Festivals in Dubai are kinda disorienting.. I think its due to the multitude of cultures and communities living in the country that one ends up celebrating festivals in ways that could get u burned at the stake as a heretic in your home country/culture!! :)
Beware of making festival dinner plans at home with friends on a weekday as the average dubai resident (unless blessed by the traffic god) spends 1-2 hrs on average in travelling home in the evening. So to make it for ur party he must:-
a) come from work n end up looking like a stuffed shirt or freshen up and change clothes in hiscar and stun paralel cars into accidents thereby further reducing his chances of ever reaching ur party
b) he can go home , collect his family and then wipe his face with a babywipe before facing the rush hour traffic again from one suburb to another via the expressway!!!
In summation ur party will resemble Enron as a debacle and end up with just you and desperate bachelors who will drive across all 7 emirates just to eat something cooked in a house kitchen (unless Im cooking which means even the most homefood deprived bachelor will develop "I need to work late so sorry i cant make it" syndromes!
Centres of worship know that non-islamic festivals are not given a public holiday here in a mood to boost footfall hold strange assemblies/sessions starting 5.30am to 8am and 630pm to 12pm trying to lure the one-a-year devout to church/temple pre/post working hours.
Firecrackers are banned in the country and so are most oil lamps (due to fire hazards) so if you attempt to celebrate diwali..do make sure u have an adequate supply of electric light to ensure it is really a "festival of lights"!!
I mean I have spent Vishu in KFC gnawing at some plascticy thing masquerading as a drumtick, Easter (yday) in a Pakistani restau pulling away at a roti as big as a Pathan and Diwali in my office food court trying to distinguish between the various coloured goo on the plate!
The reason I spend all my festivals in such outlandish restaus is becoz no Indian restau worth its weight in sand will be available either for takeout or sit-in as most women go on strike n order in a whole sadya. So orders have to be placed 1 week in advance and non-planners who require a reminder sms from India like me might as well try to eat at Rashtrapati bhavan!
So I guess most ppl like me will be eating burgers or subways tomorrow for Vishu while the rest attain nirvana via sambhar!
Sigh...Cest la vie!
Monday 13 April 2009
Wednesday 1 April 2009
How to beat the recession!
you know nowadays all you see when you open a newspaper or the internet is what i call "recession blues" . the stock markets dive faster than jacques cousteau, banks keep reducing LTVs ,upping interest rates n changing policies faster than hugo chavez in venezuela!
depression is becoming everybody's middle name and im sure my babys first words will be "costcutting" when i attempt to power him/her with baking powder to save buying baby powder!!
most ppl in most other countries experience the same sort of symptoms but here in the ME we see varying reactions from different parts of society.
one main issue we had here in dubai were the soaring rents n std of living - inflation did not just rise it galloped like the famed arabian horses :)
well inflation has been forced to never before seen single digit figs and rents have been spiralling downwards and u can literally buy a stock with a 1 aed coin on the dubai finance mkt :)
altho i do see some serious attempts at cost cutting - many of the oil filled locals here started driving their lexuses instead of their porsches, buying lancome instead of elizabeth arden, gap instead of gucci..sigh how they do try..
so what must happen is that the savior of the world depends on increased spending by common ppl..that makes a shopaholic like me even more determined.
Obama may have his TARP pgm so I made my own TARP (To go forth and Aid Retailing countries Program) and in inaugral of which i just out post work yday and bought the following :-
1. 1 guerlain eyeliner
2. 1 mascara whose only redeeming option is to make my eyelashes look like long streaming curtains as seen in movies circa 1960
3. cleanser and toner (to add to the pileup of bottles already existing on my dressing table)
4. perfume coz i didnt want the perfume industry to shut down
5.shampoo and conditioner coz good looking hair gives me (and probably the general populace of dubai) the courage to facedown the recessionary blues
6.then i decided that we must support developing superpowers like china so i bought hakka noodles, sweet n sour sauce n soy sauce to make a chinese dinner
7. but then i tot i must be patriotic n save the indian economy first so went out n got samosas and dumped the noodles in the kitchen cabinet (ill save china over the weekend)
my husband came to meet me at the mini mall and liften an eyebrow when he saw my bags..but hes been trained from experience not to react and with a show of non chalance lifted my bags n walked me to the car..one word cud have got him karatechopped like the Chinese cabbage i bought!
so off i went off home after saving south asia and parts of france...sigh being superwoman is tough after a loong day at work..but someones gotta do the dirty work!
depression is becoming everybody's middle name and im sure my babys first words will be "costcutting" when i attempt to power him/her with baking powder to save buying baby powder!!
most ppl in most other countries experience the same sort of symptoms but here in the ME we see varying reactions from different parts of society.
one main issue we had here in dubai were the soaring rents n std of living - inflation did not just rise it galloped like the famed arabian horses :)
well inflation has been forced to never before seen single digit figs and rents have been spiralling downwards and u can literally buy a stock with a 1 aed coin on the dubai finance mkt :)
altho i do see some serious attempts at cost cutting - many of the oil filled locals here started driving their lexuses instead of their porsches, buying lancome instead of elizabeth arden, gap instead of gucci..sigh how they do try..
so what must happen is that the savior of the world depends on increased spending by common ppl..that makes a shopaholic like me even more determined.
Obama may have his TARP pgm so I made my own TARP (To go forth and Aid Retailing countries Program) and in inaugral of which i just out post work yday and bought the following :-
1. 1 guerlain eyeliner
2. 1 mascara whose only redeeming option is to make my eyelashes look like long streaming curtains as seen in movies circa 1960
3. cleanser and toner (to add to the pileup of bottles already existing on my dressing table)
4. perfume coz i didnt want the perfume industry to shut down
5.shampoo and conditioner coz good looking hair gives me (and probably the general populace of dubai) the courage to facedown the recessionary blues
6.then i decided that we must support developing superpowers like china so i bought hakka noodles, sweet n sour sauce n soy sauce to make a chinese dinner
7. but then i tot i must be patriotic n save the indian economy first so went out n got samosas and dumped the noodles in the kitchen cabinet (ill save china over the weekend)
my husband came to meet me at the mini mall and liften an eyebrow when he saw my bags..but hes been trained from experience not to react and with a show of non chalance lifted my bags n walked me to the car..one word cud have got him karatechopped like the Chinese cabbage i bought!
so off i went off home after saving south asia and parts of france...sigh being superwoman is tough after a loong day at work..but someones gotta do the dirty work!
Firstimer Blogger!
My first blog!! It took 3 friends to chat incomprehensibly about 'how they were reading blogs on certain google readers' etc to for me to blurt out to them saying what in the world were they talking about (this coming from someone who spent 4 years in an engineering college - albeit having spent most of those 1460 days bunking class n travelling 30km during class hrs to eat a pastry in our fav cakeshop!)
nyways being the true MBA grad i googled "how to blog" and copy pasted the instructions exactly as specified and created it n m now a superblogger who will revenge herself on her pals by throwing in blogtechnics in my conversations :)!
well my pals have super blogs on origami, cordon bleu cuisine, intelligent ripostes on current affairs and editorials so i thought id make mine all about world peace and metaphysics..........
but the thing is im too hottempered for the former and too lazy to google the latter...so my blog will be all about my life here in dubai and the quirks n craziness that encompasses my oh so wunderbar life!
till the next time then buddies - cheerio n pippip
nyways being the true MBA grad i googled "how to blog" and copy pasted the instructions exactly as specified and created it n m now a superblogger who will revenge herself on her pals by throwing in blogtechnics in my conversations :)!
well my pals have super blogs on origami, cordon bleu cuisine, intelligent ripostes on current affairs and editorials so i thought id make mine all about world peace and metaphysics..........
but the thing is im too hottempered for the former and too lazy to google the latter...so my blog will be all about my life here in dubai and the quirks n craziness that encompasses my oh so wunderbar life!
till the next time then buddies - cheerio n pippip
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