DXB Brinkworth

The middle east has been relatively stable since we arrived nearly 20 months ago. Just recently however, tensions have reached breaking point in Lebanon/Syria/Israel.  I am sure that I’m partly responsible.

Less than a month ago I suggested as our family’s first overseas holiday that we “hit” Lebanon. Lebanese people are abundant in Dubai, including my workplace, and they all speak so fondly of the place, all the pictures look lovely, and as the icing on the cake, we get a chance to eat their food quite often. And after a little research it seemed like a lovely place to visit, we even had the offer of a friendly colleague to be our tour guide. But as soon as I put the idea in my head, war broke out!
I subscribed to the Australian Government’s travel warnings for Lebanon, and almost every day for the past week and a bit I’ve received an update with a more strongly worded warning. So our plan to fly to Beirut are now shelved for some time.

I’m sure we can find another interesting location in a similar proximity to the UAE. Sri Lanka looks the most promising at the moment.  Their civil war finished last year, after 25 long years.

Interestingly with the Lebanese conflict, I heard some news which I thought would surely help sort things out. It seemed the US were sending in the Hof - which got me excited that things may still be possible.  But it turns out it is not David “Hof” Hasselhof from Knight Rider fame.  Instead, it was US Diplomat Fredric Hof. 

What can he do that’s nearly as useful as a talking crime-fighting sports car?

Ryan Adventures, Family news, Newsworthy Lebanon, middle east, Sri Lanka, The Hoff, travel

The world’s most popular children entertainers, and possibly Australia’s greatest export visited Dubai over the weekend.  They had quite a whirlwind tour performing just three shows over our weekend. I took my two boys on Saturday to watch the final show in a packed Palladium -  just over the road from our place.

Unfortunately Murray - the red wiggle - was absent, due to a pressing family commitment, so we were introduced to a new red wiggle in Bobby - apparently Australia’s greatest surfer.  But otherwise all the characters were there.

I knew what to expect, Elle had gone to a previous show in Australia, and told me how the event goes at such a frenetic pace. But it must be seen to be believed, particularly when you know their ages.  It was interesting when they did their usual gag of Jeff falling asleep so the kids can scream “Wake Up Jeff!”. However while Jeff was standing there ‘asleep’, instead of telling kids the instructions on how to wake Jeff, Anthony mentioned Jeff ’s tired because he’s getting old. He then proceeded to tell a story of what had happened earlier in the day.  Judging by Jeff’s giggles he knew what was coming. Apparently Jeff got news from Australia that he had received his Senior Citizen’s Card.  Apparently Jeff was dancing around the hotel room repeatedly singing “half price at the movies”. By the end of the story Jeff was visibly laughing, so Sam interjected telling kids that Jeff must be having a really funny dream. Once the kids had succeeded waking him up, Jeff jumped up and hung upside down from a bar, again singing “half price at the movies”.

The Wiggles are a real class act. Even a minor mistake was extremely smooth, and then highlighted to make an even more entertaining moment. It happened when Henry the Octopus couldn’t stand on the thight of a couple of wiggles and fell. Captain Feathersword couldn’t stop laughing, and explained it was just so funny - and they made the three do it again when the song had finished.

They are also expert at seamlessly introducing local influences to their show. Apparently they fell in love with our fruit dates - a traditional local treat - and were re-considering the lyrics of their song ‘Fruit Salad’ so it would become just “Dates”. And after doing “Incey Wincey Spider” quite a few times, Anthony cut it off abruptly and said, actually it doesn’t rain that much here - which received a lot of laughter.

It was good to see quite a mix of people attending. The Wiggles are  a real world wide phenomenon, and it was present in the crowd.  While it was mostly Western looking families, you could easily spot a few locals were present in their Konduras and Abayas.

I saw a couple of guys from the office at the end of the show, one of the guys apparently insisted on going it was just lucky that his wife and kids were interested in coming along also.

Ryan Adventures, Newsworthy Australia, The Wiggles

Last weekend Myles and I went to Dreamland Aqua Park which is a waterpark in Umm Al Quwain - another emirate within the UAE. The trip from Dubai is around an hour, but the time went pretty quick as we saw lots of interesting or new things.

In fact Myles counted the interesting things on the way to the water park:

1. Flamingos in Ras Al Khor sanctuary
2. Very different traffic lights in Ajman - they had little clocks counted how many seconds the lights were remaining on Red or Green (they were also laid out horizontally instead of vertically)
3. Six “tornadoes” (whirly winds)
4. No pictures of HH Sheikh Mohammed (outside of Dubai it makes sense)
5. A picture of a man that looked like Fazza (Dubai’s Royal Prince) but wasn’t (he was a different Ajman’s Royal Prince)
6. Sharks in the water (sticks in the water)
7. A big old abandoned plane used as an advertisement

Emirates employees get a generous discount at the park, but there was an even more generous coupon in the entertainer book which encouraged us to visit this particular water park over the other three.  We’ve been to Wild Wadi a couple times, and Elle and the boys had been to the a bit run down Wonderland.  The only one we now haven’t visited is Aquaventure which is in Atlantis - The Palm, so possibly the most well-known.

In a word, Dreamland was awesome. Myles had to be convinced that it was different to Dreamworld back on the Gold Coast in Australia. There are things to appeal to all ages. There is a good maze to have a relaxing float with babies, but we didn’t take Lewis on this occasion.  There are plenty of other rides for larger kids, and the obligatory number of scarier rides still for the adult-aged kids. There was also a bar or two if you wish for a break to whet your whistle.

I had to give Myles an impromptu Arabic lesson, more of a reminder, when I had to clarify that “yulla” is Arabic for hurry, or let’s go. Myles originally thought all the guys were unhappy because they wanted to go on the yellow slide, not because they were extremely impatient.

The only downside of the day, was the heat. We made the mistake of going barefoot from the change rooms and lockers. So throughout the day we had to run between the slides, and deviate our course to take in a bit of grass now and again til our scorched feet had reduced to a normal temperature.  Well, my feet at least. I put Myles on my shoulders most of the times.

One of the other downsides was the amount of body hair on display. I’m on the paranoid side of having body hair, and in the past have generally shaved down for triathlon events. But it was nothing, compared to the spectacle you’ll see at any water park in this region. It was interesting that you’d see what you thought was the hairiest guy at the park. But the guy would always be outdone by the new hairiest guy. You never really find the winner, you just get sick of noticing. Or you’ll spot the hairiest guy in the world, and there’s instantly no where else to go.

Myles enjoyed all of the rides he was allowed on.  There was still a few things he was not tall enough for. But we’ll certainly be back.

The trip also had second hidden agenda for the way home. Next to Dreamland is a place well-known to all expats, particularly from the West. It’s called Barracuda Beach Resort, but it’s really only famous for one thing, cheap alcohol.  But just as impressive, is the huge variety of stock they carry.  The first time I visited, I was like a kid in a candy store.  They have a fantastic Australian wine collection, with possibly more wines than a standard Australian bottle shop. And they have all the most popular Australian beers at fantastic prices. The XXXX cartons were AED 90, which equates to less than AUD $30 - must cheaper than in Australia! I’m sure anyone outside of Queensland would want to insert joke here about cat urine, but I’ll move on.

The trip home takes you through the emirate of Sharjah - which is a strictly dry emirate. So there’s always a bit of uncertainty whether we’re breaking the law or not. But the consensus is providing its within personal consumption levels, and you are licensed to drink within your own emirate, it should be fine.

We spent around 5-6 hours at Dreamland, but you could easily spend even more time.  Myles was so active the complete time we were there he was asleep within minutes of leaving Barracuda.  It was a fantastic day, and we’ll certainly be back again. Although Wild Wadi is less than 10 minutes from our house and Dreamland is at least an hour away, it has a larger layout, caters for adults a little better and is quite a bit cheaper.

Ryan Adventures, Family news alcohol, Barracuda, Dreamland, Umm Al Quwain, waterpark

Elle & I, and a few tables of friends attended this year’s Black and Gold Ball held at the Grand Hyatt. It’s an important Dubai institution around ANZAC day for particularly all expats that hail from Australia and New Zealand. Our mob demonstrated the laziness of Australians and Kiwis when I think back to how we came together and bought tickets. All communications were over email, instituted and purchased between a Brit and a Papua New Guinean.

The ball’s title should be obvious to those from the Tasman. No, they don’t supply weird mixed drinks of Guinness and mid-strength XXXX. For anyone stuck, Black relates to the All Blacks the world champion rugby team, and the Gold is one half of Green and Gold - the proud colours of Australia, world champions in most other sports ;-).

Despite the effects of the financial crisis, and people allegedly leaving the region in droves, the ball continues to grow each year. This year saw 600 people in total, up from 450 the year before. All attendees were also quite generous. Around AED 30,000 was raised for charity during the night.

In one short sentence, the night was fantastic. After paying respect to those ‘who shall not grow old’, there was quite a long speech by organiser, Graham McNally. I heard on the grape vine that Graham completed almost the whole organisation of the evening himself - which if true is outstanding. He tried his hand at some humour, and made me chuckle at a few standard Oz and Kiwi jokes I’d heard before. And yes, having AUS and NZ the focal point of a ball, he felt it was necessary to mention “that” delivery. I believe the subject was changed pretty swiftly after to take the piss out of South Africans.

They played one party game our British friends forewarned us about called head and bums. Since playing the game at last year’s ball also, they have been of the belief it was a common Australian pastime. If you’re unaware of the game - which we were - it’s really simple. Everyone stands and chooses whether to put their hands on their head or on their bum. The announcer chooses one of the options, and if you chose correctly you remain standing to play another round. We were quite hopeless. In fact the only person from our entire table who did well was Bob our resident Scotsman. He made it just about to the round where those remaining in the game move to the dance floor to find the eventual winner. But unfortunately he followed the advice of someone from our table, and chose to put his hands on the option which had more hair. I’ll leave it at that. He was very smartly dressed in a tuxedo and kilt, we didn’t want to go any further.

The Aus/NZ inspired menu and specially imported food was tremendous - although two friends claimed to have inconvenient issues after some oysters. Eating high quality lamb from home was one of the highlights of the night.

The night was like all the balls I’ve been to. There was great company all looking very spectacular, great food and drinks, a real reluctance to get onto the dance floor but once there we danced the night away. Lionel Ritchie’s song All Night Long got us singing more than we ordinarily would when it sounded like the lyrics included a local suburb:

We’re going to Party, Karama, Fiesta, forever, Come on and sing along.

Toward the end of the night it was a mystery where the whole night had gone. When the ugly lights came on to encourage us to leave, we could not believe it was after 3am.

Actually this ball had a few significant differences from the balls I attended previously. Those in years gone by were safely held before the onset of social networking, 3 megapixal Blackberries with WiFi connection, and inconspicuously sized digital cameras with HighDef video recording. This ball, and every moment for ever more is open to the gazes of the web’s population. It was interesting to know that photos of our escapades were getting uploaded to Facebook in near real time.

When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t recap on the night by reading Facebook status updates. I watched an edited video megamix of myself making some terrible dance moves. What ever happened to ‘what happens on tour…”

Unfortunately one thing that wasn’t caught on film was one of the highlights toward the end of the night. We heard The Proclaimer’s, 500 Miles and insisted on getting our other Scottish friend up to dance with us - knowing full well how much she hates the song. Good times.

Ryan Adventures, Family news, Newsworthy ANZAC, Black and Gold ball, Facebook, web2.0

Yesterday a number of Tecom families gathered downstairs on the Floor 1 terrace to celebrate Easter.  We had a well-received egg hunt for the kids - large and small, as well as a BBQ lunch and a few drinks with good company. Interestingly some of the kids didn’t go crazy with the chocolate. Lewis was the obvious exception, he had half his face, and pretty much his entire t-shirt covered in a mixture of chocolate and baby slobber.

It’s probably the first time my kids participated in such a big Easter egg hunt. And a few good lessons were learned.  Probably none more important than Myles learning no matter how full your basket of eggs becomes, NEVER put chocolate eggs in your pockets if the temperature is warm.

The kids enjoyed playing football, hide and seek, and chasing each other on bikes.  But once they grew a bit tired of these games, they seemed to go their own ways.  It was interesting to see Myles walking up and down the garden speaking some “foreign” language. I had to ask what he was doing, to which he replied he was being an Indian. He was equipped with a spear made from a frong from the garden, so I figured he was the American variety of Indian.

Trying to fit the theme I told him about traditional Indian names (without mentioning the standard two dogs joke).  We started with the animal, which he chose a Rhino. I was pleased, as it’s my favourite animal.  But I would soon regret the whole activity. As he’s just five I simply asked what is the Rhino doing, as it would be the first part of his name.  He responded it’s Pooing.  So “Pooing Rhino” it was for the afternoon.

Some friends set out to eat fish, in compliance with the tradition. It encouraged me to also get some prawns for the BBQ which was a very nice touch.  But the longer we stayed down there, the hungrier we were, and they conceded that fish was just not to cut it.  So they walked across to Carrefore and bought a full leg of lamb to throw on the BBQ.  It was delicious, even if a little heathen.

Ryan Adventures, Family news, Interesting, Woops Easter, Myles

Before coming to Tasmania this trip, I had not been introduced to whitebait fishing, or even this type of fish.  First thing you learn is, fishing is more than just standing around with a rod drinking beer. It really is a sport.  Why else would it be broken into seasons  (Opening of the Whitebait season — IFS Portal  -27 October 2009 - http://www.ifs.tas.gov.au/ifs/opening-of-the-whitebait-season)?

This season, Fred (Elle’s father) had bought an illustrious whitebaiting license. From his daily Facebook status updates of whitebait trials and tribulations, it certainly seemed like an activity I must see.

Unfortunately or probably fortunately, it is an activity non-license holders can only see and not do. To manage the whitebait there are also a host of other restrictions placed upon the dedicated whitebaiter, covering things such as the size and design of the net, how far from the net they must stand, and what colour and fabric underwear is worn.

Fred with net

There are also numerous rules that have been learned over generations and passed down. Don’t cast a shadow on the water, don’t chase the fish, don’t change direction of the net.  We disproved all of these, and managed to bag a quota.

Two Tasmanian whitebait magnified about a billion times

It was interesting how much effort is required to catch even just a handful of  these tiny lovettia sealii - which judging by their size they must have the nutritional value of a good belch.

But it’s even more interesting to see the passion and appreciation the humble whitebaiters have for their “sport”. Despite the freezing conditions, and what seems to be huge frustration at the whitebait not doing what they should, these fisherman (and one fisherwoman) are always happy.  The beautiful surroundings have gotta help.

I saw a bumper sticker once that said a bad day at golf is better than a good day at work.  The sentiment surely applies to whitebaiting as well. On the first time we only managed to capture enough little fish for two patties. On the second we got a daily quota - which sort of translates to a jackpot for the gamblers.  But both days were equally enjoyable.

Ryan Adventures fishing, Fred, Tasmania, whitebait

After eight months living abroad we finally took our first holiday. On October 17 We headed home to Australia for four full weeks.  Work had been quite hectic leading up to this. My manager is still unsure how I managed to get her approval for this amount of leave.  It was quite simple really, quietly mumble the request while she was distracted talking to someone else, and just take any of her body language as a positive response.

The flight from Dubai to Australia is a long one - wind-assisted and direct it’s still 14 hours.  I scored some big brownie points and let Elle take the business class seat, while I had the kids in economy. The plane was so full we had no choice, despite us deciding to forego our contractual business class seat to sit altogether.

On my own it was a little worrying to think of the large number of hours for a five year old and a baby to fly, but it really did go quite quickly. Myles and Lewis were an absolute dream. Lewis, our baby beefcake, is now 12kgs which means he’s too heavy to go in the bassinet to sleep, but not light enough to want him sitting on your lap for almost a whole day.  It started with some humour. Myles always took a lot of interest in the safety card of each aeroplane.  He’d study it for 10-15 minutes, each side, and ask lots of questions if there’s something he didn’t completely understand. Well, this time it was Lewis’s turn. To keep him occupied, I handed him a few different cards from the seat pocket, and Lewis started reading the safety card intently. Myles noticed this, and gave some classic 5 year old big brother advice, “Lewis, that’s a sad, sad, story”.

I managed to get a lovely neighbour from the UK named Pam who was very helpful when things got too busy. She didn’t have to do too much, but it was great at times such as when Myles decided to go to the toilet more often than normal. The novelty of the small toilets was too much for him.  He also suggested he needed to brush his teeth numerous times after they gave him a tiny toiletry set.

The cabin crew were really good to Myles, and they clearly enjoyed his company. This was despite Myles earlier showing no loyalty to our beautiful Emirates airline, and buying an Aer Lingus airport set. This is the second time he’s done this. When they flew to Dubai he came proudly displaying the same airport set with QANTAS insignia.

Elle did a stint in economy, which allowed me to at least get some business class tucker and watch a movie.

And before I knew it, we were in Brisbane to start our holiday.  My brother picked us up in our X-Trail, and we had a go at driving on the other side of the road again. Funnily, it’s harder to change back from left-side drive to right-side drive, than it was to originally change over. We had to modify our driving considerably from how we’ve learned to drive Dubai for fear of getting locked up by Queensland Police.

We got to my parent’s place where a huge Welcome home banner got our immediate attention.

We deliberately made very few concrete plans in case any of us suffered badly with the effects of jetlag. In the end there was nothing major,the kids adapted particularly well. Before we left, Lewis was napping four times a day, and eating at every other opportunity. The six hour time difference just means meal #3 lines up with maybe meal #1, which he has had no complaints about.

The only thing scheduled for our trip was my graduation ceremony on the 22nd of October at Monash University in Melbourne. This left us about a week of hanging around Burpengary to relax into holiday mode. Which did take a little while.  One thing that helped though was trying to complete a cryptic crossword for the first time. They really a nonsensical form of torture. Their baffling effect focuses all your thinking on just how unintelligent you are - a great way to forget the stresses of work.  Eventually I probably got a quarter of the clues, and that’s where it was left.

Myles (and Corey) with one of his bream

We were quite fortunate to have my brother take Myles & I out fishing in his boat on his day off.  The location was Scarborough, and with Corey living less than 2 minutes from the boat ramp I correctly assumed he had sufficient local knowledge to make it a successful trip.

Myles & I talked it up in the car about who was going to catch the most number of fish.  Obviously I supported his totally unrealistic goal to catch the most number of fish, but put little actual thought into it coming true.  It didn’t take long to learn that Myles was a superior fisherman to me, with is probably not too surprising.  But landing more fish than Corey - the keen angler - and LARGER fish as well was quite unexpected although a great result for any five year old.  The results were Ryan 1 fish, too small. Corey 3 fish, all too small. And Myles 5 fish, 4 of them HUGE enough to eat. Which we did that evening. Thanks Corey!

And after a day and night in Melbourne the travel plans were to spend two weeks in Tasmania, then one final week in Queenland before flying back to Dubai on the 12th of November, which is approaching at the speed of light.

Ryan Adventures, Family news Australia, Brisbane, Corey, fishing, holidays

Late last month Elle and I took advantage of my parents coming to Dubai and jetted off to Germany for a long weekend on our own. Despite appearences, it wasn’t just for a dirty weekend, there was actually some purpose to the trip. I’ve set a goal to complete the “Big 5″ marathons of the world, and decided that Berlin would be a good place to start.

The trip started off on a sour note, when we got bumped from our scheduled flight due to the extremely busy Eid long weekend rus of passengers.  For the uninitiated (like we were), the break of Ramadan means public holidays so a lot of people make the most of it and travel. 

We managed to get on a flight later in the day, but had to change our plans as we missed our connecting flight from Munich to Berlin. We ended up arriving in Munich at around 9:00pm and then had to find a hotel for the night. We got completely confused by the train ticketing machine completely in German, so we decided our best bet would be to get a taxi to Munich to find a hotel. we probably should have done more research, as we discovered once we were in the taxi and on the road, that Munich city is actually quite a distance from the aiport and hotels are scattered all over the place.

The taxi driver tried to discourage us from trying the nearby hotels saying they would be fully booked due to the Oktoberfest.  His suggestion was that he drive us 55 Euros away, and then take us back to the airport in the morning - after another 55 Euros later.  But we insisted he stop at the Sheraton so I could see if they had room.  The lady at reception looked at me strangely and said, of course we have vacancies.

Something else surprised me at reception.  In Dubai pornography - anything close to it - is strictly illegal so you just don’t see it at all.  However, when I was standing at the hotel’s front desk, staring right at me was the cover model for Playboy completely topless!  I don’t think I’ve been overly interested in such images since I was 17, but having this strange sight was extremely distracting.  Quite a Europe welcome.  A similar thing greeted us in the rooms, where the TV had 1 movie channel and 4 adult channels.

The next morning we caught a flight to Berlin and managed to hit some random buttons on the ticket machine which spat out a ticket enabling us to catch a bus into the city. After asking a friendly policeman for directions, we eventually located our hotel.  We stayed in the Mercure de Charite.  With the terrible currency conversion between the UAE Dirham and the Euro it was disappointing to find that Charite didn’t mean we were staying in a shelter for the poor and destitute.  Actually we found the hotel through the marathon’s web site according to the distance to the start line - which was just perfect.

I had a few worries going into the marathon.  Most of my training has been through the summer period with frequent and mandatory water stops, so I wasn’t sure I had done sufficient distance training.  My concerns became reality at around the 25km mark when my legs started cramping terribly.  I was on track for a reasonable time until this point.  But with all the stops I saw all my goal times pass me by.  In the end I realised 4hrs was at risk so I really had to knuckle down.  Towards the end I felt terrible agony.  Everything was telling me to stop, except for the million+ spectators. In short it was an amazing experience.

Folllowing the race I was hobbling quite a bit.  I met up with Elle on the steps of the Reichstag where I had to sit for some time.   The Corona helped a little.  The walk from the finish line back to the hotel probably took 10 times longer than it did that morning. I slept extremely well that night. 

We missed a day in  Berlin before the race due to the missed flight, so we decided to change our plans a little and try to see a few of the sights the next day then hit Munich and the Oktoberfest later in the day and night.  We did the Reichstag Dome tour, a look around Brandenburg.  Then we left the big smoke for the largest palace in Berlin at Charlottenburg. The whole area was beautiful, and something definitely worth seeing.

We caught the underground back to the airport and made our way to Munich.  By this stage we were seasoned veterans at buying tickets in Germany, but we didn’t need to.  A very friendly German guy gave us a tip that the tickets were priced so they were cheaper as a group of 3 or more - which he had the ticket for already. We got out of it for free, although we gave him 10 Euros anyway.  He was a lovely guy and kept us entertained the whole way.  We knew we were onto a good thing when he mentioned he works at the airport in IT and “it’s shit”.

Unfortunately my limping got worse, so we found our hotel and crashed.  Any thoughts of hitting Oktoberfest that evening were dashed by the allure of a nice warm bath.

We had plenty of time at the airport so I trialled all the local beers on display to try and compensate for missing Oktoberfest the night before.

The w’end flew by, and we arrived safe and sound in Dubai late on Tuesday night.

Ryan Adventures, Newsworthy Berlin, Germany, running, travel

All dressed up. Elle's a lady of the night, Myles as a ninja, and Lewis as Batman's off-sider, Robin

This weekend we attended a fancy dress pool tournament party at a friend’s place. They had a wonderful villa with their own private backyard which is a bit of  a luxury in Dubai. They made the most of it and had two large dogs running around. It would be so much better environment than the majority of dogs in Dubai - including the ones we hear in our apartment complex.

It was tough to come up with something for me and my pool partner go to this party as.  We wanted to either bring something Australian, or locally. The final idea, after many options, was to do a delightful corny play on words and dress as “Sheikh, Rattle & Roll”.  We bought some local Kanduras (robe/dishdasha) for the sheikh part, we had baby’s rattles, and - running out of inspiration - we hung some bread rolls from the outfit.  The final piece was perhaps not the greatest idea, as we had the dog closely following us around for most of the time.  My head piece was probably normal sized, so it failed to fit my watermelon-like cranium. So unfortunately it fell quite a few times which gave the dog the split second opportunity on two occasions to quickly snaffle up the bread rolls I had.

We thought the dog was just following Paul & I for the bread rolls, but it turned out the dog was actually owned previously by a local guy who wore the same clothing. The story goes that the dog may have been mistreated as he is apparently not a big fan of the local dress. So it was perhaps our fault when the usually friendly hound nipped the chin of one of our fellow revelers, in an unprovoked attack. Or perhaps it was just the excitement of the evening.

The night was organised for a number of reasons. It all came clear when the cakes took over the pool table, where we were allegedly playing a keenly organised and Microsoft Excel powered tournament. Not a lot of competition there, one of the games was lost off the initial break — by none other than my wife, Elanor!  Perhaps she could have been more useful out on the street, she and my boss dressed as ladies of the night.  The party was for the one of the ex-PNG pilots who made Captain, as well as a host of birthdays which would prove difficult to celebrate together as most people avoid the Dubai summer.

A good night was had by all - even the “Man in skirt” who briefly masceraded as dog food.  Unfortunately we had to be one of the first to leave, as we probably had close to the youngest kids there. Lewis was asleep for a great deal, but the noise became too much. And when he finds that second wind, it’s difficult to put him back to sleep.  And also difficult to make him enjoy himself.  Mind you, this was 12:00 midnight when we left, early. The party consisted mostly of the local PNG community, who know how to party!  Just ask my Aunty in Cairns who has PNG folks next door.

The other good thing about PNG parties, is they know how to put on a feed! We were tasked with bringing Elle’s famous potato salad, but left it on the bench at home. I intended to return home alone to fetch it after we arrived, but the hosts insisted there was more than enough food, which there was.

Ryan Adventures, Family news dogs, party, PNG

There’s only so many times I can read Myles the two or three kids books we have here before I go crazy.  And I think that point has passed.  All our books are still in storage in Brisbane. And knowing we’ll just have to move again means we don’t want to buy too many more right now.

Besides, Myles and I used to love visiting the Brisbane City Council library on the weekend and regularly getting a new bagful of books.  It was also a pretty cool place to just sit and chill-out.  We have been wanting to try the same here, but other things have always taken priority. Tonight however, I thought we’d finally visit a Dubai library.  “Gertie” - the name we’ve given our female-voiced GPS - gave us some pretty terrible directions. We were pretty much led onto the Metro’s tracks, so we had to do some rapid reversing, then a  large detour to get to the library.  The original directions suggested we’d make it there from our house in five minutes, including the traffic it was almost 45.

When we got out of our car Myles asked if he’d be allowed in, which I thought was a pretty odd question. It turned out to be well-founded. As we entered the gate a security guard walked straight up to us and said Myles wouldn’t be allowed in. Then he asked how old Myles was. I said four, which made him shake his head. Only six year olds are allowed to enter the library.

Next to the main library building there was a “Children’s Library”. Surely we could get in there, nope - he said it was the same deal. Only six years and above. I said we were just having a look, can we at least do that.  He said we’d need to test it with the staff on duty.

We did. And failed. The lady immediately asked how old Myles was, and four was the incorrect answer. I suggested he was very smart and is very good with books, but she was not wanting to budge. When I asked why they had such a rule, she said kids at four cannot read, and they make a mess of books.  I didn’t agree, but that made no difference.

The only ground I did make, was I’m allowed to get a card for myself, then I can take a  family loan of kids books. As she was saying this though, she seemed to be reducing herself to the fact Myles would most certainly ruin her books anyway.

This situation was quite upsetting for poor Myles. He was looking forward to going to the library this evening, so much so he almost ate all his spinach. His hopes certainly ended though with the ridiculous circular rule that kids should only read books when they’re able to read books. So I decided to get the library card another time - Myles would have to wait in the separate kids library while I did that anyway.

When we got outside I consoled him by saying we’d buy him a book instead. I spotted a bookshop sign from across the busy road. We made our way to it, and when we got close enough I saw it was an Islamic religion book shop. Hmm.  We entered anyway, and they did happen to have a small kids non-denominational section. I picked up the classic educational resource pictured. Not only does the cover have a misspelt title, it also has some odd graphics which bear no resemblance to any of the content.  It does have a train though. And it was a great relief to the slap in the face the Dubai library provided.

Opposites and Defferences (sic)

Next time we visit, Myles is primed. He’s magically become six!

Ryan Adventures, Interesting ageist, different rules, library