Reason Enough to Move to the States

I just LOVE this story. What's not to love?!

Product Placement

I'm not sure why this is news...hasn't it been going on for years? Back in my House of Pain days my toilet tissue client (oh, the glamour) had the bright idea of wanting their product to be stocked on the shelves of the convenience store in EastEnders. Always one to embrace looking for tortoiseshell paint, I tackled the challenge with relish, contacting product placement agencies to unearth costs and protocol.

The figures were mind-boggling - Peugeot paid millions to have their new estate car featured in the final chase sequence of Notting Hill......and the sum to have good old bog roll on the shelf behind Ian Beale etc.....20k GBP....PER MONTH!!!!

And that was 10 years ago! Don't get me wrong, I can see the benefits of brands sneaking their subliminal way into our consciousness via this route, but unless done cleverly and appropriately, you could well end up throwing good money after bad. Interesting, anyway.

Beach, beach, beach

Another weekend, another trip to beach club, cold drinks brought to the sun lounger, a mountain of celebrity magazines to get through, and great company. The day I am bored of this must really be the day to leave Dubai.

It's always the holiday Facebook updates that see people whipped into a frenzy: so and so is counting down to their holiday/packing for their holiday/on holiday having an amazing time/uploading 9 million photos from their holiday/gutted to be back from holiday/already wanting another holiday. I get to 'go on holiday' every weekend. And some evenings too during Ramadan...you can't beat an hour by the pool at 5 pm....

Restraint

The lovely Ms Harris popped over to Dubai this weekend from Oman. Well, I say 'popped over' but it's actually a 4.5 hour drive....anyway, always a pleasure to catch up. This was one of our more restrained weekends actually, what with it being Ramadan and all. No clubbing, no podium dancing, bin bogling, or dj booth storming. Still, there's always next month.....

Metro Fever!

It's official! The metro has opened! I make NO APOLOGY WHATSOEVER about the excited, nay, hysterical nature of this blog post. It's a monumental event, people!

So, as you'll probably know unless you've been living under a rock for the last 24 hours, last night was the launch of the Dubai metro. It set off on its inaugural journey at 9.09 pm on 09.09.09 - see what they did there?!

I was actually at an iftar with friends, and in between stuffing my face, chatting, drinking tea and playing cards (which for the record, I am terrible at - was I always that bad at card games? I digress...) we watched the live tv feed. Terrible in terms of professionalism, but a fascinating spectacle. Sheikh Mo was, of course, the star guest, and the pandemonium which follows him wherever he goes is so bizarre to watch.

The worst bits: terrible camera angles, translators, hour long speeches, a video which appeared to have been shot in the sixties...no lighting on the track so that you couldn't actually see the train leaving the station...

The best bits: Sheikh Mo having to buy a ticket to get on (no fare dodging mate!) and getting his glasses out of his dish dash, his lovely navy blue dish dash, his ticket being presented to him on a silver platter, views of the Dubai skyline from an overhead chopper, the stations - which look a-mazing.

Generally just the huge hoop-la and fuss was great to watch. Can't imagine HRH rocking up to Manchester and causing the same fuss when a new bitof Metrolink opens....

Today it's open to the public and we're now hotly debating when when when we can get on it. Full report to follow, natch.

Treats

You can buy most things in Dubai (if you're prepared to swallow the overly inflated prices) but there's still a few things which aren't that easy to get...tan in a can, for one, and some make-up brands, which, whilst not life or death, certainly make a girl's life easier. So it's always exciting when someone makes a trip back to the UK, when you can persuade them to bring back treats for you, or, even better, you can get all your treats delivered directly to their door so that they can avoid the shops...

Liberty, (and Liberty's mum) thanks for taking care of the perfume/tan in a can/make up and escorting it back for me. I promise it won't use up much of your 30kg Emirates luggage allowance!

Ah, Iftar

My first Iftar of Ramadan last night, at the gorgeous and very conveniently located Qamardeen Hotel (of wine and cheese night fame). They have a divine Italian restaurant in the basement which is where they host their Iftar.

For those outside the Middle East, Iftar is when you get to break your fast during Ramadan, and it takes place at sunset. It's hard to tell exactly when this is (6.32 pm tonight, I'm going for another one!) so the restaurant plays the call to prayer at the appropriate time and that's your signal to start troughing. We did sit for a short while after this, not wanting to be the typical 'Brits at a Buffet' so we weren't the first up, but we did nearly break our necks once we were up, doing a couple of full sweeps of the food!

After a first course of about 20 different salads and a main course of at least 5 different dishes (the best: fish in a cream and raisin sauce: sounds wrong but tasted oh so right) you'd really think that dessert would not be an option. I mean, I don't even have a Sweet tooth! Give me cheese over chocolate any day. So I'm not really sure why I saw fit to scoff not one, not two but three desserts (if you're interested: creme brulee, chocolate brownie and triple layered chocolate mousse).

I had managed to squeeze in 50 lengths of the pool before heading out, but the guilt did weigh heavily on me. Not enough to stop me polishing off three glasses of wine afterwards in a nearby bar. Whoops! And It's another Iftar tonight....well, it really would be rude not to embrace the culture/food of my adopted home!

Near Death Experience

Today, I cheated death on Dubai's roads. No, really. The driving is insane here: fact, and many's the time my heart has been in my mouth due to some freak's relentless tailgating, flashing, or just general reckless moves. But today was different.

So, we're heading out to a meeting with one of the office drivers, and whizzing along SZR, when for some reason the car in front of us starts braking suddenly. No big deal, cars do it all the time here. But it did it again, and again, to the point where the the windscreen was getting just a little too close to my head for comfort. Then it fell back, and came up behind us, flashing and beeping. Then when we tried to speed up and get away from what was clearly an escaped lunatic, it pulled alongside us - and terrifyingly - started to push our car into the central reservation.

I'm not exaggerating- it was pretty horrific. At this point I'm not happy - neither are my two colleagues ( a girl and a guy), not to mention our driver. We decide to pull across the highway (all six lanes) to the slow lane - mainly to get out of this guy's way. (And it always is a guy, isn't it??). But there was no escape, he carried on trying to ram us with his car. It's now like something out out of Grand Theft Auto, only minus the fun and plus a lot of screaming and shouting - all members of the car included. Eventually, we are completely run off the road by the other driver. yes, run off the road. lest we forget, this is a six lane highway, WITH NO HARD SHOULDER, where cars screech along at an average speed of, oh 100 MILES AN HOUR.

Call me old fashioned, but when cars pull over/get run off the road, no good can come off this (remember Kenneth Noye, people of the UK?) We all tried to persuade our driver to stay in the car, but he was having none of it. The other guy gets out of his car too, and they have what can only be described as a huge argument which deteriorates into an actual fight. AT THE SIDE OF A SIX LANE HIGHWAY. WITH NO HARD SHOULDER. I'm sorry to shout, but you're getting the picture? Oh, and it's all in arabic so we have no clue what is going on.

What to do? We roll the windows down and join in the shouting. I attempt to get out of the car but think better of it when a 4x4 screeches past my nose with a few millimetres to spare. Mark the fireman's words are ringing in my ears at this point: more accidents are caused on the roads by people stopping their cars than anything else. Gulp.

After what feels like an eternity but is actually about 3 minutes, we persuade our driver to get back into the car - the other guy is still well into the argument. He's a local. Which means that if the police were called, and he wanted to make an issue of the incident - depsite it being HIM who is deranged, it would most likely bedeemed out fault. Nice.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we made it away, in a cloud of dust. Seriously shaken by the whole thing. Dubai drivers: stop being such complete and utter deranged freaks!

This Modern World We Live In....

So here’s a thing that’s only happened to me since moving to Dubai. At least once a week, I get completely random friend requests on Facebook. Always from Arab guys. On the odd occasion they come through a mutual friend: which means that some people really do go trawling through other people’s friends…but a lot of the time they are completely random – how do they even find me?

This is my latest request:

I am Hamad from uae

My age is 32 years

Where r u from and where u r live ?

I see ur pic its very nice and u r so cute I like to be good friend with u if u dont mind .. try me :)Have a great day

I mean, the man makes a couple of good points ;), but seriously, call me old-fashioned, does he really expect a response? And who the hell thinks it’s acceptable to contact someone completely randomly like that? I can only surmise, that, as in the case of Mr Abu Dhabi (whose opening line was the classic: I have 57 cars) that this route has worked in the past. Women of Dubai: get a grip!

The Great British Weather

Living in a place with such fabulous weather means that my brain has completely adjusted to perpetual summertime. This meant that last year November crept up on me - in my brain it was still June - as without the dark nights, dark mornings, sleet/snow/hail that makes up a typical Manchester winter, it completely escaped my attention that winter was upon the UK. So it's no surprise that when Sian informed me that she'd had the central heating on this weekend, I nearly fell off my chair. I mean, it is September, but didn't the UK often bask in an Indian summer? Or am I so overwhelmed by heat, sunshine and blue skies (sorry!) that my brain has cancelled out all bad-weather-memories?! Uk: you have my sympathy. It's a steady 44 degrees here today....