the little things...

ok, i realize i owe you posts about my adventures in jordan and australia, but sometimes it is the little things in life that just steal the spotlight.

myself just off my trip from australia and my flatmate just back from russia decided to have a leisurely saturday of breakfast out and a little bit of home shopping.  a bit blinded and quickly bored by the none too new home decor ideas we were nearly to the exit when we spotted the most genius home accessory i've seen in quite some time!


thank you Umbra for the portable ping pong set, our dining table will never be the same :)

the COOLest thing to do in dubai

found it!  by far the best way to beat the summer heat:  ski dubai.

we humans have come up with some crazy ideas in our time, but this one is pretty up there on the list.  a ski slope in a mall in the middle of one of the hottest places on the planet... why not?! 

i've always wanted to learn to snowboard (admittedly because i love the direction snowboard design has taken, i would buy a snowboard just to hang on my wall)... but every time i go for a ski vacation i always end up deciding against it because who really wants to spend their vacation falling in their butt the whole day when they could be swishing down a mountain?!

so this is perfect.  an hour on the weekend, its blazing hot out, what have i better to do than learn?

there are about 4 levels of lessons at ski dubai.  being a skier first, i wasn't sure what my reaction to snowboarding would be, but i loved it! it is so streamlined, you don't have to deal with 2 skis and 2 poles all wanting to go in separate directions.  it is one board and your balance.  granted this isn't something you can master overnight, i see some good times for snowboarding and i in the future :)

i did my first lesson as a group lesson with a few of my friends that way we could laugh with each other.

maybe one day we will be good enough to take my skills to a real mountain with one of these: 

paul smith and burton = love.

let there be light

as i embrace the emirates and all they have to offer, i am slowly making my way about each of the seven.  the latest was sharjah.

while i didn't fully explore sharjah (i'll save this pleasure for the cooler months) i was on a mission to find one particular jewel, the blue souk.

i have yet to find a souk in the emirates that fulfills my mind's romantic vision about them, but i did quite enjoy this one.

i checked all my preconceived notions at the door in search for some idyllic little metal lanterns that should fill and empty corner in my apartment. 

mission accomplished:

dragonmart

"where you can find one in a million or a million of one."

as the quest to escape the summer heat (and more importantly, humidity) continues, the options for indoor activities are becoming increasingly creative.

last weekend, upon numerous suggestions that this was indeed "something to see", we decided to do just that.

this place is everything it claims to be and more...  full on 150,000 square feet of anything and everything you could possibly think of.... i'd say the good, the bad and the ugly, but it was mostly just the latter two.

massage tables, tools,  pet fish stores, anything and everything sponge-bob-square-pants, scary light fixtures, and cheap handbags... oh my!

perhaps my favorite thing of all is the names of the shops, my favorite is "Feel Nice Trading"... you just can't make this stuff up. 

so without further ado, i bring to you: dragonmart

get wild

ok.  let's face it, it isn't getting any cooler in the emirates anytime soon... what are we going to do to beat the heat?

the obvious answer is air-conditioning people, but if you must go outside, your best bet for survival involves WATER!

i recently hit up the slides at wild wadi waterpark in dubai, my favorite was the burj surj!

NO other water park has this view:

found it!

have you ever met someone that doesn't love pizza?  right.  that is what i thought. 

abu dhabi has all your standard fast food pizzas... pizza hut, papa john's, il forno (which is pretty legit for take away)... it has some hotel restaurants who's pies are worth a shout out... prego at beach rotana, frankie's at fairmont... and even one "street" restaurant with delicious egyptian pizzas...

BUT by far the best pizza i've found in abu dhabi comes by the meter at a place called Spaccanapoli in the Crown Plaza. 

more, again.

looking for a way to get in shape?  i've found a new form of torture for you that will definitely do the job!...it is called boot camp kids, and i had no idea what i was in for. 

the one i signed up for is by Lion's Fitness.  you can usually find deals on GoNabit or Cobone

 

boot camp.  just some hardcore name for another fluffy aerobics class, right?  think again.  seriously, channel Demi Moore in GI Jane.  

let me give you a better image.  the class is on the beach taught by a Syrian dude named Mohammad that actually was in the military.  You will do more situps, push-ups, squats and lunges than you ever thought possible in one hour... and when you are done with those prepare yourself for sprints up and down the beach with a 10k sandbag belted to your person... now, start running. 

after the first class you might say "never again", but now i am a little addicted.  

with the outside temp ramping up by the day, i am thinking i need to move it inside, but what will i do without a drill sargent? 

i made this

 

looking for something to do around abu dhabi? try the sushi making class at Soba in Le Royal Meridien!

lions and tigers and...camels, oh my!

i've been a bit of a beach bum the past few weekends so this last weekend i decided to do something a little out of the norm. 

i left our lovely city of abu dhabi and headed out for the greener pastures of al ain (which is another city within the abu dhabi emirate).  we didn't quite see everything there was to see there, but we had animal ambitions in mind for this trip! 

1.  check out the al ain wildlife park and resort (aka the zoo), its only 15 dirhams for adult admission (this is what, $5 US?) talk about cheap thrills! 
2.  find a camel market and take some photos with some camels!

mission accomplished on both counts, check it out!

 new white tigers (their names are sugar and spice.. we named our family dogs the same thing!)

 this is love.

 this is the love of simple things... food!

 did you know that giraffes have purple tongues?

 this little guy is a gazelle native to the region, so cute!

and this one... he just means business!

now, on to the camel market... which was to me anyway, much cooler than the zoo!

 late afternoon in the desert, after one wrong turn, a small issue involving sand and our SUV, we finally made it to the camel market.  which is, for those of you that are wondering, on the road between al ain and dubai about halfway in between the two cities. 

 

 this guy was awesome, hanging out, trying to get us to drink warm fresh camel milk, and generally enjoying our over-fascination with their livestock...

 baby camels, so much better than the zoo babies!

 

the whole time we were here, i kept picturing some role reversal... in my mind the people at this camel market look at us the way we would look at them if they pulled off the highway in the countryside of the US randomly to stare at a pasture of cows... the must have thought we were crazy!

 i think this one liked me!

  he's cute right?! little food in the teeth though...

why did the camel cross the road anyway?!

i can't take credit for any of these photos by the way, they are all taken by my good friend JW... who happens to have a killer camera and used the day testimg out her skills in manual mode. i think she did a fabulous job!

sugar 'n spice

i have a secret:  i like to tell people i hate valentine's day, but the truth is... i don't hate it entirely (shhh... don't tell).

just to get it out of the way, here is what i do hate about valentine's day:

a. hideous floral displays made of the most cliche flowers (e.g. red roses with baby's breath) in the ugliest vases possible.
b.  ridiculous expectations that cause people to get nervous, overplan, and do something cliche, like buy a person the above mentioned item.
c.  prix fixe meals at restaurants that never live up to the food at that same restaurant on any other given day.
d. chocolate in heart shaped boxes.
e. giant stuffed animals holding heart-shaped pillows, cheesetastic!

all of that aside, here is what i do love about valentine's day:  

a.  chocolate (sans heart shaped box. however, i love it as much on february 14th as i do any other day of the year...)
b.  sappy romantic comedies (yes, the ones that ususally cause all of the problems mentioned above).
c.  the hope that one day someone will understand me well enough to know that i dislike all of the above items and would prefer a simple modern flower arrangement without fillers, a meal somewhere far away from a restaurant full of strangers, and even on days that aren't valentine's day... and for no reason at all. 
d.  but most of all, i do love any opportunity to do something nice for my friends and family to let them know that i love them, because the bottom line is that you can't say it enough. 

and since my grandma always told me the way to a person's heart is through their stomach... i decided to bake cookies this year!

depending on who you are, you might think that baking cookies is a pretty easy task, but it turns out that part of the fun of being an expat, is that something that seems easy is always bound to be a challenge...

snickerdoodles, for those of you that don't know... are not only the most delicious cookie ever, but are made of about 7 of the most basic ingredients.  which is why i was surprised when i found myself trekking around abu dhabi to three different grocery stores to find them all! 

here is a little fun fact:  the ingredient commonly known as "baking soda" in the US is actually called "bicarbonate of soda" here... who would have known, i bought it hoping for the best but definitely had to Google when i got home to be sure. 

also, used to having a fully stocked kitchen, i temporarily forgot that i moved here with only three suitcases and all my kitchen gadgets are packed safely away in a storage unit in new jersey (or as my mom likes to joke, sitting in the bottom of the Hudson).  so it was off to the store to buy a mixer,some baking sheets, and a cookie bin.

and lastly, because i can't help but to add a little "valentine's day something" i wanted to find those small jars of colored sugar to sprinkle on top of the cookies (pretty basic in the baking section of any US grocery, oh the things I took for granted!) ... at the third store, after two stores of total strikes, i finally found some pink sugar!

at last i am home and prepared to bake, and i hear my phone chirping from the other room... it is a friend of mine (also an Abu Dhabi expat from the US). i tell her my baking plans, and she says, in a vote of confidence "every time i try to make a US recipe out here it just never goes as planned, but i'm sure your cookies will be great!" 

ha ha.  on that note, i continued on, with caution, but i have to say, the cookies turned out to be fantastic!  my roomie has already had two tonight. 

you can't have just one snickerdoodle...

 

(yes this is a photo of my snickerdoodles... you want one now, don't you?!)

cabin fever

if you've been following this blog then you already know a cardinal rule of mine: 

always have the next trip planned. 

my how i've broken that one in the last couple of months.  people, i need a vacation! 

now, while the side of me that has adapted to this lazy lifestyle of the UAE would like to go to some remote island and sit by the ocean, the side that i used to know says i should do something to push me out of this rut i seem to be in lately. 

so here is what i am thinking, some camping and hiking are in order!  

where:  snake canyon, oman. 

while there are plenty of tours available for this sort of thing, i'm thinking some friends, and SUV, and a couple of tents are the way to go!

i have it on good authority that this is an amazing hike full of killer scenery and adventure... there are even some swimming portions involved!!! this will definitely be a good motivation for maintaining some gym habits in the coming weeks!

now the only question is: when?

i'm dreaming of a....

...white christmas?

hmm, let's take a minute to ponder that one... every year, we take a dozen or so cardboard boxes out of storage and decorate our houses for christmas.  my favorite decoration was always my mothers nativity scene, which is ceramic and handpainted by my mother herself (but if you ask her, she isn't creative or "arty" at all).

i'd take out the statues of mary and joseph, the wise-men, the angel, sheep, and camels and place them all in a perfect arrangement.  the tree, i think i usually got frustrated with about halfway through, but the nativity scene i loved from start to finish.

being in the middle east for christmas this year got me thinking; where does this notion of a white christmas really come from?  really i'm just desperate to find ways to connect with christmas while feeling so far away from my family.  and suddenly that nativity scene, those camels with ornate coverings draped over their backs, and the wise-men in their robes and headdress, came floating across my mind once again. and what i realized is that i'm much closer to the roots of christmas here, geographically anyways, than i ever was in the states.

white christmas, camels trekking across white desert sands perhaps?

new views

they say a good portion of the value of real estate is in the location, right? well, needless to say, i'm pretty happy with the view from my new place.  check it out!

 emirates palace

rotana pools and beach

czech love

november was a whirlwind of a month.  in this time i managed to get a new apartment, experience some of the Formula One festivities, including performances by Kanye West and Prince among others.  and over the Eid Holiday I was also able to squeeze in a trip to the Czech Republic. 

i was invited on this trip by an amazingly creative glass company called Lasvit. the main focus on this trip was to understand more about the world of glass blowing, i even got to give it a go myself  (more to come on this later)!  after my glass blowing experience in the small town of Novy Bor, we took a lovely drive through the countryside of the czech republic to a beautiful spa town called Carlsbad.  remember when i was in italy and found that lovely little restaurant the one that was "a place that dreams are made of"?  Carlsbad is another one of those! this town is famous for its hot springs and a very popular place for filming movies, including the likes of Bond with Casino Royale. we didn't spend much time here, just a late lunch and evening stroll through town, but it was enough for me to know that even though this place may have never been on my list before, it definitely is on the list now as a place to go back to!

 a walk through town

 grandhotel pupp

 buildings are built around each hot spring

both traditional and contemporary.

hot spring

next up.... prague!

home sweet happy

after a long hiatus... too long really (meaning i probably lost any non-family readers at this point)... i am back!

you better bet i wasn't sitting around with my feet up all this time doing nothing.  i should have a better excuse than that, right?! 

here's what has gone down.

sometime in the last month, things have all fallen into place.  first and most significant, is that i found an apartment (finally)!!!  and bonus, it came with an amazing roommate and new friend.    the place is coming along slowly, but nicely. i have a case of something i am deeming the "expat stuff dilemma".  by definition, we expats are a special breed prone to wandering.  we don't know how long we will be in one place therefore investing in a lot of furniture and other stuff you will then have to drag around the world comes at a price, one we aren't usually interested in paying.  the solution for most: ikea.

everything you could possibly need for an apartment at a price that won't leave you cringing... my situation poses a bit of an extra challenge. i am an interior designer. i design luxury hotels. i have expensive taste; i think i was born with it, really.  so i had to do what i do best, get creative. i'm pretty sure i've been to ikea at leat 2 times a week since moving into this place and  i've got a nice share of it coming my way this weekend, so i believe i've fulfilled my portion of the expat quota for their profits this year! 

the great thing about the "expat stuff dilemma"  is that when you live in a community where a large amount of people are expats, people are always coming and going... and therefore purging their barely used items at a fraction of the cost! i was able to score some pretty sweet living room furniture and fit out my spare bedroom in this fashion!  the best and most popular website for this in the UAE is called Dubizzle (yes, that is for real kids!) 

there's also a great thing about being an interior designer.  i know people.... well the right people when it comes to these sort of things anyways. people who will make me custom draperies from their back stock of leftover fabrics.  actually an interesting tidbit about the UAE is that anything that involves tailoring can be done at a very reasonable price here, a fraction of what you would pay in the States!

the bed and the dining table my splurge items. no question about where my priorities rest! for these little gems i will most likely head to Crate and Barrel in Dubai :)  thank god for them, they must have known i was moving here because the dubai location, which only opened earlier this year, just happens to be the one and only C&B outside the US.

more to come soon, maybe even a few snapshots once we get this place up and running!

mia

i have to apologize for being mia the past few weeks.  not having internet at the new place is putting a kink in my blog abilities.   hopefully up and running again in the next week or so!

poser

i've been designing hotels for some time now, and in our presentations we always place images of the chic people that we imagine to be the future visitors of our creations.  the happy couple, the model-like business man, the chic single girl with that handbag we dream of but just can't afford.  people have a a way of bringing a space to life. after all, they are the reason we design. 

i find myself thinking of the spaces i've completed and wondering, are there really people there?... sitting in the perfectly positioned chairs covered in the fabric hand-picked by me, or are they just empty, statuesque, as people pass? 

who uses these lobby seats?  today it's me.  i've been living at this hotel for quite some time now and the lobby, over time, stopped being the lobby and became my living room.  why sit in a hotel room when i can be down here? the hotel room is stagnant. this place has energy, with the clanking of pool balls from the billiards tables in the corner, and the bustle of people coming and going. 

i used to think the only people that sat in the lobbies of hotels were those that posed in our renderings, illustrating how we dreamed the space would be used... but now i know them.  they are me, and somehow that makes it all worth while.  

sky

my coworker took this photo from the fire stairs of our construction site office yesterday. the sky was amazing!

when i lived in arizona, pretty much every sunset looked like this... out here at least from what i've experienced having only lived out the summer season, the sky has never looked like this.  it is usually a cloudless very muted blue with haze that makes the visibility not so great.  the past couple days the sky has been crystal clear and you can see further and see more details, the light quality has just changed. 

we are finally changing seasons and if this is a sign of what fall-winter will look like, bring it on!

boo!

signs of fall and US holidays halfway across the world!

i couldn't resist buying a pumpkin for the office when i saw the display at spinney's yesterday.  they had the traditional orange pumpkins and also white "ghost" pumpkins!... so i'm sure you all know which one i went for!!!

...  it reminds me of home, fall holidays, adult apple cider, and sweaters with boots!  a girl can dream can't she?  even when it is 38 degrees Celsius outside!

hiatus

can someone please tell me how on earth we are already a third of the way through october?!

i clearly neglected this blog while i was gone!

my time in arizona felt like someone was holding down the fast forward button.  knowing that i'm not able to go home for a long time after this visit left a bit of a cloud over my head.... a whirlwind of shopping for things i can't get here, various appointments, parties, wedding celebrations, and brunches with family friends and relatives, all the while feeling my way through a mean dose of jet lag and trying to cram in as much QT with everyone as possible.  i love my family and friends there so much.  i needed more time.  i settled down into my seat on the plane back and i felt sad.

then i remembered a tip from a well traveled friend:  always have the next trip planned.  you have to have something to look forward to.

now, this doesn't cure my current homesick blues or negate the fact that i still have to stay out of the states for a while (tax purposes), but it does give me pause to remember that there is a whole world out there to explore.

i guess the only questions left are where? and who's with me?