Living the Travel Channel

Beard question

January 13, 2009

Question:
“Is Paul’s beard an eye catcher here?” Yes, but not in the way you might have thought.

Before we came and we were pondering what it might be like here, Paul wondered what might happen if he dressed in native apparel. I told him they would think he was an albino with his fair skin and blue eyes. Little did we know that he wouldn’t even have to change his dress to be noticed.

He began to notice that construction workers would look surprised/confused and then say “Salaam aleykum” to him. He also noticed that taxi drivers often asked if he was muslim or where he was from. At one point, he began to get more “ogles” than I. He asked our friend, Amed, about this and Amed was nodding his head “yes” before Paul even finished describing the situation. It seems that there is a wealthy Pakistani family that are known for their red beards. They dress in western clothes and are of fair complexion. So, these construction workers see Paul walking down the street looking like a wealthy Pakistani and they are confused to see him “out of context.”

As for beards, some Arabs have beards, although they are usually neatly trimmed. The Sikhs have bushy beards, so Paul’s is not that unusual here.

Posted in beard, culture shock | 2 Comments »

Follow up on cats – K’s question

January 10, 2009

The cats hang out on campus because they are welcome. I suspect they help keep the rodent population down. The college sees to it that they are neutered/spayed and the security guards feed them. There are stray cats everywhere in the city, so a few wandering onto campus is not surprising. In fact, they are the lucky ones.

I haven’t seen any evidence of the cats chasing or catching birds. Birds are also welcome on campus. Much of the landscaping is done to attract the birds. (Although, I do wonder if the myna bird population might reach critical mass some day soon.) Some of the birds are too big for the cats to easily take down – mynas, doves, pigeons, and hoopoes, but there are also smaller birds that would make an easy target. I suspect that the cats are content with mice and kitty kibble.

As for my library wandering kitty, I saw her as I was leaving campus Thursday and I sat down on a bench and beaconed to her. She came running to be petted, jumped up on the bench and cuddled up beside me. She kept rubbing her chin on me, so I think our relationship was not harmed by my refusing to let her wander the library freely. She even purred for me.

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Aquarium and mall redux

January 10, 2009

We went back to Dubai Mall last night and ate at Taco Bell again. As you can see by the line, it is popular and not particularly fast fast food.
Below are our “cheesy fries” which are just fries with nacho cheese sauce poured over them. The fries were good and crunchy and would be much much better without the cheese.
Below is Paul’s expression when I take pictures of our food. He thinks I am crazy and is probably embarrassed to be seen in public with me. I know you are all dying to see what we are eating, so I suffer his scorn to satisfy my audience.
A toddler at a neighboring table climbed out of his high chair and proceeded to run away. An extremely observant busboy caught him and put him back. Only then did we realize that there was no one else at the table, just a purse and some shopping bags. No parents of this boy to be seen anywhere. The busboy hovered around keeping his eye on the boy and looking for the parents. People at a neighboring table signaled him to move the boy over to their table and they began to take care of him. We left before the parent(s) of this child returned. I hope someone tore them a new one for having left him unattended, but I suppose that is unlikely. We tipped the busboy. He definitely deserved it.

We went through the aquarium. It has two parts — small tank areas with different fish, reptiles, otters, seals, penguins, etc., and the big tank area with the walk through tunnel. There is a serious design flaw, however. You can enter either section, pay once and your receipt will get you into both. The parts are completely separate though. We entered the upper floor with the small tank displays and walked all through it. It exits through the gift shop and back out into the mall. You then have to walk back around past the entrance to the escalators that take you down to the lower floor where the big tank is and you have to walk back around to the far side in order to enter the tunnel. The tunnel entrance is directly below the exit of the upper section, so why they didn’t just design it so that you didn’t have to exit the top floor walk all the way around and back again, I don’t know. A simple elevator or escalator where the gift shop is would have done the trick very nicely.
These are pictures of the giant groupers they have in the big tank. They are quite impressive and these pictures don’t do them justice. They can grow to 9 ft in length and these guys looked to be at the 7 ft range. They are related to hamour (brown spotted reef cod), the very tasty fish that is common on menus here. If you get fish and chips, it is most likely to be hamour.

Posted in aquarium, fast food, malls | 1 Comment »

Fountains

January 10, 2009

Despite the scarcity of water and the fact that most of it comes from desalinization, there are innumerable fountains in Dubai. Every new construction involves some sort of water features – fountains, canals, pools, etc. Some of them are quite massive and some are quite creative and interesting.
Here is one of the massive ones. This is in Dubai Mall.

The diver sculptures are life sized, so that gives you some idea how tall and wide this is. Not only that, but this is one of a pair of fountains.
Below is one of Paul’s favorite fountains. He is a waterbaby and could watch fountains like this for hours given the chance. This is in Festival City mall and is an example of the interesting design type of fountain.
It is a sloped wall and at short intervals water comes down in waves.
The slope is covered with sea shells which is what causes the frothiness of the water and the sound of waves on the beach.

Posted in fountains, malls | 1 Comment »

Campus wildlife

January 9, 2009

These flowers look like gardenias, but I am always disappointed when I smell them, because they are not gardenias. I can’t detect much fragrance from them at all.
The red arrow is pointing to where my office is.
This fountain is a very popular spot with the minas in the afternoon. They love to have their bath in it.
The minas also congregate in the trees near the front gate. The noise of their chatter is astonishing.
This garden area near the front gate is usually full of birds in the afternoon also.

This is a white cheeked bulbul.
Can you find all the birds in the picture above? I see 5 white cheeked bulbuls. What do you see?
This is one of our campus cats. I usually see her near the front gate. She seems friendly and runs up to me, rubs against my legs and meows LOUDLY, but she does not like to be petted. Talk about mixed messages. Having her cheeks rubbed seems to be okay, but she’s not crazy about a simple pet down the back.

Posted in birds, cats | 1 Comment »

Dubai Mall miscellanea

January 9, 2009

The Dubai Mall is the biggest and most recent mall. It is at the base of the Burj Dubai (tallest building). Many of the store spaces are still vacant with “store opening soon” signs. I kinda figure if it doesn’t say the name of a specific store, that nothing is opening there “soon.”

When we go into these massive and confusing shopping malls, I am very lucky to have my spacial genius husband to do the navigating. I would have to spend all my time looking at the maps to figure out where to go. Sometimes the maps don’t have the “you are here” indicator, so that increases my fruitless staring at the map time.
There are giant led boards displaying ads or national symbols on the sides of the walkways.
We were especially amused by the Ribs and Rumps restaurant. Doesn’t that sound appetizing?
Here is the one and only Taco Bell in Dubai. Yes, we ate here. The rule is that if we didn’t eat at an American fast food restaurant back home, we won’t eat at it here either. We did our fair share of Taco Bell back home. However, this TB does not have the burrito supreme, but it does have cheesy fries?!?!?!?!? We did not try the fries. There seems to be a rule that you can’t open a restaurant unless it has fries on the menu.
The mall has a giant ice skating ring.
And a large aquarium. We were too tired of foot to go through the aquarium, but it is on our list of things to do. I love the aquariums where you can walk through the tube and see the fish all around. After they had stocked the tanks they were having trouble with the fish eating each other, especially the big sharks eating the smaller sharks. Go figure! I’m not sure how they resolved this. They have regular feeding times (one of the things advertised on the reader boards), so maybe that keeps the predating down.

Posted in aquarium, Dubai, malls, restaurant | 1 Comment »

Kitty fun

January 8, 2009

When I arrived at work yesterday one of the campus cats was laying on the mat in front of the door, so I stopped to pet her. Now that the weather is cooler, they actually have fur and are more pleasant to pet. In the 120F summer heat they shed to the point of being almost hairless.

A short time later I was sitting in my office and I heard her meowing. They tend to have very big voices here, so I thought “Wow, I can hear her all the way inside the building.” Then the meowing got louder and I, being brilliant, put two and two together and went looking for her. She had just entered the periodicals room and was roaming around to investigate. So, I talked to her and picked her up telling her we should take a walk outside where she belongs. We headed for the door, but one of my coworkers had called custodial to come and remove the cat, so I tried to hand her off to him, but he had NO idea how to handle a cat and she was soon loose again. I thought that she would now give us a chase, having been handled roughly, but she laid down on the floor and rolled over, so I was able to pick her up and take her for a walk away from the entrance of the library myself.

That was my big excitement for the day.

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Christmas trees

January 1, 2009

The Christmas tree at the Dubai Mall (which is still up, by the way) is gi-normous, as these three pictures show.
The color of the lights changed before I got all three pictures taken.

Here you can see the tree at Festival City.
As you can see, you can ride the escalator through the tree. Weeeee!

I’m not sure when the trees will be taken down. Some had “Happy New Year’s!” banners draped on them. Maybe they will add hearts and cupids next. January and February are the “Shopping Festival.” Like they need a shopping event here.

Posted in Christmas | 2 Comments »

Burj Dubai, fog, traffic patterns

January 1, 2009

Here are a series of pictures of the Burj Dubai (world’s tallest building) as we get closer to it. Our original intention was to go to Festival City – one of the many malls – but if you miss your turn-off, you are up a creek. It is often easier to just change your destination than to try to get back on the path to where you originally wanted to go. So, our destination changed to the Dubai Mall.
These pictures were taken at dusk and, yes, there is a significant amount of pollution, but this was also the evening of our foggy day (see previous entry) and there was still a significant amount of fog hanging around. Warm and foggy, imagine! In fact, we had to run the windshield wipers because it was condensing on the outside of the windshield and making it nearly impossible to see to drive.
The frame of the building has reached its highest point, now they are just filling it out. They haven’t announced exactly how tall it has turned out to be, yet.

Posted in Burj Dubai, Dubai traffic, fog | Leave a Comment »

Various and typical Dubai sites

January 1, 2009

Driving down Sheikh Zayed Road is like driving down a canyon.
This construction site has 15 cranes. We’ve counted them multiple times. We’ve decided that the philosophy is that they don’t want to have to move them, so they install enough to cover the entire construction site at all times. Considering that a few months ago a crane on Sheik Zayed road fell over, it is probably a good thing that they are not moving them about. (By the way, no one was hurt by the falling crane, which is an amazing thing, since that is a heavily traveled road.
Great advertising. “Big Tasty – It’s big and tasty!” One thing I am very glad of — we have not seen the creepy Burger King in any advertising here (although we don’t have cable, so maybe he is here.) KFC has a questionable looking chicken mascot making the thumbs up sign (with his wing???). He apparently thinks it’s great to be your entre.
The guys in this picture were painting the cross walk stripes with a bucket and a brush in an active intersection. That is typical Dubai!
I think the Picadelly Hairdressing Saloon speaks for itself. There are a lot of saloons here. We find the use of that word amusing. They are always gender specific. No unisex here. You can see into a gents saloon, but the women’s saloons always have opaque windows. It’s hard to wear a veil and get your hair cut at the same time.