Out and About in Dubai

13 Things I Still Need For My Apartment

It’s been 5 months since I’ve relocated from New York to Dubai (7 months for my husband) and there are still major pieces of furniture and other house stuff that we don’t have either because we haven’t gotten around to buying it or we haven’t found anything remotely decent. Things such as:


1. Bed. We are still sleeping in the guest bedroom as we can’t seem to find any master bedroom furniture that we both like. Furniture stores in Dubai are crap. I miss Pottery Barn.

2. Full-length mirror. We have a small mirror in the bathrooms but I have to jump up and down to see if my shoes go with my outfit.

3. Dining table and chairs. Same reason as #1 - furniture stores in Dubai are crap. We eat on the couch or on the floor. I miss Crate and Barrel.

4. Blender. Been missing my margaritas… Will be sure to pick one up before the next girls’ night-in.

5. Matching stemware. We don’t even have 2 wine glasses that match. I’ve broken them all.

6. Dishwasher. Sadly, this is one thing that we will not be getting as there is no room for it in the kitchen. But I’d still like to have one.

7. Garbage can for the kitchen. Right now, I just hang shopping bags on a doorknob as a makeshift trash bin. I know, I’m a lazy butt.

8. Bathroom cabinet. There is absolutely no linen closet or medicine cabinet in either of our bathrooms. We have all our toiletries sprawled out on the (very) small counter space. Ikea has been no help. I miss Target and Bed Bath & Beyond.

9. Lamp shades. We have bare bulbs hanging from our ceilings. We finally bought some shades for the living room but are still missing nice shades for the bedrooms.

10. Broom. I’ve got a Swifter but it’s not very useful when I’m a klutz and break glassware on a weekly basis. Can never seem to remember to pick one up at the store.

11. Mouse pad. Sad to say, we haven’t had a mouse pad in years. We use scraps of paper or the Ikea catalog. I think the reason for not owning one goes along the lines of #10 - never remembering to pick one up at the store.

12. HDMI cable for the TV. I’m not shelling out 200 dirhams ($60!) on a cable that costs me $10 in the States! I’ll wait ’til the next visitor comes and brings me one. I miss Best Buy.

13. Welcome mat. Because every house should have one.


So that’s it! Hopefully the apartment will be complete before the next visitor gets here. Otherwise, I’ll have to add airbed to the list of things we’ll need!

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This past Saturday, DB and I met up with a co-worker of his to play squash. Well, they played squash, I don’t like racket sports so I just hit the trusty old treadmill. Unfortunately, I was hungry-hungry-hippo as I hadn’t had dinner the night before. Unless you consider 7 little dumplings dinner. I sure as hell don’t.

After an excruciating 3 mile run - I say excruciating because all I could think of was FOOD! - we went to have lunch by Jumeirah beach. Ah, and what a perfect afternoon it was for lunch by the beach. We sat in the shade and there was a light, refreshing breeze keeping us cool, and the lovely lapping of the waves to make you just sigh every few minutes.

But I was so starved out of my mind, I couldn’t enjoy anything until I had ordered a dozen oysters and a seafood platter that was to contain salmon, hammour, calamari, shrimp, and Omani lobster served with rice and vegetables (I know, it’s a lot of food, but I was REALLY hungry).

The food came all at once (not good) and while I tried to enjoy my oysters, we were attacked by house-flies to the point where we were using our hands to swap flies more than using them to work our utensils. And it didn’t help that I ordered seafood which flies seem particularly attracted to. I scarfed down my food so fast I hardly tasted it. I didn’t think it was that good anyway. (And a dozen oysters was too much - I never want to see another oyster again…at least until dinner.)

That’s one of the bad things about Dubai - the damn flies. It’s absolutely lovely to sit outside to enjoy the weather (before it gets unbearably hot) but try to eat outdoors - forget it. However, the good thing is that as soon as the sun goes down, the flies disappear. I don’t know why, but they just do. So it’s only breakfast and lunch that’s a problem.

Dinner outside can be absolute heaven.

Tags: dolce vita, food | 2 comments »

I went to Smiling BKK by Al Wasl road for some Thai food last week. The food was disgusting so don’t even think of going there unless you are a glutton for punishment or do not care about eating good food. Consider yourself warned.

I did however enjoy the Thai iced tea. It reminded me a little bit of Bubble Tea that I used to get in the Chinatowns of New York. So now I have a huge craving for taro Bubble Tea (in the image below, it’s the one on the far right).

Don’t know if I can find Bubble Tea here in Dubai - but I will try Karama where I found the Korean grocery and maybe even Deira where I found the two Chinese groceries. Wish me luck!

Plan B would be to order a Bubble Tea kit off of Amazon.com.

Tags: Uncategorized | 3 comments »

13 Things Banned / Illegal in Dubai

1. Porn

2. Sex Toys

3. Codeine

4. Poppy seeds (A Swiss national is serving a four-year jail term after three poppy seeds from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow airport were found on his clothes.)

5. Secret Dubai Diary (Etisalat customers cannot access the site but du customers still can)

6. Laser pens or laser emitting devices (huh?)

7. Oil paintings, books, magazines and sculptures that do not adhere to the religious and moral values of the country

8. Living in Sin

9. Man-Woman holding hands in public (but Man-Man is okay)

10. Employers locking up their employees passports (but still this practice continues unfortunately)

11. Gambling (you cannot place any bets at a horse race, BUT, you can play this game where you “predict” who will win and the person with the best “predictions” wins a prize…hmm…)

12. Skype (partially banned, actually, since only one Dubai ISP blocks it, the other does not…)

13. I’m not so sure if this is truly illegal or if it’s a matter of courtesy: I am not allowed to be naked in the ladies locker room of my gym (there are signs posted up)

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Last night over dinner, a friend alerted me to the story in the local paper about dead fish being found on the public beach by the Burj al Arab. Gulf News reported on this story yesterday and opened the article with “Dozens of beachgoers enjoyed a free seafood dinner on Monday.”

Lifeguards reported that people were running into the water and collecting the dead fish with their bare hands and that it took them 4 hours to clean up the mess. Photo from Gulf News below:

Now if I saw a slew of dead fish and squid on the beach, I would be very suspicious about how they got there. Note that there is a lot of construction and dredging around the beach where the dead things were found. So I’m thinking some kind of pollution or contamination from this activity.

But here’s what a representative from Dubai Municipality had to say:

“It may have been caused by an algae bloom - a rapid increase in the population of microscopic algae which produces fatal toxins in an aquatic system.

“Or perhaps the fish were rotten and discarded by fishermen unhappy with their appearance.”

Sounds like a red herring to me.

Tags: environment, wtf | no comments »

Last week, I got into a discussion (yet again) about bad driving in Dubai. It is inevitable that this topic will come up on any given night. Because bad driving is just that bad here.

So I was talking to a friend and I mentioned how Dubai doesn’t immediately punish bad drivers so the offenders repeat the offense over and over again. For example, if you are caught speeding by a speed camera, you get fined but (1) it’s not like they send you a ticket in the mail so how are you supposed to know that you got a ticket and (2) even if you did get a ticket in the mail, it’s not like you would (a) get points on your license b/c Dubai doesn’t have a point system or (b) charged interest for non-payment like in the States. Okay, on to point (3) which is that many people wouldn’t even know where to check for possible tickets they’ve received so they don’t even bother. (BTW, you can check for outstanding tickets at any RTA office or online here.)

As I continued on and on about how bad driving is encouraged here b/c it’s not punished, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I was a bad driver. I mean, I don’t honk at drivers to hurry up just as the light changes from red to green, but I certainly have been known to drive over the speed limit and I have never paid for parking at a parking-metered lot. Why? Because of the same reasons I outlined above. Let’s say I get a speeding ticket every day on the way to DB’s work. But because I have no idea that I received a ticket, I continue to drive over the speed limit.

As for the parking meters, I started out as a law-abiding denizen of Simcity, er I mean, Dubai, but the first couple of times I tried to put money in a meter, nothing happened. No acknowledgment that I had deposited money, no parking stub came out, no money got returned, nothing. So I went to another meter and put money in. Same nothing happened. So there I was faced with a dilemma - do I move my car out of a parking spot that took me FOREVER to find? Or do I just not pay? Obviously, I went for not paying and haven’t put any money into a parking meter since.

And now my story goes back to that fateful day last week when I said aloud, “Why should I pay for any stinking meter when they’re not going to ticket me anyway?”

And just my luck, I got a parking ticket that night. 150 dirhams. Ouch.

Tags: driving | 1 comment »