Tag Archives: uae
Summer and Kitchen Dreams
It’s getting hotter here in Dubai. I’m less likely to go and sit outside on the balcony during the day, and the amount of time we spend inside increases by the week. Flu season is upon us, thanks to everyone herding themselves indoors, and it’s about that time when our teensy-weensy studio apartment starts to […]
We just gave up the television
We just gave up our television. I mean, not in the physical sense; there is still a 50-inch plasma filling one partitioned wall of our studio apartment. Just in the digital, service provider sense. This morning, we handed in our decoder and said goodbye to recorded TV as we knew it. This isn’t one of […]
Great stuff about Dubai
It’s coming to that time of the year when living in Dubai will start to get much, much harder. Things are heating up quickly as we head towards the summer months, school (and exams and reports) will wrap up for the year in just ten weeks (already!?!) and we see another year gone by being […]
Flying Solo
It’s been a long time since I’ve lived on my own; some five or six years now. Back then, I had a flexible schedule: a blend of university classes, office work and eons of study. I had a townhouse to myself, my own car, and still managed to maintain a gym membership. I shopped, washed, […]
The Next Generation of Travel Writers: Part II
A year ago now, I posted a piece of work written by a talented young man as the culminating task of learning about travel writing. Now, the time has come for my next phase of brilliant young minds to finish up their travel narratives*, and I have even more amazing experiences to share. Not only […]
But I just wanted some falafel…
There’s an infamous song in Dubai by my good friend Kris Fade where he opines in musical tones of what one can buy with a dirham in your pocket… “A Falafel with a Dirham.. A Falafel with a Dirham in your pocket” repeats the chorus. Up until recently, one could actually buy a falafel with […]
One more year of it
When I went hiking in Sa Pa, I met a writer – a real one. Admittedly, he’d spent the last two years teaching English in rural Japan, something else I would give a limb to do, but his actual field of work and study was to write, rather than teach. He was writing a book. […]
Coming home
When I came back post-summer vacation to Dubai from England, and even from Australia, I felt that this place was cramped; that my apartment was too small and that the city was truly stifling. I came from the homes of family and friends, from the life of sprawling supermarkets and full size highways and returned […]
I am sure that chickens hate me
This weekend, I had the pleasantry and excitement of another bout of food poisoning here in Dubai. It’s not uncommon for a meal here to set off an upset stomach, with food handling and sanitation not always under tight control. Every year, we read in the news more and more food places shut down or […]
A summertime heartstring tug
There’s something that’s been tugging at me of late, and it’s not just the standard level of homesickness. I noticed, as we drove in to one of the biggest malls in the world on Friday, at the foot of the tallest building in the world, that all I could think about was wandering along Beach […]
Words of Caution: On Teaching in Dubai
In the past, I’ve written about an average weekday as a teacher in Dubai, and noted that it wasn’t really all that different from one in Australia. There’s teaching, a brief break for the internets, planning and wandering about chatting to colleagues. You get to work with a wondrous variety of students, tapping into a […]
Should Cinderella have gone to the ball?
Not exactly travel talk, but it’s all a part of the experience. Trust my students to turn a fairy tale into a discussion of rape, murder and the influence on children. I’ve either been with them too long and brainwashed them, or taught them too well…. A class essay created by the brains of 7C […]
