Roller Girl!

Ok, so I finally made it onto the streets of Dubai last night. One word: hilarious!  The last time I roller-skated properly I was about 14 - there was that time I got the girls together for a roller disco for a birthday but that was only an hour so doesn't really count.  Not only was 14 a long-ish (ahem) time ago, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.  Including a skiing holiday where I spent most of my time on the ground and on blue runs..any I digress.  The point is, it's been a while since I was a carefree teenager scooting around the roller disco rink at high-speed. 

Given that much of the downtown area is a building site we had to pick our starting spot carefully.  And then we were off!  D hadn't revealed to me that she's actually a dab hand on wheels (she chose rollerblades) the result of many summers roller-blading between friends' houses in LA, apparently.  The first few minutes were a bit hairy (watch out for drains, joggers, and errant bits of gravel getting stuck in your wheels) and culminated in me falling flat on my backside in spectacular fashion.  I had a full audience consisting of: construction workers, a queue of cars waiting to do a u-turn, and one very hot male jogger who was right behind me when it happened.  D finally stopped laughing enough to help me up and then we were off again.

The verdict: great fun but not as easy as being inside on a  rink - lots of dodgy terrain to navigate in Dubai.  But if we'd been inside then there would have been no warm breeze, no gazing up at the world's tallest building, and no taking a rest whilst watching the world's largest fountains.  Yet another "this is why I live in Dubai" moment.  Downtown pedestrians: watch out!

Random Acts of Kindness

A lot of communication here in Dubai is either via word of mouth or the internet. I'm not ashamed to say I met a couple of my closest friends here through a brilliant site designed just for women. So when I needed to get rid of some rollerblades (completely ill-thought through unwanted gift – less said about it the better!) my first port of call was aforementioned website.


No sooner had I posted a message (literally about four minutes later) offering the blades free to a good home than a lovely lady called Miriam got in touch. Her husband works in the Burj and she collects him from the office each night. She could be at my office to collect them that evening (two hours later). The power of the internet!

And collect them she did. We did a quick handover outside my office. She was thrilled to receive them (she’d wanted some for ages but they are stupidly over-priced here) and I was thrilled to be rid of them – they’ve been taking up space in my office cupboard for the last fourteen months and have only been worn once. She was so thrilled that she nearly cried. So I nearly did too. All in a day’s work!

A Weighty Issue

I need to preface this post by saying that I’m not weight obsessed, and never have been. I’ve always been more interested in how I feel, and whether or not my clothes fit, and I've never owned a set of scales. In Manchester I walked to and from work (an hour in total) and was always pootling around the city centre by foot. Yes, I went to the gym, but to be honest even when I slacked off I didn’t notice a huge difference as I was so active in my day to day life.

Then I moved to Dubai, and the issue became a lot more pressing. A combination of 12 hour days and 40 plus degree temperatures means that for much of the year ‘pootling about’ is completely impossible, so life is much more sedentary. I’ve noticed that some of my clothes are a bit tighter, and the scales in my gym tell me I’m about 4 kilos heavier. Yikes! Anyway on a recent doctor’s visit, where they weigh you before you even get your foot in the door of the doctor’s office (double yikes), the scales revealed me to be the exact weight that I was when I arrived in Dubai. Who to believe? The doctor’s scales are electronic, and surely of the highest standards..until I know who to trust, I'm keeping up the bootcamp, walking to work and....roller-skating! Yes, roller-skating! More to follow....