You Are Here

Stating the Obvious at the Dubai Mall. Of course you are here, or you wouldn’t be reading the sign.

I had a request to occasionally pontificate on the food scene here in the UAE and thought it an excellent idea. What better way to start this series but to visit the local Carrefour supermarket and see what is available for those lucky enough to have time outside of work to actually prepare their own meals.

Coincidentally, my wife B just joined me here in Abu Dhabi and today I took her on a mini tour of the city.  I say “mini” because we thought we’d be healthy and walk the city but heat and humidity quickly saw us dashing to the air conditioned sanctuary of the Marina Mall via air conditioned taxi and to the multiple football field sized supermarket on the basement level. Before she arrived, I only ventured into Carrefour to purchase a top-up card for my mobile phone, as the thought of actually purchasing individual ingredients and cooking a meal myself is as appealing to me as watching paint dry. However, with her as my tour guide, this strange and fascinating labyrinth of culinary building blocks was actually very entertaining.

Food Galore

Everything and anything you could ever imagine putting into your stomach is here on display. In addition to all the staple foods you and I are accustomed to seeing, there are foods from many other countries for sale that I did not recognize.  I thought I knew my vegetables, but with much of the produce having been imported from neighboring Middle Eastern countries, there were many alien looking, oddly colored, round and obscene shaped produce items for sale with names I could not pronounce sitting next to the familiar and comforting tomatoes and onions I tended to gravitate toward.

B became very excited at the spice section with open buckets of multi colored powders and grains on display, for sale by weight and again with names I did not recognize. We jotted down the unfamiliar names and intend to look them up on the internet when we return to our room.

Then we realized that our amazement at the wide selection of food items was probably more a reflection of our past ten years living in Portugal where one stop shopping is an oxymoron and variety is just the name of a magazine. We became accustomed to doing without many food items as the Portuguese cuisine is, although delicious, very narrow and limited.

So take this article with a grain of salt (Carrefour has something called Lemon Salt in the spices section – never heard of that) as we are probably experiencing culture shock more than anything and I apologize for the lack of pictures for this article. The security guard in the one photo I do have came up to me immediately after I took the shot and told me no photographs allowed in the supermarket. What? Next time I’ll use the camera in my cell phone and make it look like I’m texting a message, which at any one time in the UAE, half of the population is doing anyway.

This coming Friday I am going to participate in one of the most popular expat activities this country has to offer, the visa run. At first you may think I’m talking about an organized group running event down the Cornish of Abu Dhabi, the entry fees of which might go to some worthy charity. But this is not an aerobic sports run, it’s even more exciting than that.

Visa Stamps

You see, when you arrive in the UAE, you get a little stamp in your passport that allows you to stay in the country for 30 days and in some circumstances, up to 60 days. This is usually plenty of time for most tourists to come, enjoy a little vacation time and go home with a minimum of paperwork to be legal staying here.

If you come here to work, your company gives you a work visa which then allows you to apply for residency, then eliminating the need for the border stamps. These are things that aren’t necessarily possible to do in 30 days. Having spent 10 years in Portugal and seen first hand how countries wrapped up in endless red tape operate, I seriously doubted that this can be accomplished in several months. My suspicions were confirmed shortly after starting work as most of my colleagues have spent up to a year getting these two critical documents in hand.

Running Man

So what happens as your 30 day tourist stamp comes close to expiring? The Visa run! To remain legal in the country, you have to leave the country and then return. That means crossing the border, then turning around and coming back, gaining a new 30 day stamp in your passport, or flying out to some other country, turning around and coming back into the UAE. This event is practiced every day by hundreds of expats waiting for their work documents to come through.

Great, I say. A chance to get away for the weekend to some nearby culturally significant tourist destination. But every 30 days? For possibly an entire year?

Welcome to the Visa run racket. A million dollar plus industry that has created relatively cheap turnaround airline flights to keep you legal in this country every 30 days. You fly out and back into the UAE in just one day, get your stamp and go back to work the next day.

I chose to fly to Oman this Friday, my day off, so I won’t miss work. Trouble is that the flight leaves at 3AM and I get back to Dubai 10 AM. I don’t think there will be much to do in the Muskat airport when I land at 4AM. What a waste of time and an entire day.

Original article here.

Mariam Yammahi has three children. Two have genetic abnormalities.  “I would never allow my child to marry a first cousin,” she says. “Not after what has happened to me.”

When Cousins Marry

Mrs Yammahi, 26, is from a traditional family in Fujairah. Eight years ago, she and her prospective husband, her first cousin, were screened for the most common genetic diseases at the Thalassaemia Centre in Dubai.

Her first son, Abdulaziz, now seven, was born with a condition that remains unnamed. Among his ailments are an enlarged head with dangerous water retention. He also has congenital heart disease and had to have surgery for a hole in his heart. He cannot walk and his speech is only just developing.

Although she expected further complications with her second child, she was born healthy and is now five. It was her youngest, Sara, now three, who would be born with the same condition as her brother. She is deaf and refuses to use a hearing aid, which has resulted in impaired speech.

The children of Mrs Yammahi’s second cousin have the same condition, as do three of Mrs Yammahi’s cousins. It is probably no coincidence that they all married cousins.

The tradition, she says, is more common in more rural areas, such as Fujairah, and her new home, Al Ain, where she moved to study computer engineering at UAE University.

No all traditions, even legal ones here, are necessarily good ones.

Al Bidyah Mosque

On my trek to the east coast of the UAE a few weeks ago with my friend Richard, we stopped by the Al Bidyah Mosque near Fujairah. This is the oldest known mosque on the Arabian peninsula and dates back to the early 1400′s. It’s architecture is unique as it consists of four pointed domes and is still in use as you can see by the photos.

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No shoes allowed.

We happened to arrive at prayer time and weren’t sure if the mosque isn’t open to the public outside prayer time or not. Needless to say we did not go in. There is a small castle above the mosque from where I took the last photograph of the tower below.

Tower above Al Bidyah Mosque

I named this bull Mr. T.

Who says there’s nothing to to on a Friday afternoon in the UAE? I was cruising the east coast of the UAE with my friend Richard about two weeks ago when we came across what seemed like an open field surrounded by hundreds of people peering into a small arena. At first I thought we came upon a small local camel race but upon exiting the car and walking over, noticed several bulls tied up along the perimeter of the fenced in field.

Bloodless bullfights

Welcome to the UAE’s version of bullfighting. Before you get upset, you have to realize that here the bull does not get killed, nor is it injured in any way. This is an actual bull fight. Two bulls are brought into the arena and they “fight” by facing each other, locking horns and PUSHING. It’s sort of a push-of -war, the bull who causes the other to back up wins. Or so it seems. There is a referee who decides who is declared the winner and keeps the bulls facing each other.

Spectators with a deathwish.

Most of the spectators are safely outside the fence, but a collection of spectators (VIP’s, bull owners, daredevils?) are sitting in the arena a few feet from the fighting bulls. The most entertaining part of the afternoon was watching these internal spectators scramble when the bulls got too close or when one got free from it’s restraints and charged the crowd.

Butt Sweet House

Local Abu Dhabi restaurant.

New Business Card

My new business cards arrived today. I’ve been waiting for these in antipication as I need to get out into the community and start handing these out. You know, networking. My friends and family have been asking where I work and how to get in touch with me, and I have to admit, it’s beed so busy, I haven’t had time to get back to them.  Now they have all the details to either call me on the telephone or write me a letter. One more thing off my “to do” list.

Check out the logo.

I saw this on my way to work this morning.  Apparently this clinic is expanding its services to include in vivo fertilization.

Maybe it’s just me, but it really irritates me when people of English speaking nationalities make no attempt to speak the local language properly when living in a country foreign to them. I can understand tourists making mistakes, and will allow newly arrived expats a grace period of about a year, but the video depictred here really rubs me the wrong way.

The fantastically clean and efficient national metro system in Dubai announces your next stop in both Arabic and English. For all the millions of Euros it cost to build this transportation system, you would think they could have hired a professional announcer who could take the time to learn how to pronounce the Arabic words.

By the way, Deira is pronounced “Day-rah” and not “Deer-Rah”.

Living in Portugal for 9 years sensitized me to this seemingly blatant disrgard for local customs where the local language is admittedly difficult to pronounce, but do-able if you give it a little effort. Expats we know living there for decades still butcher the local language to such a degree, it’s almost comical. But I can’t help feeling it’s a disregard for the people and culture of the place they have been caling their home for years.

Now I’m off to find where I can take lessons in learning Arabic.