Sound Off

Photo: Completely adorable Taylor.

I am getting crotchety in my old age.

I use to like young children, especially when they were mine. (Honestly, were any two children more adorable than Alec and Taylor?)

Now I find that young children just drive me crazy.

They have lots of little kids in Abu Dhabi. The government encourages large families and locals all seem to have at least five kids. These huge families are always clogging up the aisles at Carrefour when I am in a hurry. (I warned you I was getting crotchety.)

Parents here are much more lax about their little ones’ activities in public. While I don’t approve of American parents whacking their kids at Wal-mart (or anywhere else), I am appalled to find that local parents just let their children holler. Even in movie theaters.

For a culture that often keeps young adults firmly under their parent’s control, they seem to have a surprising laisse-faire approach to children. At the mall, it isn’t unusually to see a bunch of siblings, all under age 10, playing around some fountain with no adult supervision.

Today, when I went to the phone company office to pay my bill, I noticed they had posted a sign that said, “No unaccompanied children.” The phone company office has a problem with unaccompanied children?

But most amazing to me was seeing a baby in a stroller left outside a shop. I suppose the mom was inside. While I appreciate the value of living someplace this safe, as an American, it just feels odd.

One Western mom was upset by the local family on her floor because their kids played noisily until midnight. The local mom, however, complained that the expat children were making entirely too much noise every afternoon, when her kids were trying to sleep!

Even among Americans we can’t agree on what’s appropriate behavior for children. (Why else do some Americans think it’s okay to take their rowdy children to nice restaurants? It’s not!) So it’s not surprising that different cultures have different child rearing philosophies. And I once again remind myself, that I am the foreigner here. Locals set the acceptable standards, and I will just have to add “earplugs” to my shopping list.

Paleface

I decided to treat myself to a manicure ($8) at the Zen-like nail salon in the mall. I felt very pampered as I reclined on pillows in the plantation chair while a young Philipino woman massaged my hands. She exclaimed over my fair skin.

She wanted to know my "beauty secret" for keeping my skin so white. I had forgotten how prized my Scarlett O’Hara-like skin tone is with many Asian women.

I willingly shared my secret of always using sunscreen and limiting my sun exposure, a strategy I developed decades ago out of fear of skin cancer. She was probably disappointed I didn’t name one of the many skin whitening products sold here.

“You know,” I said, “Women in the U.S. WANT darker skin. They go to salons to have color sprayed on.”

She looked at me doubtfully and tactfully changed the subject. “Madam, how old are you?”

What constitutes too personal of a question varies a great deal from culture to culture. For example, in some places asking about someone’s family is taboo, but asking how much money they make is okay.

“I’m 49,” I offered.

“My mother is 38. She looks older than you,” she said. Her mother probably had a much harder life than I, who had been blessed with easy work, good genetics and ready access to Oil of Olay.

I always longed to be tanned. But I had consoled myself with the fact that staying out of the sun meant less skin damage. And now I find that in the Middle East, my natural pasty look is considered posh. Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder.

Photo by Alec Perkins: Who is that masked woman. I cover up in Kiev in March to protect myself from the
cold, not the sun.

Food For Thought

My Oscar Mayer bacon comes with a warning label: May contain pork products.

As I live in a Muslim country, pork and alcohol are not readily available. Non-Muslims can buy alcohol in special stores at high prices. But you need a license. Not just to buy alcohol, but to drink it.

Most stores don’t stock pork. I bought my bacon at one of the few groceries in town that cater to expats. These stores sell expensive pork products which are segregated away from everything else in a separate room.

I understand why frozen pepperoni pizzas and cans of Chef-Boyardi are in there. But I also found Pop Tarts and marshmallows which really makes me wonder what Kellogg’s is throwing in these things.

Grocery stores here have a wonderful selection of products from Asia, Europe and America. It is especially fun to shop for fruits and vegetables because the country of origin is listed on the signs. It’s like shopping in the U.N. of produce. On my last trip to the grocery store, I bought green beans from Egypt and red grapes from the U.S.

With choices like these, who needs Pop Tarts?

Perspectives on Arabic

I am currently taking a calligraphy course twice a week. It’s called Arabic.

I thought Arabic was going to be a language course. But the first 20 lessons deal with writing the alphabet, a bunch of letters with nary a straight line.

And each letter has three different forms, depending on what letter it follows and where it falls within the word.

Numbers are tricky only in that they are written left to right, while everything else is written right to left. And just because we use Arabic numbers, doesn’t mean they use them in Arabic. After we stole their numbers, they took some other numbers from Asia which are in use today.

Arranging to take Arabic was kind of a problem. My husband’s company contracts with a language services provider out of England. I was astounded when they emailed me they couldn’t find me a suitable teacher and I should just check back with them in a few months.

They can’t find a teacher? Where did they look? I LIVE in the Middle East where Arabic is the local language.

But I emailed back, “That’s okay. I’ll just ask my husband’s company to find someone else to handle this.”

This usually gets action. While I am just one student, their contract is with my husband’s huge multi-national corporation. Did they realize how much money their company spends to land such deals? Apparently not, as they didn’t bother to respond.

So I forwarded the emails to our company expat services coordinator along with a request to find a language instruction provider who could actually PROVIDE language instruction.

Suddenly my cellphone began to ring with progress reports from the language contractor on their efforts to get me an Arabic teacher. They lined someone up within a week.

My teacher then failed to show. When she called a few days later to reschedule, I told her I was not pleased to be stood up but I didn’t email any complaints.

At our first lesson, she apologized in person and told me she had been distracted by making arrangements for her husband to get to Lebanon, which was being bombed, to evacuate their teenage children!

Thankfully, her family is safe now. But it's a reminder to me as I practice my swooping Arabic letters that I should try to keep my settling-in problems in perspective.

I'm A Little Teapot

I am not an artsy-crafsty kind of person.

It’s not that I lack creativity. In fact, that’s pretty much the ONE area in which I excel. I am just a bit deficient in the hand-eye coordination department. And, oh yes; I don’t have ANY spacial visualization abilities.

This really has been more of a problem for others than for me. For example, my seventh grade art teacher felt compelled to create a two-tiered grading system just for me. (Ideas A+, Execution C-).

As a young copywriter, I was partnered with art directors. They may have begun by shaking their heads over my rudimentary sketches, but once they understood the idea I was trying to convey, they quickly became fans.

Crafts have never appealed to me. Besides being hampered by my lack of skills, I find activities like scrap booking, quilting and mossaicing unbelievably tedious.

That’s why I couldn’t believe it yesterday when circumstances found me painting ceramic pottery. It started innocently enough. I had walked over to Café Ceramique, where the American Women’s Network was having a coffee, according to my meticulously kept calendar.

However, once inside, I was greeted by women from the Abu Dhabi Ladies who were there to paint pottery. “Nancy,” one woman said. “It’s nice to see you. I thought you weren’t coming.”

Oh, no. I had obviously gotten my expat women groups confused. But at that point, I couldn’t say, “Oh, this is stupid activity. I’m not joining in.” So I hurriedly chose a small teapot to deface and joined the group. I had arrived late so I got a quick briefing from a staff member on how the process worked.

First, you sponge off your item. Then you choose up to five colors which you apply in one to three coats.

While the other 20 women were busy painting fishes and camels and palm trees on their chosen ceramics, I wisely opted just to do big swatches of color. I didn’t want anything too precise and they ended up looking a little like shark’s teeth. Really, I have little control of what happens when handed a brush.

After I’d been there over an hour, I got up to find the Ladies Room. There, in the back was the American group I had meant to meet! In ALL of Abu Dhabi, two different expat women’s groups chose the same venue and the same time.

The six of them had finished their coffees (no one was painting) and they were leaving. I stopped and introduced myself before returning to my hated teapot.

I finished it up by outlining everything with contrasting dots to hide the overlapping colors. I was finally able to pay and escape, although I am supposed to come back next week when they’ve finished firing it.

The staff member who briefed me looked at my completed teapot. She said, “This is your first time? That’s a really good design.” Some things never change. Idea: A+, Execution C-.

Pepsi-Cola Embassy

Photo: New resident Taylor relaxes with a refreshing lime drink.

When Taylor got his residency visa, Larry’s office pointed out that Taylor was now out of empty passport pages.

Getting new pages is a high priority item. If Taylor doesn’t have blank pages, he can’t get exit and entrance stamps. That means he is unable to leave U.A.E. (or get into any other country) in case of an emergency.

American citizens can get blank pages added to their passports for free at the U.S. Embassy. As there are no addresses here, I looked up the American Embassy on my new map of Abu Dhabi. It wasn’t too far away and I gave the taxi driver directions. When we arrived at the spot on the map, we saw only a deserted compound.

“This isn’t the American embassy,” I said in dismay. We really needed those pages added. The taxi driver, who spoke little English, said, “American Embassy… Pepsi-Cola Embassy, okay?”

“Okay,” I replied with resignation. “Take us to the Pepsi-Cola Embassy.” The driver drove for about 10 minutes until I noticed an Embassy District sign. A little way further, I spied a Pepsi Cola bottling plant. The area behind the plant had a huge gray bomb shelter-looking building with the seal of the United States. It was the American Embassy.

I paid the taxi driver and included a big tip (2 dirhams, about 80 cents) on his $2 fare. While I don’t make a habit of relying on the kindness of strangers, sometimes it works out okay.

La-dee-frickin'-da

My ships have come in, literally. Our belongings from Moscow are here. The moving company didn't do too badly.

My crystal sugar bowl broke. Both the vacuum cleaner and our phones committed hari kari. The only real shocker was the fact that two of our leather kitchen chairs warped. I can't even imagine how that happened.

But the biggest surprise was how much stuff we had crammed into our 160 sq. meter apartment. Even though we have double the space here, I don’t seem to have anywhere to put anything.

Maybe life on board caused all my stuff to swell, like a cruisegoer making several trips to the buffet!

Anyway, now we have our furniture, our rooms don’t echo anymore. Larry always knew when I was calling from the flat as he could hear the difference. The only room that now echoes is our living room, which Larry refers to as “The North 40.”

It was the maid's room, however, that provided the most controversy. While the expansive villas in the suburbs have “staff quarters,” our city apartment has only with only one room fo the help. Apparently, city maids don’t need much space or even a window according to the builder, although they do get a tiny ensuite bathroom.

We had earmarked this as a future foosball room. We’ve been looking for about two years for an industrial strength foosball table Larry thought could withstand aggressive Perkins play. We haven't found anything yet.

But after moving in, I decided testosterone was out. Estrogen was in! I moved our two Ikea freestanding closets into that space and appropriated it as my dressing room.

“Are you such a princess that you need a special room to dress?” Taylor asked incredulously. “Should we put a little star on the door with your name on it?”

So we now referred to it as the “La-dee-frickin’-da” room. Even though it really functions as walk-in closet, I like to privately think of it as My Princess Room.

Photo: Taylor and Alec play tennis in the North 40.

Tea for $250

The Burj Al-Arab is the iconic hotel in Dubai, built to resemble a sail. At over 1,000 feet tall, it is only 16% smaller than the Empire State Building.

It sits on its own little island, connected to Dubai by a private road. And when I mean private, I mean private. They have two guard stations to keep the merely curious out.

When they first opened in 1999, I heard they use to let the tourists in to have a look at $100 a peak. I guess they decided that was too crass so now the only way to get passed all that security is with a prior reservation.

The cheapest way in is a reservation for tea, which costs an astounding $60 per person. But once inside, you had full run of the hotel. And we took full advantage of that.

After doubling verifying our name was on the list, the guards retracted the concrete barrier and we were able to drive onto the island. Once inside the hotel, we were distracted by the great water features which included two fish tanks that rose from the bottom of each escalator to the top. In between was a wonderful fountain.

Unfortunately, that was the only cool things about the decour, which reminded me of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. The floors were done in bright blue and bright yellow and there was fakey gold everywhere.

I don’t understand what the owners were thinking. You lucked out and got handed a stunning building. Why would you then hire a Las Vegas-wannabe interior designer to screw it up? It’s like ordering a Vera Wang wedding gown and then sewing garish plastic beads all over it.

I wasn’t impressed with the tea either. For one thing, your $60 tea includes NO TEA. That was an extra $11 per person for regular tea and $15 for the special teas or for ONE cup of coffee. (No free refills.) Your $60 got you finger sandwiches with gourmet ingredients like shrimp and fresh rosemary.

While it was fun to eat itty-bitty sandwiches with no crusts as we trashed the interior design, I still was put off by the service. The table next to us which came in later ate their sandwiches and then were served fresh scones. When those were finished, they were served itty bitty pastries, and when those were gone, they had their sweets.

In the meantime, we are still sitting there with the dregs of our sandwiches which I finally had to ask them to clear away. After neglecting us for well over an hour, the staff suddenly realized they were running out of time for tea and they brought ALL three final courses at once!

We liked the scones. It’s kind of hard to screw those up, but everything else was pretty forgettable. We decided to get our money’s worth by exploring the rest of the place and took the express elevator to the Skyview Bar. This is a glass elevator, speeding up 28 stories looking out entirely over the ocean.

The bar is cantilevered near the top of the building and it’s feels like you are floating in space. Larry asked for a quick look and they genially let us wander through an empty section.

The interior had lots of computer lights flashing on and off, reminding me of the Wayback Machine in Old Bullwinkle cartoons. “Beam me up, Scotty,” Alec quipped.

It was fun, but we won't be back.

Scoreboard

Photo: The beach outside our bungalo at the Maldives.

We came home from our dream vacation and moved directly into our new flat. We soon discovered the following items didn’t work:

Washing machine
Drying machine
Lights in three bedrooms
Hot water heater in the guest bathroom
Oven hood
The oven

Additionally, we also didn’t have:

Internet
TV
Phone line
Microwave
Outlets for any of our six bathrooms
Curtains for half the apartment

We also hadn't received our sea shipment. So we were sleeping on air mattresses and the only place for most of our worldly possessions was the floor.

Unlike the Maldives, there was no turndown service with fresh flowers for my bed. There was no pool guy standing ready to fluff my lounge chair cushion, spread out my fresh towel and summon the barman for my fresh limeade.

In other words, it was back to real life. And everything on my list was a little drama involving its own cast of characters, money and days to resolve.

Take, for example, the oven that didn’t work. We suspected that a lack of gas might be our problem.

I began by phoning the building superintendent, who never bothered to answer his cellphone. Not to be put off, I SMSed him: Problem with gas in my flat.

That got his attention. Ten minutes after my SMS, he rang my doorbell. He took one look at our gas connection and told us we needed to pay the gas company to connect us. (We did? Nobody told us.) He provided me the number.

The gas company guy turned up the next day. We handed him cash and he turned our gas supply on. Now that we had gas, we discovered the oven STILL didn’t work as it had never been connected to the gas supply.

That was also remedied. While the oven is now operational, we are still figuring out how to use it. For one thing, there’s no temperature guide. There is a knob with a series of dots. We have to figure out which dot represents which temperature.

And the oven was a synch compared to the Cable TV Saga where I signed a Showtime agreement. I thought I was dealing with Showtime, but I was wrong. Showtime has a myriad of companies who install and service Showtime and the guy I chose was not the one authorized by our building management. When he came to install our system, they wouldn’t let him in the building.

I think I hear the Maldives calling my name…

Photos above: More pictures of our Maldives vacation, which are much more fun than photos of the disarray in our apartment.

Badgered

Photo: Taylor and Alec do it all at Kurumba.

If they gave out merit badges for activities, our family would have certainly earned one. (You know, something labeled “I did it all at Kurumba!” ‘cause we sure did.)

We would have earned the Ping-Pong Badge, the Tennis Badge, the Snorkeling Badge, the Tanning by the Pool Badge and the Every Night at the Buffet Badge.

The resort had seven restaurants, but our half fare deal included ONLY the main nightly buffet. Lucky for us, every night had a theme were they brought in food from the other restaurants and often served them in different venues. We arrived for Arabian night and then had Maldive Night served on the deck, Italian night, and finished up with Seafood Night served on the beach where we earned our Ice Cream Sundae Eating Badge.

The most fun for me, however, was SCUBA diving. While the one day Explore Scuba course was expensive, it seemed like a good idea to actually try out this activity before taking a bunch of classes to get certified.

We attended a couple of hours of training, where I panicked because I absolutely couldn’t get my face mask to fill up part way with water. Luckily, this is NOT a skill set I needed. The only reason the teacher had us do this was so we could practice cleaning the mask of water below the surface and I had no problem blowing the water OUT.

I was a little intimidating by all the high-tech equipment. But in fact, my biggest issue with the equipment turned out to be how heavy it was on my back. And after years of dieting, I was told I wasn’t HEAVY enough and we all had to wear heavy weights around our waists.

That afternoon, they took us out to the open water on a boat. On the way, they gave us some giant wristwatch thing but I am not sure what it did. It didn’t really matter as the instructor had to stay with the four of us at all times.

With 70 pounds of equipment, I took a giant step with my flippered feet out into the ocean. We descended about 30 feet into this world that is so alien, you have to wear all this special equipment just to keep you alive. I thought, “This is how astronauts must feel.”

The water was clear and suddenly I saw a flying saucer approaching me. It was about 12 feet in diameter. I exclaimed in surprise, which is difficult with a breathing regulator in your mouth. Then the flying saucer gently veered away from me. This was a manna ray. We saw plenty of coral and other tropical fish, but it was that VW bus-sized creature that made the biggest impact.

Of all the exciting places we’ve been, under the sea is one place we’ll want to revisit soon.