Tag: traffic

Australia vs Pakistan in Twenty20 – 07 May 2009

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32 today, 32 today!

I experienced my first birthday in Dubai.  I received some handy gifts. Of note was the remote control toy car Range Rover that Myles picked out. He slyly asked if he could use it some times. He’s dreamin’.
It’s different from having a birthday at home in a number ways. For one, the birthday boy or girl needs to bring in the cake, or sweets to work. So I made a dash to the Lebanese sweets shop around the corner and bought a kilo of mixed baclava on a tray. It turned out to be only just enough.
I sent an email out at work that it was my birthday and people were welcome to the sweets. So many people made the effort to respond or tell me best wishes for the day, it was lovely to see how sweet and sincere everyone was.
During the day I also found that they weren’t joking about me shouting lunch either. Fortunately a mate didn’t realise it was my birthday and suggested we go to the burger joint, so I got out of it very cheaply!

dsc14
Tanzeem, Myles & I

I finished a little early to get prepared for the Twenty20 cricket match between Australia and Pakistan. It was a little bit worrying that the Australian embassy felt the need to provide a specific warning about this. It really only covered the behaviour you should follow in the UAE anyway.

Australian citizens planning to attend the Australia-Pakistan cricket matches to be played in Dubai and Abu Dhabi between 22 April and 7 May 2009 are reminded that local laws and penalties apply to you. It is important to remember that we are guests in the UAE, and that we must respect the UAE’s laws and customs.

Home – Australian Embassy (9 May 2009)

http://www.uae.embassy.gov.au

We left in plenty of time, as Thursday evenings are terrible for traffic even without the extra burden of a cricket crazy population getting to a local match. After a wrong turn which we couldn’t easily return from, we only just made it to Dubai Sports City in time. It was a little frustrating that we could then see the stadium, yet there was no way yet to get there directly, and there’s also no parking in sight. Not sure how this is possible in a desert with sand everywhere. Dubai Sport City is also a construction site so there is space everywhere.

We followed the already growing number of cars stuck in a line towards the designated parking areas. Eventually we found a park just over the road from the ICC headquarters.

Fortunately they had shuttle buses operating from the parking area from the car parks as we were probably 2 – 3 kms from the stadium.
The stadium looks like a giant marshmallow from the outside. It has giant sails at the top half, the rest of it is what you expect from a new world-class stadium.

There were so many people trying to sell us scalped tickets, or “black tickets” I had to check if it was illegal. It was.  Just maybe not policed very well.

As we got into the final lines to get in we were frisked by beefy security. It was from there we saw a large shiny helicopter, so we figured His Highness Sheikh Mohammed was present.

Once inside the ground we were free to walk into any section we pleased, with the exception of the VIP areas. The VIP tickets were more than 12 times the price of our cheap seats in the atmosphere section. It made no difference however if you bought one of the many other ticket categories. They all just piled in together, and we weren’t allocated a seat.

I saw on the big screen a sign, “We’re eating kangaroo curry tonight”.  Another one that got a laugh when it was displayed was “My wife thinks I’m at work”.

The match

I had never been to see a T20 match before, but they certainly look more exciting on TV. The organisers tried hard, including cheerleaders, but in keeping with the local sensitivities, they all had bright white tights beneath their short skirts.

Australia batted first, which usually means they’ll win.  But not this time.  The game started quite well for them with a good strike rate. But it didn’t last too long, with wicket after wicket.

When Andrew Symonds came out to bad, it was disappointing to hear a section behind us doing the controversial Monkey chant. Fortunately it didn’t last long as Symonds was out first ball. It was a new look Symonds, sporting a shaved head, perhaps this was a mistake as he suffered a similar fate to  Samson without his locks.

The ease with which the Pakistanis were bowling us out made it look like they were throwing down a golf ball. Our final score was a mere 109.  When Brett Lee was bowled out I thought he would have been licking his lips at the change to bowl on the wicket, but he didn’t make an impact. To cut a long story short, in comparison it seemed like we were bowling a soft ball to the Pakistanis as they smashed the ball around every which way.

Australia won the one-day series, but were extremely outplayed in this Twenty20. This was a good result for the crowd. The Australian fans were severely out-numbered. There was one section entirely made-up of Australian shirts, but they were all Indians. On closer inspection, the shirts were branded with Multiplex, so it seemed like they were only there as part of a work junket.

Some of the Pakistani fans in front of us pose with us
Some of the more vocal Pakistani fans pose with us

The row in front of us, the rest of the row behind us, and the row behind us were all very vocal Pakistani fans. My mate translated their chants which were entertaining. The most used was “PAKISTAN JITEGA” – ‘Pakistan will win’.  Even before the end of the match, I was cheering it also. Another was asking where are the Australian fans, but they didn’t hear Myles and my screams.

Time to leave

The Sheikh’s helicopter had gone by the time we began piling out of the stadium. It was clear he knew something we didn’t, the means to leave the stadium was hopeless.

The shuttle bus service to get us back to the cars got terribly stuck in traffic, so we ended up walking the distance back to the car. Then once we got onto the road we didn’t move for around 20 minutes. We then noticed that our hold-up was just go get us to the u-turn point to join the other road that hadn’t moved for 20 minutes either. Eventually we ditched this, and followed the brake lights of some other cars that seemed to be moving. This was a winner.

It was a great evening. We eventually got home just before 2am.

Myles and I in plenty of Australia gear - in the minority
Myles and I - in the minority - wearing plenty of Australia gear

What a weekend

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My family and I have had another hectic weekend.

Tecom

On Thursday – the equivalent of Australia’s Friday – we managed to get a viewing of our permanent accommodation at Al Barsha. Getting into there is not the finest introduction at the moment as due to the rain the ground’s mostly muddy, and there are still plenty of ad hoc signs to get you through the many construction sites in the area.  But the actual building wasn’t too bad.

As there is still a little bit of construction there was definitely no kids allowed, so Elle and I viewed the apartments in turns. I went first.  I firstly had to work out the major things such as which blocks were the ones available and what not.  There were no authorised staff around to start the lifts for me, so I was only able to climb the stairs, which meant I stopped as soon as I could work out how many flights til you got a half-decent view – which incidentally was floor 10.  After my turn, Elle just happened to bump into the facilities manager who took her to the roof so she could view the pool & BBQ area.  Despite some of my colleague’s concerns, the area was apparently not too bad.  There’s been a bit of talk at the office that the area is extremely unsafe as there’s only a 1 metre glass wall stopping you from falling the 26 floors to the ground.  But apparently C block which Elle viewed was a fair bit higher than this, and can be managed.

There’s also quite a bit of talk around the traps whether now is the right time to use company accommodation or not.  The financial crisis has dropped the values and rents of a lot of the real estate.  Allegedly villas are now at prices less than most of our accommodation allowances, so we could conceivably ditch the apartment, lease our own villa, and still get extra money in our pocket.  But you’d be at the mercy of local landlords, and have to manage all the utility costs yourself.  And who knows where prices are going next. Most papers have quite a few competing predictions.

Ski Dubai

I dropped Elle and the boys back at home, then went back to work for a few hours before picking them up again and heading off to Ski Dubai – within the Mall of Emirates.  There’s something not right with the order of things, when my son sees snow for the first time in a desert. All in all though, it was a fantastic first introduction.  We took my boss’s son who is a very competent skier. Elle had to provide some level of adult supervision as she was the only one left who could ski. I say “some level” of supervision, as Alex was zooming down the slopes like a rocket, while my wife had to initially spend some time back on the learner’s slope.

One this occasion Myles and I just visited the Snow Park, which was no problem at all.  The place was great. All the kids there were so adorable with their snow suits, boots, and helmets.  I thought some of the activities would be a bit advanced for him, but Myles enjoyed the tobaggan and donut rides immensely.  I thought they were pretty cool also, but for our next visit the two of us made a pact to learn to ski.  I should add that our baby went shopping with my boss during this time.  Apparently whenever people were watching she was boasting that Lewis was her kid. 🙂

Mall of Emirates shopping

The following day my wife was a little worse for wear from skiing for the first time in many years. We disregarded this though and hit the Mall of Emirates again, but this time only the shopping mall. My goodness!  I viewed it very quickly last November after I finished my job interviews, but I really had no idea of its actual size. The place has a bit of absolutely everything. We bought plenty of things off the shopping list, but as we’re still “setting up” it’s still outside of full scrutiny.

When we returned to our car, there was another example of Dubai’s shoddy driving.  On either side of us there were massive 4WDs over their line wedging us in.  With great difficulty I put the boys into the back, but then had to get into the passenger’s side to get out.

The Gold Souq (Market)

And today to complete the weekend a Prado load of us visited the Gold Souq. We were warned to get a ride there as there are limited parks, and they weren’t kidding. The traffic was horrendous, and there were absolutely no street parks. In the end we were lucky to get a space in the paid car park. From the street it looked like it was already oversupplied, but they managed to squeeze us in on the proviso we left our keys so they could reconfigure the place each time someone needed to leave.

The markets were nice. The constant line of people asking us to go off and look at their copied watches and handbags was no so nice after the 30-40th  suggestion.  The amount of gold on display was almost on the obscene level.  Some of the gold chains would floor Mr T. I should mention only I thought they were obscene.  My wife and boss both thought they were perfectly appropriate.  Go figure.

According to a map I saw, the gold souq was very close to the perfume, spice, and fish souqs also. But that was incorrect.  They had spice and perfumes only.  My wife may have been relieved by this, as I promised to buy equal value of fish to gold.  Actually I think the threat worked a treat, we didn’t buy any jewelry at all.  Although a bit of negotiating with shops occured, and a few business cards were collected.

We did pretty much a full round, and bought only specials which I was happy with.  We now have an authentic beautiful table runner, and a few other useful items. And contrary to a lot of the advice I received before going, we’ll certainly be back. Next time though, we’ll get a driver to drop us there.  Well, actually the next trip is (thankfully) purely for the girls,  so I mean the time after that.