A Good Night in Dubai

A good night in Dubai starts with Mahbartender shaking some nice peachy drinks in our kitchen, before we swim across the street (summer humidity has kicked in) to the house of wonders that is the Capitol Hotel.

A good night in Dubai continues when one discovers that behind the humble façade, the Capitol Hotel houses a restaurant that serves… BURRITOS! At last, after 2 and a half years of craving Mexican and finding only a few wilted restaurants with nary a Latin American in the kitchen, I found a decent burrito. It’s not amazing, mind you, but it is just across the street. This is a milestone of my life in Dubai.

But the best part is that this is no ordinary restaurant. This is “Savage Garden,” which is a perfect microcosm of Dubai’s gloriously weird side. It’s a small restaurant with ground and mezzanine floors, all decorated like an Amazonian version of the Tiki Room ride in DisneyWorld, with giant fake trees and vines protruding from the walls, interspersed with fake birds and animals and ethnic masks. It may or may not be named after the cheesy Australian pop duo. It has a fabulous live salsa band, comprised mostly of Philipinos and fronted by woman dressed much the same as the working ladies in the lobby. The dancefloor of Savage Garden is aswirl with Dubai’s tight clique of semi-professional salsa regulars, most of whom are Lebanese. And then there was my table of friends, a mélange of nationalities typical of any gathering in Dubai: 1 American, 2 Lebanese, 1 Egyptian, 1 half-Egyptian/half-Swiss, 1 Brit, 1 German, 2 Argentinians and 1 Dane.

A good night in Dubai continues on my favorite club, which is grungy, friendly to all shapes sizes and persuasions, spun by the best imported Lebanese DJs, and underground (literally underground – it’s built into the corner of a basement parking lot).



A good night in Dubai typically ends with some munchies (my fave is a cheese and zaatar mana’oushe), though last night I skipped that part and went straight to the part where I fall into bed with a big grin on my face.

My second hammam

Today I went to the spectacular Imar Spa. It’s in the middle of nowhere in a neighboring emirate, about an hour drive (or two hours, for a trio of chatty girls).

After stripping down to our disposable spa underwear, we were led one by one into a long, narrow marble room. I stood at the far end, tentatively clutching the metal rail on the wall, while a sturdy grandmother-ish Moroccan lady picked up a small fire hose and proceeded to hose me down from about 15 feet away. Back, arms up, front, side, arms down, kinda felt like I was doing the Macarena in a carwash.

Then they took us into the blue-tiled hammam room to cover us with a gritty henna mixture and leave us to steam for a while. There was much topless giggling.

Then they scoop cups of warm water from the fountain in the center of the room to wash off the henna before slathering us in something that they claimed is soap but looked more like brown Vaseline. Then they spread us out on the marble benches and started to scrub. Wow. I thought the scrubbing in my first hammam in Istanbul was intense, but this was a different league of loofah. When they say exfoliation (which is, of course, not what they say – they have some incomprehensible Moroccan word for it), they really mean it. She twisted me all around to get to unexplored angles – even my armpits were exfoliated! And the stuff that was sloughed off was incredible. About a dozen times through the course of the scrubbing, she would shake off the mitt and drop a little gray 3 inch worm of dead skin. Gross, yet fascinating.

Then they rinse us off, slather us up with some sweet-smelling, curry-colored clay, rinse it off, smooth us down with olive oil and send us on our way.

A Fine Choice of Occupation

I’m reading the riveting “The People’s History of the United States” over my lunch breaks and I came across an awesome list of middle-class jobs from the 18th century. It includes “Measurer of Coal Baskets” and “Fence Viewer.”

I am pleased with my relative career path.

Indiana Jones and the Last Lame Wobble

I saw the latest Indiana Jones and was not impressed.

I will admit first that there were a few good things about the movie. For one thing, the reappearance of Marion from first movie was a stroke of genius and nearly saved the movie. Secondly, the filmmakers make great use of the knowledge that the audience is there to relive their childhood fantasies. All they have to do is play the theme music and show the shadow of the hat to send shivers down our collective spines – and they do exactly that in the first scene Indy is in. And then they move on within the first 20 minutes to lob a very interesting question at us: what does it mean to be Indiana Jones in a different decade with a changing world order? After emerging from a refridgerator in which he survived an atomic test, Indy stands silhouetted against a violent sunset-coloured mushroom cloud, battered and bruised, holding the bullwhip, watching the might of a weapon he can’t possibly defeat with his typical gruff and sweaty, giddily hyper-intellectual feats of derring-do. I was wondering, what is our leather-clad hero thinking?

It was an interesting question which, unfortunately, they never got around to acknowledging. They were all too busy sparring terrible dialogue and CGI-ing their way through tedious, unending action sequences. On top of that, I really can’t forgive them the stale old plot and characters. We had 1 almost admirable villainess, who ends up undone by her own ambition as the ancient temple is crumbling. We had 1 man who might be a traitor, or maybe not, but is in any case undone by his own greed as the ancient temple is crumbling. And we had 1 newly discovered son who chafes under the nickname “junior.”

RETIRE! RETIRE! Leave my childhood fantasies in peace.