Life in Dubai: A different way of thinking

When my UK friends tell me how glamorous my life in Dubai is, I fall about laughing. What’s glamorous about a three-hour school run in the heat? About doing the grocery shopping, the cooking and the homework? My life is the same as yours, I maintain, just it’s in a slightly more glamorous location.

But every now and then something happens that reminds me that Dubai does change you, in small ways, at the core of your existence. It changes the way you view the world; it changes your expectations of the world.

Case in point. DH picked us up from the airport in Dubai. We’re driving back home, chatting about things I’d missed while we were away.

“Oh,” he says. “And you know the new terminal at the airport? The A380 terminal that they’re building?”

How could I not know it? It looks like a humungous spaceship’s landed next to Dubai Airport.

“Mmm,” I say.

“It’s going to have a giraffe in it.”

“Oh really?” I ask. I’m imagining some sort of travel exhibit with wild animals in the centre of Duty Free. Why not? They’ve only just released the tigers from the Dubailand sales office. “From Kenya?”

DH looks slowly across at me.

“No darling,” he says. “From England. Giraffe?  The restaurant?”

Really, I blame it on Dubai.

Giraffe – healthy, delicious and family-friendly. But will it also be mummy-friendly in Dubai Airport? (yes, I mean, will it be licensed?)