The Bastakia Quarters, Dubai
Hi I’m back. As usual it’s the end of the month, and I really wanna keep to my commitment of having 2 posts per month, so here goes.
Nothing’s changed much. Anu has started working, in the same Company, and the same office that I work in – that pretty much takes care of her boredom and the transportation arrangements. Good.
I have given up my wonderful car, reluctantly, very reluctantly, mainly due to the constant prodding of dear wife, who didn’t want me to drive without a license, seeing the so many accidents on the way to work and back, which is the right thing to do. Except that now we have to take the local cabs. They’re good, they’re controlled by the local government and they charge by the meter (unlike their counterparts in Malaysia, Truly Asia, who will do anything, not to run by the meter, especially when it comes to tourists). There is only one tiny problem with the cabs here, they’re either not very easy to find or there’ll be a queue of about a city block long waiting for them, so much so that we have waited 2 hours, twice, for a cab to take us back home from City Centre. Buy a book and some takeaway dinner if you’re planning to travel this way.
A café at the Souq Madinat Jumeirah
Food. Food is simply wonderful here. Lunch is free (for me and wife because it is somehow included, and we get an authentic Chinese lunch daily, generously slobbered with oil, prepared by real Chinese cooks, with fruits to go). I eat most of my other meals at home, compliments of my delightful wife. Eating outside is also interesting as there’re lots of varieties to choose from, and helps you get rid of your hard earned money so that you will have less to carry when you go home. The cheapest food is the pay-by-the-kg cooked food you get at the hypermarkets like Lulu or Carrefour. Otherwise any food will set you back at least RM25 per meal.
The Food Court at Dubai Festival City
People. The locals have some kind of a dress-code to differentiate men from women – white for men and black for women (no, I have no idea why). Men wear pressed long sleeved, kurta-like ankle-length shirts (dishdashas) with sandals, and a white ‘dish-cloth’ (gutra) on their heads tied with a black rope. The effect looks very cool – clean, elegant and pleasing to the eye. The only problem to this, I think, is when they wanna run or ride a bike, or maybe pee in a urinal. Maybe that’s why many of the men’s toilets here don’t have urinals (and I thought I went into the ladies by mistake.)
I’ve read that this attire has something to do with the Arab identity and non-Arabs aren’t encouraged to wear these (if not I think it’d be simply superb for people with hyperactive sweat glands on the head, …like me).
Women’s dresses are more varied – the more traditional wear full-length dresses completely in black with either a veil or a Darth Vader mask (ok, I’m exaggerating – they don masks but they’re not as cool as Darth Vader’s – something like a bronze-coloured piece of cardboard shaped somewhat like a duck-bill). The more liberal minded are usually dressed in sleek floor-length black satin dresses with matching satin black head scarves, and artistically designed glittering sequins or ornaments. They look simply exotic and elegant. The liberal-minded are almost always heavily made up with blackened eye lids, long eyelashes and big hair bobs at the back of their heads beneath their head scarves, so that they have sort of a crown beneath, …something to make them look like the Crystal Skull beings of Indiana Jones.
Darth Vader in Mirdif Uptown, a shopping area near our house
Dubai usually smells nice (or at least in the supermarkets where we spend most of our time in when we’re not working). The locals have a knack for perfume and incense. The exception to this is right outside our ‘villa’ where the sewage overflows each day due to the excessive shit and etc that China State (my company) employees dump into the local sewage system. Parking space No 1 is therefore off-limits to anyone without gum boots.
Anu outside our villa, purposely blocking parking space no.1 from view
Dubai is also quite clean (again in the supermarkets). This could be due to the floor-length dresses (abeyya) the local women wear that automatically sweeps the floor wherever women go… Or maybe it is just the army of migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippine etc, etc, etc.
Another picture of Mirdif Uptown
OK, enough for this month, going back to work now.
A violin troupe performing at the Mall of the Emirates
Yet another picture of Mirdif Uptown, well it’s only 5 minutes from our trusty ‘villa’
The gang of 3 (I with Joseph, Assistant PM and Nasar, Safety Manager) at Al Mamzar Park with a view of Sharjah (another emirate) across the creek
