Out and About in Dubai

Dubai Mall Aquarium

I’ve been to The Dubai Mall many times since it opened last year.  I didn’t think I would like it as it’s hyped as the world’s largest mall (based on total area) – blah blah blah.

But, it’s actually quite a nice mall.  I don’t go evenings nor weekends when it’s a bit packed but as a lady-of-leisure now (ha ha – I still get a kick out of that phrase) I go mid-day and mid-week and it’s a very pleasant experience.  At least it is more pleasant now that I’ve figured out its labyrinth of a parking garage.

When the mall first openened up, you could walk right up to the Aquarium without having to pay. Now it’s roped off and unless you fork over some dirhams, you must stand a few yards away.  The mall plays classical music over the speaker system and I remember my first visit being absolutely mesmerized by the fishies in the tank (my nose only inches away) listening to philharmonics and feeling like I was suspended in a Discovery Channel show.

I try to avoid looking at the Aquarium these days because as an avid scuba diver, I get this intense feeling of wanting to jump into the tank to say hello to all the little fishies (and huge sharks) and am always jealous when I see the other divers in there.  The mall offers a scuba discovery program where guests can pay to dive in the tank but I think it’s all wrong (for me, I mean) because it’s so artificial.  I’d rather dive in the real ocean.

In case you were wondering what world record the Aquarium holds…I’ll tell you!  It holds the Guiness World Record for World’s Largest Acrylic Pane. So there – another Dubai world record!

Besides the Aquarium, other water features in and around the mall include an indoor ice skating rink, this cool water fall with sculptures of freedivers, and one of the largest water fountains in the world – the Dubai Fountain - which is 25% larger than the Bellagio’s in Vegas.  I haven’t seen it myself yet – so no photo, sorry.

Water Fall

On my last trip to the mall, I also saw this really cool water feature – a drinking fountain!  These little stainless steel guys below are actually quite rare in Dubai.  It could possibly go down the Guiness World Record books as the only drinking fountains in a Dubai mall (joke).  I don’t know why, but there is quite a stigma here about drinking tap water.  I drink it at home and coming from a city with the best drinking tap water in the world I have of course tried to order tap water in a restaurant but I just get these awkward or blank stares so I’ve given up.

Looking at the drinking fountains I don’t think anyone has ever used it so I thought I’d be the first.  Except I stupidly chose the one on the left and if you look closely at the photo…the spout was pointed directly at me – so you can imagine I got a little bit wet.

Tags: shopping, tourist | no comments »

So all I wanted was rice noodles.  Quarter-inch thick rice noodles – to be exact.  Last time I bought them in Carrefour and saw a whole boxful in the Al Maya market just downstairs from my apartment.  Should be as easy as buying oh, rice perhaps?

Well, I don’t know what’s worse.  Driving to 5 different grocery stores in far reaching parts of Dubai and not finding any rice noodles at all…….Or going to the Waitrose by my house, and almost (almost!) scoring rice noodles only to notice that instead of plain…they sold only CARROT, SPINACH, or PUMPKIN flavor. WTF!?!

I kid you not.  You can see the proof for youself in the photo.  I think at this point I started hysterically laughing/crying and my husband had to drag me out of the store to avoid any potential embarrasment to himself.

Tags: food, wtf | 3 comments »

Cafe on JBR Walk

Being a New Yorker, I’m always amazed at how safe and relatively crime-free Dubai is in comparison. The picture above was taken in my neighboorhodd (JBR Walk) during Ramadan. It’s mid-day but since no food or drink can be consumed during the month of Ramadan, almsot all restaurants are closed until sunset.

Notice how none of the chairs, tables, fans, nor umbrellas are bolted down nor chained together in any way.  In NYC, these pieces of furniture would have been stolen overnight.  And the culprits aren’t necessarily hardened criminals either.  Let’s just say it’s not uncommon to walk into a friend’s apartment in NYC and see pieces of furniture that were “left out” on the street.

Tags: random | 3 comments »

My mom makes a killer Vietnamese Sweet and Sour Soup. It’s pretty much restaurant quality. Actually, it’s better than restaurant quality. She gave me the recipe a few years a go and I like to make it every once in a while because it’s mm-mm good. DB’s not a big soup person so he will usually have one small bowl while I finish off the rest of the pot by myself.

I made a small pot today to use up some of the recao (“nice-smelling-herb” or “sawtooth herb” or whatever it’s called) I bought at Sunflower the Thai market yesterday.  Slurping gooooood!

A while back, I was flipping through these two Vietnamese cookbooks and came upon their versions of this soup. Both recipes in each book called for the addition of tamarind pulp. So I thought I’d buy some tamarind and try it out. Another recipe also called for some lemongrass. I had some lemongrass in the freezer, so I tried throwing that in the pot too.

(Shaking head) I should never have messed with THE MOM RECIPE. Why did I have to spoil a good thing? I was hoping I could make what was great even greater but the soup that came out of the lemon grass and tamarind experiment not only tasted all wrong but made me sick. Real sick, if you know what I mean.

Tags: food | 1 comment »

First let me say that I managed to figure out my photo uploading issued with Wordpress.  Turns out that I have neglected upgrading to the new version for months and months now and after upgrading to the lates WP version, everything is working again.  Well…sort of.  I have never been able to upload via Firefox so only IE works. 

Yesterday I had my 6th prenatal visit at American Hospital so I thought I’d try to find the nearby Kim’s mart that is on my map of Dubai Asian Grocery Stores and also to pick up some Thai basil from Sunflower foodmart for a Vietnamese dish that I’m cooking up this weekend.

So I drove out of American Hospital towards Lamcy and followed my map to find this Kim’s mart.  I drove and drove around in circles trying the other nearby streets as well.  No luck!  If anyone has any idea where this market is, please be so kind as to let me know.  I have also heard of something called Dean’s Fuji-something Japanese mart.  Any leads on this would be great as well!

I’ve been to Sunflower (the Thai store) in Karama twice now so can pretty much find it without my map.  However, I haven’t been able to drive myself directly in front of the store.  I always end up on a one-way loop about two blocks away – it’s easier for me to just park and walk the two blocks than to figure out from my map how to loop around again.  I love the fact that the streets of Karama are windy-bendy but I also hate it for the same reason.  If you know where to go, it’s all peachy-keen but if you don’t, then it’s a f@*%ing nightmare.

Anyway, I got to the store around 4:30pm as I remember getting there once between 1 and 4pm and it was closed.  They seemed to have a new shipment that just arrived from Thailand or something because there were 10 or so styrofoam ice boxes in the back area with loads of Asian goodies for making all sorts of yummy dishes!

In addition to Thai basil, I bought some Asian cilantro (I don’t know what it’s really called but in Puerto Rico it’s called “recao” and it’s great for spaghetti bolegnese and in Vietnamese, my mom calls it something that translates to “nice-smelling-herb” and I’ve seen it labeled as “sawtooth herb” in some cookbooks.  Anyway, we use it for Vietnamese Sweet and Sour Soup - yum yum yum!  Here’s what it looks like:

Finally, I also bought a large taro because I needed it for my Vietnamese spring rolls.  At least I hope it’s taro because it looks different from what I thought it should look like.  I guess I’ll find out tomorrow when I cut into the thing! Sadly, I did not find any sugarcane (normally sold in a can) so I guess making Vietnames grilled shrimp on sugarcane is out.

Sunflower also has a bunch of other things I might find useful in the future such as banana leaves, pandan leaves, lots of Asian veggies, spices, etc.  I also liked the fact that most of the unidentifiable stuff (at least to me) was labeled in English.

After Karama, I had an hour to kill before meeting up with my husband so I decided to see if I could find the Korean foodmart in Al Barsha called “1004 Mart” which is also on my map (which I forgot to print out and bring with me) so after driving around in circles a bit I finally found it (see picture of store front above).

The store stocks mostly Korean items similar to the Hanarum and Safestway one but the items are labeled in English which is a big help since I don’t read Korean and don’t know what 99.9% of the stuff is.  Maybe after my Vietnamese supper party I’ll do a Korean one?

Tags: food | 5 comments »

Okay, I swear I meant to post the below yesterday! But for some reason my picture upload function wasn’t working on Wordpress and I tried 2 laptops, Firefox, IE, Chrome but nothing seems to work! When I click the upload button, there is supposed to be another window that pops up for me to choose my photos but it’s not happening. Anyway, then I forgot to post and here I am today!  (If you find pictures below, that means I’ve fixed the problem.)

Since I woke up today I have been sitting in front of my laptop for the last hour trying to figure out what would be my first post after yesterday’s crazy idea of committing to posting EVERY SINGLE DAY until my delivery date of mid-December.

There is no dearth of information in my head but for some reason I can’t seem to get it out into words.  So I’m just here typing away to keep the fingers moving.

What can I write about…hm….Aha!

Here is something I found in my drafts section that I started in late July and never got around to finishing.  Might as well kill two birds with one stone by using it for inspiration today and cleaning out my draft folder at the same time:

THERE GOES THE FIGURE. At 16 weeks pregnant, I am finally “showing” with a tiny little baby bump.  I can still fit into my pants but my stomach now looks like I perpetually come home from all-day Dubai-style brunch (I wish!).   However, I’m in that in-between stage that strangers would probably thing – “God she should lose some weight.”

Standing, I could probably still suck it in to avoid the odd stares.  But seated, my stomach looks like tiered rolls of fat. Anyone seeing me at the gym having breakfast would probably think inwardly that I should put down that fake-sausage and egg non-mcmuffin and get back on the treadmill.  Because you see, I don’t have that perfectly rounded pregnancy stomach just yet.

WEIGHT GAIN. I am also having trouble gaining weight.  I was underweight to begin with and aiming to gain about 25-30 pounds.  According to guidelines, in my second trimester I should gain 1 pound each week.  I thought that would be easy because pre-pregnancy I would eat for two AND finish DB’s leftovers.  I thought about food all-the-time!  I woke up wondering what I would prepare for dinner.  For example, I could spend hours on end looking for the perfect bulgogi recipe and driving to 3 different markets as well as Karama to get the perfect ingredients.

But now?  Although I have had no morning sickness at all, food no longer interests me.  I surmise that the reason for this can be one of two things.  One – I could chaulk it up to baby hormones.  Or Two – I subcounsciously do not want this baby and therefore not eating as a result.  I’m going to go with reason # 1.

20 weeks pregnant

Now back to the present day.  This week I am 30 weeks pregnant (only 10 more to go!!).  I kind of feel bad about what I wrote in the last paragraph above about not wanting the baby.  Now that the baby is moving and rolling around in my tummy like ALL THE TIME, I feel quite bonded to it/him and am very much looking forward to meeting my (gulp) son in December.  “Son.”  I still think that word and concept is so weird to voice out loud.  I’m going to have a “son”.  Son Son Son.  Weird.

24 weeks pregnant

My appetite is slowly coming back I think.  Although yesterday all I ate was a small bowl of cereal for breakfast, a chocolate brownie with one scoop of ice cream for lunch, and a big bowl of udon noodle soup with chile beef for dinner.  Now the brownie with ice cream thing I blame on the baby because I have had it for lunch FOUR DAYS IN A ROW.  Yeah, you read that right.  I have something like that maybe four times a year so FOUR DAYS IN A ROW???

28 weeks pregnant

Weight gain to date – 10 lbs since being pregnant.

 

Tags: baby, pregnancy | 2 comments »

So it’s been more than one month since I’ve returned to Dubai after summer vacation spent in NYC, Chicago, France, and Switzerland.  And what have I got to show for it?

Nada.

The baby room is still completely empty (well, we did buy a rug for it…but then decided to keep it for ourselves so moved it into the master bedroom), I still haven’t sorted out my mountain of receipts that need to be filed, trashed or excel-spreadsheeted, I haven’t started on any of the 3 knitting projects that I my mother-in-law bought very nice expensive yarn (or “wool” as they call it in the UK) for, nor have I caught up on my blogging as I promised myself I would do, nor have I completed my family tree that I half-assed started on heritage.com. AND, I only went to the gym ONCE last week.

I’m such a SLACKER!

I’m convinced it’s the unemployment.  After all, if an object in motion stays in motion, then an object not in motion…just ends up on the couch?

So in an effort to jolt myself out of this rut, I am going to try and blog EVERY SINGLE DAY until my delivery date of December 17th.  At least, I’ll try.

Whew…here goes…

Tags: baby, random | 1 comment »