Don’t Speak Arabic? Neither does (most) anyone else….unfortunately

Afraid to move to Dubai because you don’t think you speak Arabic? Don’t be. Unfortunately, English is the most popular language here. It is used in business and with approximately 80% of the population all from different backgrounds, a common ground must be found. That common ground is the language of international commerce, English.

I came here very enthusiastic to learn Arabic. One of the first things I did was find a good Arabic language school. The only problem was that outside of the classroom, there was never an opportunity to practice. For example, most of the taxi drivers here are from India, Pakistan or other countries that don’t use Arabic. Once I did start working again, all of my colleagues were from elsewhere so I had no opportunity to practice it in the office. After about a year and a half of lessons, I decided it would never progress as my Turkish did in Istanbul, so I dropped out.

Quite frankly, the only time I have ever used Arabic in my six years of living here was once when my husband and I were lost in a remote area of the UAE and needed directions. Despite my earlier struggles in class to give directions from the Arabic school to my home that was a mere five minutes away, much to my delight, I was able to ask where to go and understood the directions.

I find this a very sad thing and after speaking with some locals, it is a double edged sword it seems. They are proud of their country and proud of Dubai for being such an international hub, but they are loosing a lot of their culture and tradition in the process – and this includes language.

For example, a local friend’s children are learning Arabic in school from a Moroccan teacher. There is no issue with the woman being Moroccan, but the dialects are so different that the children are learning a very different language from what their parents and grandparents speak. As many locals seek higher education in English for their children here, they may never learn proper Arabic in any dialect. It is slowly becoming a lost language for them and in my opinion, this is sad.

So my advice if you want to learn Arabic. It’s a beautiful language – both written and spoken. Go for it. However, you’ll be challenged to find a lot of practice in your daily life to speak it. It is nice to know the formalities and greetings, but there is nothing within that context that you will not be able to pick up from a language reference book.

Everyone in the service industry here is usually from the Philippines, India or other Near and Far Eastern countries and they are all speaking English. If you are really a linguist and want to learn something exotic that you can master here – go for Tagalog or Urdu!

The Veiled Kiss

So I took Erin to Ikea tonight to try to find a cheap solution for toy storage for his room. I think we were successful. Yes, they have Ikea here - its huge and often crowded. My new favorite time to go - Monday night..almost crickets chirping. Lovely.

Erin had a blast letting me push him around the store. And Ikea is never big enough because he had a blast using the funnel I picked up from the kitchen section as a megaphone. He can already be pretty loud if he wants - he needs no magnification really. He was quite successful in disturbing people. Most people laughed at him. I tried to do that whole "use your inside voice please" and all that good calm mommy stuff - he could care less. My favorite was when I decided to ignore him and I'd just get those stares - you know the ones. The people who look at you like "don't you hear your kid?". They don't know if he's just mental, or if its just me...no worries, its me :-) He's fine.

He desperately wanted to play in the ball pool they have for kids, but they wouldn't let him because he was not tall enough yet. He was so upset. I knew there was another play area further in the mall attached, so I took him there as he protested the entire way - even louder than before and without his megaphone.

As he was playing there, much to my surprise two children were fascinated with his hair. The boy who was maybe around five or so kept coming back to touch it. This happens sometimes, but usually by adults.

When then proceeded to dinner, at Chili's. Yes, we really do live in a "foreign" country. I hate these chain franchise things with a passion, but unfortunately that is almost all there is here. Yuck. But it was one of the better choices believe it or not. I'm mostly pleased Erin was most happy with his milk rather than the greasy food. He ate well, but he is not a big fried food or junk food person - with the exception of his liking for crunchy cookies and biscuits which he gets from me!

After dinner we went to watch these large inflatable balls they have on the water that they rent out and let people run around inside. If you ever want to feel like a hamster, I think this is it.

As we were watching, two Gulf Arab women and their children came by. I overheard them discussing Erin's hair - its quite long now as we haven't cut it yet - more than 2 years. And they were debating if he was a boy or girl. The women knew, but her young daughter was insisting it was a girl. So with what little Arabic I recall I turned to them and said yes, he was a boy. The little girl was shocked- not at my Arabic, but that Erin was a boy :)

They were all incredibly kind and the one woman asked if she could kiss Erin. Of course I didn't mind. If I were to be asked this same question in the US, there is probably no way I would let a stranger kiss my child. But here, that's what they do. And her face was completely covered except for her eyes. I am assuming they were from Saudi, but I am not sure. Erin got a kiss through the veil. Wow...not many males if any are so lucky!

Erin was in a good mood, so he didn't overly protest. He quickly became very shy, but he was polite. Thank goodness he didn't start growling like a lion as he often does these days.

He seems to have a lot of luck with the local ladies. I recall him as a young one year old flirting with some local girls at a nearby table during lunch one day. They love children, and I guess especially young blonde ones. Even when we were in the Maldives, one Arab woman, who I think was on her honeymoon wanted her photo taken with Erin!

The family kept moving on with the exception of the little girl who stayed behind a few more seconds to keep taking video of us. I didn't realize until she was almost finished. I didn't mind, but I just found it funny. I am so interested in their culture and always taking photos of local things. I don't really see anything so unique about us. It was interesting to be on the flip side. I didn't mind, but I just found it very strangely so being a foreigner in a foreign country!

Apiology 101

What I expected would be a pretty low key afternoon of getting caught up on many things turned out to be an experiment in apiology, the science of bee keeping...well, ok, not quite.

As I sat at my desk working, I felt something was going on outside, so I looked up and there were hundreds, possibly a thousand or so bees swarming around my balcony. I have seen this happen before outside, and even three years ago I had a bees nest on one of the trees on my balcony so I knew that they were around. The gardeners probably founds a bees nest and moved it and they were looking for a new home.

Yes, there are bees in the Middle East. Yemen has quite a bit of honey and I also see a lot of honey from Saudi Arabia for sale. It tastes a bit more amberish and not as floral I we are used to in the West. My personal favorite is the pine honey that is made in the mountains in Turkey. Yum!

They were lingering. I can't blame them as bees. I take pride in my balcony and always have tons of flowers and plants outside in the winter when the weather permits. I am always shocked by the number of apartments here that do not have any flowers at all when there is so much potential to do so.

The bees were busily swarming around my bouganvilla....I just had a feeling what was going to happen next. In a matter of minutes, they were congregating under one of the good branches that was nice and had good shade. Uh oh. In the next five minutes, there was the start of a small hive. In the next 10 - 15 minutes I had a fairly decent size hive and it seemed word was out and everyone decided to relocate there. Word spreads very fast among bees an I was amazed at how quickly they did this.



I went down to our apartment office to ask if they could call one of the gardeners up to help move it. As I am never really sure if they follow up on things, I decided to be a little more proactive and find the gardner myself. I saw one right away. They unfortunately don't really speak English, but he followed me back home so I could show him.

Standing inside I tried to point the hive out to him - how could it be missed, it was huge and even bigger than when I left. My bouganvilla leans and needs to be tied back, so he went up and pulled it straight. This scared me for him b/c I thought, the wrong shake and that's going to upset them. He came back in and asked "You want a cut?". No! So now I am trying to buzz and do my best bee impression. Not working.

I ask him to come with me again to see if we can find the security guard who maybe will help me translate. He's not around. So he then seems to get it and asks me if I want spray. I don't really want spray because I don't want to kill bees, but now that I have a son, I certainly don't want to risk him getting stung. Yes please!

After I left him in the lobby and went back home, a very happy man named Mohammed rang my door bell. I know he worked in the complex, but I'm not sure what he was responsible for - perhaps overseeing the cleaners or maintenance. He went outside to see my new tenants and said "This is nice. This is no problem."

He went outside as I stayed in safely behind my sliding glass doors. He had only brought a long green stick with him. It was thinner than a straw really. He proceeded to stick it into the center of the bee colony!! There were many things going through my mind at that point and "this guy is nutts" was one of them.



Just before he did this another man came - perhaps his boss. He also stepped outside to help. So as the bees were swarming around mad, Mohammed and his colleague were outside in short sleeves. Mohammed swinging his stick around at the trees and his boss found my dust pan and started waving that around. :-o His boss got a phone call to go off to tend to another matter, so he left Mohammed with the dust pan and stick. I watched as he stood there waving the two around as though he was conducting and orchestra. Perhaps some "Flight of the Bumblebee" would have been appropriate for watching this.

This was insane. They weren't going anywhere. Just flying around. I'm there watching helplessly thinking this will take the entire afternoon if this keeps up. Thinking, thinking, thinking...There was a candle burning on the dining room table that I decided to blow out since I was there. It was very smokey. Aha!

I have a drawer full of incense. When we went to Vietnam several years ago, there were many people selling incense in large packages for dirt cheap. They were very persistent and kind. I bought a lot of it. Although several years ago, I still have plenty that was never used. Lightbulb moment, bees do not like smoke! All that incense burning at once could maybe smoke them out. - I must be watching the "Imagination Movers" with my son too much because I sure felt like one of them.

So, I started to light up these bunches of incense sticks and have them to Mohammed. They replaced the dust pan technique. So with smoke and stick, we started to see some relief from the bees. Since the storm seemed to be lifting, I then turned on the water to the hose and started to water down the area and surrounding plants where they still lingered. Finally, after a good 45 minutes, the majority were gone. There were a few curious ones lingering, but I anticipated they had moved on to bigger and better places. Thankfully!

Mohammed felt is was okay too and left me his mobile number in case they came back. If so, then he would bag them up and cut the branch and move them. Thankfully I didn't have to kill any bees in the process. Just to make sure they didn't plan to come back I lit some more incense after he left. Even still at 10:00 p.m., my balcony was smelling like a temple shrine.



So this morning as I sit and write this. No bees. The occasional one which I see as I look out as I write this, but I think they are just coming to the flowers, which is fine. I even saw a butterfly this morning which was nice. However, I am sure the occasional one means they didn't move that far away. So apologies to the next apartment over if they have set up shop on your balcony. I guess we'll just keep them moving around the complex until one of us decides to do an online bee keeper course!

Call to Prayer

In the shopping malls of Dubai, when it is time to pray, the call for prayer is played. All stores turn off their music so that this can be heard. I am not sure if this is the same throughout the Gulf, but if a place as cosmopolitan as Dubai is doing it, then I would assume so.

In some ways, I think its kind of nice for those who want to pray. However, there are many other ways that people are reminded. Obviously they can just check their watches and see. If they want to go old school, they could look at where the sun is in the sky - at least I assume that's how it was done. Some who work at computers can probably get automated messages or set alarms. The most high techie way I've ever heard, literally, was an alarm on a telephone. When it was time to pray, Allah Akhbar would begin and it would continue until that person turned off the phone or until it was finished with the entire thing.

I don't really mind it. I do prefer the live version from a mosque. And when the Imam has a good voice, its quite nice. Recently I would also look forward to it because my son started to kind of sing along about 4 or 5 months ago. I have never drawn attention to it for him. He simply heard it one day and being the music lover he is decided to join in.

I never really gave it a second thought until today. - Of course the first few times I heard it, I was surprised, but kept going on about my business. But really, its not a bad idea to stop and pause as we are running around in the rat race of our daily life to give thanks or reflect or whatever that may be. I am sure there are people in other faiths who pray many times a day and that is cool too whatever your reminder may be.

When at work, I often find myself wondering if my colleagues come back a bit more refreshed and focussed? You know how they say if you take a break, then you can focus more. Maybe that big solution or mega idea will surface after taking a reality check.

Today what I really wanted to ask a local was: Since traditionally the call to prayer could be heard from the mosques throughout the villages or cities, I wonder if it was used for other things. For most people I know in the West, when we were young our moms said be home before dark. Did you have to be home before a certain prayer call, or at that prayer time? Thinking of this, I think thought that might be cool for the kid who could negotiate it to a few hours later for the next prayer call. Those of us who had to be home before dark had no chance - only one sunset :)

Happy Belated New Year

Yes, in my true form I am late to Blog again. I've not made any resolutions to improve this. I don't really believe in New Years resolutions. If you truly want to change something about yourself, then why not do it now, or in this case, maybe then in the last quarter of 2009? Why wait for a new year? Yes, I realize its a new year which means a clean slate for a lot of people, but come on. Are there not really important milestones we need to celebrate throughout the year instead? - Weddings, births, new jobs, etc. Why put all that pressure on one night for how the next 365 days will go?

Additionally, the commercialism of the New Year has also become too much. Yes, we live in Dubai the land of glitz and shiny stuff, but I'd just as soon have a nice dinner at home w/ friends or even curl up under a blanket and watch a good movie rather than pay for an over priced dinner served by a staff who doesn't want to work on New Year's Eve.

I say this reminiscent of my experience at the millennium. My husband and I met up with some very close friends in Ft. Lauderdale. We made dinner reservations at a nice place in Miami for dinner that was supposed to be really good. However, come midnight when everyone took to the streets to watch the fireworks and celebrate, the staff picked up all the food from the tables and practically cleaned up. When we returned to sit down, our food that we barely took one bite of was gone. Not to mention the wait staff had already evacuated the building as if Y2K was for real and ran for the bomb shelters leaving only the bus boys to deal with everything. It was pretty disappointing. However, despite that we had a most memorable New Year and had a great time celebrating with friends over the entire weekend we were there. Honestly, its not what I think of when I think of how I spent that time - I of course only remember the good stuff. Only the restaurant portion comes to mind in the context of over-ratedness.

After a very emotional and stressful 2009, I really wasn't in the mood to have an over the top celebration. However, I was out voted by my husband and our much more social friends who wanted to celebrate the coming of a new year. One of them found a great semi-private roof top room that was going to be catered by a good restaurant we were familiar with. It was nice, and outside of our group, not that many other people were there so it ended up being quite private. Of course I won't lie that it was nice to enjoy all the three beach firework displays of Dubai from one location. My parents were visiting and felt it was one of the best new year celebrations they ever attended, so that was nice for them.

In the end, it was a very nice way to ring in the new year and we had a great time with our friends, so I'm not sorry we did it. Just as I've learned with photography, like anything, if you want to be happy or have a good time, you need to get out there and find it. Its not going to find you while you are sitting at home.

So any resolutions for this year? Absolutely not. Only the wish that it is better for everyone than 2009 was.