12 posts tagged “dubai”
This weekend I had the joy of heading out to one of the other Emirates, Fujairah, to be a spectator of the weekly bull butting competition that occurs.
When you hit the corniche at the end of the main street, there is a paddock where every friday, after afternoon prayer, the locals gather to pitch bull on bull.
We arrived, after a 2 hour ride through the mountains from Dubai, to no bull fighting. Surely we had the day right... only to chat to a local to find the fight today had been called off due to a death. Nooooooooooo Flanagans luck.. surely not..... so we prepped ouselves for a long and disappointing trip home... well.. at least we got to see the billboard posters of children holding guns...
Regardless, we grabbed something to eat and hoped for the best... to our luck, shortly after we see the first bull get carted in. Here is here.. one big pappa... and I can tell you, he was not happy.... snorting, pawing at the ground.. and that was all before they bought in the next bull.. and the next bull... and the next until there were 40 odd bull all teethered up ready to fight.
Sometime around 5.30PM, all the bulls are tied up and the locals are all gathered around to watch the main event. Big 4WDs surround the arena, men
selling home made packed peanuts and bottles of water start touting their wares and the commentator bellows out for the first bulls.. spark and spice.
Bull butting was apparently introduced to the region by the portuguese in the 17th and 18th centuries. Two men lead their bulls into the arena, then the bulls lock horns and pit their strengthen against each other.
Round one ends rather spectacularly... the biggest bull out of the two... looks about and then, once deciding this isn't a sport he wants any part of.. legs it into the crowd and makes a hasty escape into the car park.. I have never seen so many dish dashes scatter and run... brilliant... if this is the beginning.. I can't wait for the end.
The goal of the fight is for one bull to have another
bull on its knees, for the other to run off or ... a tie... no one gets anywhere. Watching them trying to stop a fight is priceless. Simply blowing a whistle or calling off the bulls doesn't work. Instead... about 15 spectators run out into the field and grab an end of the rope tied around the bulls neck to try and prise them apart. It is priceless.. you can't imagine the entertainment it provides.
One of the easiest things to do in Dubai, is to only visit the hotels and clubs and to ignore anything that evolved prior to 1980. Traveling to Fujairah and getting to be a spectator for something that has been happening for hundreds of years... much more interesting and involving than heading down to the local hotel for brunch. Not that I don't enjoy a good brunch.... sometimes its easy to forget there is more to the desert than that... if you let it.
The traditional sport of bull butting helps you to appreciate the essence of the desert .. its an essence of dust.. chaos... male virality.. community... disorganisation....
On Monday night I had an experience that had me wondering if I was still in fact in Dubai.
My soon to be neighbour took me to new live music venue, The Fridge, that supports up and coming local talent.
I went along thinking I would be heading to another stuck up Dubai night, filled with ex-pats swanning about telling each other how fabulous they were whilst guzzling the free booze.
And I was wrong.
Very wrong and very pleasantly surprised.
After missioning out to Dubai's industrial area.... walking past a row of warehouses we came to The Fridge. Very easily to be mist
aken as another tyre warehouse, The Fridge is a free live music venue that puts on shows showcasing and supporting local talent. It is, to be quite frank, an amazing
idea and for a city where good local talent have very few places to ply their trade, let alone showcase their talent, it's so very fresh.
Every Monday they put on a free show, with support from local lighting and sound professionals, showcasing local talent. I was lucky enough to head along to see Ziryab (Cassiano De Sa), a versatile and talented muscian from Brazil who n
ot only took us through some of his own music, but through music that had influenced him growing up in Brazil, both traditional (including Hermeto Pascoal, an Albino muso who once used a gun to shoot out the beats to a song) to the more modern, Stevie Wonder.
The set up of The Fridge is one of support and awe. Getting to sit so up close and personal while an artist plays and talks you through their life influences is something I have been dearly missing from home. The venue had such a fringe fest feel to it, from the artist sitting in the front row sketching the band to the bean bags piled on the floor, I couldn't help but to feel like I had walked into a tiny piece of home.
For anyone who doesn't live in Dubai, the local music scene is almost non existant and hardly supported. Any given night you can find plenty of places to be packed in against a bar whilst a DJ bashes out hard house music, but trying to find a small wine bar with a live bit o
f jazz music is near impossible.
But it is changing, with more live venues like The Fridge opening up and a few big venues catering to other music tastes... other than house. Which makes me pretty happy and unable to stop telling almost everyone who will
listen to me about how fantastic The Fridge. I would spend all my money on live music if I could... I'd spend my last
$10 on a cheap glass of wine and ticket to a jazz club.
Check out a clip of Ziryab (Cassiano) here... and next Monday you can see Abri at The Fridge for free.
I've been trying for a few days to lock in a new years resolution. I have been successful so far of keeping to 2008's resolution and I am fairly confident I'll keep to it for the rest of my life. Big tick to me. But I am struggling to come up with one for 2009, sure I have plenty of ideas... but picking something that I aim to stick to is proving to be a bit of a struggle.
In the meantime, I have decided to make an inventory of all the things that I feel of proud of from 2008.. so here we go.
28 things for 2008
- Kept my 2008 new years resolution
- Had a memorable, mad and messy leaving party
- Finally moved to the desert all by myself
- Rocked it out to Muse at the Desert Rock Festival
- Had the confidence to change my job when the one I was in didn't turn out to be what I wanted
- Survived Gitex
- Went to Petra
- Hosted a kick ass Christmas Day in the desert
- Went snowboarding in Lebanon for new years
- Widened my friendship circle - met new peeps
- Catching up with GG Brown in Berlin with Kimmy and in Amsterdam with B-Fine
- Found myself a fabulous house to live - private beach included
- Cooked with a tagine
- Made a positive impact on the accounts I work on
- Learnt a few small Arabic words
- Updated my blog
- Learnt how to drive on the other side of the road
- Completed bootcamp
- Was spoilt enough to have loads of my mates come to visit from Aussieland - keep it up kids!
- Finally became a resident of the UAE
- Got used to living in the desert and called it home - crazy driving, men in dish-dashes, lack of good bread and all
- Enjoyed my own company
- Felt hopeful that things are going to change when Obama was elected
- Danced my ass off with George Michael
- Swam with dolphins
- Kept up to date with the local Aussie music scene
- Bought the love of digital media to my new colleagues
- Generally all round... continued on my quest of enjoying life as a hedonist
Rain. I don't miss rain. I don't care what anyone says, I could go for the rest of my life without seeing rain.
I know it has to rain, I know that it does rain, I know our planet can't survive without rain. But I still loath it.
The last six months I was in Australia it seemed to rain every single week. There were weeks that would go by and it would do nothing but rain. Rain rain rain and it was supposed to be summer.
Now I live in the desert. It never rains. I went over six months without seeing rain and I was never happier. I thought for a while... maybe I missed rain. Maybe it would be nice to see a little rain. Then I went to Europe for a work trip and it rained for the entire time I was there. I no longer thought I missed rain.
Now I never have to make the decision before I leave the house on whether I should take an umbrella or not, I never have to scout around puddles, I never have to worry about my hair going ballistic when wet, I never have to worry about trying to hail a cab in the rain and I never have to worry about my washing getting left out in the rain.
Today was my first day of bootcamp, an attempt on my behalf to get fit. I woke up at 5.25AM, got dressed and walked outside to... you guessed it... rain. Rain in the desert. Just my luck.
The only thing that amused me about this rain is the sign on my way to work that said "Caution, water ponds ahead." I'm guessing puddles doesn't translate well in Arabic....
This morning my day started with a big old laugh... this time at the fantastic skills of the Australian media. Today it seems, my house is in danger of being bombed by terrorists!
Allow me to explain: I live on the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. Nakheel, the company that has developed the Palm has recently opened a massive hotel on the Palm, Atlantis. Its been open a week and already I've eaten there twice... there really is something to say about Palm living... or my laziness.
Even though Atlantis is now open, being Dubai, it is still obviously under construction. Then there was the small issue of when we woke up a few weeks ago to Atlantis being on fire....
Nothing new here in Dubai, however of course that means the actual 'offical' opening of the hotel won't be until the end of November. Touted as the most exclusive event in Dubai, the opening party will only be attended by 2,000 invitees and guests will be treated to an intimate gig by Kylie Minogue.
How does this all lead to a terrorist plot.... well of course Kylie is al-Qaeda's ultimate symbol of Western decadence.... of at least that's what The Daily Telegraph would have you believe. British 'spies' are apparently tracking claims terrorists plan to bomb the hotel... wait for it... following chats on internet chatrooms.... hmmm...
Funny how only Australian media sites are covering this story.... stay tuned to see if my house survives November 20..
Yay the Olympics are upon us. A whole month where you don't have to think about what to watch on TV, the choice is always, Olympics. It is the first time for me to watch it outside my home country, which so far has been interesting. In Aus, they prioritise the sports that Aussies are competing in, but the UAE only has eight athletes.... It's going to be amusing to see what gets priority.
I had the joy of watching the opening ceremony at my local (an Aussie themed bar called Bidi Bondi) in Arabic. Hard to know what the hell was going on or who we were looking at on the screen. But fun all the same. Usually in Aus the swimming events dominate the first few days of the Olympics.... not here. Instead we had the joy of watching women's handball (you wouldn't mess with those women they look like they would eat you), a little boxing and some shooting of course.
I was thinking that the Olympics is probably the only sporting event where Israel competes against the rest of the Arab world. However, I wasn't surprised when I went to Arabian Business's site this morning and its leading story was about how an Iranian swimmer had pulled out of his heat because he would have to compete against an Israeli. Apparently Iran and Israel haven't competed against each other at the Olympics since 1979.
I also found out, and I guess if I thought about it for long enough I could have figured it out on my own, Saudi's team includes no women. And that of the eight Emiratians in the team, two are sheikhs and two are sheikhas. One of them, Sheikha Maitha Bint Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is competing in Taekwondo is Sheikh Mo's daughter.
There is rumour about that Dubai is going to put in a bid to host the Olympics... In a place where construction ventures only previously thought of as a dream come true, it would certainly be able to handle the games. Typically held in August... the summer heat could prove a trifle difficult for the marathon runners!
I don't even need to rant about this article I don't think.... perfect example of the local 'news.'
Dubai is a funny old place. Where the rest of the world is urging its citizens to get out of Zimbabwe, Dubai is sending its citizens into to Zimbabwe for no less than part of of an aggressive tourism marketing campaign.
Hold up, wait a minute, did you just say tourism marketing campaign? Seriously! Zimbabwe's current economic and food crisis is described by some observers as the country's worst humanitarian crisis and the recent election has been marred by violence with more than 70 opposition supporters having been killed since the first round of elections at the end of March. Definately a place to put at the top of your 'must see' travel list.
Local publishing house ITP sent one of the journalists from Ahlan! magazine (similar to Women's Weekly back home in Aus) over to Zimbabwe the week of the collapse of a democratic election. The quote from the journalist is priceless:
"The journalists talked much about their expeditions in the county and one of the touring journalists, Kate Hazell of ITP, a media group with over 200 publications that covers most countries in the Middle East was overwhelmed by the tourism packages, which the country has on offer. "It’s not my first time in Zimbabwe, I was once here sometime back. I didn’t know one can afford to do hunting as well," said Hazell." (thank you Dubai Media Observor)
In Australia the government is maintaining regular contact with all Australians living in Zimbabwe, which, even if it is a false sense of security, kind of makes me hopeful as I have an uncle who lives in Harare. Who in their right mind would live in the middle of a volatile environment like that? Well, he may not be in his right mind but he is my uncle and a fascinating individual at that. The once in a lifetime kind of guys and a dead ringer for my dad, which I just love.
So just a small peek at how different my two homes are and how they react to situations in the world.....
Today was my first day at work and my first week starting on a Sunday. Having a week off in between certainly made it easier to start on a Sunday... although the Bangles tune Manic Monday kept running through my mind... no longer would i wish it was Sunday.
My new office is located in the Emirates Towers, one of which is a hotel and the other, the taller one, is an office block. The level of service in Dubai even stretches into work, where there is a guy who is soley employed to make tea and coffee for the staff on the floor whenever they holler for it!
The cab line after work wasn't much fun, although i found out that if a cab pulls up with a female driver they only take women passengers.... a bonus if you've been standing in the cold waiting for a cab for half an hour with another six men standing in front of you!
Had my first celebrity meet in Dubai... day three. Had a lovely meet with celebrity chef Gary Rhodes while at the taste of Dubai last night. Gary is the master chef at Rhodes Mezzanine at Grosvenor House in Dubai, and was in town for the Taste of Dubai. We got to sample Gary's Iced lemon chiboust which was suitably fantastic... along with
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