Gina: Soon, Mommy will be going to Abu Dhabi
Magnus: Dabu dabu dabi! Dyyyyaaaaadeeeeeee!!!
Gina: Yes, Mommy is going to find Daddy! You stay here with Gong-gong and Po-po and I will come home after, ok?
Magnus: <nods happily> Dabu jabu dabu jabeeeeee…..
But the goodbye went more smoothly than I expected, thank goodness. After his bath, we parked him in front of the tv watching his favourite show (In the Night Garden), and I spent some quality Mommy-Magnus time cutting all his nails. Usually his prize for sitting still and getting all his nails cut is to play with the nail clipper afterwards. When he started to clamour for his prize, I told him that if he was good, perhaps Po-po would let him play with it - but Mommy has to go now, to Abu Dhabi. Following a repeat (have I mentioned Magnus' love of repetition) of our usual prep conversation, I beat it out the door with my dad. When I called home right before boarding the plane, Magnus seemed perfectly ok so I boarded with a light heart.
On the plane, I watched a lot of movies (oh the luxury of not having to take care of a toddler on a plane!). I think my subconscious made me pick movies with a lot of child-parent separation scenes: Kung Fu Panda 2, Sleepless in Seattle, Dumbo. That last movie was THE worst - tears were just gushing down my face so I had to turn off the screen and try to sleep.
When I reached Dubai I was tired but excited. It was nighttime but the heat still took my breath away. I picked up a SIM card and by the time I was in my rental car, it was activated and I gave Kendrick a call. He texted me some directions from a friend (who drives in Dubai a lot) which were, in retrospect, missing some key pieces of information. Not to worry, I had rented a GPS unit, and was feeling quite confident until I realized that I could not program my destination in the dumb thing. Although the GPS system is aware of most of the roads in Dubai, many of the side streets are named "anonymous" and most locations do not have a street address. Yes that's right, people get around by saying, I live in this neighbourhood A, next to landmark B. My building name is C and my suite number is D. Subsequently, there is no postal service to the door in Dubai. Instead, everybody gets a PO Box and the postal service delivers to your box. You can then pay some companies to get your mail and deliver it to you, since only local companies understand directions in Dubai. Not to be discouraged, I managed to find a landmark on GPS system that would bring me to the right exit off the highway. From there, I reasoned, I would continue using Kendrick's directions and rely on my having pored over some google maps before leaving Dubai. And so, I headed out to my destination neighbourhood - the Dubai Marina.
With the help of GPS, I left the airport without any problems and got onto the main highway - Sheikh Zayed Road. It's a bit like the 401 in Toronto but with 5 lanes in the express and full of muscle cars.
I had another challenge however, which was that my little rental car contained only 1/8th of a tank of gas. Our hotel was all the way across town, and by the time I exited the Sheikh Zayed Road, my gas light had lit up. There in the dark, I squinted at the bilingual Arabic/English signs and was thoroughly confused by the multiple appearances of my destination. At one junction, there were two signs side by side that said Dubai Marina, one pointing straight and the other pointing to the left. ??!!?? I drove around for a while, stopped to ask for directions, and finally called Kendrick back and shouted out all the hotels I could see. In this way I made it through the last 2-3 kilometers to my final destination. Both the directions and Kendrick used the Dubai metro stations as landmarks, but I could not seem then initially because I kept looking for what I thought were two key features of metro stations:
- A sign with an M on it
- Stairs going underground
Dubai metro stations have none of the above. They look like this:
which I would have described as a large, above-ground armadillo-like building.
So endeth my first Dubai Challenge. During this trip alone Kendrick and I have had several more Dubai challenges since, but I will save those stories for when see you, dear reader, in person.
