Good Morning World!

Good morning world!

I love my journey to work. Aside from the fact that it's 8 minutes by car (used to be the same on foot) it's a really great route. 

After pootling through some of the oldest residential streets in the city, I head down a large main road. Although this is sparkling and well groomed (as are all of Dubai's roads) you can tell it's been around for donkey's years. It's flanked by trees: big trees, not the skinny, newly planted ones in Downtown. These are so wide you'd struggle to get your arms round them, with branches so vast you could get the cast of Fame in the shadows they spread. 

The palm trees are old too. Like the gnarly older brothers of the Downtown Boulevard palm trees, their knotted trunks and oh-so bushy tops make them look markedly different to the usual sanitised Dubai palm trees.

At the end of the road I turn onto the huge highway that takes me into the office, and am met with the (always) resplendent sight of Sheikh Zayed road, complete with skyscrapers, the Burj Khalifa, but also piles of low rise villas back from the days when Dubai was a pile of sand with no electricity and A/C. Oh, and 99.9% of the time there's a backdrop of blue sky and sunshine. Joy. I love love loved my walks to work through the Manchester streets, but it's hard to beat this view as I head to the office each day...

Always impresses me...

The Joy of Satwa

What's not to love?!

Those who know me know that I love nothing more than an afternoon strolling round Satwa. It’s such a diverse area and the antithesis of the glitz and glamour of Dubai Mall. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dubai Mall, but there comes a point at which you can only dodge so many rude, overweight, offensively dressed tourists before you want to run screaming from the building.

Satwa also my solution for almost everything. Can’t find something? You’ll find it in Satwa. To prove this point I thought I’d share with you a few things that my lovely friends, colleagues and myself, have giddily purchased/sorted in Satwa this month:

• Fabric
• Buttons
• Studded shoulder pads (oh they are SO now)
• Sticker of Sheikh Zayed for car
• Miniature Burj Khalifa
• Bike chain
• Books
• Oud burner for car (No, really)
• Bucket and mop
• Fancy dress outfit
• Abaya
• Bukhoor burner in shape of palm tree
• Shelves
• Bedding  plants
• Ribbon

It sells a lot more besides, but I think list goes some way to proving my point. If you can’t find it in Satwa, it probably doesn’t exist.

Feline Bothering

Admit, he's handsome, isn't he?

When I left the UK for Dubai, I left a variety of things behind me: friends, family, winter clothes, an umbrella and….one fat and fluffy black and white feline who went by the name of Frank. I won’t dwell  on that as it can still get me a bit misty eyed….he has a lovely new home and apparently still counts watching the telly as one of his favourite hobbies.

Anyway. It’s rare that I get to bother felines these days, but there is one rather lovely specimen. She’s black and slinky and called Molly and she lives……in our favourite Dubai pub. As cats do, these days it seems! She’s often to be found wafting around the bar stools and tables, and (as with most cats) is rather partial to anyone who has had food delivered to their table.

As is customary last Saturday night we headed to the pub for a few vinos before heading to Ravi’s for a street curry. Maybe it was the sudden drop in temperature (I was freezing even I n fur lined boots, jeans, cardigan and scarf), maybe it was the thought that I was about to order food, maybe it was just because I can talk to the animals and was once a zoo-keeper for the day…..who knows! But the slinky black cat made a veritable bee-line for my lap, did a few quick furry turns and then settled down for the evening. Then ensued a beautiful few hours of ear rubbing, chin stroking, and general feline bothering. With regular deliveries of white wine. An absolute treat.

It was hard to drag myself away from her and it did cross my mind just how lovely it would be to have a permanent furry friend at home. But in my heart of hearts, I think it’s best for cats to have some outside space – especially as so many here in Dubai are re-homed alley cats who are used to life on the mean streets.  Just another reason to move to that villa in Satwa, hey?!

The REAL Dubai

Scruffy villa, shiny skyscrapers: hello Satwa!

I’ve blogged before about how I much love Satwa.  Last Friday, when much of Dubai’s great and good were staggering around brunches, swigging beer and insulting waiters, we took a drive through Satwa.   Not the main street, but the area adjacent to Sheikh Zayed Road.  A few years ago there were plans to knock this whole area down and put a new development in its place. They started this, but thankfully didn’t finish.

It’s THE most enchanting and magical place. It has none of Dubai’s glam and glitz, which is precisely why I adore it so much. As we drove around at sunset, the adhan swooping through the open car windows, we watched the community, who usually drive our taxis, clean our floors and serve our food, hang out and relax. 

The buildings are crumbling, you dodge chickens and fat (and skinny) alley cats, if you’re lucky you even stumble across a few rogue peacocks (just how they got there from the Zabeel Place is anyone’s guess!). 

An overwhelming sense of calm always washes over me when I spend time there.  It has a spirit which is palpable.  With the glittering skyscrapers of Sheikh Zayed twinkling in the sunset next to the corrugated iron low rises, you can’t help but feel that this is the real Dubai…love it.

I Heart Satwa

Forget Harvey Nichols, Satwa's where it's at!

After working for much of yesterday at a client event (never any need to work at the weekend, but at least it was for a lovely client) I spent a lovely few hours in one of my favourite places in Dubai: Satwa.  It's one of the original community areas in Dubai, long before Downtown was even a twinkle in HRH's eye...

As well as residential it's also commercial, with heaps of shops.  There's a standard joke in Dubai that if you need something and you can't find it in Satwa, it doesn't exist.  To prove how diverse the place is, this is what I got up to yesterday:

Bookshop
Books are expensive in Dubai, with a new release, even if in paperback, regularly costing ten quid or more. And with the rate that I read, that makes for an expensive hobby.  Enter the wonderful 'Book World' which is a second hand bookshop the size of a postage stamp, stuffed chockful of all sorts of fiction, non fictions, kids books, old magazines..you name it, it's in there.  And not only are the books a bargain, when you've read them, you can take them back, redeem half of what you paid for them, and swap them for new ones!  After a bit of chin scratching in the philosophy section (who am I kidding) I admitted defeat and snaffled up a couple of bonkbusters to take to Nepal. 3 books cost me approximately 1 quid.  Love it.

Tailors
Satwa is known for having lots of tailors, and the key is to know which one you want to visit. If you just pick one randomly, you may have a bad experience and end up looking less than fabulous.  I do know one such great tailor, but here's the rub: I haven't been for two years.  And it's down a tiny backstreet alley.  And Satwa is basically one giant backstreet alley. 

I followed my nose in the general direction I last remembered heading.  Call it perseverance, call it the universe, but it wasn't long before I stumbled, quite literally, across the tailor that I knew and loved.  I unloaded a bag of material which was bought two years ago (luckily I have great taste that transcends the years, ha ha) and in two weeks time  I will be the happy owner of one new shirt dress (copied from a Paul and Joe favourite) one new kimono top (vintage copy) and one new work shirt (single white femaled from VH...puffed sleeves, long cuffs, just perfect for work).

Kitchen Supply Shops
I have no idea why, but I just love to see piles of saucepans, Tupperware, and various metal kitchen implements that I have no idea how to use.  Then I love to question the store owners about what they are to be used for.  I can go on for hours like this, picking things up quizzically, and discussing them - me with my non existent Arabic and them with their limited English.  I didn't have much time to spare on this but I did discover that you can buy electrical frankincense burners.  Who knew?

Hardware Stores
No, I haven't taken leave of my senses, I need some shelves, and IKEA is just snoreville.  Much more fun to head into a treasure trove of a hardware store and ask for brackets instead.  And however cheap IKEA may be, they don't do brackets for 10 dirhams.  You  also don't gather a crowd as the only white, blonde, western woman striding up and down the (very cramped) aisles.  It was more of a shuffle, really.

Carpenters
Well brackets needs shelves, don't they!  This little store frontage, I suspect, was the tip of a very large wood iceberg, but I couldn't really see past the piles and piles of wood.  I wouldn't say that English was the strong language of the lovely owner but we somehow worked out how long and wide I wanted the wood to be.  And the colour (the easy bit).  Just five short minutes later the aforementioned lovely owner bought these over to the car for me (he looked aghast when I suggested I would stand and wait) and passed them to me through the car window. Two beautiful shelves for 50 dirhams (ten quid).

After that it was a pleasant twenty minutes with the boy's tailor, which involved discussions about material, stitching, design features, and consultation of numerous photos on the iphone.  After that it was a very pleasant few drinks in one of Dubai's oldest hotels (and one of my favourites) followed by a street dinner at Ravi's. 

I love Downtown, and all the glitz and glam of Dubai, btu this remains by favourite way to pass some time...