To Dubai, that is…

Yep, been here for just over a a week now! Phew can’t believe it has only been one week- feels like I’ve lived an entire year in just this one week!

While it’s quite a strange new environment for me, I’m fully loaded with my office work so my days seem so whizz by and before I know it, it’s about time to take a day off.

It also means I’m bit closer to the mantas and the team in the Maldives and so making trips back to help out with the project will be much easier if I am based here!

Win-win situation

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind ‘Welcome to Dubai’ which has involved meeting the entire DDD team at some crazy beautiful villa over looking a massive polo field and spectacular private pools to getting lost in malls with ski-slopes and navigating my way through rush-hour traffic (on-foot), while tall men donned in Prada and Valentino suits with sleek ties and polished shoes dash by on either side of me on motorised little scooters…

and to avoid any confusion..:I mean these little scooters: 🛴…it’s just simply bizarre.

To add to this image – I woke up on Friday morning and opened our sliding door onto the balcony…of course this was all at 4:50am (my preferable wake up time) and was greeted by a constant flow of white-cloaked men whizzing past on their scooters below en-route to the mosque.

Now in reality this all took a few seconds to actually comprehend…as you can imagine, in my early morning, sleepy state, and whilst glaring out with one eye open and one semi-closed onto the yellow-illuminated dusty streets below my first visual impression was that I had just witnessed my very first ghost 👻 😳! Yep, the white robes the men wore trailed over the scooters which they stood on and as they glided past on the silent, motorised contraptions, it looked just like ghostly impressions. After reaching for my glasses, the eyes adjusted and the brain cogs started to kick into motion eventually….THANK GOODNESS else I would still be second guessing myself.

I could start sharing the stories of standing next barbie with her high-heals, glitzy silverware, and shockingly big booty, boobs, and bulbous lips, but I realise that my bungee pants and stained top wouldn’t put me on an equal footing to discuss what a ‘decently dressed individual’ is according to Dubai standards. Well to be fair, I don’t think there is such a standard….❓

All in all you can say I have really entered a new realm of culture shock and it’s still taking me some time to figure out this new world…

I’ll get there eventually…I 🤔 think!!