Adventures in the Desert

Just getting over the jetlag from my two week trip to Dubai! Thank goodness for 22 hours of sleep in two days, probably more sleep than I got in about 4 days during busy season. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at taking notes and writing about my travels while I was in Dubai, so we'll see how good my short-term memory is.

Day 1: Flight at 6 pm from IAD to Amsterdam on KLM. I was all excited for the famously young, blonde flight crew, but I encountered a much older set of flight attendants. No worries, I just watched The Fighter and focused on the little 6 inch screen barely 2 feet from my face. I love the passengers who move their seats all the way back right after the seatbelt sign goes off. I know you're probably larger than me, but, hey, I like my super small airplane personal space as well. I was pretty surprised by the food - it was somewhere in between delicious and not awful. The best part, I got a small airplane bottle of wine and cheese and crackers. Did I mention nobody asked for my ID? That's a big step up from people asking me what I plan on majoring in when I get to college. Thank you Europe.

Day 1 1/2 and 2: Hanging out in the Amsterdam airport cursing myself for not getting a direct flight. I landed in Schippol at around 1 am East Coast time but it was about about 6 am over there. The only way I could handle this was to head straight to the nearest non-Starbucks stand. No, I don't hate Starbucks, but I mean there are options other than Starbucks out there - too bad they haven't made it to the US. I walked around until my feet hurt, trying to make the 6 hour layover go by faster than 6 hours. The Dutch being the Dutch had a small art museum in the airport with replicas of Rembrandt and a few others. They were pretty gorgeous! Ven, so sorry I forgot to take pictures. Hung out in the numerous "See Blue Fly " stores and picked up the delicious stroopwaffels. Did I mention they're delicious? Oh, and they have similar ones in Trader Joe's.

Day 2: Finally land in Dubai, the land of bigger and taller and more expensive is better. Texas, take notes. Landed in DXB airport at 11:30 pm Dubai time (completely lost all sense of east coast time and pretty much dazed), and followed the crowds of European tourists to PASSPORT CONTROL. Oh goodie. I stood in line for about an hour. I have no idea what took so long other than the fact that the people working at passport control are incredibly (hmm what's a good euphemism for lazy)...laid back. Fortunately, I didn't have to pay to get in like the Dominican, but trust me, I will pay later.

Day 3: Woke up at 1:30 pm Dubai time and ready to do the tourist thing. Thank goodness I have a semi-almost native with me to show me around. Since the weather in Dubai is perfect all the time, except for scorching heat and humidity in the summer months, I didn't have to check the weather. Major Stop #1: Mall of the Emirates. This place is enormous! I will no longer be in awe of Tysons Mall (1 or 2) after visiting this place. To warm my heart, there were coffee shops all around: Costa, Gloria Jean's, El Monde, Second Cup, etc. And I've never tried any of them before. Before I left Dubai, my goal was to try all of these places, and more. After wandering around the Emirates Mall, I had to get to the beach. That's why I came right? The water was amazingly warm for April and we managed to catch a beautiful sunset. One difference: you know when you see those spectacular sunsets with all those shades of red and orange, well I didn't see that here, just pure yellow. Then went to dinner at the Noodle House in Wafi mall. This mall is decorated and designed with an Egyptian theme. Not really sure what our equivalent would be in Virginia, maybe something British-esque? Took lots of pictures, then finally got to looking at the menu, and tried not to let my eyes bulge out of my head. Right, those prices are in dirhams, not dollars. This was a mantra I said to myself for the whole trip. At this time the dollar was worth about 3.65 dirhams. Prices were pretty equivalent to the US (note this excludes the old markets and Karama areas), as long as you divided by 3.65. 

Day 4: Woke up at a more reasonable hour, and started my Brooke Bond tea bag morning ritual. I could not leave the house with at least 1 cup of Brooke Bond tea. I really can't keep counting the days and remember exactly what I did, so I will have to default to large paragraphs where the days blend together. Now that I've done a few touristy things, I sought out to achieve goal #1: get tan. We went to Nassimi Beach, the one next to the new Atlantis on the Palm. This place was gorgeous! White couches, beds, and bean bags to lay out on, good drinks, and mezzes of hummus (yum!). I had my first taste of mortabel here, which tasted like a more garlicky version of baba ganoush. There was a DJ area for the evening beach parties that I knew would get pretty routy later. Darn my aggressive tourist itinerary. To kick off the eating binge of my vacation, we ate at Ijaza, a cafeteria near a mosque. Never would I think to eat a place like this, but oh is it popular. If you want good, cheap, local food then this is the place. Sadly, the shawarmas weren't around at 3 pm, but there was so much else on the menu that I didn't care. I ate the chicken burger that had a couple french fries on top of the bottom bun. What an unusual thing to add, but I definitely like it better than pickles! Another delicious difference: fresh squeeze fruit juice. Any juice you want, you can get it juiced, and it's not loaded with spoonfuls of sugar. Can we import this to the US please? They also are famous for the milkshakes. Curiously, the menu just lists the obscure name of the milkshake, and no description of what it was. There are about 20 options, all looked splendid, but I had no idea what was in them! We picked the "Georgio Armani" because of a recommendation. No idea why it's called that, but it was really good. No idea what was in it either, but I don't mind. 

We made good use of the metro system while we were there, mostly because the place we were at was a 5 minute walk from the metro. It was so well planned and designed, I can't help feel a bit jealous when I think of the DC one and all it's ineffectiveness. The metro in Dubai came about every 5 minutes, the stations are all superbly clean, they have bathrooms in each station (!), and they are electronically/remotely run, so you don't get those awkward brake slamming, head jerking stops. The only negatives are: you can easily get confused and get the wrong ticket and have to pay for an extra expensive ("punishment") exit ticket, there are police officers manning each station which made me nervous at first, and there's not too much seating so you're most likely going to be standing most of the way. All in all, I'm really glad it was there. It saved from relying on taxi cabs but at least the taxis aren't too expensive.

Since I was on vacation, clearly I ate a lot. One night we ate at Asha's, a gorgeously decorated Indian restaurant that is dedicated to the old-time Indian singer. I'm not really sure if her meals are related to her, but the decor and music were. The food, a little pricey but it was in a nice location, was really authentic, not that you can't get a ton of that in DC, but it was a really good experience. I could smell all the hints of cinnamon, masala, and cardamom, and my glass of white wine. 

You can't visit Dubai without getting some gold! You can literally get it everywhere and anywhere. My best bet was to go to the gold souk over in old Deira and try to haggle my way to a better deal. My bargaining skills were quite tested here, especially since I don't really know the true price/cost of the items they sell, but it's quite a new experience. We walked around and there are stores and stores lined with gold, silver, precious gem jewelry. There were necklaces, rings, earrings, and bracelets galore. I can't even imagine the prices of some of these items when I was only looking at small earrings, but the shops were decently crowded. I bought a Mother's Day present of earrings for my mom and felt so successful after haggling the price down by 30 dirhams. It's barely 10 USD, but it's all in the experience of bargaining. I don't understand the purpose of getting a receipt for my purchase though. It's not like I'm going to come back from the US and return my purchase 30 days later - is that even possible?  Probably not. Anyways, it'll be a good souvenir for 20 years from now when gold will cost double what it is today.

Time to wrap up this post before it's obscenely long. My introduction to Dubai was amazing! There are so many tourists and foreign people living there that you get a good cosmopolitan feel. You can get almost any cuisine you want there: Japanese, Chinese, Indian (South or North - you choose), Lebanese, Moroccan, American fast food, Arabic, Iranian, Italian, Thai, Afghan, the rare Mexican, and British pub. You can find some really cheap, really expensive, and everything in between. Great weather (except the summer), beaches, hotels, bars, MALLS, and activities can keep anyone pretty busy. To excite the accountant in me, there is even no income or sales tax over there. The price you see is the price you get. There weren't too many Americans over there, but that's a new experience in itself. 

To be continued in the next post...

Dryer Sheets No More

Sorry for the delinquency. Unfortunately, I haven't had enough time to pursue my evening pastime of writing my random feelings and thoughts. I have encountered a most unusual and annoying experience and feel that it is appropriate to share it with you.

I am not someone who is usually allergic to things. No peanut allergies except for that one year when I was younger and my doctor performed the prick test on my arms and found out that I could possibly be allergic to almonds which turned out to just being allergic to the change in seasons. I'm okay around dogs and cats, I sneeze like all normal people when the flowers bloom and the weather turns to spring. I'm pretty sure I had some diaper rash (which self-respecting baby didn't?), and I might have had an adverse reaction or two to bath bubbles. They're all chemicals, as my mom likes to say. Speaking of which, how about those dryer sheets?

All of a sudden, one random day around Thanksgiving, an itchy, rashy looking group of bumps appeared on my hands. I felt like a leper. I was scared someone would look at my hands and think, hmm this person better not be spreading some ridiculous itchy bump disease. They were oddly concentrated only on the outside of them, between my knuckles and my wrists. I couldn't think of any reason why they came up. Did I douse my hands in something that spurred some 20 year dormant allergy? Definitely not. Did I eat something that could have specifically decided to cause an allergic reaction on my hands only? Probably not. I eat pretty much everything and not even super spicy Indian food can conquer me.

Perhaps it was those acrylic gloves that I've been wearing for the past 5 years that caused this unsightly set of itchy bumps. And so, I tested it. I rubbed one hand with the acrylic glove for a few minutes, then wore it on that same hand for about 30 minutes. Nothing. Well, not nothing. The itchy bumps were still there, demanding that I desperately scratch my hands until I could find another bottle of cortizone. Cortizone is pretty useless by the way, unless you have a mosquito bite, which I definitely did not have. No, to the acrylic, no to the almonds/other non-existent food allergies. What else? I had to Web-MD it.

Again, no help except that I started to think that I had a form of cancer that began as itchy bumps on your hands. Mind you, this has been several days of flaringly itchy bumps on my hands that didn't seem to die down. The lone acrylic experiment didn't work, Web-MD failed to diagnose me, and I was starting to think I had a unique case of a new hand disease. Benadryl helped sometimes, but I didn't want to be drugged up all day at work and nodding my head in drowsiness.

Finally, I talked to my parents about it. Granted one is a dentist and prides herself on her excellent medical awareness and research abilities, I probably should have talked to them earlier. They boiled it down to soap and feminine lotions that are too much for my delicate sensitive hands or dryer sheets. More experiments underway, including countless loads in the washing machine and new bars of ivory soap. At long last, we figured it out, and I had to part ways with my dryer sheets. The culprit was hiding behind that veneer of a promise to de-static and perfume my clothing. I felt so betrayed!

Dryer sheets and I had gotten along pretty well over the years, especially after I had learned to do my own laundry. However, my skin and my sanity were my priority. The chemical residue reaction that were the itchy bumps on my hand started to fade after each load of laundry sans dryer sheet and I could finally feel relieved. I have been itch-free ever since, minus the one flare up when I wore a friend's sweater that reeked of dryer sheets (of course I noticed this after I was wearing it for a while).

I have looked into alternatives like "natural" dryer sheets and feel a little cautious as to trying them. One wrong step and I could be five ways to Benadryl-Cortizone land. I hope the old washcloth and conditioner remedy works like the housewives say they do. Maybe they've all encountered the same scenario as me, forgot to write about it in Web-MD, and discovered a magical solution. I'm crossing my fingers and praying it comes in a bottle labeled 7th generation or Sun & Earth.

In the meantime, I have sworn off an old friend. Goodbye dryer sheets!