Gubbi of Arabia: Expat Life in Dubai

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-16944794-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); The (mis)adventures of an All-American girl in the Middle East. I blog about travel, running, expat life, and of course, Dubai - my quirky, sandy, for-now hometown. Think of me as "Lawrence of Arabia" meets "Legally Blonde" and we'll get along just fine. New here? Check out my favorite posts. Wanna chat? Email me, Gubbi of Arabia at gmail dot com, or just ask! Follow my blog with Bloglovin

[gubbiofarabia]

The Story of Billie & Doctor

(Hiking with puppies at Jebel Jais, Ras Al Khaimah... you will note that Alex is holding Billie for the picture and #billiedontcare)

So if we’re gonna do this whole “blogging” thing again, we’re gonna need to introduce you to a couple of new supporting characters. You already know Alex (TL;DR - my partner of six years, husband for two of them) and we’ll soon introduce you to MT (our beloved housekeeper, puppy au pair, and nanny to any future human progeny... yup, we went full expat up on the crowd). But aside from these wonderful folks, do you recall [insert Ella Fitzgerald crooning “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” voice]... the most famous dachshunds of all? 

(Billie snout under Missoni duvet cover, top left; Doctor snout under West Elm faux-fur throw, top right.)

We got Billie in December 2012 and Doctor in January 2014, and our lives have been ever the richer since - because dogs, man, amiright?! Much though it pains me to admit it, the correct word for the procurement process of both dogs is “bought,” not “adopted”... as luck would have it, Dubai is rife with wonderful pups for adoption, but we happen to live in an apartment building which does not technically (read: um... doesn’t) allow dogs. This prohibition exists largely in the classic Dubai legalese grey area of “we don’t care if you actually obey the rule, just don’t get caught or piss anyone off while breaking it and it’s all good” (case in point: there are a dozen or so dogs currently residing in our building) but nevertheless, most of the adoptable dogs here tend to (A) be too big for apartment living, certainly clandestine apartment living, and (B) be adoptable through highly responsible rescue organizations that take a dim view on our “no don’t worry, we love our dogs SO much - if there was a problem with having them in our building, we would just move!!!” rationale, sincere though it may be. 

Hence our wieners were purchased from a website-less pet shop that sketchily imports puppies to the UAE from Hungary, which is the closest country that has an actual canine-centric culture (dogs not being generally held in super high regard throughout the Arab and / or Muslim worlds, but we’ll talk more about that in a separate post). So yes, I live with residual guilt about contributing to the shady Eastern European puppy mill exporter situation... and yet, I take consolation that at the end of the day, both of our pups were brought to the UAE totally outside of our doing and we were lucky enough to find them and give them better homes than they might have gotten otherwise. 

(The consequence of living in a no-dogs-allowed building: walks require a pair of “stealth bags” to secretly transport each dachshund outside.)

Enough about the military-industrial-dachshund complex, and on to “the girls.” (My parents make so much fun of us for referring to them as such?!) They are characters, to be sure. Billie is self-confident to the extreme, aloof, and above it all... until she’s not (i.e. occasions of potential access to beer, ice cream, or new dog toys, all of which merit rare enthusiasm; exposure to straws or to vertical jumps of more than 6 inches, which elicit genuine terror). In the parlance of Instagram, #billiedontcare. By contrast, Doctor’s only mission in life is to please us, but she is tragically (or perhaps, tragi-comically) stricken with what we call a “nervous mind,” meaning she suffers from constant low-level anxiety in the face of any alteration to the status quo, and is prone to regularly losing track of who / where she is in both space and time, resulting in long periods of blank staring off into the distance and / or confused facial expressions. 

(Billie, background, and Doctor, foreground, cheering for Germany - their ancestral homeland, obvs - in the 2014 World Cup.)

By way of personality comparison, last week Alex was flying to Bahrain for work and had to get up at the ungodly (in our household, anyway) hour of 5 AM. As he shuffled out of the bedroom towards the kitchen and coffee, Billie slunk over towards his warm space in bed, let out a few exaggerated, anguished sighs to show her displeasure with this departure from routine, and burrowed deeper under the covers, not to emerge for hours to come. Doctor, on the other hand, fled the bedroom immediately, following Alex out into the kitchen where she proceeded to submissively roll around on her back for ten minutes, even nervously peeing herself a time or two, all as if to say, “if this departure from routine is in any way my fault, please know that I am SO SO SO SORRY!!! Wait, who am I? ... Where am I? [long stare into space] Right! Sorry! So, so, so, so, soooooooo sorry!”

(Spooning wieners.)

So, there you have it. Yes, we’re crazy dog people, but as I said - if we’re gonna go back down this whole well-trodden blog-oversharing road, you gotta know the weens. And also... crazy or not, #billiedontcare.

[gubbiofarabia]

Hello- I am moving to Dubai soon it seems as the man has accepted a position there and I am scared outta my mind and not sure what to think. Can you give me an idea of what to expect? I am in my 30's moving from the Midwest, Nebraska with two dogs and a healthy wine liking. I am scared that I wont be able to drink there? No that I need it all the time but it is enjoyed from time to time. Anything that really caught you off gaurd being female in Dubai?

Don’t be scared!

Dubai is actually very similar to the Midwest… no, really! In order to get anywhere you drive long distances in big cars through flat, sometimes dull landscapes. People in both places tend to warm, friendly, hospitable, and often overweight, with religious beliefs that are conservative and held close to the heart. Sandstorms are like the adorable, harmless cousin of Midwestern tornadoes. And both local cuisines are heavy and designed for serious sustenance… true story, I once had a bowl of “cheeseburger soup” in Omaha that highly resembled harees, a traditional Emirati meat porridge. 

Having two dogs will be an interesting cultural experience. Be prepared to be looked at like you are walking an armadillo on a leash, because that’s how cray you seem to people. 

As for access to alcohol… well, it’s a shame you can’t see my liver on the internet or you wouldn’t be worried. 

Being female in Dubai means you will gradually develop a unique form of sensory perception disorder in which you lose the ability to notice that you are being stared at. Scientists theorize that this is an adaptive self-defense mechanism which evolves to prevent constant rage blackouts and finger-wagging. Otherwise, it’s all good!

[gubbiofarabia]

Enjoying the blog and the amazing photographs - keep going! What are the 3 most important factors that stand out as having had a profound effect on your life? Have you ever thought of turning this into a book?

Thank you - I’m back, baby!!!

If I answer in pure stream-of-consciousness fashion the three most important factors that stand out as having a profound effect on my life are food, family (including dogs), and doing things that make me sweat. In related news, I am not the world’s deepest human being... but I am nothing if not self-aware.

Of course I have thought (read: dreamed) of turning this into a book. Do you know any publishers?

[gubbiofarabia]

How old are you?

I will turn thirty-noneofyourbusiness this August.

[gubbiofarabia]

Hi Gubbi.. after serious reading and scrutiny of your blogs..i am quite amazed that its your complete dairy of middle east experience. i was so refreshed .. being me in doha.. i now started looking my life in new way.. thank you i will be your serious follower of blogs now... Cheers, Rasheed

Thank you for the super-kind words, Rasheed! I love the feeling of being immersed in someone’s life through their blog - to be honest, I almost prefer going back into the archives of a really great blog over reading novels! (Yes, I am a wayward lost child of the internet generation in that way…) 

Throughout my recent years of non-blogging I’ve found some great gems that have reminded me what a powerful medium this is, especially in sharing the uniquely crazy transplantedness of being an expat. Mama Congo, Hilary in Mumbai, The Real Housewife of Ciudad Juarez, and The Same Rainbow’s End are but a few of the awesome expat bloggers that inspired me to get my ass back here. 

[gubbiofarabia]

Hi, just was wondering what you've been up to lately. It's been a long time since we've seen a post from you. Hope all is well in Dubai.

Hi Tumblr friends! I’ve missed you and I’ve missed sharing my life here. I’ve hemmed and hawed a lot about getting back to blogging (”HOW DO I START? WHAT DO I SAY?!”) but at a certain point I think you gotta just jump in cold turkey so maybe I’ll dip a toe in the water (wowe, very metaphor-mixing) by randomly answering questions that have been hanging out in my inbox for, I dunno, two years?

So… what have I been up to in the past 586 days? I’ve done some soul-searching. I’ve cooked a lot - including very delicious enchiladas last night that I shamelessly reheated for breakfast this morning. I’ve become the mother to a second dachshund named Doctor Michael (Michael being short for “microphallus” because when we got her, she was a Very Tiny Wiener). 

I’ve celebrated (TODAY, in fact - something about the occasion of anniversaries always makes me feel retrospective and want to write) two years of marriage to my hilarious, cantankerous, endlessly supportive husband. I’ve gone through some serious raison d’être “what do I do with my life”-type crap that I’m reticent to share online but maybe someday will. (Note my use of the imperfect tense to indicate a continuing or repeated event or state.) I’ve used a lot of parentheses. 

I’ve traveled to Namibia and Bali and rural Kentucky (where hilariously, my fake-American husband couldn’t understand anyone’s accents) and London and Wyoming and Germany and lots of other places I’m sure I’m forgetting right now. I’ve watched my mom fight cancer. I’ve become totes obsessed with CrossFit in a not un-life-changing way, and I have many things to say about this obsession which is great because non-CrossFitters apparently looooooooooove to be talked to about CrossFit. (This is what they tell us in the cult orientation sessions, right before they give us the paleo Kool-Aid to drink.) 

I have made and lost some friendships and learned the true relevance of the Maya Angelou quote, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them - the first time.” I’ve spent a lot of money on Lululemon. I’ve semi-gotten over my extreme aversion to children to the point that I am now obsessed with the awesomeness of several of my friends’ kids and may at some point in the next few years contemplate making one of my own. (May.) I’ve come right up to the edge of 8 years in Dubai, with no sign of leaving anytime soon. I’ve opened and closed the Tumblr “write post” window far too many times without typing a word…

Welp - there’s a start!

[gubbiofarabia]

What? Just seeing if the #dachshund fits into my new jumbo-sized #Camelbak. This is totally a normal thing normal people do. #runALLtheplaces #carryALLthethings

[gubbiofarabia]

On the Occasion of Six Years in Dubai (Or, I Guess I've Lived Here Long Enough to Stop Counting Anniversaries)

It came and it went, actually: 9 July 2013, the the six-year anniversary of my move to the desert. As it does, I guess, when you just... live somewhere.

And what a six years it has been... especially the past couple, which I have rarely chronicled here. (If you are so inclined, you can read On the Occasion of Three Years in Dubai and On the Occasion of Four Years in Dubai from the days of yore when I was a better blogger.) You know, I've not been up to much of late: just met and committed to my life partner, had some major career changes--eh, let's call them "paradigm shifts"--and bore forth my first fur child in the wienerful form of Billie the mini-dachshund.

I guess the most surprising thing about six years here is that I still have zero desire to leave Dubai in favor of anywhere else. This is home, for now (always, for us expatriates who lack recourse to any sort of permanent residence in the UAE, the nagging caveat of "for now" - but we'll get to that later). In a way, I'm so comfortable with my niche as a fish-out-of-water here that I feel like it would be really hard to move back to a place where I was expected to be... a fish-in-water, if that makes any sense?! I've talked about this before, but for someone who grew up with (and to be fair, still has) such an acute self-consciousness about "fitting in" and "being cool" and "doing the right thing," the greatest and most unexpected blessing is to live in a place where, by and large, you can't fit in with the general population, you don't know what cool is, and doing the right thing is... well, open to cultural interpretation.

But it's not just being a space alien that keeps me here. (I should note at this point that I mean "us," as I'm not exactly in the solo-pilot life stage of "pick up and move to country X on a whim" that I was when I came here... but it's hard not to write in first-person singular when indulging in the deep narcissism of blogging.) It's a lot of things that keep us here. It's Ravi's restaurant off of Dhiyafah Road (no, I will never call it 2nd December Street), eating 10-dirham qeema while breaking bread - figuratively, if not literally - with a table of Peshawari cabbies about to start their evening shift. It's finishing my spinning class at 9:30 PM and walking alone to my car through a dark, deserted parking lot and never thinking twice about threats to my personal safety. (Except maybe passingly, by way of contrast - "Gee, in the States this might be a bad idea!") It's the heat - the glorious, radiant, life-slaying summer heat - that I've now adapted to to the extent that I'll go for a casual 5-mile run at 11 AM on a sultry August "108 F / feels like 125 F" weekend morning. It's boisterous Filipino bands covering Taylor Swift in Bur Dubai and failed-Bolshoi Russian ballerinas pirouetting across the stage of supper clubs in Deira. It's the family of friends we've made here, friends we don't have to explain things to or provide context for, friends who are almost self-selectingly like us as a result of their choice to live in this faraway land. It's the McArabia chicken sandwich at McDonald's and weekend booze runs to Ras Al Khaimah and December sunsets over the Gulf as witnessed from our couch. This a good place to live and an easy place to live (once you figure things out), and perhaps above all else, it's where we live. 

And yet.

You know how people move to New York after college and it's all bright-lights-big-city, I-live-in-the-most-magical-place-in-the-world rapture, and somewhere around their late 20s they start talking a big game about how "this is my city" and waxing possessively poetic whenever anyone mentions anything about the High Line or 9/11 or Momofuku or Central Park on a spring day? My city, my city, my city? I find that fascinating, because as much as I feel the same way about Satwa and Al Reef Bakery and Sheikh Mohammed and the Kite Beach on Friday mornings, Dubai will never be my city. It is a place in which I am allowed to live at the delicate whim of capricious and unidentified stakeholders - a description which may sound exaggerated, but which has been driven home for me over the past year, as unforeseen sociopolitical developments completely outside of my control have had a major impact on my professional and personal life. (That sounds dramatic. It kind of is. But unfortunately, this is a public blog so that's all I will say about that, besides noting that everything worked out alright in the end.)

So this is not my city, despite six years and counting of official residence and no plans to leave anytime soon. And that's okay. We all accept that part of the deal when we come here: build your life, sure, but don't get too comfortable. Even so, there are the rare times when you think... REALLY? All the blood, sweat, and tears I've put into a life here - the work I've done, the communities I've formed, the money I've spent, the crises I've stuck around through, the bureaucratic hurdles I've cleared, the obtuse laws I've complied with - none of that means anything to anyone?

Recently I got an email from an American friend who moved to London at the same time I moved to Dubai, telling me that she and her husband had successfully submitted their applications for British passports. It came around the same time that I was due - as we all are, every two years - to renew my UAE residence visa. I couldn't help but laugh at the juxtaposition: all other circumstances being equal, this friend is about to become a fully vested citizen of the country she's chosen to reside in, and I'm about to submit myself to a battery of health tests and background checks to determine whether I have the privilege of remaining here for another two years. 

But again... we all read the small print when we sign on, and after six years here, well - I suppose I've more or less signed my name in blood.

So here's to another year, or two, or ten, in the desert. Me and my fabulously culturally-confused little expat family (Greek-born, British-educated American husband and Hungarian-born, German-bred, Dubai-raised pup) - I guess we're here for the long haul. 

[gubbiofarabia]

Is there anything dreamier than finding a new blog you're obsessed with and sitting down to indulgently read the entire thing, front to back, on a lazy Thursday afternoon in Ramadan when you have absolutely nothing better to do?

If you listen to This American Life you may have heard Emily's story this weekend - do yourself a favor and get stuck into the details. 

(And yes, [whispery voice] this is making me miss blogging... maybe I'll be back soon.)

[gubbiofarabia]

Baby?

(OMG, calm down, despite the title this is not a post about me having a baby. Although given how sporadic my blogging is these days, and the fact that one of my last posts was about getting engaged, you could perhaps be forgiven for assuming as much. Although, in semi-related news, Alex and I recently acquired a tiny 5-pound mini-dachshund pup who is both the light of my life and the closest I will get to procreating anytime in the near future. So, in a way, I kind of almost did have a baby. BTW if you would like to be unapologetically spammed with puppy pictures for the next forever and you are not already following me on Instagram, you should - @gubbiofarabia. Hey-oh, prelude over, blog post begins!)

On Sunday evening I was on a flight back from a work trip to Jeddah, feeling like I always do when I come back from Saudi: world-weary, a little cranky, and ready to not be stared at. I had had a great day of meetings, but it was one of those typical two-steps-forward-one-step-back experiences I tend to have in the Magic Kingdom. I spent the morning presenting to some senior leaders at a big local company (Saudi men, all of them) and it went really well and I felt super competent and confident and well-respected and impactful... and then after the meeting I left the building and was walking around the back streets of this semi-dodgy part of Jeddah trying to find my driver and people were glaring and staring and cars were honking and men were yelling things out of windows and I got soooooooo flustered and was reminded once again that the bizarro challenge of being a Western woman working in Saudi is not the professional part at all, but just the "existing as a female in everyday life" part. Which I feel like is the opposite of what people might assume.

So. I'm on the plane and I'm giving a general side-eye to everyone around me, especially the Saudi couple across the aisle from me who are clutching a baby that looks suspiciously capable of dissolving into shrieks at any moment.

The mother is wearing niqab, the full-face veil that's often erroneously referred to as a burqa in the West.

(via)

Now, it's super-common for women to wear niqab in Saudi - in fact, in some parts of the country it's the norm. Women wear it in the UAE and other parts of the Gulf as well, and although it's less prevalent than in the Kingdom, I would say in your average Dubai mall you'd find about 10-20% of local women rockin' the niq. At any rate, the point is that I have seen a lot of munaqabat (women who wear niqab) in my day.

However, during 5+ years living in Niqabistan (ALL I DO IS WIN with the invention of that word, right? Also, I bet 95% of Americans could be convinced that's an actual country. Somewhere in Central Asia? Yeah, the Soviets fought Muslims there or something, right? I think I saw something about it on the History Channel one time...) I've never really had a meaningful interaction with a stranger wearing niqab. This fact is not intentional on my part or, I assume, on theirs. It's just that only being able to see a single square-inch of someone's face feels like a real barrier to entry for casual chit-chat or offhanded questions. It's also a self-selecting thing, right? You feel like if someone chooses to expose that little of themselves to the world (and more power to 'em, if so they choose), they probably don't want Ms. Sunshine over here to come galloping over the moat and into their drapey black fortress bearing idle chatter.

So imagine my surprise when the flight attendant came over to inform Mrs. Niqab that because she was sitting in an exit row, all her belongings (and her husband's, and her baby's) had to be put in the overhead compartment for landing. This was no small undertaking, as the flight attendant realized when she started to gather up their items... diaper bag, shopping bag, computer bag, purse, shopping bag... finally, just as the last item had been stowed, Mrs. Niqab lifted her kid towards the flight attendant and asked "baby?", gesturing innocently at the overhead compartment and winking in my direction. There was a super-awkward moment of silence where the flight attendant seemed to think that this crazy Saudi woman was seriously asking her to put her child in the overhead compartment, to the point where I could see the stories she would tell her cabin crew friends starting to take shape in her head: "You think that's bad?! This one time on a flight from Jeddah, I had a passenger who wanted me to store her baby as carry-on luggage! Can you believe the parenting in this part of the world?!" And then finally the flight attendant got it and the three of us dissolved into laughter - I figured I was entitled to join, thanks to the wink and all. 

Humanity, man. Here's hoping we never lose sight of it in others.

[gubbiofarabia]

Not to Put Too Fine a Point on It...

... but according to Mitt Romney, this body of water doesn't exist:

And Syria is thus Iran's "only outlet to the sea."

I don't mean to mix my political allusions and go all Sarah Palin up on the crowd, but Mitt, I can see it from my back yard apartment window!

(PS - I'm pretty sure it's called the "Persian Gulf" for a reason. And that the Strait of Hormuz is, in fact, pretty darn far away from Syria.)

HERE GOVERNOR ROMNEY, I HAVE PPT'ed YOU A HELPFUL INFOGRAPHIC:

While we're at it: Mali? Really? Twice in the first five minutes? Did I miss a sudden and meteoric rise in the global strategic importance of the Touaregs?

**This post brought to you by bad geopolitics: the only campaign issue that can motivate me to write a blog rant about the election.**

[gubbiofarabia]

Yesterday, my bank texted me an emoticon. Inapprop, unintentional, or hilarious? All of the above?!

[gubbiofarabia]

That awkward moment when a mundane task forces you to commit to a major life decision. (It's not that I plan to return anytime soon... but I found the boldness of "do *NOT* intend to return" a little aggressive. Can't there be a write-in option for "meh, we'll see"?)

[gubbiofarabia]

An Airhead, Not A Ditz

Today a visiting colleague from one of our US offices brought a bag of AirHeads taffy for all us crazy non-Americans over here in Dubai to try.

First, I was judgmental: really, THIS is the greatest cultural export of the United States of America? THIS is what you bring to the Middle East to promote the All-American values of tolerance and democracy and... high-fructose corn syrup?

Then, I was skeptical: surely my palette had evolved in the fifteen or so years since last I consumed an AirHead, and certainly the combination of uberprocessed sugar + Yellow 5 would no longer taste like the best thing in the world. I mean, I am Fancy now - I think the most recent dessert I deigned to eat was something along the lines of artisanal extra-virgin olive oil gelato with a sprinkling offleur de sel at a poncey* hotel restaurant in Mauritius. The allure of CVS candy would be lost on me.

Then, I ate a handful couple and I was bought in: the tang! the chewiness! the mouthfeel! "NOTHING IS BETTER IN ALL THE WORLD THAN AMERICAN CANDY!" I chirped to myself as I buzzed around the office on a sugar high, surreptitiously singing the theme song to Team America: World Police ("AirHeads? Eff yeah!") as I passed a Pakistani colleague in the hall.

Epilogue: Now I feel violently ill.

Good story.

(OH HI I'M BLOGGING. Mostly because I have recently received a variety of admonisments from friends to the effect of "Gubbi, Instagram is not your blog" and "Gubbi, Facebook is not your blog" and "Gubbi, we really like you better when we just get to interact with your blog" so I will tell this story here and you will deal with it because guess what, MY BLOG IS MY BLOG.)

*Americans, I need you to help me make poncey happen outside the UK. Get on it.

[gubbiofarabia]

That Time I Got Engaged

Ohhhhhh, Tumblrs. It's been a while, eh?

So, how 'bout I tell you a story. A story about the time Alex made an honest lady out of me this past weekend. Sound good?

Our story begins with a long, romantic walk on the beach...

(No, just kidding, this is from when we were in Santa Monica earlier this summer. A proposal story that starts with a walk on the beach sounds like something I would hear about from the girls I grew up with in Tennessee who got engaged to their high school boyfriends when they were 22. Not that there's anything wrong with that - except, meh, there kinda is. But I needed a picture of us so here is a picture of us walking on the beach. Now simmer.)

Anyhow, our engagement story begins with something much better than a long walk on the beach: it begins with salami!

Yay, salami! And cheese! And Belgian flags!

Here's the thing about getting engaged at the ripe old age of (almost) 31: you don't want it to be, like, this super-cliche "that's so two thousand and late" spectacle reminiscent of something you would have read about on The Knot back in the early ‘00s when you used to stalk your aforementioned high school peers, something redolent with personalized poetry and Bible verses and scavenger hunts and so much painful earnestness that you have to sign onto AOL Instant Messenger immediately in search of the one person you're still friends with from high school, who is - thankfully - a snarky gay man who will understand. But perhaps I digress with this walk down memory lane…

I guess what I’m saying is – the jig is up, you know? And I think it was a challenge, given my age and life experience and general overly-self-aware judgy-pants-ness, to find a way to get engaged that was special and meaningful in an un-cringe-worthy way. (ALSO - HYPHENS!)

That said, it’s a challenge Alex accepted nobly and then decimated. Because, you guys, it was perfect: we went out for Belgian food and beers, and I ate salami and a lot of cheese, and although I knew a ring had been purchased and a reveal was imminent, I wasn't reeeeeeeally expecting anything that night, certainly not after we walked in the door of our apartment and everything was normal and I shuffled off to the bedroom to put on PJs so we could lounge on the couch and watch the last half of the women's Olympic gold medal soccer game...

... only to be met by this.

And this.

(True story: a couple of the friends who helped Alex set the scene live in the building next door - the one with the bright blue pyramids you can see in the background. After they finished their very thorough, many-candled elf-work and returned home, they realized they could see the blaze through the window... so they sat around helplessly for the next hour or so, waiting anxiously for us to return and hoping they wouldn't see the candle-blaze become an actual blaze. Woulda been a buzzkill, no?)

Then before I knew it Alex was calling me all my nicknames (because we are a couple of many, many nicknames) and proffering some VERY SPARKLY ICE and asking me to marry him.

And I said yes and we called family in America and friends across the world (the soft launch of the engagement) and plotted our Facebook reveal (the hard launch, because relationship status change or it didn't happen) and laughed and cried and watched the US women's soccer team win Olympic gold!

Then in the morning I woke up and stared at fiancé – and, let’s be honest, my ring – in many different lights and angles:

Does it sparkle like this? How about like this?!

And we discovered a number of hilarious nuances that our elf-friends had left the night before, such as a strategically placed Post-It note covering the eyes of the African Barack Obama wall hanging that faces our bed:

We also received outtake footage of my two incredibly wonderful - but oh, so very blonde! - girlfriends, to whom Alex had granted artistic direction for the operation:

Thankfully, he granted proofreading and photography duties to their husbands, and hence we have frame-by-frame documentation of their “MERRY ME” blonde moment: first, such pride! Then, such shame!

And then we spent our second night as an engaged couple celebrating with some of our Dubai BFFs, drinking margaritas and eating tacos and spilling queso on the head of one slightly overweight sleeping pug.

So that is the story of how I came to be engaged to this amazing man:

It's okay to be jealous.

[gubbiofarabia]

No One Gives You A Cookie

Over the years, I've been asked a couple of times: what's the most frustrating thing about living abroad?

Some people expect the answer to be cultural stuff - adjusting to a different way of life, a new language, foreign customs, et cetera. Others assume the challenge is distance - negotiating time zones, long-distance calls, and circuitous trips home. Those who know the region sometimes anticipate Dubai-specific gripes - the heat, the traffic, the artificiality, the incompetence.

To be honest with you, none of those things really bother me. (After nearly five years, I've even become pretty zen about the incompetence, which is telling given my proclivity for rage.)

To me, the most frustrating thing about living abroad is this: no one gives you a cookie for the tremendous effort you put into maintaining relationships with the friends and family you left behind. There is no medal you get for showing up faithfully at family gatherings year after year; there is no special recognition you receive for rerouting flights to visit friends that never visit you; there is no accounting for the schlepisodes you endure or the cell phone minutes you use or the other plans you cancel to try and keep those relationships alive and well.

And of course, there shouldn't be - let me be very clear about that. My perspective on the matter has always been pretty straightforward: I am the one who chose to leave, so it is my responsibility to do everything I can do to maintain relationships while I'm gone. For the most part, I do so happily - after all, it's far from a sacrifice to spend time with people I love, and it's a privilege to be able to maintain my roots in the country that will always be my home.

But sometimes - just a few of the times, really - I feel a tiny wave of resentment start to creep into that sunny outlook. Times like this morning, when I found out that half of my family members are bailing on a vacation that Alex and I are traveling back to the US for next week - a trip which has been on the books for, oh, about a year. Times that make me get petty (my second-worst attribute, after rage) and start counting things - dollars spent on tickets, hours days crammed in airplanes, meetings missed at work, vacation days expended, nights of jet lag suffered through - with the goal of calling up the offender and being like, "Seriously? I'm doing all this and you suddenly have more important plans?!"

And in those times, this is the thing I have to remember: no one gives you a cookie. No one's life stops just because you're flying halfway around the world to see them. No one owes you anything because you decided to move so far away and now, for one brief shining moment, you're coming home. No one's world revolves around you any more than it would if you lived down the street.

"But, but, but--" you want to whine... "Shouldn't it?!"

Maybe. But that's just not the way the cookie crumbles--I mean, if anyone had given you a cookie in the first place--I mean--OKAY, I'M MIXING METAPHORS, DEAL WITH IT.

So you shake it off, and you write what is - hopefully! - a more constructive post than the passive-aggressive email blast you were about to send your entire family, and you realize, viscerally, somewhere in the back of your mind: ohhhhhhh, this is why I have a blog.

And then you move on. Because that's what we do as expats, as nomads, as people who live our lives on a different plane - both literally and figuratively, I suppose. We pack up our well-worn bags and our slightly bruised feelings and we move on, because this is the life we have chosen - cookie or no cookie.

[gubbiofarabia]

A Note from the Void

I'll be back to blogging sometime soon, I swear. But that time is not now, as I am currently typing this update fat-thumbedly on my new iPhone in Dubai airport's Terminal 2 (departure zone of choice for gun runners, opium traders, Somali housemaids, and - oh yes! - the region's most esteemed budget airline, Fly Dubai), heading to Beirut for the weekend for a friend's 30th birthday. So! In the meantime, maybe you should follow me on the Instagrams? Holla atcha girl @gubbiofarabia ... because you know there will be hijinx to document. And then later, I'll write about all the things... inshallah. Love y'all!