the painting from the wall, than my doorbell sounds and the Floor Manager’s cherubic visage fills the peep-hole. I’d barely made a sound! Still, he was here to check on my dry cleaning requirements but I couldn’t hide the picture, now seated, rather lonely, on the sofa. I explained to him how I am allergic to reds and oranges, though since my fully exposed suitcase resembles a fiery clementine, he simply eyed me suspiciously and took my shirts. Then looked back again. That time, I’m not sure what he was suggesting, so I shut the door in his face.

Apart from the disturbing non-art, I’m loving my serviced apartment.

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Posted in Dubai, Travel | 1 comment »

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Why I love my passport

2 April 2010

The mark of a worthy passport is not having to collect the stamps in the first place.

Today I’m sitting in bed and chuckling to myself though the clock warns me it’s 5:30am, a time I assume has meaning in other people’s lives, but not mine.

Late yesterday morning a colleague at work informed me I needed to organise air tickets for two staff. They were required to travel to neighbouring Bahrain, just an hours’ flight away from Dubai International Airport. Rejoicing at the joy of e-ticketing that has come with the Internet, I was swiftly able to locate and reserve two seats for DXB-BAH, leaving at 7:15am the following morning and returning late in the evening on the same day.

Be thankful for a passport that give affords you unhindered travel

Still, it was never going to be as simple as that. You see, if all Consulates and Embassies warn us in an unreadable, minuscule font that the granting of a visa does not guarantee entry into the territory which the diplomatic office represents, those of us with passports from rich and powerful nations never consider, or rarely, that we may actually be denied entry.

This trait doesn’t belong to many citizens from less powerful or little-liked nations, or from countries deemed hostile to the dominant world order. One of my staff travels with an Indian passport, and he was already undoubtedly used to encountering the misplaced bureaucracy that comes with border crossings.

When I called the Bahrain Embassy in Abu Dhabi to learn the process for him to obtain a visa, I received a response that was unsure and hesitant. A e-visa could be issued within the next two weeks. Useless for a 7:15am flight the following morning. Could he obtain a visa on arrival at the airport? No, out of the question. Unless. If I could persuade the company in Bahrain where my colleague had an appointment to issue a formal, signed and stamped Letter of Invitation, it might just work. I started to feel constipated.

Five hours later I managed a smile

Though the last rays of the sun were already sinking past the gleaming spires of Dubai when I received the second attempt at a Letter of Invitation with accurate itinerary dates, passport numbers and correctly spelled names, I jumped a little excitedly that I’d managed to pull it off. He would be able to attend the training session in Bahrain.

but an hour ago, at 4:30, my colleague woke me from contented slumber. In the background I could hear the familiar noises of the airport departure hall, that continuous voice over system announcing a thousand flights to ten thousand bleary-eyed travellers taking the red-eye specials, dressed in suit and without any check-in luggage. ‘No need to tell me… you’re not going?’ Even before customs had the opportunity to scan and manhandle and glare condescendingly at him, the check-in counter steward had refused to issue a boarding pass. Why? Well, to some people and governments out there, your job title is an important thing.

I don’t what your job title is but have a good idea what I’d like to call you

Since with word ‘manager’ was nowhere to be seen on my colleague’s UAE residency permit, the check-in clerk believed he would be refused a visa on arrival in Bahrain. Does it really matter? Yes, to some people it clearly does.

I asked to speak with the airline staff member and knew that I wouldn’t be rolling back into my bed within the next half hour. Thanking another gift of technology, I took my mobile phone into the kitchen and prepared a fresh pot of coffee. I was already agitated so I thought I’d just help myself along a little more.

Somehow, and certainly not due to my bedside manners and endless charm, my colleague got to Bahrain. The day went well. Yet again, I am grateful for my passport. And must remember more often not to take it for granted. I am visiting Bahrain in less than a fortnight and won’t even have to think about obtaining a visa beforehand. Or should I? Nah, that kind of thing never happens to me.

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Why this sentence offends me

1 April 2010

Window shopping in Dubai

I’ve just finished reading an article that claims to investigate the increased application of social conduct laws in Dubai. The story commences, ‘It seems Dubai’s authorities are cracking down on public indecency in the city.’

Yeah, it seems they might be. Then again, it may not seem like that at all.

It’s a fair assumption that one of Dubai’s most prominent publications for the expatriate community would write about such a topical issue. After all, while the swank restaurants, luxury vehicles and sleek architecture place this metropolis partly in the sphere of western influence, it’s evident to any person with a shred of common sense that this society’s origins differ deeply to those of the international jet set quaffing cocktails in Jumeirah Lake Towers.

A lost opportunity

What could have been a thought-provoking investigation into the current barometer of tolerance of the scantily-clad and bejewelled women of Dubai turns out to be a series of possibilities based on nothing more than mere suggestion and inference. It’s a crap read.

Usually, even that wouldn’t bother me. Besides, the magazine clearly caters well to its readers and makes no claim to being a intellectual leader in news and current affairs. It’s a publication that informs its readership about the latest film releases, groovy hangouts in which to be spotted and whether Paris Hilton has recently been slutting about town. You get the idea.

Then I read this:

But the fact remains that this is a Muslim country and if someone takes offence to behaviour that conflicts with these laws and reports you, then you have committed a crime, whether or not plenty of other people do it and get away with it.

Put aside the fact that I’ve removed the phrase from the article and perhaps out of its context. Read the sentence again. And once more.

Yeah, show me your prejudice

What this says to me is that Dubai is a Muslim country. Here, the author states a fact I won’t argue with, since she’s right on the ball. Next, the author clearly means ‘break the law’ and not really ‘conflict with the law.’ So, what’s she’s saying is, should a person takes offence at my behaviour, action or deed, which contravenes the law, I have committed a crime, regardless of others who might exhibit the same behaviour yet not be convicted of the same crime.

So, let’s think of a law. Let’s take the ol’ favourite of monotheistic culture, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Killing contravenes the law. And so it ought to.

The sentence now reads: ‘if a person takes offence at the fact that I commit murder, I have committed a crime, whether of not other people get away with it.’ Umm, yeah.

You see where I’m going with this?

The true garbage-worthiness of this article comes from the niggling, ‘But the fact remains that this is Muslim country’. Hate it. It’s mean and it suggests the kind of thing I’d rather not think about people. To me, what the author is hinting at, whether subconsciously or not, is that living in a Muslim country of itself means modesty will be the overriding value, whether in dress, word or deed, and that somehow the laws are not consistently applied.

And that is not fair.

Try harder next time, or I’m assigning you to the fashion desk

Modesty is a relative term. And you’d have to be some kind of idiot to wear hot pants in a Dubai shopping mall and not really feel out of place. I say, wear what you want. And just like people on roller skates in public places should be drawn and quartered, a bikini worn off -beach almost anywhere is considered wrong and possibly offensive.

What could have been an educational, investigative exploration regarding the current application of social conduct regulations in Dubai tuns out to be a trash-heap, well-steeped in prejudice, which infers that the culture in which I reside could somehow be a little arbitrary and random regarding its application of laws with regards to its expat community.

I hope not.

After all, we are far superior to the locals, aren’t we?

Another reason to employ a good editor.

Or is it just me? That, I suppose, is possible too.

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First impressions of Dubai

5 March 2010

A light fog shrouds the unfinished construction sites in the DIFC district

I’ve a desire to post my initial impressions and early sensations of Dubai now, since over time my perception of the city will inevitably change. Also, like others, I suffer from making unfortunate generalisations about places and customs, crude stereotypes gleaned from experiences with people. My hope is that, by writing, I’ll think a little more assiduously and carefully about what I’m trying to express, and avoid some notorious pitfalls of reckless cliché and hackneyed phrase.

Dubai is glitzy and stylish

I’m fairly sure that this is an accurate adjective for a city which has burst forth from the desert in a short number of years. From my apartment building situated next door to the architecturally wondrous Dubai International Finance Centre, sleek, svelte office towers rise up along Sheikh Zayed Road, glistening and shimmering in the morning sun.

Dubai interiors are generally exsquisitely designed and it’s clear than for a considerable time no expense has been spared on original fit-outs and exceptional furniture. Can you describe people as glitzy? Yeah, I think I can. On Thursday night, when I sit downstairs in the apartment hotel and chat with security guards over a cigarette, there’s a constant passing parade of both sexes, overdressed, over-coiffed and, applicable to some of them, overstretched. I ‘ve always hated shiny fabric, but here they certainly don’t. They embrace satin suits, gold stilettos and whatever that gunk is that woman slap all over their faces.

Despite the colourful superlatives attached to the city, inhabitants are a little ordinary

In comparision with other cities, a sizeable chunk of the Dubai workforce is busy in the banking & finance centres. These are conservative industries that demand males and females to strip themselves of any personality and wear the obligatory dark-colour suit and appropriately dull accessories. Eating lunch as I often do in the neighbourhood Lebanese restaurant, I sit and watch the view, a neverending sea of dreary-looking charcoals and steel-greys.

The burqa might well be the world’s ugliest garment, but at least it swishes. The streets surrounding the Dubai International Finance Centre are filled with cardboard cutout figures that are interrupted every now and then by the bright blue overalls of unskilled labour from the subcontinent. Seen the movie Brazil? Since landing in Dubai this movie comes into my head at least once a day. The people in my neighbourhood are straight from the office scenes. As are the offices themselves.

Dubai’s architecture is massive and stark

The greatest dissatisfaction in my life is that I won’t live to see the world when it resembles the opening scenes of my two favourite science fiction films, Bladerunner and The Fifth Element. You don’t have to like either of the movies; many of my closest friends don’t. However, they both commence with incredibly inspiring images of what respectively, Los Angeles in 2017 and New York in the 24th century might look like. When Bladerunner was released in 1982, it gave me a passion for the slightly degraded, of things past their prime, of the descent into ruin.

Night falls and the city is already sleeping

That’s how I see Dubai, summed up beautifully by The Index, an 80-storey mixed residential and commercial tower that dominates the view from my living room windows. Topped out but not yet completed, it ground-floor service areas, driveways and footpaths remain far from finished, and in the right light, appear already to be slowly crumbling. A score of similar projects are within my view, towered over by deserted cranes. Each building looks like a wonderful dream that was half imagined but that might yet slide back into the sand, without ever having been occupied.

My impressions will change as I learn more, discover new places and meet people who can introduce my the the varied and various layers of this glitzy desert settlement. for now, I’m happy to stare out from the window by night over a futurescape that takes me back to my teenage dreams.

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Arabic lessons commence

3 March 2010

From the wall of the old mosque in Edirne, Turkey.

It seems like a natural idea to attempt the native language of the culture in which you are living. In fact, I cannot imagine spending a great deal of time in a foreign country and not speaking the local language. It’s be frustrating. The thought of not being able to shout back at a shopkeeper who once again stuffed up my order, well… let’s just say life flows better in my direction when I speak the local tongue.

Travelling of course is different. It’s hardly common sense to tire over unaspirated bi-labial consonants in Malayalam because you plan to navigate the backwaters of Kerala or immerse indulge yourself in Ayurvedic treatments in Thiruvananthapuram. Even those Lonely Planet phrasebooks featuring natty photos of burqa-clad wheat threshers won’t see you scaling heights in Aramaic dialect as you perspire about Syria, although it does acknowledge your resourcefulness and cultural sensitivity.

Additionally, English is firmly established as the lingua franca of the jaded jet-set, the indigent nation of backpackers and, especially, of any person working in tourism from Vang Vien to Peunto Arenas. English may even one day take over from Thai in the land formerly known as Siam. There’s no need to learn how to say ‘thank you’ in Thai, primarily because it’s a hideous sounding language to anyone but Thai nationals, and secondly, Westerners who speak Thai raise my suspicions. And fears.

That I mastered French easily comes down to the fact that the Gallic spirit is a worthy opponent in arguments and general conversation. I refused to be a passive participant. In Turkey, my skills at chattering away in Istanbul’s finest dialect meant taxi drivers were cognisant of their inability to take me via a scenic route. I was a local. I talked a lot and saved cash too.

Something I'd like to be reading, in the native tongue, sometime between now and my death.

Here in the good ol’ UA of E, fluency in Arabic among expatriates might be an irrelevant goal. My first greeting in Arabic to the taxi driver who slung my suitcase in the trunk received a cool, ‘I’m not Arab’. But rather than tell him of his need for the indefinite article, I placated him by telling him how much I’d enjoyed Pakistan. Though he was from India.

That first introduction to a fully English-compliant workforce has been a massive source of disappointment. I want exoticness. I want Dubai’s inhabitants to astonish me with sibilant trills and pharangeal consonant clusters. But no. Instead I get nothing more than the enervating, ‘Yes, sir. I can be taking you there immediately, sir’. Or from my smart-mouthed housekeeper, ‘I not finish ironing today too much cleaning dirty bathroom’. Attitude aside, and quelling my desire to physically discipline such insolence, the futility of enrolling in Arabic is clear. Tagalog or Urdu would be more useful.

Still, I’m not one to give in to common sense so I’m not leaving Dubai until I can read and write Arabic. To this end I paid the requisite fees last month and am currently attending lessons twice weekly with the very capable and elegant Ms Amira, at a language school situated just a short walk from my apartment. Monday and Thursday afternoons I begin storing any available phelgm for use in the evening class. And it appears to be working.

Though I sound as staccato as I once did in Spanish classes many years ago, I’m back where I should be and it feels good to be learning again. I can spell out words on street signs despite not understanding what is being advertised or stated. This gives me great happiness. I can write the alphabet and I no longer care that the Arabic vowel system looks exceptionally complicated. I’m making progress.

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Dubai. And so a new adventure begins.

28 February 2010

What I wake up to now no longer resembles a beach.

About a month ago I boarded a plane. Nineteen hours later I landed at DXB Terminal 3.

I’m very exicted. As usual.

Recently I was offered a position with the Dubai branch of a Turkish company and I jumped at the possibility to leave behind a living standard that is second to none, to move to a desert metropolis where the debt has scaled greater heights than the mid-summer temperatures.

Still, I love a challenge.

So, this blog will become a record of my time in Dubai. I look foward to exploring and discovering the people and places of this rather odd corner of the planet, as I ingratiate myself with the jetset and become a regular featured guest on Dubai’s hottest TV station.

Failing that, I hope to keep family, friend and followers up-to-date with what going in my my life, in this town, and in the region in general. The Middle East is stimulating and invigorating. I planned to be often amazed and sporadically confused by what my senses perceive and perhaps fail to perceive.

Aside from that, I intend to post articles about things I’m passionate about. Expect to have to deal with my frustrations with learning Arabic, the odd rave or three about customer service, helpful information about travelling and undoubtedly a rare rant on politics, language, religion or world news.

I promise never to use bullet point lists and to keep my blog posts under 800 words. I shall use headings where appropriate, avoid convuluted sentences and refrain from longwinded arguments.

Here we go. This ought to be fun.

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