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The Dubai stone is the name given to the weight gain experienced by expats shortly after they move to Dubai. It comes about through a healthy eat-out culture, an increase in alcohol consumption, and a decrease in physical exercise. Most expats encounter the Dubai stone at some point during their stay in the emirate. Often it arrives early, and becomes so comfortable that it stays for a very very long time. I managed to avoid the Dubai stone for almost three months. It caught up with me in December, when I returned home. The indulgence of the festive season is not usually a problem, but combined with the fact that I had been training for it for the previous three months I returned to Dubai carrying a little extra poundage. Now, I have never been fat, and likely never will be, so I was not particularly worried by the weight gain. However, as 2007 progressed two things made me realise this was unacceptable. The first was that the slightest bit of physical exercise was leaving me out of breath. I did not want to be one of those people who break into a sweat blinking[1]. The second, and more important, was that a female friend had suddenly started mentioning my beer-gut when she saw me. Now, I do not look like a darts player or anything, but if it was noticeable to her then it was probably noticeable to every other woman in Dubai. Last year, some friends and I had attended a weekly pub quiz at Dubliners, an Irish pub towards the airport. It had been enjoyable to stretch our brains whilst enjoying a jar or four of Guinness. We performed reasonably well, and a couple of times even won, but towards the end of the year standards dropped. Cheating became prevalent, and teams of ten or more were soon being entered. Our regular trio stood little chance of leaving triumphant, so we stopped going. We decide to resurrect the tradition. We visit every pub quiz in Dubai, and eventually choose the one at Aussie Legends. Unlike some of the others we try, the quiz here is challenging, and we are still far from winning it. There is a convivial atmosphere in the pub, and the food is generally good. The pub, and the quiz, quickly become favourites.
I practised taekwondo for two years before moving to Dubai. The school was a McDojo[2] that I stuck with mostly because it was convenient, but it gave me an interest in martial arts. I begin looking for schools. My search is fruitless. Although I maintain that anything you want to do can be done in Dubai, this does not include Martial Arts. I visit a half dozen schools, and find that they alternate between serious but oversubscribed martial arts schools with crappy facilities, or Blackbelt Factories with great facilities but no soul or credibility. The closest I come to picking was an Aikido school. It is rejected on two points. First, I cannot understand or hear what the instructor was saying. Second, Aikido involves, predominantly, a lot of sitting on your ankles. Since an injury during a taekwondo class a year and a half ago, I have suffered from weak ankles. At the end of the three hour class I am in agony, and can hardly walk. Alas, the school's attitude is right, but sadly we were not right for each other. I continue to look for schools, now, but with little hope. In the meantime, I practise my techniques at home occassionally and hope that they will not get too rusty. Dubai Metro is the city's attempt to rectify years of inadequate transport planning by installing a rail transit system. Time alone will tell whether it is a success -- it is not due to open for another two years -- but there are as many people praising the genius of the scheme as there are decrying its short-comings. The proposed lines do not run anywhere near my daily commute to work, so I tended to sit on the fence. It seemed ambitious, but barring a momentary initial interest, I forgot about it. That was until we learned that iBO was to be demolished to make way for one of the lines. Then it became an evil thing, destined to failure and ridicule. You see, iBO was the home of Twisted Melons, the best club night in Dubai by a country mile. Twisted Melons was unique, and so it is with a heavy heart that we make our way to what we think is the last ever night. It is a great night, with the crowd in even more buoyant spirits than usual, and the D.J.s playing a couple of extra songs following a chorus of 'One more tune!' from the packed dancefloor. As it turns out, it is not the last night, as the club gets a reprieve until the end of May. The actual final night is a non-event, as most people had partied themselves out the month before. The cries of 'One more tune' are somewhat half-hearted.
Nezesaussi is a bar with an unmemorable name. Sure, it looks like it might stick in the mind, but I have been there several times now and even I had to double check to see if I had spelt it right. It is like trying to remember one of the less important elven characters from a teenage nerd's first stab at a fantasy epic; you might get it clear in your head at the time, but a week later you will struggle to remember the name when someone asks who killed the orc in chapter 13. Until, that is, you learn the trick of it. The name comes from the fact that this is an Southern Hemisphere hat-trick of a sports bar, jointly based around the nations of New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia. And if you can't remember the name, just call it Keyser Soze. The bar is a tidy little place, still shiny and new and stranded in the middle of what is currently the construction site surrounding the Death Spire[3]. Despite its remote location and the difficulty in finding it, during sporting events the place is full of Southern Hemisphere types, mangling the Queen's English as they cheer on the Sharks, or the Mighty Wallabies, or whatever. The food is pretty good too. Generous portions of well cooked meat, served with a tasty barbecue sauce with a slightly unappealing name[4].
The confusing maelstrom of my social circle continues. One friend travels from the U.K. to cover for another who is being sent to North Africa for six Halcrow-months[5]. One friend leaves, a few more start working in the city, and all the while people start disappearing on summer holidays, business trips, or jollies to the U.S.A.
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Before the summer heat becomes too great to contemplate doing anything outdoors, we attend a few last sporting events. My South African colleague and I attend the third round of the Dubai Duty Free Men's Tennis Open. She is more into the sport than I am; I do not follow it at all, but I enjoy watching[6], and we watch a couple of interesting matches as Nadal and Federer both win. (Nadal would later stumble in the fourth round, but Federer would reclaim his championship). We go to the Masters Football a month later. Think old guys playing six-a-side. It is a good evening, with some impressive skill shown before age and the heat start to take their toll. Most of the old guys seem to have kept themselves in pretty good shape, although John Barnes seems to have taken on everyone's Dubai Stone for them. Liverpool steal the championship from the Manchester United. Even as the final whistle is blown it is clear that it is already too hot for playing in the sun, and we resign ourselves to seeing nothing now until the autumn. |
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Three friends and I take a bus to the capital for the first race of the international Red Bull Air Race programme. The event involves a team of former stunt and display team pilots racing their way around a course marked by low lying inflatable gates. Hundreds of thousands of people congregate on Abu Dhabi corniche and watch as plane after plane passes seemingly within touching distance. The first time a plane heads directly towards our spot on the beach is slightly nervewracking, but we soon get caught up in the atmosphere with the rest of the crowd. That evening we hit the town, determined to disprove the long-standing claim that there is nothing to do in 'Scabby Dhabi'. We hit a couple of bars, but when we start to run out of options we begin to wonder if maybe the town's critics were right. Or maybe our host in Abu Dhabi does not yet know his way around. We end the night in a very expensive seafood restaurant. A mistake in reading the wine list leads to our ordering three bottles of what we thought was cheap wine. When the bill comes we are staggered, and none of us can recall spending this much on wine before. We celebrate by ordering another bottle, albeit of a slightly cheaper vintage. |
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A work colleague organises an afternoon's trip into the desert for a spot of dune bashing. It is meant as an alternative to the typical beer-centric events that are organised, and despite initial misgivings it goes remarkably well. The afternoon is spent pulling each other's 4x4s out of the sand, and taking photographs of each other's stranded cars for the noticeboard at work. Having no car of my own, and not wishing to test my hired Civic on the sands, I invite a friend along. He is eager to test out his new car, and once he gets the hang of driving on the sand it handles on the desert very well. The car realises its potential . . . although it probably would have been even more fun with working air-conditioning. |
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Early in the year, Fitness First announce the opening of three new gyms. The first of these is located on the roof of the Burjuman centre, the nearest mall to my flat. When I finally give up my search for a dojo, I walk down to view the gym. I am shown around and, though they insist they will be open on time, they do not look anywhere near ready. Doubtless the plans are impressive -- the gym is set to become one of the biggest in the country -- but it looks like a building site, the weekend before opening day. After they assure me that they will not charge me until it opens, I sign up. Opening day is pushed back even further, until the beginning of June. I have to admit it looks pretty impressive; the cardio area alone has about a hundred machines in it, and the resistance and free weights areas have comprehensive selections. Now, if only the classes had started or the pool had opened, it would be even better.
The Lodge is a vast club located in a bit of a social wilderness. It centres around a large open-air dancefloor, which in the winter months is a welcome change from the usual sweaty clubs. That is not to say that it does not get sweaty, but at least there's a breeze. The crowd is an interesting mix of the pretty set -- there for posing and preening -- and the usual scum from Bur Dubai. One of the regular nights that has caught our eyes is a cheese night called, imaginatively, Cheese at Chi, hosted by DJ Tim Cheddar. Cheddar is known for rollerskating around the dancefloor. As he pelts around the crowd, it truly is a wonder that no one has yet tripped him up.
As summer approaches the live music scene in Dubai begins to dwindle. Gigs still happen, but with less regularity, and the artists who are prepared to endure the summer temperatures become smaller and smaller. Many of the expats in Dubai are aged between their mid- and late-twenties. A decade or more ago, Faithless provided the soundtrack to many of these expats' school days. I can remember dancing to Insomnia whilst still at school[8]. Since then they disappeared, but their concert in Dubai is much anticipated. Ten years ago, they were reknowned as putting on one of the best live acts in the country, and they still put on a damn good show. The Old-Men-of-Rock tour continues. What started with Roger Waters, and continued with Iron Maiden and Robert Plant, is now followed by a visit from Aerosmith, who choose Dubai to kick off their world tour. I surprise myself with just how many Aerosmith songs I know the lyrics to. They put on one hell of a show, but once more the performance is let down by some shoddy Dubai-style organisation. Only one bar is put on, there is no merchandise[9], and the band doesn't start until 10.30pm.
Sports-wise there is plenty to do in the city and the facilities, events, and opportunities are increasing at a rate to match the frantic development in other fields. Sports City -- one of the many developments in the pipelines -- is going to have more capacity than the current population of Dubai, and will alledgedly cater to sport at all levels. This development does not come without cost however. The Dubai World Cup -- which I attended in March, but for some reason didn't write about -- is the world's richest horse race. Plans to develop a site that will match the opulence of this event, had led to the closure of several facilities in the vicinity of the existing Nad Al Sheba race course. Whilst the facilities have all been given new homes, no one seems to know where they are. Whilst the golfer were up in arms about the closure of the golf course (all the other clubs in Dubai being full), perhaps the hardest news is the closure of Dubai Exiles Rugby Club, home to the sevens tournament each December, and the Desert Rock Festival each March. Whilst we are assured that the future of these events are certain, we cannot help but mourn the closure of one of the most easily accessible venues in the emirate. Still, we remain optimistic. Hopefully my new found enthusiasm for the gym will see me doing a lot more than just watching in the near future.
Photographs from the U.A.E. can be found at my pages at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53537358@N00/
[1] I pity these people, and I did not want to pity myself.
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Concept and content by Kevin Paul Jones Copyright © 2007 Kevin Paul Jones |  |
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