Dubai, 23rd January 2012
With reportedly only an average of six rainy days a year in Dubai (although it has only rained twice last year, in the daytime at least), we really don’t have anything to complain about. Yes, it gets a little hot in the summer, a little dusty when it’s windy and a little sunny every day, but that’s nothing compared with what some people have to endure. But. But. At the moment it’s horrid. Freezing cold, I tell you.

Okay, to most of you who live in ‘normal’ climates, a maximum of 19 ° Celsius is nothing at all to complain about, but here it is akin to the next ice age. Even in the coldest of winters it is sunny during the day and reaches a comfortable mid-20s, usually. But for the last three days it has been gloomy, cloudy, very windy, too cold and no sun! No sun. Down to 4° Celsius last night in Al Ain. Virtually unheard off and very depressing indeed.

Problem is, once you’ve lived in a climate like this for a while, your wardrobe changes. Yes, I do have some snuggly cashmere jumpers and warm boots, even a fluffy jacket – but these are usually reserved for trips to Europe. Wearing socks in Dubai for me is torture. Okay, I have to don them for any trip to the gym, but I try to keep those at a minimum anyway. But this morning I finally gave in and put on socks and my boots for good measure. Sad, really sad.

Saying that, I quite like the opportunity to wear boots and cardigans, occasionally, but what really kills me is the inside of the house. It’s below freezing. No, I swear! Obviously designed to keep its occupants nice and cool in the 11 ½ months when we need it, there is no heating whatsoever. So my little plug-in radiator is working overtime and is efficient enough to keep my office warm. But when I move it to the living room, and the dog curls up in front of it sucking up most of the heat, the result is virtually zilch. Nada, nothing. No heat. So we are huddled under a large blanket to watch TV in the evenings, cupping warm mugs of tea, eating hot stodgy comfort food instead of healthy salads, and are waiting for warmer days. Ho, hum.

But hey, life is fickle, so just watch this space, in a couple of weeks I’ll be complaining about how summer is coming earlier and earlier every
 

Dubai, 16th January 2012
Although I am still busy reading ‘1Q84’, I cannot wait any longer to spend the book vouchers I got for Christmas. My husband always struggles with my request for book vouchers; he thinks it’s like giving money: not a real present, thoughtless. I think it’s the best: I get a present, i.e. said vouchers, then I get to spend a few hours strolling round a bookstore, picking, reading, choosing books; then I buy then, take them home, arrange them on my ‘yet to read’ shelf, and then – I get to read them. To me book vouchers are the present that keeps on giving. But then, I do have a bit of a book problem…

Anyway, if you are similarly inclined, I thought I’d share with you the best places in Dubai to get books, and there are plenty.

My absolute favourite is Kinokuniya. It is a huge store in Dubai Mall, and they have a fabulous assortment. I have yet to wander in and come out with nothing. Well organised, helpful staff,  and soo much to choose from!

There is Borders, found in most malls. Although I was ecstatic when Borders first arrived in Dubai, I now avoid it. For some reason they always have a sale on, and whilst that is normally a good thing, it means that all their books are out of order, nothing arranged alphabetically and trying to find anything specific is a nightmare. Also, for some reason they never seem to sell the books I am looking for. I agree that I have rather eclectic taste, but they seem to specialise on romance and general tatt, at least here in Dubai…

Magrudy’s used to be great but has sadly gone downhill, also closing some stores. I think it’s just the way it seems to go at the moment. Either people don’t read and if they do read, often now it’s e-books. I do feel for sorry for bookstores. But silly attitudes don’t help the state of affairs: I was listening to a radio request show the other day and the presenter was asking a listener who had phoned n what she was doing. She said she was sitting on the sofa reading a book. His reply was: ”You are reading a book??”  As if she had just confessed to pulling out her own toenails one by one. Idiot.

If you like to read, but not spend too much, then there are a couple of good second-hand bookstore chains around.  House of Prose, at Jumeirah Plaza and in Dubai Garden Centre, sell a great variety of second-hand books, and you’ll get 50 per cent of your money back, if you return the book after you’ve read it. The same concept works for Book & Bean (in Ace Hardware Store at Festival City), a coffee cum book shop, where you can chill, chat and read.

For those who simply want to borrow, Dubai has a couple of good libraries, one in Ductac, Mall of the Emirates, with an annual membership of Dhs200 plus a small book lending fee; and the brand-new Read’n’Enjoy on JBR (Rimal Plaza), where the membership costs Dhs600 per year, but book lending is free.

Enjoy your books!

 

Dubai, 9th January 2012

Last year I worked my way through roughly 60 books, some bad, some worse, some wonderful, some recommendable. Rather than boring with the entire list though, I thought I’d share some of my favourites with you.

The book that turned into one of my all-time favourites was Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’. It had been on my to-read list for quite a while, but the sheer size of the tome always made me put it back on the shelf. This time there was no turning back, especially not after I had started. What a story. I kept marvelling at the fact that someone actually made this story up and wrote it long before word processors or computers were invented. If you think reading might be time-consuming, try writing it! Anyway, so glad I finally read it, it’s amazing.

One book I came upon by chance, in a hotel in Sri Lanka when I had run out of books and was desperately browsing the hotel’s left-behind-by-guests library, was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Half of the Yellow Sun’. I like reading books by writers from all sorts of countries, but must admit that I have not really ventured into African territory. This story is set in Nigeria, in the late 60s/70s, when the state of Biafra was briefly formed. It made me laugh, mostly cry and opened my eyes to what has been and still is going on in Africa. Ashamed to say it, but I was not aware of many of the problems before I read this. But don’t be put off, it’s not a political or historical book, just an excellent story of individuals set in an extraordinary time. I will certainly return to the author.
 

Other favourites included Goran Petrovic’s ‘Die Villa am Rande der Zeit’ (sorry, don’t think it’s been translated into English), which was quite magical and utterly unusual; Donna Tart’s ‘A Secret History’ ; Jamie Ford’s ‘The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet’, which is a lovely story and again giving me an insight about segment of history (the Japanese and Chinese living in the US in WW2) which I was not terribly knowledgeable about.  David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’ was great, love the span of time covered; and autobiographical ‘The Hare with the Amber Eyes’ by Edmund de Waal and Gregory David Robertson’s 'Shantaram' astounded me both with their individual stories – so different from life as I know it.

Helen Simonson’s ‘Major Pettigrew’s last Stand’ was very cute; David Nicholls’ ‘One Day’ very relatable, but the film, mostly due to the casting, was simply dreadful; whereas with Alice Sebold’s ‘Lovely Bones’ I quite liked both, although apparently I was ruining my family’s enjoyment of the film by constantly complaining about inaccuracies… so there.

I managed to catch up with some classics such as Heller’s 'Catch 22', John Fowles ‘The Magus’, and even some PG Woodhouse. Sadly I worked my way through most of Jo Nesbo’s Norwegian murder stories such as ‘The Redbreast’ and ‘The Snowman’ until I was utterly sick of the loser-detective and will never read another book with him in it again.

One award-winner I did not get on with at all was Howard Jacobson’s ‘The Finkler Question’, it simply bored me and I decided a third way through it that life was too short to waste on books I don’t look forward to getting back to in the evening. Or maybe it was simply too ‘deep’ for me and I just didn’t get it. Quite possible.

As always, any Murakami gave me joy, although I am nearly running out of his stuff now, but have just started '1Q84' and am already totally enthralled. Love that man.

What did you read and enjoy in 2011, and what’s on your list for 2012?
 

Dubai, 19th December 2011
At the weekend, I tried out a new-to-me restaurant: Voi in Jumeirah Zabeel Saray, the hotel at the end of the Palm Jumeirah Crescent.

I had read about it a while back and upon hearing that it was offering Vietnamese cuisine with a hint of French, as it would be, I put it on my ‘to eat’ list. Since we went to Vietnam a couple of years back, Vietnamese food has been one of my firm favourites, tasty and light, fresh and healthy, with the odd fried spring roll thrown in for good measure, so I was gagging to go. Finally, with friends coming over from Qatar, we had an excuse and headed off.

The restaurant looks perfect, very chic, very French, but not at all Vietnamese. Lovely décor, all black and white (with a somewhat gaudy white Christmas tree at the moment), and the terrace overlooking the gardens and fountains.  All in all a gorgeous setting, giving you plenty of excuse to dress to impress. Nice attentive staff as well - our waiter had the lovely name Octavian, and hailed from Bulgaria.

And what about the food? Well, I had the 7-course degustation menu and two courses were what I would have described as authentic Vietnamese, one a rice paper roll filled with crispy vegetables and the other an absolutely delicious pho (soup) made from beef with bone marrow, and an actual bone standing up in the middle of the bowl. This eeked me out initially, but nobody compelled me to suck the bone marrow out, so I simply enjoyed the broth, which was perfect. The rest was very nice food indeed, but certainly more French than Asian in every way.

Overall verdict? If you want to dress up, go for an excellent meal with superb service, a great setting, and try somewhere new - go to Voi. If you want a Vietnamese meal, with very authentic food and even Vietnamese waiting staff, but still in a five-star setting, head straight to the fantastic Hoi An in the Shangri-La.

Dubai, 5th December 2011
Okay, so I admit it. I am a fish-aholic. Given half a chance, I would have fish every day; my husband has given up asking what type of restaurant I would prefer to go to as the answer is always ‘something fishy’, and I have even been known to order fish in a steak restaurant. What to do? Give me a lovely grilled hammour or a pan-fried halibut, or even better, a chunk of monkfish, and I am in seventh heaven.

But, alas, I am a marine biologist as well. No, I don’t work as one, but studied Fish and Marine Biology at uni, and am still interested in the subject. I don’t just eat fish, I love to look at them as well and if there is an aquarium to be had anywhere I am travelling to, I’m there.

So, I sadly know that my love for fish is a double-edged sword. Even, ahem, 20 years ago at uni, we analysed charts that showed quite clearly that there were not enough fish in the sea to sustain the fisheries and general demand. Now, there obviously are even less.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 80 per cent of the world’s main fish stocks are considered to be either fully exploited, overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion. Similarly, the Arabian Gulf around the UAE has suffered a sharp decline in key fish stock, plummeting 80 per cent over the past three decades. Time is running out.

My favourite local fish, hammour, a grouper, is one of those threatened and it should not be my favourite fish any longer… But it’s not easy to say ‘no’.

The Choose Wisely Campaign, run by the Emirates Wildlife Society and World Wide Fund for Nature (EWS-WWF), has been set up to raise awareness about the declining number of fish in our seas.

As quoted in Time Out Dubai, EWS-WWF conservation officer Darren Hiltz explains: “The EWS-WWF Sustainable Fisheries Project and the Choose Wisely Campaign are focusing on the UAE at present, with information provided on local species fished in UAE waters.” Since its launch in April 2010, the project has focused on the Choose Wisely awareness campaign. It aims to promote well-managed, healthy fisheries and provide UAE residents with specific, practical steps they can take to reduce fishing pressure on vulnerable species that are being rapidly depleted.

The EWS has categorised 22 species of local fish into three lists according to their level of sustainability: the red list features species that could really do without being eaten (the hammour sadly being no. 1); the orange list includes species that are still within sustainability levels, but won’t be for long, while the green list includes sustainable options that the EWS are encouraging consumers to choose. See the list here.

But at least some restaurants are trying to make it easier for piscivores ( is that a word? Should be…) like me. Last weekend I had dinner at the Westin Mina Seyahi’s Hunter’s Room & Grill, the steakhouse, and yes, I ordered fish. There were only two on the menu, and both were sustainable. Underneath the somewhat small fish section (okay, okay, I know it was a steak house…) was a brief but adequate explanation about the campaign and the reasoning behind trying only to serve sustainable fish.

Equally, my favourite Italian in Dubai, Jamie’s Italian, is reportedly upholding the British celebrity chef’s strong commitment to sustainability with a menu designed around sustainable fish sources available in the market throughout the year. ‘At Jamie’s Italian, we do not use endangered species, such as blue-fin tuna, Atlantic cod, shark fin, sole, halibut, plaice, hammour and swordfish,’ says a representative of the restaurant’s Festival City branch. ‘People do ask for the endangered, overfished hammour, and as a result we try to educate our customers and give enough information so they can support our ethos against using unsustainable fish.’

Luckily I don’t have a problem at Jamie’s, because when it comes to truffle pasta, the fish often doesn’t get a look in…
Want to know more? Read up on the campaign here.