Author: ThirdCat

It’s that kind of skirt

So I was putting the fnishing touches to a skirt which fits but does not flatter, and my mind turned to other matters, like this, that and the other, and it occurred to me that if I were a word, I would not be eponymous.

For while eponymous does its job of being one word where otherwise there would need to be three most excellently, it is the kind of word which is only ever used when a person needs another person to know that they are the kind of person who knows the meaning of the word eponymous.

Good things

My, but I’m a sucker for a bunch of schoolkids singing. I am, you are…zippedee doo dah…der glumph went the little green frog, it really doesn’t matter. Kids sing, I cry. So, despite it all, I had a pretty awesome time in the school assembly this morning watching eldest boy singing Education Rocks and youngest boy reciting There was an Old Lady.

Wish I could be at the Adelaide Town Hall tonight (or maybe it’s tomorrow night by now).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQxHxloG854&hl=en&fs=1&]

In two months, we will have been here for twelve (excepting the five I’ve spent away)

The problem with tryng to make rational, reasoned decisions is that all rational, reasonable arguments have perfectly rational, reasonable flip-sides. There are just as many reasonable reasons that I should stay as there are reasonable reasons that I should leave.

It’s a big decision, and I’ve more or less made it, but all the same, I keep looking around and thinking, But if other people can make it work, why can’t I?

The other day, the mister said, ‘You know, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it. You don’t have to justify that to anyone. You don’t even have to justify it to yourself if you don’t want to.’

Maybe he just said it because he’s sick of the circular conversations (fuck knows I am), but I tell you that man is wasted as an engineer.

And now we are exhausted

On the weekend, we went to Sharjah.

We had this view from our hotel room:

From sharjah

The hotel was filled with visiting Russians. I have no idea why so many Russians come and visit Sharjah, but they do.

We walked along the Corniche at dusk;

From sharjah

we saw some bags of bread;

From sharjah

We obeyed the signs.

From sharjah

>>>>
The next day, we saw a decorated truck;

From sharjah

got lost in the Heritage Area;

From sharjah

did not go into this shop;

From sharjah

but looked into this one.

From sharjah

We walked past this sign;

From sharjah

through this souk;

From sharjah

and past these shops.

From sharjah

We desperately wanted to buy some more crystals.

From sharjah

On the way home, we drove through University City

From sharjah

past a sign:

From sharjah

and spent some time behind these camels.

From sharjah

One answer

In her last comment, Helen asked, ‘What kind of jobs are available in AD (apart from construction/engineering)? Is it easy for an expatriate who isn’t an engineer/builder/developer to get work? Is there a special dress code for women?’

I shall begin with the dress code. Simply put, expat women seem to wear pretty much what they like, though women from my background generally dress more conservatively than they might at home. I have a couple of sun dresses, for example, which are strappy numbers that I wear around the house, but wouldn’t wear outside. At the swimming pool, there are plenty of bikinis, though I myself continue to wear my sensible all-covering bathers, because I have been raised on ‘slip slop slap’ and also I burn easily and also have always found sunbathing excrutiangly boring (when I say always, I mean the two times I’ve done it). Local girls and women and Muslim expats often wear the full-length bathers, but others wear bathers similar to mine.

Coming home from the gym, I sometimes stop at a shop to pick up a newspaper or milk, and I keep a shirt in the car that I put on over the top of my gym gear, because I wear singlets to the gym and, for many different reasons, would feel uncomfortable dressed like that in the shop.

I often carry a scarf which I can wrap around myself which is also a useful defence against the ubiquitous air-condiitoning.

The malls all have signs asking that you dress appropriately, which means covered shoulders and skirts/dresses/pants that go below the knees and tops that are not low-cut. It wouldn’t be unusual to see uncovered shoulders at the malls, but it isn’t common.

Local women (Emiratis) wear an abaya (the black robe), and sheyla (head covering) which is considered to be the national dress. Many do veil their faces, but many don’t. Some women wear a ‘burkha’ which here is the leather mask covering the mouth, eyes and cheekbones (I think, don’t quote me on that). The burkha isn’t all that common, but you would always see at least one woman wearing one. Local men wear the dishdash (white robe) and headdress.

There’s lots of shops catering to Indian expats. One of the easiest ways to buy fabric is to buy a set for the sari suit, which is two larger pieces of fabric (one to make the top and one to make the pants) and a smaller piece for the scarf. I’ve bought more fabric than I really need, simply because it is so easy to buy it that way. Mind you, one of my friends from India told me that all of the fashions here are ‘out of date’. I have never been in date, so it doesn’t really matter.

When you put it like that

On the phone to his granny, eldest boy describes his last week thusly:

On Monday, I go to Spanish club after school, and I’m learning the Spanish alphabet, so now I know four alphabets, English, Greek, Arabic and Spanish…on Thursdays I go to soccer club with my friend, and he’s partly from Egypt and partly from America and he’s so funny, you should hear his jokes and he’s definitely coming for a sleepover next week…and last night, we went to our friends’ house for Happy Diwali…what? Diwali is Indian celebration – yes, they’re Indian, but they live here now – and all of the house has beautiful lights hanging from the ceiling and also this special coloured sand in patterns outside their doors…younger brother? No he’s not home, because he’s gone to the beach with his friend…hmmm? Oh, she’s from Australia, but not our part of Australia. Have you heard of Sydney?

It’s time

Because of reasons, I’ve been looking for a job. Which leads me back to the old ‘work-life’ balance issues that you’ve all discussed and thought about, and how many days I want to work (in order to be at an interesting, challenging job that lets me sink my teeth into it) in relation to how many I need to work (in order to pay bills as well as buy books and so on) in relation to how much time I need to do other things (possibly finish my second novel, bake muffins with youngest boy, trip over the vacuum cleaner and so on and etcetera).

People, I think the week as we know it is broken. This seven day structure might have been just tickety-boo and dandy for the Gregorians, but it does not suit our modern times. It is time for a revolution in time. It’s time.

For myself, I can see an eight day week working very well indeed. Take our house, for example.

I could work four days and have four days off. Four days in the workplace allows me to find an interesting, challenging job that I can sink my teeth into without feeling that I’m picking it up and putting it down all the time and never quite immersing myself in it. I still have four days for writing a bit, baking muffins and constructing cubbies with youngest boy, tripping over the vacuum cleaner and so on.

The mister, the type of person who likes to spend more time in the workplace, can do his five days, but with three days off, has time to go swimming with his boys and put the next load of washing on.

Not being awesome at numbers, there could be some flaws in my adding up, and maybe the week should be nine days. Whatever. I think the general idea is one of my best. It does rely on the minimum wage being enough that four days work per week provides enough to live on, so that’s an issue, and I don’t have a solution to that. But potentially, workplaces could become more productive – say if the week was nine days, they could have two people doing one job at four days each, which is eight productive days instead of five. And when workplaces become more productive, they make more money and when they make more money they can pay employees more and/or employ more people. That’s how it works, right?

The mister says that changing the calender is impossible and that my thinking on this issue is not clear enough. Which, again, with the vision.

Lashings

Today, for no particular reason, I have been thinking of the ginger beer I never quite got around to making for my Dad. He drank ginger beer to help with the nausea of it all and I thought what a great idea it would be to make some. The lads could watch the plant grow. And making ginger beer, it would be something we could do, something we could give him.

Making ginger beer was something we could do.

I remember that we went to Gaganis Brothers, the lads and I, to look for bottles to put the ginger beer in and I remember the lads bought a packet of wafer biscuits (‘can we have one each, can we, please’), but I don’t remember – and I don’t understand how I could forget – whether we found the perfect bottles or not. And I can’t remember if we did buy them, what happened to them next.

We didn’t quite get around to making the ginger beer.

I hope, if we did find the bottles, I gave them away in the great cleanup before we left. I hope I cried over them as I wrapped them carefully and put them in a box for the Salvation Army to come and take away.

I hope that they did not go into storage.

I would hate to find them, the perfect bottles for ginger beer. Unused.