It’s not quite one place, but it’s not the other neither

One day, when I was trawling the internet for previously unknown information about myself* I found a review of a journal in which I had been published. The reviewer summarised my piece thusly: “Tracy Crisp on Dubai”. For a few days after I read that I was somewhat annoyed at the injustice of being reviewed in a somewhat dismissive tone by someone who hadn’t even read the piece closely enough to notice that I live in Abu Dhabi and had not once, in the entire piece, even mentioned Dubai, but what can you do, and life goes on, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be needing therapy to recover from the experience. Call the wah!mbulance and so forth.

While I have recovered from the injustice of it all, I am reminded of that review every time I go to Dubai, because the trip never fails to do my head in, and I find Dubai even more incomprehensible than I find Abu Dhabi (sorry if incomprehensible is an absolute state, of which ‘even more’ isn’t, technically, possible, but if you want to argue the toss about it, I challenge you to come and stay for a while, and I will take you down to Dubai, and then we’ll see what you think).

The distance between our house and the first place you might want to get to in Dubai is about 130 kilometres and the trip takes anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half depending on who is driving. The drive is mostly along Sheikh Zayed Road, four lanes each way (eight in all).

Sheikh Zayed Road is home to the world’s largest traffic accident. It’s on youtube if you want to see a 200 car pileup. I’m not linking to it. I try not to think too much about the accident side of things because the mister makes the trip a couple of times each week, and it doesn’t do to dwell on things.

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So much for SMART goals (achievable, realistic and so on).

The difference between the two cities is simply described as the difference between Canberra and the Gold Coast. Abu Dhabi being Canberra and Dubai being the Gold Coast. If Canberra had more money and the Gold Coast had more steroids. But this doesn’t really do the difference descriptive justice.

I have spent a lot of time trying to think about how I could describe what it is that distinguishes Abu Dhabi from Dubai, but it’s going to take a bit more work. I’m having trouble with it, probably because I’m trying to describe degrees of incomprehension.

For now, all I can really say is this:

it’s not so much that in Abu Dhabi you wouldn’t see the world’s tallest building
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an indoor ski field
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or go through a gate to get to a mall that traces the steps of Ibn Battuta:
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No, no, that hole leads to Atlantis, this is the one that gets you to the lands of Ibn Battuta (sorry):
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And it’s not so much that you wouldn’t see a shop that specialises in pink camels
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or, erm, these
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it’s just that in Abu Dhabi you don’t.

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*side conversation had during the composition of this blog post
‘Have you ever googled yourself?’
‘No.’ True and actual surprise on his face at the very thought.
‘I only asked you to confirm what I already knew.’
Seriously, that man is so fucking well-balanced it wouldn’t surprise me to learn I’ve been living with one of Earth’s as-yet-undiscovered magnetic poles.

Advice, freely dispensed

Every year at Adelaide Fringe and Festival time the searches for nutri grain nuts and bolts and ‘slow as a wet wig’ diminish in proportion to the number of searches for ‘jokes about Adelaide’ and ‘Adelaide jokes’. I suspect not all of these searches are by visiting comedians, but include a fair smattering of writers rewriting the first paragraph or two of presentations they made at Edinburgh or New York; buskers and other street performers; the odd critic who wishes to sound informed in their dispatches back home.

I do think that rather than internet searches you’d be better off getting into town a day earlier and spending the time wandering around and reading the local ‘news’papers, but since you’ve come to me for advice, let me provide it.

Unless you can find a way to tell said joke with stunning originality, we find the following really boring:
– weird disappearances and murders;
– the one way freeway;
– the balls (easier to make funny in original way than some other subjects, but tricky nonetheless);
– Mike Rann (surely he’s put even himself to sleep by now);
– the pandas;
– our own boringness.

I’d offer you some suggestions, but I’ve been away for two years, and when I left we were all still making jokes about Nicole Cornes and water restrictions. Having said that, I think the bogans at the Clipsal 500 are still fair game, but that’s just me.

More ponderous

Living in a Muslim country makes for a surprisingly awesome Christmas. The difficulties and complexities are stripped away, or at least easily ignored, and from this distance it’s very hard to insult anyone or be insulted by anyone in the heat of a December moment. There is no stress of trying to get from the music concert across to the kindergarten graduation and then home to have a shower and scrub the toilet before the babysitter comes and you leave for the work Christmas show. And you don’t have to worry about how you’re going to cater for 27 people when, even if you use the good plates, you’ve only got 16.

There is, of course, the melancholy and the yearning for Christmases past, but (and I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear this), I quite like that bit.

So I don’t have any major stresses or whinges. But I do have a few little grinches which seem to come up from year to year, so herewith, my little list of Christmas grinches (because it’s either that or some sentimental piece about grief and the layers of time and I’m sure you’ve had enough of those):

1. I cannot stand anything set to the tune of Twelve Days of Christmas. Sorry Annabel Crabb, this includes you. However witty, however informed, however contemporary, if you are setting words to this carol, you will evoke an image of a work Christmas skit which includes men dressed as women or possibly men dressed in fairy wings.

2. I would like to know (or perhaps I would not like to know) how many Christmas letters begin with the following: ‘Well, I can hardly believe it’s time to sit down and write this letter…’ or some variation on that theme (‘I can hardly believe another year has passed’, ‘Can you believe it’s been a year…’ and so on).

3. I’m not sure that I’m totally jiggy with the whole ‘give a goat’ thing. I have worked or volunteered in many NGOs and I know the thought that goes into fundraising and awareness raising. I know that there is probably endless discussion at staff meetings, board meetings and so on and that overall and taking everything into account, they are considered to be a good thing. I’m also pretty sure I have handed my brother a card telling him that I bought a goat or a latrine or somesuch on his behalf. But I dunno, it isn’t really a gift, is it? It feels a little bit earnest, and a touch patronising in its assumption that the person receiving the card needs you to intervene and do their good works for them. Also, I’m a bit uncomfortable with the first world gifts to the third world dynamic it perpetuates.

4. At this time of year, I get a lot of hits on my blog by people who appear to be looking for the recipe for nuts and bolts made with nutri grain and curry powder. People, it’s 2010. Move on.

5. I also get a lot of hits for people looking for the Magic Cave. My advice? Go and look at the Magic Cave, but if you want to see Santa Claus/Father Christmas, go down to Myer. Although the days of just turning up and being the second in line have gone, it’s still a heaps shorter wait than at the Magic Cave. And they let you take your own photographs, and don’t put any pressure on you at the end to buy theirs.
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and a propos of nada, a Christmas photograph from the archives
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Road Closed, Loxton, South Australia
If you’re interested, you can catch a bus from Adelaide or even Mildura to see the Loxton lights. I just see them as part of my Christmas family visiting, but there’s a shirtload of buses making the trip.

Thursday

Just now, about ten minutes ago or perhaps fifteen, in a series of events which I cannot quite describe, I very nearly choked on a piece of toast. That is, I did choke, and very nearly could not do anything about it.

The mister and the lads had just left for school, and so, I was home alone, dressed in smelly gym clothes*, but not yet with my socks.

Fark, but it was scary, and if my whole life did not exactly flash before my eyes, the thought of not being alive was sharper than I would like it to be for many several years.

*the day your gym clothes are smelly before you even go to the gym is the day you know the laundry cannot be postponed another day

Mornings

I wish I could accept, and act on, the lived-experience knowledge that the second cup of coffee will make the entire morning coffee experience only half, instead of twice, as good as it would have been if I had stopped at one.

I love the euphoria which follows the first and loathe the jitters which follow the second and yet, I find myself unable to stop at one.

I allow myself the second, even as the crema dregs of the first ring the cup of the second, making it look desperate instead of loved. Even as I take my first sip of the second and know that it is too strong, not strong enough, over-milked, under-milked, or I have burnt the coffee grounds, still I drink the second.

As I drink this bitter, wrongly-milked brew, my love for the first and my sorrow for its end grow stronger.