UAE Runs on Dunkin' (!)

I think the picture pretty much says it all...

I've been meaning to post this photo for months and months and just kept forgetting. It might seem random, but it was kind of heartwarming for me because people in Boston are so obsessed with Dunkie's and so when one of the girls I used to tutor brought a donut to class and I noticed this bag I just had to snap a photo. I really thought the whole "America Runs On Dunkin'" ad campaign was US-centric, but I guess not....

New Years Resolutions... Better late than never.

Somehow I feel like 2011 did not get off to the smoothest start for me. It could have been the bar fight I witnessed at 2am New Years morning that started my year out with bad karma, or it could just be that traveling 6000+ miles for the holidays is generally discombobulating and hard to get settled after (especially when you are an ocd control-freak like myself). Either way, I was feeling a bit disheartened that it took me the greater part of January to finally feel settled back into life in Dubai and that I had a grasp on my life.

So, back in December before the craziness of the holidays set in, I had been thinking about my New Years Resolutions for 2011, and just generally things I wanted to improve for the better or change about my life this year. I kind of forgot about them for the month (or at least put them on the waaay back burner), but now that I finally feel like I have regained some semblance of control of my life I think I will try to institute some positive changes for 2011. My reason for posting them on here is that I feel like if I actually write them down (and publicly for all the world to see), then it will keep me a little more honest with following through. So, without further ado, my new New Years Resolutions for 2011:

1) (Obviously) lose the 6 lbs I gained over the holidays.
2) Regularly do yoga.
3) Make more time to read.
4) Make an effort to cook more at home and continue to try new recipes once a week. This is something we were really good about last year, for the vast majority of the year, but since we've gotten back from Christmas with the craziness of work and daily stress of life we've been having more take-out than we'd like to admit.
5) Take the time to enjoy the little things in life and appreciate what we have, including taking advantage of the beautiful place that we live, because the plan is to not live here for all that much longer.

So there, I think that's probably enough to keep me busy, and now that it's down on paper (so to speak) I will at least have a place to keep tabs on my progress. I just got new running shoes yesterday and I am starting a yoga class every Sunday starting next week, so now onto the reading one... Let's see how this goes!

Al Qasr Champagne Brunch

Yesterday we went to our second Champagne Brunch. Champagne Brunches are an institution in Dubai and I felt like it was criminal that we waited over a year to go to our first one last fall. The one we went to in October was at the JBH (Jumeirah Beach Hotel) and while very good, was not the "best of the best." Our friends have been raving about the Brunch at the Al Qasr Hotel in the Madinat Jumeirah since we got here, and we figured if you are committing a large chunk of money along with your whole day to eating and drinking extreme amounts, you might as well be getting the best experience possible. So, as an official Happy New Year/Back to Dubai after the holidays celebration we got all our closest friends together and decided we needed to do the Al Qasr brunch. I think we were the only Al Qasr 'virgins' and as soon as we arrived we knew what all the hype was about.

The brunch is probably the most over-the-top food and drink bonanza I have ever seen. The whole downstairs of the hotel was entirely taken over by the brunch, and every single restaurant in the hotel was included in the spread. There aren't any menus, but instead there were maps on the table to direct us to all the different food and beverages stands (approximately 20-30 of them) scattered throughout the outside and inside of the hotel. We had a lovely table outside, overlooking the Gulf and Burj Al Arab, and conveniently right near the beer stand, and Indian and Arabic stands. Champagne is free-flowing (you are greeted with a glass of either Prosecco or pink champagne upon entering), and throughout the day your glass is never empty. Then you can hit us each of the other booze stands as often as you want, for as many glasses as you can carry. There was a mojito stand, Hennessey stand, Bacardi stand, beer stand, cognac stand, Saki stand, vodka stand, gin stand, and somewhere Jared found a cherry cordial cocktail (along with red wine appearing on our table out of no where). You can pretty much get your moneys worth on alcohol alone.

And Jared certainly did... He has 8 alcoholic beverages in front of him in this photo... And I don't even think that was the high point of his day.

And if all that alcohol wasn't enough, there was literally a food stand from every region of the world, and many countries had their own stands too... Just to name a few that I can think of: Arabic, Indian, Paella, Mexican, Malaysian, Thai, Dim Sum, Seafood (including grilled prawns and lobster, of which I think Jared had 4 lobster tails), mixed grill, a Wagyu burger stand, all the soups, salads, and breads you could imagine, German/Swiss, a Pork Room, Sushi, a kiddie buffet (with things like fries, hotdogs, and fish fingers), Italian pasta and pizza, foie gras, fried food, and a variety of amuse bouche with different pates, terrines, and ceviches (of which I probably had too many, and therefore missed out on some of the things I would have liked, like the grilled lobster and prawns and the Wagyu burger bar). If there was a picture in the Bible of the 7 deadly sins, the Al Qasr Brunch should be the representative of gluttony.. and that is even before you get to dessert. After my 4th plate or so, and 5th glass of champagne, I decided it was time to get my camera out and try to capture some of the essence of the day...

Elizabeth.

Lizzy and Muthanna.

Me & Jared, in cardiac arrest heaven.

Another shot. I should really learn not to push my arm up against my body like that in photos... Especially while consuming 10,000 calories. Not a flattering look.

And then we were onto the desserts. Oh and the desserts added a whole other 'wow' factor to the buffet. There were somewhere between 5 and 7 different dessert spreads scattered throughout the buffet. There was the candy buffet, with loads of gummies and chocolate candy that you could just take by the handful, there was the British dessert stand with various puddings and fruits crumbles, there was the ice cream bar, and room of chocolate with not one, but two chocolate fountains, along with truffles and other chocolates to indulge in + cupcakes. Then there was the macaroon stand, and lastly the traditional dessert stand with all varieties pastry and cake. I am sure I missed some too, as I couldn't even stomach dessert by the time I was sick of the savory food, so only had some gummies and a white chocolate ice cream cone. Needless to say, I probably consumed a week's worth of calories and truly should not eat again for 2-3 days. Truly an indulgent day.

Oh but wait, my friends thought it would be really funny to tell the wait staff that it was my birthday, so guess what, they brought me a cake (on top of everything else) and came to sing to me... And got our whole section of the buffet clapping. I was laughing so hard that it was difficult to blow out the candle.

Happy 27 and 5 months birthday to me!

Then, when we couldn't possible eat or drink anymore (and the buffet closed at 4, but let us sit there until 5), we decided it was time to move onto the Madinat to continue the night with sheesha and tea at Barzar. So we took the electric abras within the Madinat complex over to the bar. A lovely conclusion to the day.

Ruch and Elizabeth on the electric abra.

Clare and Mel.

A view of the Burj Al Arab from inside the Madinat complex (while on our abra ride).

So we luxuriated in the beanbags at Barzar for another 3 or 4 hours and digested while enjoying good company and sheesha (I had my traditional Moroccan mint tea). And then we were home and to bed by 10. It was a great time, but not something we need to repeat again for a long long time...

Desert Camping

At the top of the medium-sized mountain near our campsite.

This weekend we had a new and very interesting experience... We went desert camping! Camping in the desert is a favorite pastime of Dubai-dwellers, and something we've been wanting to do since we arrived. However, I wouldn't say Jared and I are particularly 'camping' people, and in fact had never been camping together in the almost 8 years we've been dating. I probably haven't been camping myself since I was in high school, so you could say it's been a lonnng time since I've 'roughed it' in the way you do when you camp. But that didn't scare us and we eagerly accepted the invitation from our friends to join their camping convoy.

The idea was for the guys to all go mountain biking, and the girls to go hiking (it was a group of about 12 people, 6 couples, with a few others who I never actually got a chance to chat with so don't really know their story). We were to leave on Friday afternoon, get to the campsite before dark, set-up, BBQ for dinner, and then the next morning the biking/hiking would occur. A great plan in theory. However, this weekend it finally decided to rain in Dubai (and not just sprinkle, but pour, all day Friday) after about 10 months with absolutely no precipitation to speak of. We began to wonder if we were still going to go, but our friends Bruno and Beth who organized the trip were convinced that it would be dry once we got to the campsite.

So we got on the road at about 3pm on Friday and drove the hour and a half to the turnoff to get to the campsite. We were driving our little car (not the oh so fantastic Mitsubishi Lancer we've been renting for the last 1.5 years, but a temporary replacement for it, since the Lancer was in for servicing. The replacement was an even more ghetto-tastic Chinese car called a "Family Haima STD". Certainly not of superior quality). We had asked Bruno if he thought that our little car would be able to make it to the campsite (as everyone else was driving SUV's), and he said he thought it was "doable" in a normal car. Well we soon found out that the 'dirt road' to get to the campsite was in fact rocky mountain trails and dried up wadis. We all drove in a big convoy (with us in the back) and the 25ish minutes it probably took us felt like about 2 hours. Jared was driving and the stress and tension that ensued was nearly relationship ending, which is saying a lot for anyone who has spent even a little bit of time with us, and particularly in situations involving moving furniture and/or law school finals/bar exams. As we weren't sure if the car would make it, and nearly broke up about 12 times, I didn't get any pictures on the way in... I did on the way out though, which I will share below.

So, for some unknown reason, God had mercy on us and allowed our Chinese POS car to make it to the campsite. However, by the time we got there, there was only about 15 minutes of light left in the day, and it was just drizzling down rain. We commenced setting up camp, with the tent we borrowed from our friends Pauline and Kevin (who were also camping with us). Despite the fact that Jared and I were basically not speaking, we somehow set up our tent and managed to get the rain flap/outer tent up before everything got soaked. As we also (obviously) had no sleeping bags, we borrowed a camp bed [which collapsed within 5 minutes of laying on it] and foam camping mattresses from P&K as well (using spare sheets from home to make the bed... along with the pillows and duvet off our bed).

Once we were all set up, the rain finally let up and we ended up having a really fun night of drinking and grilling with a toasty campfire and good conversation. We even introduced all our non-American friends to S'mores courtesy of a S'more kit my Grandma D. got us for Christmas. The tension between Jared and I seemed to lesson as the night went on and the rain eased up (and we realized that remarkably, the air was still in all four of our tires).

Unfortunately, the rain continued through much of the night and I woke up to dripping periodically on my face (or maybe I woke up a lot because the camp bed had collapsed on me and so I ended up sleeping on the ground and trying to get Jared to share his foam mats with me). Either way, when we woke up we realized how beautiful the campsite was... If only it hadn't rained the one time in the year and a half we've lived here that we actually went camping. Oh well, in my experience, it isn't camping unless it rains.

After a hearty breakfast of eggs and English sausage, the boys sans Jared headed out to mountain bike. Jared was originally planning on borrowing a bike, but the logistics seemed to be getting too complicated and he didn't want to spend $60 USD on a bike helmet he would never wear again. So we stuck around the campsite and did some light hiking around the area to soak in the gorgeous scenery...

View of our campsite from above...

View of the mountains.

Another view.

Jared and the mountains.

Victory! (Jared at the top of the peak).

Me & Pauline, taking a load off.

The Family Haima at the campsite. I just had to get the effect of a car that had no business being in the middle of the desert mountains.

See, I'm not lying! It's really called the "Family Haima STD" no matter how ridiculous it sounds. Silly Chinese.

On the way out, with a bit more confidence the Haima could do it, but with just as many cringe-worthy-rock scraping the bottom of the car moments.

Off-roading in the Haima.

Yet another view... We just couldn't believe the car was actually driving this path, and relatively unscathed. Maybe we weren't giving the Haima enough credit.

Last view of the path out. Still can't believe we drove a two-wheel drive car through that, and that it made it!

So, overall, I would say camping was an interesting experience. Certainly memorably, and possibly something that we never need to do again.

And just to throw this in, we started out our weekend by running in the Dubai Marathon 10K Friday morning at 7:15am. The whole race experience was just a comedy of errors which began with us stuck in a traffic-jam for 45 minutes and missing the start of the race (despite leaving our house an hour before the race began to travel a distance less than 5 miles). Mind you, hundreds of other 10K (and marathon) runners were in the same situation and missing the start of the race. Once we finally got into the parking area (Dubai Media City, a congested and small area which I wouldn't even consider trying to fit 12,000 runners/cars into, but apparently the race organizers thought otherwise), we had to park literally on the front steps of the Microsoft building and were chased down and harassed by the security guard as we were leaving our car. We ignored him however. We reached the starting line of the race about 25 minutes after the race was to have begun and they were already wheeling away the starting arch, and had removed the starting gate, so that our chips didn't even register and so we weren't timed or even considered to have started the race (according to the official results). Jared took pleasure in taunting race officials as we passed them. Then when we got to the 'water stop' they were out of water (which is kind of ridiculous considering we were catching up to back of the pack people who are the ones that needed the water the most), so Jared told the water stop workers to go to hell as we passed. Funny enough, we both finished the race in really good times, Jared in 47 minutes, me in 49 minutes 37 seconds. I think it must have been the anger and rage giving us adrenaline. Oh well, chalk it up to another uniquely 'Dubai' experience.

December Fun

Wow! I can't even believe how quickly this last month has flown by! December is always insanely busy, but it seems even more so when you are traveling 6,000+ miles to celebrate the holidays. And while we were disappointed to not be able to go home until December 22nd, in some ways it was actually nice to be in Dubai so close to Christmas because we got to see everything in full swing here (whereas last year, a lot of the decorations were not up yet and/or finished by the time we left on December 17th). We tried to make the most of our extra time before Christmas here, and I was even able to convince Jared to go ice skating with me at the Dubai Mall Ice Rink. Nothing gets me in the winter/holiday spirit more than ice skating...

Jared appeasing me by posing for a photo.

Jared fleeing from my attempts to take pictures of him on the ice.

And our time at home was absolutely wonderful as ever. Not nearly as cold as last year, with no mishaps (at least nothing of the scale of a blizzard rental car accident with a snow plow... Jared did lose his blackberry in a taxi on our first night home but it was returned to him by the oh so kind driver within 24 hours). We were even lucky enough to have a white Christmas in both MA (which never happens) and NY (which always happens), but without having to do any bad weather driving. We were able to catch up with [almost] everyone (family and friends) we wanted to, and all-in-all had a great trip! I do have to be honest though... With all the running around we do while we're home, I wasn't entirely sad to be heading back to the sandbox after a whirlwind 10 days.

I didn't take many pictures while I was home this year, but I thought I'd share my favorites....

I took the little cousins and my little sister Valerie sledding in Wellesley after Christmas (it was absolutely perfect sledding/snowball making weather!) and we had a great time!

New Years Eve we went out in Boston... The city throws a big celebration called "First Night" with parades, fireworks, and ice sculptures throughout the city and this year was the 35th Anniversary (apparently). It was a fun night which included watching the early 'family' fireworks show from our friend's roof-deck while sipping champagne, and ended with a bar fight as the open bar event we were at was ending. Nothing like starting out the new year with a bar fight. I'm sure 2011 will be a fantastic year!