the end of love

I've been stuck creatively for a long time now. I was wondering what
would be able to break open this obstruction. Last week it came in
search of me and found me late on a Tuesday afternoon.

I now think that if you're lucky you realise that the thing which
punches you in the gut and leaves you for dead, is often the very thing
you've been waiting to come along and save your life.

This triptych is called 'The end of love'.

Enough said.

HP in 3D

As most of you are aware, the 5th Harry Potter was released a few
weeks ago. I was quite excited to go and watch it. Ok, understatement.
I was dying to go and watch it! But first, I had to speed-read through
the 7th and last HP book. Couldn't risk anyone giving the ending away.
I avoided any moderately literate people for 3 days straight.

I was off early on a Thursday afternoon, so on the spur of
the moment I decided to watch the Harry Potter in IMAX 3D.
Bigger is better, right? And if that bigger is 3D, well. What more
can a girl ask for?

I was just in time for the movie, so there was no time to ask
for instructions. It seemed simple enough. Put glasses on.
Watch movie. I picked up my oversized pair of 3D glasses at the door.
The plastic kind, with a nice thick black frame, one lense red and the
other green. I was ready.

As soon as I put them on, I knew instinctively that I looked like
'The Fly'. None of this mattered, however. It was Harry Potter
and it was 3D.

Two thirds through the movie, I was having serious issues about
3D not being all it was cracked up to be. I even had to pay more
for the movie ticket, dammit! Surely, things had to at least look
a bit, well, three-dimensional?

And then, realisation dawned, or rather it struck me square between
the eyes. The start of the 15 minute 3D segment of the movie was
indicated by the pair of glasses flashing on the screen. As in 'ok people,
put on your fly-goggles now'.

Oh right. Oh no. I sank down a bit lower in my chair and then tried
to glance surreptitiously to my left and right. Was I the only idiot who
had had my 3D specs on throughout the entire movie? It would
seem so. Eish.

If someone asks me now what I thought of the HP movie, I reply:
'Oh, it was great! Loved it! Saw the ENTIRE movie in 3D, wouldn't
you know?'

Taking out the trash

Today I want to talk about the things that scare me most.

First off: natural childbirth.
My pain threshold is really low. I'm not doing it. Period.
Not unless I'm stranded in some godforsaken log cabin in
the middle of a freak-snowstorm. And the man who is
stranded with me, Henri, who is not the father of my baby
of course, just happens to be a qualified 'murse', or male
nurse. Log fire crackling cosily in the background. Me,
sweaty and red in the face, hurling obscenities at the Frenchman
in between contractions. Sigh. It would be just like an episode
out of 'The Bold and the Beautiful'. Not that I'm pregnant
or anything, I'm just stating it for the record. When the time
comes, I will call upon Ceasar.

Et tu Brute?

The next thing that really, really scares me and makes me
wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of night, is the state
of the world today. More specifically, what we're doing to
our planet. If we carry on like this, hell, there really won't be
anything left for our children. And then what's the use of
having the whole rigmarole in the log cabin with the
snowstorm and the French murse called Henri?

This is why I've started My Next Big Project: recycling.
My flatmate who is an innocent bystander in all of this,
has now been sufficiently guilted into separating all
of his trash into paper, plastic, cans and glass. Think of
your unborn children, I plead.
Let's just say, I know how to pull a guilt-trip.

No compost heap, as of yet though. I live on the 10th floor
of a modern apartment block and we have a really teensy
weensy balcony with a breathtaking view over the 12 lane
highway. The neighbours would definitely talk and besides,
it would stink to high heaven.

So after I making my first trip to the recycling bins this week,
I have to confess: dumping the waste of our lives into the
appropriately marked recycling containers, made me feel like
a better person, like I could walk a little taller. Take it from me,
that's a big thing for a vertically challenged person.

My next project? To change all the lightbulbs in the house
to energy-efficient ones. You can be sure it will involve a lot
of 'how many vegetarians does it take to screw in 20
energy-efficient lightbulbs?' jokes, inflicted on me by
my carnivorous flatmate.

Yup, it's payback time.

Singing in the shower?

Today I need to speak about the size of my shower.
I need to get it off my chest. Air it. Hang it out to dry.
In short, it's coming out of the closet for all the
world to see.

I have now determined that my shower is in fact,
smaller than the triangular-shaped one I had in my shared
cabin on the cruise ship I had worked on. I didn't think that
was possible.

That is until I moved into La Riviera Tower. A glittering jewel
set amidst the luxurious building site and dumping ground
of the UAE's cutting-edge city of Dubai.

So without further ado, here follows an account of my
morning shower routine.

I open up the taps and let the water run a bit, till the
hot water comes through. It's all good. I then proceed
to get into the shower and try to close the L-shaped
shower curtains around me. This often fails miserably,
since the curtain rail sags in the middle and this,
in turn causes the curtains on both sides to slide into
the centre as well. I try and remedy this by splashing water
onto the tiles to my left and my right and then 'sticking'
the plastic layer of the shower curtain onto the tiles.

I then proceed wash the whole of my body as quickly as possible.
This would be easier if my now wet skin didn't also stick
to the plastic shower curtain, which makes the 'sealed-off'
bits come away from the tiles and gape open to the left
and right of me. More splashing of tiles and sticking of
curtains. More peeling my wet butt off of the shower curtains.
As you see, this ritual could continue for hours.

After I've tried to get to all the bits that needed cleaning,
I open up the curtains with a flourish, only to find the Mississippi
River lapping gently at the edges of the shower basin. And look!
There goes Huck Finn, feet a'dangling off the edges of the woven
reed IKEA mat, drifting downriver towards the living room.

The joys of living in a country claiming to be at the cutting-edge
of just about everything you've ever heard of, never ceases to
amaze me. Perhaps they should go back and learn the basics of
plumbing? Until then, I guess I just won't be singing in my shower.

C'mon Dover, move yer bloomin' arse!

BEFORE THE RACES: All the ladies in their finery.



Hilarity ensues...



since the mutant clone-dwarves also came to the party.





MUCH LATER: My friend Werner and I.


You know, when I think about horseracing, I cannot help but
recall Audrey Hepburn in the movie, 'My Fair Lady'. I still
remember we had 'taped' it when it was shown on TV
one night. Our family then proceeded to watch that movie
till the visual was stretchy and the sound had gone to hell.

One of the best parts of the movie, for me at any rate, was
when Eliza Doolittle, gets all toffed up for the races and then
in all of the excitement in cheering on her favourite horse,
forgets herself and all of Professor Higgins's efforts and
yells at the top of her voice 'C'mon Dover, move yer
bloomin' arse!'

That, in a nutshell, is the Dubai World Cup. The richest
horse race in the world. The prize money this year for the
winning horse was USD 6 million. This amount has been
upped to USD 10 million for next year.

The races are basically an opportunity for people to get
dressed up in silly hats and frilly frocks (there were even
a few tophats) and then get as drunk as possible, so that
Eliza's little mishap pales in comparison.

Ah well, at least a good day was had by all. Makes one
think though. You can dress 'em up, but you can't take
'em anywhere.

The sum of us

A few weeks ago, there was an article in the local newspapers
about a three-digit numberplate, E 15, which cost Dhs 3.12 million.

You could say that it was a noble thing for a son to give his
father this numberplate as a thank you gift. You could also look
around Dubai and start adding up the sum of people's lives.
Most of who seem not to add up to very much at all.

A fine example would be the mostly Indian and Pakistani
labourers who are quite literally building Dubai. Yet, they get
paid a meagre wage of approximately Dhs600 - 700 a month.
Most of which is sent home to their families. How DO they survive,
we wonder, as we sip at our Starbucks Skinny Latte Cappucino.

There are people in Asia who survive on less than one US Dollar
a day. Africa - same desperate story.

I always have to wonder if some people's lives are worth more
than others? We can only look to President Bush to see that he
thought the people who were involved in the 9/11 attacks,
were worth more than the people who lived down South, after
Hurricane Katrina devastated their lives.

Robert Mugabe has single-handedly ruined so many people's
lives in Zimbabwe. Yet, the world sits back and watches. After all,
there's nothing of real value in Zimbabwe. Now Iraq, there's a
different story. They have oil, don't they?

It seems that this is life though. We live in a consumer-driven
society, where more is better and the simple things in life are simply
not free anymore. And if you happen to have a magic three-digit
number, well, you should thank your lucky stars, and count your
riches once again.

As for myself? I try to remember that every person, no matter
how poor, has a wealth of family history and unique stories to tell.
And isn't that true sum of us?

Sand gets in your eyes

'Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of
our lives'.

I hear you. It's been a while. And a lot has happened.
I often think my life is more interesting than a soap opera.
Or as I think of it here in the desert, a sand opera.

We are experiencing the infamous sand storms, or
'shammal' as they are better known here in the Gulf,
that signify the onset of spring. Ah, spring, such a
special time of the year, don't you think?

Add to this, that our balcony door has been broken
for over two weeks. Of course this happened just after
the one-year maintenance guarantee had expired.
Good to know that things are still built to last.
The nitty-gritty of it is, that it's up to us to get it fixed now.

I've given up and started inviting the kids in the building
around to come and play in the sandpit, or the space
formerly known as the living room.

In conclusion, I came across this profound statement by a
resident in Dubai regarding the shammal in the online newspaper,
Gulf News:

'I went out and saw my car covered with a thick coat of sand.
I wiped it and the sand was red. But then it rained, and then
all the sand was tuned to mud.'

Ahmed
Dubai, UAE

Be sure to 'tune' in again for more riveting sandstorms in
a teacup.