Dubai Mall Mania

I’ve been a lot of places and seen a lot of things, but I went somewhere that took the cake this weekend. The girls and I went to Dubai for the day (Steve was on his death bed at home…Swine Flu anyone???). Dubai is a crazy place in of itself (there will definitely be more Dubai-themed posts to come), but the Mall of Dubai was insane. We walked around and ogled for about 5 hours and still did not see probably half of the place.
Where to start? I was in the biggest mall in the world and I didn’t buy a thing because I was so thunderstruck. As soon as I walked in, I looked up and literally became dizzy with the sheer size of the place. I picked up a brochure with a map and I kid you not it was about ¼ inch thick. You had to fold it out like a street map to figure out where you were going.
I have a really good sense of direction and I got lost in this mall! Just to name of few amenities…….. an olympic-sized ice skating rink, a huge aquarium (in which 33,000 animals reside), 12,000 stores, and a 22 screen movie theatre. My feet hurt just thinking about it!
Many people call Dubai the Las Vegas of the Middle East and I can now see why. Each section of the mall had a different theme and many of them (especially the gold souk) have décor very reminiscent of some of the larger casinos in Vegas.
People had warned me about this mall (and Dubai in general), but there’s really no way to prepare oneself for the decadence of this place. I walked around with my mouth hanging open most of the day and I took over 200 pictures (ok…maybe that’s not such a big deal for me). The girls were astounded as well. There are two huge 4 story tall water fountains in one area of the mall. I had to drag them away from it and the playland (I’ll write another post about the Emirates and their mall playlands at a later date).
To top it all off, the mall is in the shadow of the tallest building in the world. You walk outside one of the two food courts and there is a beautiful Burg (tallest building in the world) observation area. Adjacent to this area is a large man-made lake that has a fountain show to rival the Bellagio in Vegas.
Wow is all I can say in conclusion. The girls and I were exhausted, but had a fantastic time. We can’t wait to go back to find what we missed the first time. AND…we still have yet to go to the Mall of the Emirates (think indoor ski slope).

www.thedubaimall.com

Dust, dust, and more dust.

Prior to moving here, when I thought of about a sand/dust storm, I pictured something entirely different. (Picture a scene out the movies where a wall of sand or dirt is coming towards you at an impossibly high rate of speed and you are running away from it.) That is really not what it’s like at all and I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or relieved. When these storms come it’s more like a heavy fog (only it’s not moisture in the air, its sand and dirt). Usually there is a strong breeze here, but on days when there is a storm it is very still. It looks cloudy and foggy, but if you look closely, it’s not clouds at all. It’s not a pleasant experience to be outside on these days. Within seconds of coming outside, you feel like you’ve been eating out of the sandbox again (come on…you all know you’ve done it in the past!) and every available surface is covered in dust. I actually got mad at the pool guys for doing such a lousy job of cleaning the pool until someone explained the whole thing to me (they come and clean and the bottom is covered in sand in minutes). Also with my lack of experience in this area, I assumed that they were a quick phenomenon, but they actually last several days (again…not pleasant).
The two pictures that I have included are taken from the same place (our roof). The first is on a normal day here in Abu Dhabi and the second is during a dust storm.

Metric Mania

Sorry that it has been awhile. It’s not that I haven’t had inspiration….there’s plenty of that here, but time has gotten away from me lately.
I have lived overseas before, so this topic comes as somewhat of a surprise to me. I was prepared to have a car that registers in Kilometers per hour and speed signs that do the same, but I don’t remember the metric system invading my life as much as it has this time around.
I remember cooking quite a bit in Japan, but this time my kitchen has become a foreign land in itself. First, my oven is in Celsius. This is fine if I am cooking something that has directions in the metric system. Some of the things I have bought (chicken nuggets, frozen pizzas) have the correct Celsius temperature to prepare them in. However, the wide majority of the foods I have purchased here have Fahrenheit temperatures (as well as any recipe I have ever followed in my life). Now why do you suppose in a country that is totally converted to the metric system, would they sell items without converting them? All items sold in the grocery stores have Arabic directions applied to them before they are sold…why not add Celsius temps as well???? I guess the good side to this is that I can now convert C to F and vice versa like a champ! And I didn’t even mention that my washer is in Celsius also. That’s a whole other story!
Another side of the metric system in the kitchen is measuring ingredients to add to things. For example, I was making some rice the other day and the instructions told me to add 425ml of hot water. 425ml?????? It’s a good thing that I am a nurse and I am familiar with milliliters, but do I have a measuring cup which measures in them? NOT! (Well, I do now) I also invested in a calculator to keep in one of my kitchen drawers.
Even buying the food at the grocery store becomes a complicated affair. Everything is sold per kilogram. As if it weren’t already complicated enough (I have to calculate in my head the conversion from Dirham to Dollars), but then I also have to figure out how much I want. For example: If I want to buy some ground beef, and the sign says AED 32 per Kilo, what exactly does that mean? Well, 32 Dirham (AED 32) is about $9. Then you have to convert from Kilograms to pounds (at least I do to figure out how much I want). Each Kilo is 2.2 pounds, so it turns out that a pound of ground beef is about $4. Whew! Did anyone follow that? Steve wonders why it takes me so long to go shopping around here! I now keep a little calculator in my purse.
I’ll summarize by saying that it has definitely been a learning process or a relearning process (I vaguely remember studying this in school at some point). Man…I wish I had paid more attention in math!