Sand in my pants

2006-12-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

Babel was an appopriate film for the closing gala of the Dubai International Film Festival - both the film and the event meant well, really wanted to impress on the world stage but something was lost in the execution. Which is not to say that Babel is a bad film. But it could have been improved.

This story - of how one woman (Cate Blanchett) getting shot in Morocco has global repercussions - tries it hand at the old trick of running multiple storylines, in this case across multiple countries, and the links between the narratives soon become apparent. That was the problem - the connections between stories were telegraphed too soon which then left the viewer feeling as if they knew it all and were merely left waiting for the resolutions, who was going to live, who was going to die and there were no real twists or surprises. Tarantino has jumped the shark in recent years but Pulp Fiction truly sets the standard for that sort of scripting.

And the Japanese part of the story seemed somewhat beside the point. Despite this, it was an excellently told and shot part of the film. In many ways it was the most creative part of the film because they didn't have the luxury of relying on vast Moroccan landscapes, wide-eyed blonde kids, a trashy but weirdly romantic Mexican wedding, or the shock value of a bloodstained Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt as her increasingly aggravated husband. But it could have stood alone as a short film or been further developed as a feature film in its own right. It was touching and beautiful but wasted in Babel.

Still, Brad Pitt was excellent as the man who just wants his wife to get medical help amid stupid political wrangling. He is a better actor when he scruffs up, forgets to shave and relies on talent rather than on his dimples, irritating megawatt grin or twinkling, boyish eyes. My taxi companion on the way home was disturbed by a scene where he passionately kisses his wounded wife while helping her do a wee, but on reflection, it was a rather tender scene. Cate Blanchett's role as Pitt's wife could have been played by any actress who is adept at lying around, whimpering and bleeding, and her American accent had the odd lapse back into Australian. Not her best work. She was far better in Little Fish where she played a recovered drug addict trying to sort out her life in probably the worst suburb of Sydney for anyone tempted by illegal substances. And there she could let loose with an accent as broad as the Nullabor Plain.

The kids were excellent too - all of them. The two young actors who played Ahmed and Yussef, Moroccan kids who end up in adult-sized hot water, were brilliant. The all-American blonde kids were great too (and cute kids in films usually bother me no end). The boy in particular was heartbreakngly convincing when he realised he was in a dangerous situation on the US-Mexican border and he cried and cried. The only kid actor I've seen outshine this was the little boy in The Hours who achieved an incredible look of sheer devastation when his mother, played by the fantastic Julianne Moore, drives out of sight.

Babel is by no means a dreadful film and in many ways a worthwhile film but I can't thinking it might have had more impact with a ruthless editor and a sharper scriptwriter.

2006-12-14T23:09:00.000-08:00

In news just at hand, I am pleased to report good things about the Dubai police force. I was attacked and had the added nightmare of being spoken to by a police officer as if I was some sort of slatternly whore when I tried to report the crime. But thanks to friends with contacts a tad higher up in the police force than the bloke who answers the phones, I have actually made some progress, been taken seriously and have reported the incident. I have a very helpful detective on the case, assorted majors and lieutenants who are well-educated have treated me with great respect and not accused me of making it up or implied that by being an unmarried woman walking alone I was in some way asking to be grabbed by a random guy at a bus stop. If you are ever in Dubai and you need to report a crime, do not be afraid to report it but insist that you speak to someone above the phone dude or the front desk dude. Do not try and tell the whole story at the front desk or over the phone. It is also helpful to bring someone with you who has some knowledge of Arabic. It is good to finally feel like my horrible incident is being taken seriously and they are keen to catch this vile man.

2006-12-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

Well, I missed the first day of the rugby sevens (allegedly Dubai's biggest social event) because I was at work, was way too messed up on Friday after seeing fit to dance until 4am on a table and yesterday, it was pouring with rain. And this is a city in no way geared towards coping with anything vaguely resembling precipitation. My housemate and I finally decided to head out there around lunchtime after some vino lubrication (which made it seem like a marvellous idea to get cold and wet voluntarily). There was mud to rival the trenches of Ypres, drunk girls wearing minimal clothing (which in plenty of cases was an example of too-much-girl-not-enough-fabric. Shudder.) and the rain pelted down so much that it wasn't so much cats and dogs but panthers and wolves. In the Heineken Tent, the only remotely warm and dry place, stress balls were being thrown around. One hit me in the neck. That improved my demeanour. Then it was off to the BP stand to get even more wet and cold. By this time, Australia had lost to Samoa, the music was excruciating and I realised that watching rugby is an activity best done in a pub, on the couch, at more civilised (and permanent) stadiums or with my dad.

2006-11-25T22:57:00.000-08:00

Imagine this scene. A woman has been out one night, nothing too rowdy. It’s time to call it a night. But she can’t find a taxi for love or money so she starts to walk. And walk. And walk. By the time the taxis start appearing, she’s close to home, she’s enjoying the fresh air and figures she may as well walk the rest of the way home. It’s a busy road, a well-lit road. Apart from a dark bus stop.

A man is sitting on the bench and he puts his foot out as if to trip her. She tells him to be careful and walks towards home, perhaps a little faster. He gets up, follows her, catches her, puts an arm around her and over her mouth and tries to force her towards a hedge. She frees her head from his grip and screams and yells. The arm around her is feeling for her breast, the other hand is trying to make its way up her dress, she feels herself falling towards the hedge. She is still making a lot of noise. A swift elbow to his chest makes him lose his grip and she is able to get away. He runs off into the night.

She is a hysterical, teary, freaked-out mess. There is nobody around and the road is eerily quiet. She sends trembling, misspelt texts. Her housemate finds her and helps her home. She is safe but still shaking. She has a shower to wash him away and goes to bed, nursing a twisted ankle, a bleeding scratch on her right breast and another on her leg. The next day, everything is aching and she still feels like crap.

That night she decides to report the incident. After all, the next girl this creep jumps at might not be so lucky. But she gets a blame-the-victim interrogation. She is accused of making it up, the officer demands to know why nobody helped her, he asks her why she didn’t scream even though she made enough noise to wake the dead, the officer tries to confuse her story by suggesting it happened at a different time even though she can, through the evidence of sent and received text messages, pinpoint the exact time of the attack. He grunts derisively when she tells him she is unmarried. By the time the conversation gets too hard, she feels like she has been violated for a second time.

Surely this still doesn’t happen in 2006? Does it?

2006-11-19T00:15:00.000-08:00

I had my first desert driving experience and after clambering up a dune to keep a lookout at one point, I literally did have sand in my pants as per the title of this blog.

In other news, the new James Bond ain't half bad but the girl is bloody annoying, Hostel is a film that proves Tarantino is well past his best and film censorship in this place is getting more and more barmy by the day. The Queen is getting a tougher rating than The Departed and the only way we'll be able to see Borat is on pirated DVD because that has been completely banned here. One of the reasons for the barking mad Borat ban is "lack of storyline" which would eliminate pretty much every crap film that does get released here.

2006-11-19T00:07:00.000-08:00

Australia played woefully against Ireland last night. Awful, ugly, unwatchable rugby, apart from the biffo. After planning to have a quiet night in attending to personal grooming issues, I instead went to Aussie Legends (which is nothing like anyone's local back home) with my Irish housemate to watch the game. The butter chicken was yummy, the beer was cold, the Australians played like a pack of bozos, two got sent off, they never once looked like coming close to scoring a try and Ireland thoroughly deserved to win. But I still maintain that the All Blacks will win the 2007 World Cup. After not winning it since 1987 and peaking precisely halfway between World Cups ever since, I think 2007 will be the year that they will do it again. Possibly against Ireland. Almost certainly not against Australia.

2006-11-06T06:32:00.000-08:00

Some random thoughts on the Middle East.

• The execution of Saddam Hussein will do nothing towards achieving peace in the Middle East.
• The formation of the state of Israel was a flawed idea from the get-go.
• Women who include their children as part of a human shield are a disgrace.
• Encouraging children to carry "Death to Sharon" and "Go to hell, Sharon" placards after Ariel Sharon collapsed are also a disgrace.
• It is too easy and simplistic to be a smug, cynicalm agnostic Westerner and say they are all just madmen and women fighting over who has the better claim on their imaginary friend. That attitude trivialises faiths and belittles the bigger issues at play.
• It is very important to try and understand the principles of Islam and Judaism if we are to be informed and retain some sense of humanity.
• There will never be lasting, across-the-board peace in the Middle East. Just pockets of peace, such as Dubai and the UAE where I currently live in a shiny bubble of glass, steel, sand and capitalism.

Discuss...

2006-11-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

2006-10-29T21:05:00.000-08:00

There was a letter in today's 7Days (a daily freebie paper here in Dubai which, while poorly sub-edited, does have a habit of living up to its "a conversation on every page" motto). The letter was complaining about the bad language and violence in film The Departed, Martin Scorcese's latest flick. It's bloody good - and very bloody. It's a film about gangsters, for God's sake, so anyone who goes into the cinema expecting Sleepless In Seattle is an intellectual bankrupt. The language would doubtlessly cause my late godmother to have conniptions but it was no more or less shocking than the average Tarantino. The letter also pointed out that the film here is rated 15+ despite having an R-rating in other countries. And true enough, it's probably not the most wholesome viewing for the average 15-year-old, but it does illustrate the conundrum of film censorship here. A 15-year-old in Dubai can waltz in and enjoy plenty of rude words, especially from a spikily entertaining Mark Wahlberg, and plenty of grim ways to kill and maim, from execution-style shootings followed by dismemberment with a saw through to witnessing the full and splattery effect of a body falling off a tall building. But a film full of sex scenes, if indeed it even made it to the cinema, would be so heavily cut that it would probably stop making sense.

Sex and violence are urges that exist in us all to varying degrees. And, as Camille Paglia wrote, "anything that can be imagined should be depicted". It is, after all, only the limits of our imaginations that limit creativity, especially when it comes to film-making and writing. But this is a society where the stifling of sex and sexual expression is much more acceptable than the stifling of depictions of violence. This is a place where a 15-year-old can indeed watch a violent film like The Departed yet adults get berated for snogging in a taxi. This is a place that is by no means all bad, a place where expats like me can lead a nice life, but it is also a place with a lot of growing up to do.

2006-10-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

Give Helen Mirren the Oscar right now. Do not pass Go, do not collect 200 votes from the Academy or kiss 200 arses. Just give the woman the Oscar. As HM The Queen in The Queen, Helen Mirren goes beyond mere impersonation and inhabits the mind, body and sometimes cryptic soul of Her Maj. Dealing with the week surrounding the death of Princess Di in film was a challenge - the film could have easily become cloyingly sentimental, overtly political or just plain hysterical to mirror the bizarre outpouring of grief which occurred back in 1997. But it wasn't - there was the perfect level of humour, studied observations of Royals and politicians as real human beings rather than cardboard cut-outs and plenty of thoughts were provoked for monarchists and republicans alike. It is the sort of thing the Brits do so well. I doubt the American film industry could have pulled this off. It would have been too heavyhanded, too overwrought and too much like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.
Michael Sheen as Tony Blair at times verged on the Spitting Image/Rubbery Figures-style impersonation but there were moments where you got such a strong sense of what a difficult time it was for him as he negotiated with the Queen to make a public statement and return to London from Balmoral, that you felt sorry for him being in such a predicament. Helen McCrory's Cherie Blair had a naughty schoolgirl feel about her - and one suspects that is close to the truth in light of her accident-prone loose cannon behaviour.
And Alex Jennings's Prince Charles could have easily become a ridiculous caricature - the ears alone are hilarious on the real Chuck - but instead he portrayed the Charles many of us believe is real. This is the Charles who is a troubled man, torn between duty and the modern world and coming across as bumbling, dithering and inconsistent as a result. He is probably just a rather sweet, sensitive, slightly eccentric man who sees the throne as a burden rather than an honour.
Comic relief in the form of James Cromwell's Prince Phillip and Sylvia Syms' Queen Mother (looking a little like Mrs Slocumbe from Are You Being Served) was well done - the humour was often dark but always insightful. Prince Phillip's constant shooting-off-at-the-mouth is amusing in real life (although it must bother the Queen no end when he starts banging on like Alf Garnett) and in the movie, there were good points made in the midst of his rantings, especially when he compared the madness of the public to the public's perception of the madness of the Royals.
The only bit which verged on the saccharine was an ongoing analogy involving Prince Phillip and the young princes stalking a gorgeous stag. The parallel between the stalking of the stag and the stalking of Di by the paps was laid on a bit too thickly - and slightly bloodthirstily.
However, this film brings much-needed sanity to the story of Diana's death, muchy like Germaine Greer's column in the midst of the Steve Irwin hand-wringing. There are a couple of lump-in-the-throat moments but the film won't leave you howling like a banshee. Thank God. Princess Di lived by the media sword and died by it. She was one of the canniest media manipulators around and her death is no more or less sad than any other road fatality.

2006-10-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

Your eyes don't deceive you. There was a post here and now it is gone. The need for cheap therapy and sleep-deprived venting via the blog has well and truly passed and I don't like racist remarks lingering on my blog either. No comments for this edited post please. Can we all move on? There's nothing to see here.

2006-10-05T02:45:00.000-07:00

Bloody hell. what is it with real estate agents? Back home, they do have a habit of being creepy, wearing bad Lowes menswear suits and trying to convince you that a flat that is only suitable for an anorexic Lilliputian is actually "cosy and charming." But if you do express an interest in buying or renting a property, they will quickly respond to the prospect of money and before you know it, you have a shiny new housekey.

Here in Dubai, the average realo is like a rubbish boyfriend. You call him. He can't talk right now. You call back later, like he asked. He doesn't pick up the phone. You call again. He is still too busy for you. You send a text saying explicitly that you are very interested in the flat and would like to move in as soon as it is ready. No response. You call again. He doesn't answer. You spend half your life waiting by the phone like a neglected girlfriend. You know he's bad for you, you know he is going to screw you over, but still you want him to call, to like you enough to let you move into his flat.

The relationship ends because you've found another real estate agent who looks after you. When the first guy finally calls back after a week of silence it is too little too late. Or you just let the relationship die in the arse like the one-night stand that went nowhere. Or he calls back and tells you the rent is actually 10% higher than the original figure and you feel like a fool for ever believing his too-good-to-be-true promises of cheap rent and plush digs. Or he is truly unfaithful and you discover he has let the flat to a family, like a real estate bigamist.

They are obsessed with preferring to rent places to families here. Never mind that when I lived in a building full of families it was overcrowded hell, there were kids riding bikes in the hallway and crashing into you or the wall, babies who sounded like they have TB cried in the night. It was awful. Families are appalling tenants for apartments. It may be because I am Australian where most of us grow up in houses with big backyards and room to ride bikes that I find the abundance of families in flats so objectionable. Or maybe I'm just pissed off because no matter where you go in the world, there is always an element of pity or discrimination towards the unamrried and childless.

Thank God I'm off to Ireland for a few days and can forget about flat-hunting temporarily. My friend Emma is looking at a place for us on the weekend. I hope I will come home to glad tidings about a new address.

2006-09-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

What is wrong with me (apart from the obvious neuroses and personality disorders)? If I get a bad meal at a restaurant, it'll be back in the kitchen at lightning speed. If the wine is not good, I have no qualms about telling the waiter all about it. If I get a dodgy haircut, a tantrum will be thrown. A tradesman messes me about? He will get the full George wrath. But I have the complete inability to take clothes back to the shop that I'm not happy with. As a result, I have in my wardrobe: a pair of jeans that are just a little too Harry Highpants to be cool, a jacket which looks great from the front but I failed to notice the dodgy embroidery on th eback when I was in the shop, a top that makes me look like I'm wearing a baby blue straitjacket and another top with a hole in it that again I failed to notice in the shop. Why? Why?!

2006-09-16T04:58:00.001-07:00

I love words. Always have, always will. I love playing with the English language, I am shamelessly amused by puns, I like rude words, cheeky words, onamatopaeic words, funny sounding words, words that amuse, insult, criticise, describe, entertain... So I get really annoyed by the lack of respect the English language gets shown in this era of gnat-like attention spans and text messages. Don't get me wrong. I love a good SMS. They are brilliant for quick and easy communication, especially when you can't be bothered talking to people. But those irritating abbreviations, such as "gr8" and "LOL", are bloody annoying outside of the realm of personal texts between friends. (Hell, I still text out "tomorrow" rather than "2moro" in a text, such is my disdain for text speak.)

I do realise this makes me seem curmudgeonly, cranky, old before my time but I don't care. That anonymous idiot who infiltrated Mushroom's blog was just an asinine pain in the rectum. It is an effort, it hurts my eyes, it causes me physical pain, to pick through the twigs and bones of improper words and sentences. And now, on a daily basis at work. I get emails from public relations twats, allegedly professional people who are supposed to be paid communicators, full of irritating abbreviations and emoticons. It's not clever. It's lazy, it's juvenile and it is a way of legitimising poor use of English. English, when used properly and cleverly, is a brilliant tool for communication, entertainment, information and getting opinions across.

The death of proper words and proper sentences is a sad day for the English language, for a language with a rich and fascinating history (check out Melvyn Bragg's work on this topic). I don't like the dumbing down of English. I'm sure there are plenty of people, probably the same ones who are emailing Germaine Greer about her Steve Irwin column, who would, if they stumbled upon my blog, accuse me of being an intellectual elitist. "Intellectual elitist" has just become easy and convenient insult for those too lazy to form a proper opinion. Or too lazy to write words in their entirety. I can only imagine the barely literate dross that Germaine Greer would have had to endure in her inbox after some paper back in Australia printed her email address. She has my full sympathy.

2006-09-16T04:58:00.000-07:00

2006-09-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

I've just had a lovely weekend in Muscat but just in case Fingers thinks I am basking too much in the afterglow, here are three things that have pissed me off of late...

• People posting comments on Radar wishing Germaine Greer uterine cancer and basically slagging her off for being unmarried and childless. As if that's a great crime and somehow makes her opinions null and void. If you disagree with her comments on Steve Irwin that is your right, but there's no need for unrelated personal attacks. Nobody ever calls into question the fertility status, marital status or sexuality of male commentators and columnists. Funny, that.

• John Howard's calls for all Muslims to learn English. Australia is an English-speaking nation so obviously it is helpful to know your way around the language but he conveniently fails to mention drastic funding cuts he has made to English language programs for migrants. The man is a hypocritical piece of crap.

• My lovely weeked in Muscat coming to an end all too soon. Oops. Sorry...

2006-09-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

I've just read a book called "Smashed: growing up a drunk girl" by Koren Zailckas. And it was an irritating read for the most part. She chronicles how she started drinking as a teenager and drank more and more throughout university - I think we are all supposed to be shocked that white middle class American girls might drink too much, might even have blackouts, have sex they can't quite remember or end up in hospital getting their stomachs pumped. Unless you have led a seriously sheltered existence, this should not be especially shocking.
Koren still managed to get good marks at school, get a univeristy degree and get a job all the while drinking way more than the recommended number of alcohol units per week. As does pretty much everyone I know, myself included. She was the textbook functioning alcoholic. But she did cross the line into dependence, realised it was threatening to overtake her life and so she went to AA. Now she doesn't touch a drop. Good for her. She did what she had to do.
But was really pissed me off was her total refusal to call herself an alcoholic. For that is what she was and is. She had a serious addiction, she went to AA and the only viable solution she sees for herself is to abstain completely. That is an alcoholic. It was as if she was just too middle class and still too much of a "nice girl" to admit to being an alcoholic. As if she'd be likened to the wee-stained vagrant in the park with the bottle in a brown paper bag. Sorry, sweetheart. You are an alcoholic. If total abstention is the only way forward for you, that is what you are.
And there seems to be a complete lack of gratitude for her good fortune. For not only did she find a way out of alcoholism at the age of 22, but she also moved to New York, got a good job there and actually found herself a nice, sane, patient, loving tolerant boyfriend. Which is more than a lot of women twice her age have done. Even if they want the dream career and the dream man, it doesn't always happen for everyone. But she seems to have managed it at 22. But instead of being a little bit humble about this, she comes across as a whiny spoilt brat who is about as shocking as Doris Day. She may think she has exposed some scandalous, booze-fuelled middle class underbelly but all she has done is confirm what most of us already knew. And lied to herself and her readers about who she really is.

2006-08-29T01:20:00.002-07:00

2006-08-29T01:20:00.001-07:00

2006-08-29T01:20:00.000-07:00

It was 9.30 on a Monday evening and I was in my friendly 24-hour supermarket restocking my cleaning products. Yes, it's a rock'n'roll life I lead. Anyway, I wandered down the personal hygiene aisle and was struck down by the sight of numerous "virginity soaps". Yes, folks. Back in Australia, these would be coyly called "intimate cleaning products" or "feminine hygiene cleansers for personal freshness" or some such euphemism for what is essentially soap for vaginas. Never mind that these asinine products upset the delicate balance of flora down there and give you raging infections and irritations. Some women just have this morbid terror about the way their bits smell and decide that they are less than a woman unless they have crotches that smell of Air-o-zone meadow fresh room deodorant.

I took a closer look at these so-called virginity soaps. Not only do they claim to clean and freshen the downstairs department but they also claim to tighten the vaginal muscles. Yep, as Allah is my witness, that's what it said. No blushing euphemisms for this Islamic land. This stuff will do for your box what it says on the box. Apparently. Ladies, no need to bother with those pesky pelvic floor exercises when you can just rub your bits with a cake of soap. I did, however, enjoy the product that said it was for married ladies. We can't be having any pre-marital pubic lathering going on here...

2006-08-21T07:41:00.000-07:00

My wordy Lordy there are some whingers here in Dubai. Some utter dickhead wrote to 7 Days, the daily tabloid paper here, to whine that he couldn't save any money here despite his and his wife's combined income being 25,000 dirhams per month. Which is about 9000 Aussie pesos per month. Clearly these deadshits are living beyond their means or had outrageously high lifestyle expectations when they arrived. People, the days of Dubai being an exorbitantly well paid hardship posting are well and truly over. People come here now for a new experience, to learn about life in a Muslim culture and to enjoy the benefits of being close to some of the world's most incredible destinations. From Sydney, I cannot just pop over to Istanbul for the weekend for about $150 but from Dubai I can. And then there was the woman who put a classified ad on an expat site. She was after a secondhand wardrobe for her maid. That made me sick. You can buy a new wardrobe at Ikea for the equivalent of about $50. What an absolute disgrace that she wasn't prepared to buy a new wardrobe for the woman to whom she pays a pittance to do her housework and probably raise her vile expat brat kids too. When there are labourers working in 45-degree heat on building sites for less than $200 per month, these repulsive whingers should be ashamed of themselves. But that would require a conscience.

2006-08-05T01:11:00.000-07:00

So there I was getting a pedicure the other night. Nothing wildly unusual there except that I was born with two club feet. As a result, I have heavily scarred hoofs from 13 reconstructive operations. But it's all good - without this surgery, I wouldn't be able to walk, drive a car, go dancing, chase boys or kick butt. Every time I have a pedicure, I get asked by the beautician about the scars. And I'm always happy to tell the tale.

The other night, sure enough, the lovely Lorna asked me and I told her. Lorna told me she has a niece in the Philippines with a similar problem but they can't afford surgery. The more she grows, the worse the condition gets. It is inexcusable that there is still such poverty in the world - I had the great fortune to be born in Australia and back in 1976, I was able to access excellent doctors. But a kid born in 2001 is going through life suffering from an easily correctable birth defect. I wonder how many orthopaedic surgeons are required to help these children? How many would be willing to do it for free? The surgeon who fixed my feet gave back to the world that allowed him to have a nice life by working on landmine victims in Cambodia. This is the kind of person that the world clearly needs more of. I'm now harbouring an ambition to start some sort of charity to help kids like Lorna's niece - if anyone has any ideas on how this can be done, please get in touch.

As an intriguing postscript to this story, Lorna told me that her niece and I are guaranteed a place in God's kingdom of heaven because we are "imperfect women". Well, I've always known that about myself. And I can flippantly say that this guarantee gives me carte blanche to behave as appallingly as I like here on earth. But it also made me acutely aware of how people come to rely on faith even when life has dealt them a pretty crappy hand. It's all too easy for us in a comfortable westernised existence to scoff at the faith of others, be it Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or whatever, but for some, that may be all they have unless the world can change for the better.

2006-07-30T00:18:00.000-07:00

I rather enjoyed the piece in today's 7Days on urban legends that freak out the people of Dubai. My favourite urban legends so far have been:

• The story of the goat living on the Trade Centre Roundabout. I drive around that part of town regularly and I've never seen a goat but I am keeping my eyes peeled. A pet goat is just what this city needs.

• Prisoners in UAE jails being assigned the government-sanctioned censorship task of scrawling over rudie-nudie bits in mags like FHM in black marker pen. If this is true, it'd make a stint in a Dubai prison seem far less hellish for the average red-blooded bloke. But then again there are also the stories of bromide in the prison tea to stop the lads from getting frisky so maybe they're all sitting there colouring in Carmen Electra's cleavage and Jordan's G-stringed bottom while feeling uncharacteristically non-plussed by it all.

• The Burj Al Arab (Dubai's outrageously ostentatious 7-star hotel for those from out of town) having terrible plumbing problems because of prostitutes entertaining clients in the rooms and then flushing used condoms down the loo. This one cannot be true. We all know there are no prostitutes here...

2006-07-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

10 things about Dubai that make me smile...

1. Being stuck in traffic but not really minding because I'm stuck behind a truckload of really cute camels.
2. Watching local men in crisp white dish-dashes, woolly hats and gloves fly down the slopes of Ski Dubai, the indoor ski slope.
3. The immaculate make-up, amazing jewellery and fab shoes peeking out from the abayas of local women.
4. Th mad developments such as a replica Eiffel Tower that's apparently bigger than the real thing, the faux Egyptian structures of Wafi City and, of course, regardless of earthquake fears, the world's tallest building.
5. Friends my own age on a similar income to me talking about problems they are having with their maid.
6. Being called "Miss Georgia" by the real estate agent, my car dealer, the person on the phone when I book a restaurant...
7. The guys at the laundry that I use - I am always amazed when someone comes in to pick up their freshly laundered dish-dashes and the guys know exactly which bag to grab out of the racks and racks of seemingly identical dish-dashes.
8. Optimistic government statements whenever someone publicly says the Dubai bubble will burst, that this city is a white elephant, a house of cards and a desert mirage.
9. Not paying through the nose for a plumber to come to the house.
10. The relentlessly cheerful guy at the Satwa post office who efficiently looks after the parcels I send home and even makes it amusing when I pay a parking fine.

2006-07-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

God, I am a Luddite. Apparently my postings have ended up on the UAE community site rather than my own, as a fellow UAE blogger has helfully pointed out to me, along with giving me a warning about not mentionng alcohol on community postings. Censorship: it's everywhere here...

2006-07-19T22:33:00.001-07:00

2006-07-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

OK, so I've been on Curiouser & Curiouser and I've been tagged by Actonb. (Gotta ask - is that an abbreviation of Acton Bell, one of the Bronte sister's pen names? Charlotte, I think...) So now I have to fill out the five things list below about moi and tag two more bloggers - so I choose Mushroom and WJ! I'm sure they both carry manbags.

The 5 things
In my bag: Increasingly wrecked-looking but still effective phone, white snakeskin wallet (part of FHM farewell present), keys on footy boot keyring, business cards (essential in Dubai...) and Libra Fleur tampons especially flown to me from Australia by Mum...

In my fridge: Cheese of the world, pate, smoked salmon (all of which I put on toast), ham (because I love ham and I love that as a non-Muslim in a Muslim country I can buy pig and the locals can't.) and wine.

In my closet: Trampy clothes, black clothes, jeans, a Vietnamese evening gown, sand-infested shoes.

In my car: Another sodding parking ticket, a pen, a weird range of CDs that'd piss off Sydney's dance music wankers no end, the essential sunshade for the windscreen so I can actually touch my steering wheel without asbestos gloves when I've parked in the sun and a Koran-sized manual for the Pajero that I've barely read.

2006-07-15T03:14:00.000-07:00

Girls, want to get a man? I think (although I can never be sure...) that I've worked it out. You must replace cynicism with indifference. You have to genuinely not care if you never get laid again, you have to wake up, smack yourself on the head and knock any insane bridal dreams out of your head with that smack, you must breeze through life with a demeanour that says "My life is not empty because I am single." (It does help to have a job you love in order to achieve this demeanour, I must confess...) And then you will find yorself with more dates than you can handle.

It is also important to have a best friend (mine's in Sydney. Thank God for texts!) who can do routine breeziness checks with you. This is to ensure you don't turn into Crazy Obsessive Woman (COW). COW is no replacement for cynicism. Only indifference will do!

Of course the trick then is to not let yourself return to the aforementioned cynical state if any of the new potential romances morph into debacles... Which is, frankly, always on the cards. Whoops, minor lapse into cynicism there...

2006-07-09T01:19:00.000-07:00

Oh boy. Today's "next blog" neighbour was an alternative medicine blog. I'm all for fighting a cold with herbal tea and echinacea rather than thrush-inducing antibiotics, and yoga has saved me from a nasty back op, but sometimes you've got to put your faith in modern medicine. If it wasn't for modern medicine I wouldn't be able to walk properly so I'm quite the fan of doctors and surgeons (and morphine and pethidine...). It was the blog's (pardon the pun) longwinded defence of colonic irrigation that disturbed me. I'm not convinced that hosing gallons of warm water up one's bum and flushing it all out again, along with bonus bowel bits, is medically sound. Surely the same effect can be achieved by (to use the scientific term) "doing a poo"? Seriously people, if you are so backed up that you feel the need to treat your rectum like a brownwater rafting course, you really need to be eating more fibre. Switch to brown bread! Eat a banana! Indulge in some prune action! Do not waste your money on arse-rinsing charlatans!

And that's Dr Georgia's session over for today.

2006-07-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

I love it when I click on "Next blog". Sometimes it's something diabolically dull, sometimes it's in a language I can't speak, sometimes it's just plain kooky. My favourite thus far has been an adorable blog by a Japanese God-botherer who has posted lots of cutesy-pie pics of himself on virginal dates with girlfriend. Twee but sweet.

"Next blog" is like having a new neighbour every day. If only I could have done the same thing back in Sydney with a mere click of the mouse - those drug-dealing, up-all-night-fighting, welfare-rorting ferals would have vanished into the cyberspace ether by now...

2006-07-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

In a classic case of being careful what you wish for, I've had it 100 per cent totally confirmed that I can't have kids. It's a weird time for me. I've got a crack in my spine that means I can't carry a pregnancy to term and now further girlie-bit hideousness has conspired to further make it an impossibility. Since I was 14 I've said I didn't want kids. When you're 14 and you come out with that sort of comment, nobody takes you seriously because how could anyone so young know their own mind? But the older you get and the more you say it, you always get the classic response: "You just haven't met the right guy." Wrong again.

In my trainwreck personal life, I've met guys who seemed right but turned out to be wrong, wrong guys who seemed so right, the odd one or two I fell stupidly in love with - and I have not had an urge to breed with any of these men. The right guy is the one who is happy not to breed, who is content to leave this life without leaving behind a living example of his potency and (obviously) someone who thinks I'm tremendous.

But that didn't stop me from having a bit of a moment in (of all places) Burger King the other day. For some reason, I couldn't stop thinking about my childlessness and it coincided with every cute kid in Dubai crossing my path when all I wanted to do was get in and out of Burger King and in and out of Ikea with a new rug as fast as possible. Adorable kids. Kids who even appeared to be well-behaved (and kids in shops generally annoy me no end). One especially gorgeous little girl with giant blue eyes actually smiled and waved at me for no reason. Why the hell was this happening? It was making my ovaries hurt.

Then it occurred to me that I don't have to be a total hardass all my life. That it is OK to be a bit angry about it all.

But only for a little while. Staying angry for too long about something I can't do a damn thing about isn't going to achieve anything. It is a bit of a bummer that the choice has been taken away from me. But that's all it is and all it should be.

Thankfully the said blue-eyed kid soon let out an awful, ear-splitting scream, the kind of wax-dislodging squeal I'm sure I never did as child. God, how vile to have that sort of noise in your house. It'd be on par with the neighbours playing Macy Gray on a loop at top volume.

It is kind of a relief to have the to-breed-or-not-to-breed question answered for me. And it's more important to look on it as a positive, as symbolising freedom. Not having kids has allowed me to pack up my life in Sydney and check out life in the Middle East. It allows me to keep the hours I choose, to drink alcohol without caring how many eggs I destroy, to go away for the weekend at the drop of a hat, to drive a two-door car, to have a cream rug in my flat (if I get vomit on it, that's my own silly fault...) and to pretty much behave as I damn well please. That's cool, don't you think?

2006-07-01T01:52:00.000-07:00

Ah, Britney Spears - just when I thought she couldn't get any more tacky and any less original, she goes and does a nude-while-preggers shoot for Harpers Bazaar. Clearly this is a triumph of PhotoShop. A babymaking machine who falls pregnant every time she looks at her icky, sweaty little husband is not going to be as blissfully stretchmark-free as she appears in the mag. Harpers probably had a team of retouch artists working around the clock for a week to rid her of stretchmarks, not to mention that pesky caesarean scar. (Like all good celebs, Britters wasn't going to have her baby taken out via the same way it got in there in first place...) Still, nobody wants to see reality on their magazine covers, do they now?

And correct me if I'm wrong, but has she dyed her hair? The other week, she was blubbering away on telly about how awful her life is (er, nothing a few condoms wouldn't have solved, sweetheart) and she had hideous, bleachy-blonde straw hair. Now she's gone brunette. I'm no expert on pregnancy but I'm pretty sure you're not meant to dye your hair while up the duff. Is she trying to win the prize for Worst Mom In The US of A? Next she'll be photographed driving with her son on her lap. Oh, hang on...

2006-06-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

So today Nicole Kidman, the anaemic store dummy and recipient of an ill-gotten Oscar for Best Performance by a Rubber Nose, is to marry Keith Urban, some country and western twanger with thin lips. Tremendous. Over the goddamn moon for them. But my question is this: why she is allowed to get married in the Catholic Church at all? Not even a priest, who is probably not the biggest reader of weekly goss rags, would have missed the small fact that she is a divorcee, the very famous ex-wife of the very famous Tom Cruise. So has the first marriage been secretly annulled? And on what grounds? Non-consummation perhaps?
Does the Catholic Church have a special rule for celebrity Catholics and another for non-famous Catholics? Is the Catholic Church using the wedding as a PR coup to boost falling congregation numbers? And what about the divorced Catholics who aren't allowed to re-marry in their church and have been made to feel like shameful sinners because their marriages didn't work out? Is this another fine example of Catholic church hypocrisy and double standards? Whatever the case, Nicole and Keith must have had an interesting time at the Catholic church pre-marriage counselling sessions. Er, Nic, Keith, you did attend the full course of pre-marriage counselling, didn't you?
And in any event, Nicole should never forget the fact she was married to Tom Cruise. Whatever you think of the couch-jumping Scientologist, the fact remains that he played a very big part in propelling her career and her public image into the stratosphere and she should kiss his butt on a daily basis for that.

2006-06-24T02:09:00.000-07:00

I'm something of a Luddite. Sure, I sit in front of a computer at work churning out copy for What's On magazine. But I write stuff for the Sydney Morning Herald or indeed this blog from an internet cafe near my flat because I just can't be bothered getting the internet put on at home, quite frankly. I have my laptop, it has unfinished novels weighing down the hard drive and one day one of them may see the light of day. But when that happy day comes, I'll be burning the Word doc on to a CD-ROM and handing it to my publisher rather than e-mailing it.
Frankly, the thought of having an e-mail inbox going off at home as well as the office, along with assorted webcams and the like, fills me with dread, Makes me nervous and antsy. I don't need that in my house. All those extra cords are ugly for starters and they'll clash with my Bollywood Boudoir-inspired interior decor concept. Hell, I haven't even got the TV working yet. I keep meaning to and I am missing watching the news over breakfast but I am also reading a lot more books. This, my friends, is not necessarily a bad thing.
I also still take photos using film (and then get the shop to put the pics on a CD for me so I can e-mail stuff to my friends). Call me weird but I like the mystery and excitement of getting my photos back afer a holiday. Technology makes out lives easier but I don't want it to take over my life to the point where my flat might start looking like a Bill Gates wet dream. People, there has to be time to get out more, travel, drink wine, eat fine food, talk crap with actual human beings who are in the same room. And then we'll all have more interesting blogs...

2006-06-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

OK, so there I was cleaning the bathroom (rock and roll, I know...) and I noticed that all the cleaning products made claims about being able to kill 99.9% of all household germs. But what I want to know, as a concerned consumer and someone who doesn't want to die any time soon, is what exactly are the potent, lethal germs which make up the other 0.01%? The bubonic plague perhaps? A particularly virulent strain of typhoid that may cause me to infect all of Dubai if it's not eradicted from my flat? And more to the point, are any of the boffins at these cleaning product companies actually doing any research into how to kill off the remaining 0.01% of thus-far unkillable germs? Or are they more concerned with the elimination of the chalky residue from cream cleansers? Or perhaps they are developing are more effective version of the Toilet Duck, the Toilet Goose, now with an even longer neck...

Answers on a postcard please.

2006-06-24T00:57:00.000-07:00

It's official. I'm too sexy for the UAE. That's right, crazy kids. I wrote a feature for Emirates Woman magazine on how pictures of celebrities are touched up with the magic of PhotoShop technology so they look much better in mags and on movie posters than they do in real life. Nicole Kidman is, in fact, three feet tall, black and has one arm, for example.
As part of this article, I posed in a bikini in my au naturel state. And then the photographer airbrished me so I had Kate Moss-like thighs, a skinnier nose, an actual suntan and big tits. It was all very amusing even if the end result made look a bt like Michael Jackson. But Emirates Woman mag has to be careful about showing too much flesh. As a result, my red bikini was turned into a very strange one-piece indeed, lest the readers be offended by my midriff.
There are little things along the way that you have to be careful of when writing stuff that's going to be published in a Muslim country. Pigs, for example, and any porcine analogies have disappeared from my work here. There is no "bringing home the bacon", "pigging out" or "hamfisted attempts" in my work. I can't say that Tom Hanks is a total ham or that I'm saving my dirhams in a piggy bank.
But on the upside, it has also made me a less lazy writer. Back home I was working on FHM where pretty much anything goes in terms of bad language and references to sex, drugs and alcohol. Out here, we have to refer to such things without being too obvious about it. When it comes to sex, nobody can write about their sex life unless they are writing about sex with someone they are married to.
But plenty of double entendre goes on so we can give the expat readers a giggle while pulling one over the censors. Robbie Williams came to town in April and a picture of his helicopter could only be captioned by a reference to "Robbie's chopper." Meanwhile, a rather crotch-tastic picture of Superman in the latest issue of What's On magazine has been accompanied by the headline "Super package". Well, the reviewer does think the film is a good, all-round effort so it's not just there to be gratuitous, honest...