A budding art district...

In the industrial district of Al Quoz, nestled midway between the Marina/JBR area and Downtown Dubai, a contemporary art district is emerging.

The Alserkal Avenue art district is home to 25 creative spaces, 9 galleries and a private museum.   And visitors are free to wander through the different warehouses at their pleasure.

The exhibits are diverse, creative and frequently changing, allowing visitors to pop by often and get completely different experiences each time.

Two exhibits particularly stood out.  

1.  The Road - a solo exhibit by Tammam Azzam - explored the tragic consequences of warn-torn Syria, using the theme of a road with little direction but numerous offshoots and obstacles along its path. His enormous canvasses highlight the wreckage and destruction that has enveloped the region, and he drove home the message with a staircase full of housing rubble crashing down and spilling out all around the exhibition.  Chilling. 

Photo Credit:  Alserkal Avenue Website (Ayyam Gallery)
- http://alserkalavenue.ae/en/event/73ef94ee-b9f9-11e5-9b67-f23c9161897b/index.php 

2.  M.A.D Gallery offered a totally different and much lighter experience, showcasing the coolest Mechanical Art Devices.  From motorcycles to spiders to clocks and robots, we wondered if we could find a way to incorporate one into our apartment!

Photo Credit:  M.A.D Gallery, Quentin Carnaille -
http://www.mbandf.com/mad-gallery/creators/quentin-carnaille/

A little night music...

A magnificent new opera house - Dubai Opera - is currently under construction and set to open sometime later this year.   This 2,000 seat theatre will showcase opera, theatre, orchestra, exhibitions and other seasonal activities and is envisioned to become the cultural hub of the region.

We have been impressed to learn, however, that there is already an active and talented music scene here in Dubai and we were lucky to be invited to the Dubai Concert Committee's Anniversary Gala Dinner (a sincere thanks, H!, for the invite).  

Even without a dedicated opera house, the DCC has been active in bringing classical concerts to the region for the past 20 years, using the One & Only Hotel as a venue.  Not surprisingly, the hotel offers some unbelievably good acoustics, making a listener (an untrained one, anyway!) almost forget they weren't in a formal concert hall.

The black tie Gala (which required some creative wardrobe pairings since we gave away all of our formal digs when we left Canada!) offered a delicacy of musical performances to accompany the different food courses.  Featuring Evgenly Morozovs' Quartet, Soloists of the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra and soloist, Felicitas Fuchs, the music built over the course of the evening, crescendoing to almost a sing-along to My Fair Lady's "I Could Have Danced All Night" during dessert.

Dubai never ceases to amaze and this evening was one of those times.  It is a night not soon forgotten.

Because it's Dubai

My welcome home from work today..... a horse just strolling around in front of our building. Why not?

Scene It!

As frequent movie-goers, we were pleased to discover that Dubai has an active movie scene, showing the majority of mainstream movies.

In addition, they also have an independent cinema culture.

The Scene Club brings to Dubai some of the top independent films from around the globe.  Started by award-winning director, Nayla Al Khaja (who was kind enough to come and speak at a CBC event!), the Club showcases uncensored independent films followed by a talk from the film's producer, director or someone intimately involved in the making of the film.

We have seen two great ones so far.  

The first - Zinzana - used a Coen Brothers-like approach to create a cat-and-mouse psychological thriller of a man in prison who is tortured by his past...and a madman.  The film showcased the emerging Emirati film culture as this superb film was done locally by a first-time director - the stellar cinematography, acting (by well known Arabic actors Saleh Bakri and Ali Sukiman) and story kept us on the edge of our seats until the very end.

The second - Race - portrayed the story of Jesse Owens, the legendary US track star who won 4 Olympic gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.  Scene Club members enjoyed the Middle East Premiere of the movie and learned first-hand from one of the producers the intense and long process (it took 15 years to make) undertaken to create the movie.

We cannot wait to see what movies are coming next....

When it rains it pours...

It doesn't rain much here in Dubai.  But around the change of season, the rain will often come.

In typical Dubai fashion - "if you are going to do something,  make it memorable and great" - our last rainfall was a real showstopper.  The skies opened and the rain flooded down.  So much so, that many government offices, schools and businesses ended up closing for the day to make sure people got home before the roads became impassable.

Our first "Snow Day" in Dubai!

Incredibly, by the next morning, the sun was shining and almost everything was dry and back to normal.  Where did all that water go??

Food glorious food...

Dubai has worked hard to bring in festivals and activities from all over the world. At this time of year, you could fill each weekend with multiple activities and still not run out of things to do....

Right in our backyard, we were happy to join "Eat The World", a celebration of Street Food. With food trucks from the UK and UAE stationed in the park, visitors could enjoy pizza made in a specialized oven built into a car, taste creme brulee burnt to preference, drink juice out of bags and taste a variety of other delicacies.

Even us vegetarians felt right at home, chowing down on some of the most delicious "vegan duck" sushi rolls.

Paired with a number of lively bands, a coffee lounge and bean bag chairs aplenty, it was a delightful way to spend an afternoon.

Here's hoping the trucks drive back to Dubai soon...

A closely-kept secret - world-class tennis!

Always actively looking at the special events happening here, we were taken aback to randomly discover that the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Tournament was scheduled for February.    As avid tennis fans, we were thrilled...but a little embarrassed...to learn of this event only a week before the actual tournament.

Nonetheless, we were able to get tickets to the women's semi-finals match day, which turned out to be a brilliant day of tennis.  Although many of the top players - Serena and Wozniacki - had dropped out due to injury, and others - Halep and Muguruza - had been defeated earlier in the week, the two semi-final games were outstanding.  All eager and hungry to win, the women were competitive, intense and the matches much closer than the results would indicate.

Final Outcomes:
Barbora Strycova def, Caroline Garcia
Sara Errani def. Elina Svitolina

The Dubai Duty Free Tennis Stadium is located in the heart of the Irish Village, which is one of the earliest expat communities established in Dubai.  The area has an inviting and intimate feel to it, with lots of greenery and twinkling lights lining the restaurant-lined walkways.  In the main area is a recreation of an Irish street, with an old pharmacy, trinket shop and a lively Irish pub that hosted a passionate band hyping up the crowd who were enjoying the sunny Friday (a weekend day here) over a couple of pints.



An awesome day of tennis in a really cool new area - we've marked it clearly in our calendars for next year!

Settling in...

The Burj Khalifa - Our New Home!

It has been a long time since our last post.

Work...it finally became irreconcilable with so much time on the road!

But...

As work and life in Dubai are now a little more settled, we have decided to start blogging again.  We won't be reflecting on travel in different countries as often but rather focus more on life here in Dubai.  There is so much cool stuff  and so many innovative and unusual things happening in the region, we think they are well worth sharing.  We hope you will indulge us.

So, here we go...

The first step in our transition was to get an apartment of our very own - in our chosen area with the layout and design we liked.  After looking at multiple dozens of apartments in a variety of areas - and after a lease experience that went awry - we finally moved into the Burj Khalifa.

Beautiful Burj at Night

As we figure - if you are going to live in Dubai, why not live in the tallest building in the world?

The rental experience here is quite different than in North America.  A property will often have many real estate agents representing it, but sometimes they just claim to represent it without having access and just try to cut from the real rep!

They mediate the agreement between the renter and owner. As such, renters do their own online research and then contact the representative of the apartments that they wish to view.  In the end, we must have met about 50 agents.

The gorgeous lobby

Renters pay the entire year either in one or only a few installments rather than monthly. Passing over a year's worth of rent in one shot can be a little nerve-wracking for the more cautious among us.  Not to mention this leaves a lack of a financial incentive for the landlord to maintain the property! 

As a result, our focus shifted somewhat to finding an apartment we were confident was well-built and nicely maintained to reduce the chance of any problems motivating a landlord who may have less incentive to fix things since all the payments had been made.  Fingers crossed, we think we have landed on a superb building with a nice and accommodating landlord... From Burlington of all places! The world certainly is small.

Move-in day!

The Burj Khalifa is one of the most spectacular buildings we have ever seen - so gorgeously finished and with keen attention to every small detail, including cleaning and maintenance. When we arrived for our first visit, we couldn't help but feel happy and calm and were more than comfortable trading off a larger apartment to live in one that was so functional and nicely designed.

Positioned conveniently on the 19th floor - high enough to enjoy a great view - while low enough to require only one elevator - our apartment is cozy but designed to allow us to host guests. Hint hint.

To minimize disruption in the main areas, the Burj residence requires all deliveries and move-in day activities to be done through the loading area in a separate area of the building.  It was this process that made us realize quite quickly that we were not the regular dwellers in this building.  Trying to explain to the concierge that we did not have movers but rather would be bringing all of our stuff ourselves - and via taxi no less - was just too obscure a concept for the team here to understand.

But, the lovely staff have indulged our quirky ways.  They chuckle every time we show up at the loading deck - hauling a rug or side tables or other pieces of furniture - likely shaking their heads at how ridiculous we look.

Having sold all of our possessions, we have started afresh with this new apartment.  As rental contracts often come into force very quickly once signed - often within a week or two - we found a bed and couch that could be delivered within days and focused only on items that were readily available. Luckily, things move quickly here and we were even able to get curtains made and installed within a week.

We are determined to keep the minimalist lifestyle we had embraced on our travels and have kept our wardrobe size to almost the same levels, adhering strictly to our serious "one-in-one-out" policy.  While Geoff thinks that we already have too many knick-knacks - Beth still doesn't understand how a plant can be considered clutter - it is a pleasure to live in a place where storage shelves remain almost empty and everything has a place.

Fingers crossed this continues!

Our view at night....