Things not to say to a pregnant woman - UAE style

A pearl of wisdom I often bore my fellow UAE baby mamas with is that, in some ways, this country is the best place on earth to have a baby. Parenthood, particularly of tiny babies is revered - everyone wants to know your baby's age, gender, marvel at their cuteness and cuddle them if you'll let them.  Babies are welcome in most places, no one tuts when they cry and no one makes you feel like a nuisance. If you have decent insurance, you get to give birth in a beautiful private hospital and it's very unlikely that during the antenatal and postnatal stage that you will experience long waits in clinics for a brief appointment with an over-worked and under resourced midwife or doctor.

However, it can be pretty hair-raising - navigating private health insurance for prenatal and maternal care can be intimidating if you're used to a comprehensive public health service, as can weeding out providers who are more interested in your insurance money than your welfare. Obviously it can be a stressful and financially ruinous experience for the uninsured, particularly if you experience complications such as premature birth. And then during pregnancy and after the baby's born - the advice, oh the advice, the unsolicited advice, from seemingly every quarter. It would try the patience of a saint.

This blog has been bubbling away in my brain ever since I started puking my face off last year, but was too busy puking, then giving birth, then looking after an actual baby and baby's big sister to do much about it. I think it's really arisen from the fact that I felt appalling for most of my two pregnancies and pretty much anyone who spoke to me annoyed the hell out of me. So, here are the top five annoying things people see fit to say to you when you're pregnant, and why they're so very, very irritating.

1. "Madam is very big now" (coupled with mime of a massively distended stomach).

Thinking about commenting on the size of a woman's bump or lack thereof during pregnancy? Whether you think she's truly massive and can't possibly be less than 10 months pregnant, or, you think her bump is tiny and neat and you feel like congratulating her on (vomits) holding on to her figure. Please don't.

I had my second baby at the age of 39, and it's fair to say I didn't exactly hit the gym hard after the birth of the first, so my stomach muscles gave up the ghost with zero resistance when I got pregnant with Desert Baby 2. While I wasn't exactly small with Desert Baby 1 due to her being a reasonably large baby, I was MASSIVE this time, at least, I believe I must have been, because literally everyone I met saw fit to comment on it.

I started saying from around month four, when it was becoming obvious that I was pregnant and not just had a big lunch, that "yes, it's a big bump, yes, it's a big baby, yes, it's my second, the first was a big baby, no, there's definitely only one". Good defensive measure, yes, but five months of being basically told what a great big biffer I was every time I was out in public got old pretty quick.

Just think, non-pregos, how you would feel if someone felt the need to comment on your size every time you went out in public (and yes I'm aware this happens to very thin and very fat people, and that is appalling too. If you do it, you should seriously have a word with yourself). Think about what that does to your ego, on top of whatever grim symptoms or side effects a pregnant lady may be dealing with.

However, the weekend before DB2 was born, for some peculiar reason I cannot remember now, we felt it necessary to go to IKEA, and a nice lady went out of her way to come up to me and tell me I had a beautiful belly. That cheered me up on a day when I had reached the delightful pelvic pain stage, and walking felt like swinging two large painful hams below a watermelon made of solid lead. I'm not usually the kind of person that needs such validation, but, after months of "gosh, are you sure there's only one in there?" a compliment had me weeping with gratitude.

2. "Is it a boy or a girl? You don't know? What do you have already? Well, I hope it will be a boy/girl/pumpkin/sweet transvestite from Transylvaniaaaaah/kitten (delete as appropriate)"

I'm sorry to be a party pooper, but it's really none of your business, particularly if the person you're accosting about their pregnancy is someone you don't know that well, or even a total stranger. I had various people telling me with DB2 that I was DEFINITELY having a boy, they could tell by the size/shape of my bump the way I was "carrying" and my symptoms, and it was all nonsense.

People like to think that they can tell what you're having through a variety of old wives' tosh and most people, knowing I had a girl already, assumed I MUST want to have a boy, because I must want the "perfect" Peter and Jane family of one boy one girl, or because, boys are still considered the preferred gender among certain cultures in the UAE, or, because, you know, having another girl would be "boring".

Well, fiddlesticks to all those people. I'm grateful for and happy beyond measure with my two girls. They're both magical and brilliant in their own individual ways, and considering what a grim time I had during both pregnancies, I was pretty damned pleased with what I'd achieved by having them at all. What I certainly didn't need after 18 combined months of vomiting, social isolation due to illness and awful dietary restrictions, was someone telling me it would be nicer if I could just manage to achieve a bit more variety.

So, next time you're thinking of probing into the sex of someone's baby and commiserating or congratulating them depending on what you perceive they will want to have, don't. You don't know what they've gone through to get where they are. They could have previously lost a child of the sex you've just told them they're definitely not having, they could have longed for the sex they're not having and be dealing with it in their own way. Seriously, just don't go there.

3. "What kind of birth are you having? Oh, I had a 10lbs baby with only whale song for pain relief because women who opt for elective cesareans or epidurals are WEAK... WEAK I TELL YOU!"

Seriously, person I've only just met, get your head out of my downstairs department, what is WRONG with you? Would you demand such intimate detail about any other kind of medical event and profess expertise? Did you want to know the kind of pain relief your uncle received when he had his kidney stones removed? Or your best friend's husband when he went off for the snip? Oh, so you had a baby yourself? I'm all for women bonding over shared experiences, but you are not an expert on every kind of birth ever, thanks.

DB1's birth was what they call traumatic, and it took me a long time to mentally process what had happened to us both, and my main coping mechanism, was to laugh about it, and recount it in amusing fashion for the entertainment of others. But, the physical scars healed from the emergency cesarean under general anesthetic, a long time before the mental ones. And it would all come rushing back when more than three years down the line, in the early stages of pregnancy with DB2, when my unflappable Scandinavian doctor stopped taking notes, put down her pen, and said; "You know, I would describe your first child's birth as 'very traumatic, rather than simply traumatic'.

It's true that the cesarean rate in our part of the world is reputedly among the highest, so you are statistically more likely to end up with one here than if you have your baby elsewhere. I have pondered the reasons for that, chief among them is, I suspect, a revenue-fueled, private insurance system means c sections = more money for hospitals, so of course they are going to push patients towards them if they can get away with it.

There are other reasons too, and that's a post for another day, but I know from experience that it can feel like a struggle to find a doctor who isn't going to lead you in that direction. I'm not knocking those who choose cesarean by the way, it was just that having done it once, I was keen to avoid doing it again, as I found the circumstances under which it happened hard to get over, and the recovery a lot harder than I was prepared for, and certainly a lot harder than I was prepared to go through again having an active four year old to look after already.

As it happened, DB2 was born "naturally" or had a physiological birth, as I understand the Royal College of Midwives in the UK now refers to it, but to birth "naturally" or not, to epidural or not, to water birth or not, to have a doula or not, to get an elective c section or not, are all deeply personal decisions that I would say most women put a great deal of time, effort and thought into weighing up, and so, random stranger who has realised I'm pregnant and for some reason has started interrogating me about how I'm going to give birth, the chances are I have a better idea about what is best for me and my baby birthwise than you do. Thanks for your interest and everything, but get lost.

4. "Oh, you don't feel well? You look really well, you're blooming in fact". 

Controversial one this, as I am sure many would think it churlish to be churlish about a compliment, but this would be my reply had I had the nerve to honest when people said that to me: "Well, I feel awful, unmentionable parts of me hurt, my ankles are the size my thighs used to be before I got pregnant, my thighs are the circumference of the earth, my feet feel like they're going to burst, I can't put my own shoes on, I have been sick every day for at least four months, and there's no sign of it abating, so stop ignoring the fact that I feel like I am dying because it's made my hair and skin look nice."

You know what? In the highly unlikely event that I get pregnant again, it's probably best not to speak to me at all until the baby is born. 

5. "You're pregnant, your're eating for two, you can eat what you want."

No, no you can't, unless you are one of those unicorns I am assured exist who experience no problematic side effects of pregnancy and gain weight at exactly the right rate that their doctor recommends and internally serve on a silver platter all the burgers, cakes, sweets, glasses of full fat milk that people proffer to them to their gestating offspring with no ill effects to them or their child.

That most respected of organs, the Khaleej Times, reckons that as many as one in three pregnant women in the UAE experience a degree of gestational diabetes. Other conditions frequently experienced by pregnant women here are gestational hypertension (high blood pressure) and low hemoglobin levels, or anemia. If, like me, you've experienced two out of three of those in both pregnancies (blood pressure and blood sugar with DB1, blood sugar and low hemoglobin with DB2) then you can eat what you want, provided it's low sugar, low salt, low carb, high iron and not too many calories because extra weight gain could exacerbate gestational diabetes. In other words, eggs, spinach, lean red meat, that's about it.

And for the record, yes pregnant woman can and do drink non-decaff coffee, because funnily enough, they've researched it, and found out that they would have to drink a large amount of coffee every day for it to have any effect on their baby, so the odd latte now and then is unlikely to be a problem. So leave them alone to marginally elevate their blood pressure with caffeine once in a while rather than by annoying the heck out of them with your unsolicited advice and interfering.

OK, I feel better now.

Next week, I'll deal with all those people who stick their big heads into the pram of a slightly grizzling baby and shout "what happen baby, why you crrrrrying?!" causing said baby to start screaming their head off from fright. I say next week, it will probably be in six months, if I'm lucky. 

Can you just snap on a rubber glove and stick your arm round the U-Bend? And other parenting low points

WARNING: The below contains graphic scenes involving bodily fluids that some may find disturbing.

I'm back again, closing in on a year since my last entry, but this was always meant to be about my experiences, mundane, unusual, interesting, exciting, workaday or otherwise in Dubai, and as I'm getting on for eight years in the city now, there is relatively little new that happens. Skip to ** if you want to avoid my overly long intro and explanation of why I haven't written more often.

I could write regularly about the hilarious exploits of my genius first-born, of course, but, I am fully aware that not everyone finds her every utterance and achievements of learning from a friend at nursery to say "bovver off you silly pow" quite so engaging and brilliant as I do.

But, this recent incident stuck in my head, and even though it occurred several weeks ago, I have been meaning to write about it as I think it gives some interesting insights into a) the healthcare system in Dubai and b) parenting in general. Although as a disclaimer I must say that I would never, best beloveds, dare to inflict "parenting advice" on you. God, no. My parenting skills fluctuate between the New Zealand dad blogger How to Dad's philosophy of "she'll be 'right" and panicking in a middle class angst way that I haven't got enough money to start her on piano lessons yet, at the ripe old age of three years 10.5 months, and worrying that she isn't progressing fast enough with her nursery level Arabic, which seems to chiefly exist of learning how to say the colours of the UAE flag in Arabic.

I should also add that the events discussed in this blog happened several weeks ago, and everyone is fine now, well, I am mostly fine. You see, because one of the reasons that I haven't written for such a very long time is that we are expecting Desert Baby 2 at the end of January and the pregnancy has been going about as well as the last one, but let's not get into all that depressing moaning, except to say I am mostly fine, apart from tedious prenatal issues you don't really want to know about, and feel the size of an effing house already, and baby is as fine and as prodigiously sized as the last one.

**Several weeks ago now, Desert Baby woke us around 2am to tell us "Mummy, daddy, there's sick in my bed because of me". So we both got up to investigate, still in sleep fug, not a little bit grumpy that she had only just got over a long period of coming into our bed at 2am and kicking us repeatedly through the night due to being post-two week trip back to the UK, which due to time difference and being in a different bed, always disrupts her sleep, so all in all, this felt rather unfair.

Still sleep fugged, we could not find the offending article at first, but when we found it, we threw the sheets in the bath and gave them a good dousing, cleaned her up and popped her into bed next to us to keep an eye on her. We are new to the puking child thing, as she has a relatively hardy constitution in this regard, you see, and we had not yet realised that a three-year-old who has puked in the night once is likely to do it again, which she did, again, and then again, and then again, and after three more changes of sheets I said: "Do you know? I think I'm going to have to take the day off work and take her to the doctor. You're off the following day if she's still not better."

You may be wondering where the 'parenting low point' I refer to in the title of this blog arises. Well, best beloveds, there are several moments that could qualify for that label in this tale. Decide for yourself which you think it is.

So, I emailed my excuses to work, got showered and dressed and waved Him Indoors off to work, and off to the pediatrician's office we popped. At this point, she had only managed to keep a bit of water down, but when we got to the surgery, she very much did not keep it down, and it projectiled across the waiting room, narrowly missing a small cluster of youngish, well-turned out good looking people who had gathered. I had pondered to myself who they could be, as we went and did the obligatory weight, height blood pressure and "what is the issue, dear?" checks with the nurse.

More and more of these curiously healthy looking, well dressed and young men and women  gathered as I steered a now waxy pale Desert Baby into the toilets for another clean up and change of clothes. (At what point does one, as a parent, stopping automatically carrying baby wipes and a child's change of clothes with one? I can't see myself stopping any time soon, particularly after this recent adventure).

We were summoned to the doctor's office fairly quickly after that, who took one look at her and decided intravenous fluids were necessary. Overkill, you might say, as she had only been sick for about 10 hours at this point, but, she could not keep water down, and they don't mess around when dehydration threatens here, partly because they don't have to, because most people have private health insurance, and partly because it can be pretty dangerous pretty quickly for little ones in this climate.

Being the curious sort, I asked: "Who are all these people in your waiting room? I have never seen it this busy, and they don't look ill. Is there some kind of meeting or convention?"

"They're medical reps," replied the doc. "We only let them come here one day per month and today is the day, so they're all here."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah," I said, in my usual insightful way.

The presence of medical reps in doctor's surgeries here interests me, because, because far as I am aware, this is not a thing in the UK. As I understand it, the purchase of drugs is much more in the hands of the NHS, whereas it seems that individual health providers have the opportunity to pick and choose what they want in the UAE. Although, I should add, that in some cases, controls are far tighter, as certain drugs available in the UK for heavy duty painkiller purposes and what have you, are not allowed at all in the UAE.

These people, and believe me I would be the last one to judge, they have to make a living,and I am a journalist for goodness' sake, we get about as much respect as organ thieves these days, sell drugs directly to doctors, which, I would hazard a guess, is why you find some doctors awfully keen on prescribing certain types of drugs, when, dare I say it, they may not be ENTIRELY necessary.

I can't speak for everyone in the UAE, but I frequently come away from the doctor's when I go for relatively minor ailments with a carrier bag of four or five different prescriptions, and for the most part, I take one or two of them, and the rest go into our bulging medicine cupboard should a similar ailment arise in the future, before inevitably getting thrown out when they go out of date.

In this case, the doctor recommended that the husband and I take fancy and insanely expensive probiotics supplements to "prevent us catching the infection", the kind that Him Indoors always refers to as 'bividus madeupidus" in tribute to a certain shampoo advert that claimed probiotic qualities as one of its many virtues some years ago.

"Are they safe to take when pregnant?" I asked, realising as I asked that this was irrelevant, because our insurance pretty much never covers them, I suspect for the reasons I have suggested above, and when they don't cover them, I NEVER have enough ready cash to feel like forking out the AED 200 (45 quid or so) that they cost for a small bottle on the off chance that they might possibly do something to help.

"Also," I thought, "Desert Baby was sick on my actual face last night, so I suspect the 'me not catching the virus ship' has well and truly sailed".

That there, apart from Desert Baby narrowly missing puking on a medical rep, might, be considered a parenting low point, but, there are more, and if I could just lower the low point slightly, I did not let out a blood curdling scream and run away to scrub my face with bleach, at the time of the incident,  because I did not immediately notice she had done it, so concerned was I about how poorly and frightened she was in the middle of the night. It took me rather a long time to clean it off, as I was more worried about her than me being covered in puke. That is the closest I am going to get to a heartwarming parental moment, so drink it in, people. Don't drink the puke in, obviously, I can vouch for the fact that this is not an agreeable pastime. You see, I had to ruin it, didn't I?

Anyhoo.

As expected, the insurance company refused the bividus, so after being administered IV fluids, queuing at the pharmacy for various other unguents and potions, which she didn't really mind at all because it meant I let her watch cartoons on my phone, apart from the ouchiness of the needle which she wasn't awfully keen on, we went home and I managed to salvage a bit of the working day while she had an extended nap on the sofa.

Although she was better the next day, nursery has a policy that you have to keep them home at least 48 hours after they're sick, so Him Indoors was in the hot seat the next day, which passed without incident.

Then the weekend dawned, and I woke feeling, slightly less brilliant than I have habitually felt during this pregnancy, and convinced Him Indoors to get up and give her breakfast while I lounged around like a beached whale. It got to about 8.30 or 9am, and I was thinking I really need to get up and give him a break, when he wondered in saying he was not feeling too clever in the stomach department, so I snappily agreed to get up and take over, until about 11.30, when I was violently sick myself. At this point, I was slightly in denial, and convinced myself it was a relic of morning sickness, never mind the fact that it was totally different.

Pregnancy sickness for me is a feeling of general terribleness, and an awareness that I am going to be sick at some point, it's just a question of when, I just have to do it at some point, sort of like an appointment, whereas this was running to the toilet and barely making it kind of sick. Nonetheless, I told myself it was fine, just more of the same, and feebly tried to entertain a now perfectly healthy and active Desert Baby.

Another hour passed, and I woke Him Indoors because I was feeling gradually more terrible, and we munched on some dry bread for lunch and enacted Dubai summer parenting protocol, which is stick a Disney movie on the laptop and collapse. By the end of the Disney movie, things had gone quite wrong, and I started being sick in earnest, combining it with lying on the bed considering whether being this pregnant and this sick necessitated a trip to hospital, and deciding not, as I had been this sick quick frequently during the early stages. I also admitted to myself that yes, as expected, puke on face incident was not conducive to virus spread prevention.

A charming side effect of pregnancy, as many of you know, is swollen fingers, so I had been wearing my wedding and engagement rings on my little finger instead of my wedding finger to prevent them getting stuck, so they were a little looser than they should be.

How is this relevant? You may ask. Well, best beloveds, in one particularly frenzied dash for the bathroom, my engagement ring flew off, made what I thought was the quiet dinging noise of it bouncing off a pipe and then disappearing into the bathroom somewhere. And, as I have become something of a professional puker of recent, I flushed instantly so as not to prolong the agony, to then wonder feebly back to bed and ask Him Indoors to have a look for the ring I could not, at that time, find on the floor.

I know that you know what had happened to that ring, best beloveds. He couldn't find it on the floor. As Him Indoors was feeling significantly better than I was at this point, I uttered the immortal phrase that is the title of this blog: "Can you just snap on a rubber glove and stick your arm round the U-Bend?" And, you have got to hand it to him, he was awfully game about it.

He did not find it, best beloveds. And again, very gamely, called the maintenance company to see if there was anything could be done to find it, and they said no, we are sorry that has happened to you, but we can't help. I resigned myself to the fact that my ring was most likely on its way to the sewage farm just outside International City, and wept the silent tears of a pregnant, sick woman whose engagement ring has just gone down the toilet, which is to say, fairly pathetically.

We agreed, somewhat optimistically to leave the toilet for a few days, on very, very off chance that the plumbing is so peculiar that the ring might not have gone beyond the point of not return, and might resurface..... Him Indoors also agreed to ring the insurance company and find out "if losing engagement ring down toilet while in the throes of projectile vomiting" is the same as "accidental loss or damage", and they were surprisingly sporting about it and agreed to send us a claim form. Meanwhile, I decided it was time to stop risking losing my other ring and put it on a chain round my neck for safe keeping.

A few days later, ready to fill in the claim form and admit to myself that the ring would have to be replaced, I wondered into the bathroom, and took a cursory look. And "bovver me" as Desert Baby would say. The damn thing was only sitting there in the water, looking for all the world as if it had not been on a near sewage-based odyssey. So I fished it out, disinfected it rather thoroughly, and stuck it on a chain with the others. We had not told the story of The Engagement Ring that Went to Sea(wer) to Desert Baby, but, for some reason, she had been slightly worried about it every time it gets near water ever since, ie, in the shower or in the swimming pool. What can I say? As I mentioned at the start of this epic tale, she is a uniquely sensitive and brilliant genius of a child, well capable of grasping the complexities, so we told her.

She has no doubt repeated it to the great delight of her nursery teachers, along with her other classics, which include, intriguing tales of her father's bowel movements and the time we let her fire a bow and arrow in Sherwood Forest, because, you know, parenting skillz, as discussed above. 

I shall sign off now, and leave it to you to decide which the parenting low point is, the puke on face, the narrowly missing puking on a medical rep, the hand round the U-bend (twice). I can't quite decide myself. Tell me your parenting low points too, if you like. I often get told by child-free friends that I should keep quiet about this stuff, lest I put others of wanting to have kids. But, if I can break my promise about giving parenting advice very briefly, you need to know this stuff, this is what it can be like, in fact, this is fairly low level of bodily fluid horror compared with what can happen, if some of my parenting associates are to be believed.  

From France with love

It's not often that a major international museum with a hefty collection of Old Masters opens up an hour and a half's drive from your doorstep, so it was to Abu Dhabi that we recently wended our way to visit the newly opened Louvre.

Those of you who take an interest in these things will know that the Louvre Abu Dhabi is not, as tends to be the way of things in this region, without its fair share of controversies, and having a less than three-year-old in tow is reason enough to sack it off until she's a bit older and less likely to try to climb on to an Egyptian sarcophagus (that happened, but you know, that's to be expected). But, the lure of such a cultural achievement was a bit too much for us to resist. I told myself I wasn't going to get into the controversy surrounding the building of the Louvre in this post. It's well documented, as you can see from that link, but I would rather concentrate on the place itself rather than go into it all, there is ample places for you to find out more about it and let that influence whether you choose to go or not, should you so desire.



These days, I tend to think of places in terms of "suitable to visit with small child" and "not suitable to visit, stormy weather involving tantrums, dirty looks and tuts ahead, to the life boats, to the life boats.". Most places in the UAE fall into the first category as the culture here largely welcomes children, within reason. Taking your little darling to smokey bars and other "night-time" establishments might earn you a few hard stares, but it's perfectly normal to see small kids out with their parents in restaurants long after what us Brits think of as "bed time", as well as in evening showings of films, etc.



The Louvre is largely OK for a small child, but I would say if you've got one that's a bit appetite for destructiony, it's probably not for you. Desert Baby is a pretty placid type, she'll sit in a buggy for reasonable periods of time and will be engaged by parental attempts to talk to her about things she is seeing in her terms, ie, pointing out animals featured in art, telling her some very basic historical things, pointing out the baby in Madonna and Child paintings (they were a particular hit), but she definitely suffered a bit of a sense of humour failure by the time we reached hall 10 or 11.

I realise I sound like a right "oh, my little Jocasta has such an interest in fine art, particularly the Impressionists" type w***er of a parent right now, but I do think it was definitely worth taking her. However, here are a few dos and don'ts, to help those of you with sprogs who are contemplating going, to plan ahead.

DO - If your desire in going to the Louvre Abu Dhabi is to see the headline acts - the Manet, the Monet, Whistler's Mother, Van Gogh, etc, and you have small ones in tow, then take my advice and skip straight to the end to see them. From memory, check the map and head straight to halls 10 and 11, so you have time to contemplate them before your beloved offspring starts demanding snacks, milk, toilet trips, or to watch "she that shall remain nameless", whose name rhymes with Queppa Qig, on an iPad. As it was, Him Indoors and I had a conversation like this during Desert Baby's aforementioned sense of humour failure:

Me: Did you know they had Whistler's Mother here?

Him: No.

Desert Baby: I wanna go home!!!!

Me: They have Whistler's Mother here, you should probably check it out.

Desert Baby: Daddy, I wanna go home!!! I want biscuits!!!!

Me: *Picking up Desert Baby and holding her by the waist*, quick, we're losing the light, repeat we are losing the light, haul anchors, etc etc.

DON'T - No food or drink whatsoever is allowed inside museum, there's a cafe with both a la carte and counter options, as well as snack trolleys once you're through the main part of the museum,  otherwise you'll be expected to put any food or drink, including water bottles, in a bag in the cloak room. This probably seems like stating the bleedin' obvious to those of you who are art aficionados, but it's a rule that is rarely enforced in most places frequented by us parents of midgets in the UAE, so it's worth filling your youngster with snacks and/or milk before you go in to avoid a low blood sugar, hungry toddler meltdown half way round.

DO - Leave a bit of time to check out the building itself. There is a large covered but open air section which seems to have been designed to keep the sun off while making the most of the benefit of the sea breezes, which, I must say, is simply fabulous in winter, and who knows, may even be a bearable place to sit and contemplate the art works you've just seen during those pesky 45C+ UAE summers.

DO - Check out the Children's Museum, it's got a mixture of UAE and French culture exhibits combined with art activities.

DO - Book in advance online. It was fairly quiet when we went first thing on a Friday morning, but if you have an online ticket, you avoid having to queue to pay.

DON'T - If you're taking the offspring, at least one of your will have to forego the multimedia listening commentary device whatsit to give full attention to stopping your precious darling climbing on to or touching the exhibits, as the "do not touch" rule is enforced strictly. Again, this probably seems like stating the obvious to those interested in art, but those of us with youngsters are not in this kind of environment often!

DO - Think about making a weekend trip. We stayed at the Beach Rotana, which was handily close to the Louvre and had the added bonus of a Swiss Christmas fair, complete with yodelling singers, beer, sausages, gluhwein, as well as a children's activity section with TV showing the obligatory Thomas the Tank Engine Christmas, and cookie decorating, which was a bit of a result. If you go to Abu Dhabi the night before, you can get the sprogs to the museum early in the morning rather than attempting to interest them in it after the drive from Dubai. That way, they'll be in more cooperative, less "destroyer of civilisation" mode, which, I think we can all agree, is better for everyone.

DO - Just go. I'm a total thicko, really, when it comes to fine art, but even I can appreciate the value of seeing such extraordinary works of art in the flesh. The standout works for me were Ai Weiwei's Fountain of Light, and of course it's hard to beat the fascination of a Van Gogh self-portrait. And, within a day of us visiting, it was announced that the "world's most expensive painting", a Da Vinci, is soon to be exhibited there. I'm also no expert on architecture, and again, the issues surrounding the alleged treatment of the work force that built it may cause some to stay away on principle, and, I hate to sound self-justifying, but wouldn't it be a pity for the efforts of those workers to not be seen? It's a remarkable building, in my very ill-informed opinion, and worth the trip alone. Plus, at the moment it's only AED 60 per adult, children under 13 are free, which is an absolute bargain.

The opening hours are 10am-8pm Saturday-Wednesday, and 10am-10pm Thursday and Friday. You can buy tickets here.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Apart from coming up with one of the greatest ever (in my view) titles for a novel, old Philip K Dick was a pretty bright bloke, in that his book explores the relationship between humans and our machine counterparts - something we are only really scratching the surface of nearly 50 years after it was first published.

This robot was not featured at the conference, it's just a random picture, but ah, bless him, what a cutie

His book was never far from my mind when I was at the inaugural Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS), at the end of March, in Abu Dhabi, because the topic of robots, automation and artificial intelligence arose again and again throughout.

I think I was probably one of the few people to have sat through the entire three day summit, as I was compiling a report for a forecasting and research company on the major outcomes, and I came away feeling slightly reassured that while perhaps we are all dooooooomed, doooooomed, I tell you, as all of our jobs, even mine will one day be taken over by a robot that is vastly more intelligent, efficient, and less demanding of biscuits, Yorkshire teabags, chicken sandwiches and Cadbury's Dairy Milk, than I am, it may not happen as quickly as some might think.

An electric sheep, also not featured at GMIS, but, oh you know, see above

Here are my key takeaways from the event:

1. Automation and robots are coming, there is nothing we can do about it. It is human instinct to want to find ways of doing things more efficiently, and eliminating human error through the use of robotics is therefore inevitable.

2. We have been here before. The headlines you are seeing about "humans need not apply" were described as "scaremongering" by an Oxford University academic, who said that all the arguments currently being made against automation were made in the first industrial revolution (we are on the fourth now) and that while technology exists, it is not being implemented as fast as you might expect. In addition, the origin of the word "sabotage" comes from when workers in the first industrial revolution threw their wooden clogs or "sabots" into machinery to jam it and make it appear faulty and inefficient, with the hope that they would keep their jobs for longer.

3. There are two schools of thought. One - robots are the beginning of the end for humans, they will take our jobs, we will be redundant, social problems will increase enormously as unemployment rises. Two - automisation will mean a massive improvement in the lives of workers in manufacturing, who will be able to work shorter hours and thus enjoy better quality of life as they depend on smart machines.

4. It's not just robots, it's co-bots. While in some areas, robotics are taking over, humans work alongside them in others. For example, in the Chinese jewellery industry - gem setting is increasingly done by robots, but the more delicate polishing work is done by humans.

5. "It's not about costs, it's a necessity". Back to China - one Chinese manufacturer said the new generation of Chinese workers have aspirations beyond the factory, and do not see themselves as manufacturers, therefore, manufacturers are using robotics in their production lines out of necessity, saying they could not fill the jobs with humans even if they wanted to.

6. We have to make it work for everyone. As previously discussed, automation is coming, whether we like it or not, and there is a great deal of fear and anxiety about what it will mean for society. We are only just beginning to understand what it will mean, and it has to work for everyone, not just the top one per cent, otherwise it is in danger of being a step backwards, not forwards.

7. Something needs to be done to bring in more women. Apart from in the media room, where there were several females of the species, XX chromosomal makeups were distinctly thin on the ground. Of a three-day conference, I could count on one hand the amount of female speakers. One of the women speakers particularly stuck in my mind, as she addressed the fact that women working in manufacturing, particularly at a high level, are rare.

To expand on this topic, as it's rather a big one, and obviously close to my heart, one of the few female speakers, Kathryn E Wengel, worldwide VP and  chief supply chain officer of Johnson & Johnson, said only five per cent of jobs at her level were filled by women. To paraphrase her view on the subject, we don't need to increase the number of women for the sake of it, but it's actually a necessity because there are millions of unfilled jobs globally, not just in manufacturing but in the wider STEM sectors, and the industries can't afford to not make sure more women play a part. The way to address that, she said, is looking at what happens to put girls off the science and maths subjects early on in education, as far back as kindergarten level, and work on it throughout schooling, to stop girls getting "tracked away" from those subjects and therefore being ruled out of that kind of career.

It got me thinking about my own education, the choices I made, and how that has impacted on my own life, career wise. It is true that I was much better at all the "artsy" type subjects, English, Music, languages, traditionally associated with females, and thus likely to get better results, so my school was pretty happy for me to follow that path. I don't ever remember anyone saying to me: "If you're not going to be a teacher, jobs in those fields are pretty few and far between, and the pay and conditions are rubbish, oh and there is this thing called the Internet coming which will make a lot of them totally disappear". Joking aside, as no one really had any idea what impact the Internet was going to have when I left school way back in *gulp* 1997, you could argue that it was the school's job to get good exam results and that was it, but I wonder how different it is for today's teenage girls.

I remember a definite undertone that, as long as I got my C at GCSE maths that showed I could count to 10 without breaking into a sweat, that was sufficient, and I could spend the rest of my schooling burying my strange little head in 20th century poetry and harmonising Bach chorales to my heart's content.

I don't meet many Brit teenagers these days, but when I attend conferences, if admittedly, not the most recent one, I do come across local women who are studying for Ph.ds and carrying out research in scientific fields that I cannot even begin to explain, due to aforesaid lack of ability in science and maths. They seem to outnumber the men, although that could well be due to the fact that traditionally, more Emirati men than women choose to study abroad, and may follow those paths elsewhere. However, a speaker from Kerala, India, said that women outnumber men in science and maths subjects at universities, although, I would point out that you would need to have a look in 20-30 years' time, to see how that levels out, whether all those women with STEM degrees actually manage to sustain careers in those industries.

Anyway, I could start banging the drum here about discrimination and poor maternity provision and lack of flexible working which limit women's choices once they reach a certain stage in their lives, as God knows, I and many women I know have had experience of that in recent years, but that wasn't the point of this post. Robots, people, they're coming. And hopefully they won't be trained to recognise your skin colour, sex, age, weight, height, disability, or whatever, and treat you differently according to what they think that says about you. That would be nice, wouldn't it?

There will be no one in the driving seat

I am not known for my early adoption of technology. I am a recent convert to the Careem driver app, (local equivalent of Uber) several years after everyone else, I clung to my keypad Blackberry, with friends picking it up and saying: "I can't remember the last time I saw a phone keypad, wow," until various members of my family despaired and clubbed together and bought me an iPhone a couple of Christmases ago, and my iPad these days is mainly used for showing Peppa Pig to Desert Baby while I am preparing her dinner. You just have to ask Him Indoors - any introduction of new technology to our house is met with swearing, grumbling, sighing, denial, sometimes even weeping, wailing and fist thumping before eventually I reluctantly admit that, yes, it is more efficient than whatever it is replacing.

However, an event I covered for work recently got me thinking about what self-driving vehicles will mean for a place like Dubai and I found myself, surprisingly, to be in favour.

I will start by showing you this picture of a self-driving vehicle that was on show at the World Government Summit, a Dubai-based gathering designed to encourage dialogue between governments and to share knowledge on how to revolutionise the way they operate for the 21st century.

This, my friends, is a passenger drone, capable of carrying a 100kg person, plus a small suitcase, operated from a central command unit. Apparently test flights have already taken place, and the RTA (Dubai's Road and Transport Authority) plans to have them operational from July 2017.

I discussed it with Him Indoors, who, not being the happiest of flyers at the best of times, remarked "Hell. No," when I asked how he would feel about giving it a go - climbing into and flying around in what is effectively a giant, computerised remote control helicopter.

I, on the other hand, remember being aged around 10, living in a relatively rural village, reliant on my parents to drive me if I wanted to go anywhere - after school activities, friends' houses, the sweet shop, and I imagined this very thing. Fair dues, my imaginary metal flying carpet of (*cough* 25 years ago) had its own manual steering mechanism, and it was open air, because I hadn't got to the practicalities of what what wind chill would feel like flying through the UK East Midlands air in mid winter, but, this is very much one of those sci-fi dreams becoming reality for me.

Also at the summit were everyone's favourite real life Iron Man Elon Musk, founder of Space X and electric car manufacturer Tesla, and the tech disruption king and Uber CEO everyone currently loves to hate Travis Kalanick. I did not hear all of Musk's session, as I had to run off to cover another part of the event, but I found him engaging, although there were grumblings from the summit floor that he was not at all charismatic. Personally, I think the expectation of a metal suit wearing, super genius wise cracker muttering "doth mother know you wearest her drapes?" is a bit much for anyone to live up to.

Tesla's cars, he revealed, are already equipped to be fully autonomous, it is just a matter of upgrading the software when the time comes that self-driving cars are legally permitted on public roads. What I liked about Mr Musk was the fact that he raised the issue of what will happen to those who drive for a living once the world's cars are fully autonomous - a process he believes will take about 20 years once underway. His calculations are that it will leave 12-15% of the world's workforce unemployed.

Mr Kalanick was perhaps the more charismatic speaker of the two, but it all felt rather blue sky to me. There was wild talk of no traffic on the roads in cities like Delhi within seven years, thanks to Uber, with his assertion being that people will not bother owning cars, they will simply summon an Uber Pool, with self-driving technology being integral. You can't help but feel that the motivation to get self-driving cars on the road for Mr Kalanick is at least 49% from a desire for no pesky humans whining about their dwindling incomes.

But still, another argument for self-driving for the Uber CEO is one few could disagree with - reducing road deaths. Death, I think we can all agree, is A Bad Thing, with vehicles being responsible for 1.3 million deaths worldwide every year. I don't know what percentage of those deaths are due to human error at the wheel, but if Dubai is anything to go by, it's a lot of them, with examples of poor driving such as tailgating never far from the agenda when it comes to road safety. That is why I personally would be in favour of self-driving car technology on the roads. Yes, it is the rise of the machines, and another example of an over-reliance on computers and technology for our daily lives, and yes, we stand to lose the skills that have given us independence, ie, driving a vehicle, but honestly, even six years down the line, I still find the dreadful driving standards on the UAE roads hair-raising. I am used to it, in that if you were my passenger, you wouldn't know that I find it hair-raising, but tailgating, cutting up, racing away from traffic lights, ignoring road markings and the frequent near misses that go with them are the norm, not the exception.

I covered another event in Abu Dhabi not long ago, and the 200 mile round trip commute, on top of sleepless nights thanks to one of Desert Baby's night-time party phases, was, frankly speaking, dangerous. Allowing a computer, programmed only to get the passenger to their destination safely, on a road with only other computers programmed to get their passengers to their destinations safely, without the human ego-fueled speed freak lunacy of the driving experience in the UAE, can only be a good thing as far as I am concerned.

Arrivederci, Ma'a salama and Farewell to Barnaby

One of the ways I spend my time here is trying to gain publicity for the Dubai Chamber Orchestra - a lovely bunch of professional and amateur musicians who are kind enough to let me saw away badly in the violin or viola section (depending on requirements) each Wednesday night and join them for concerts, even though I am usually late every week due to having to wait for Him Indoors to get home from work to look after Desert Baby so I can leave for rehearsal. 

In recent weeks, I have tried and failed magnificently to get various newspapers, magazines and websites interested in writing about the departure of our dear conductor and musical director Barnaby Priest, who conducted his final concert with us on Thursday, 2nd February, after more than eight years in charge. I am not sure why I failed, probably because I am not as efficient as I used to be post-Desert Baby, but also, I suspect, due to the fact that staff at most media outlets now barely have time to lift their heads up from inboxes bulging with press releases about the latest incontinence pants, "clean eating" diets and the most recent cacophony created by one Donald J Trump. Grrr, the state of 21st century journalism, etc. 

Another reason they were less than interested may be that that saying goodbye is a regular part of life for us expats here in Dubai - the majority of us are only here because we (or in our case Him Indoors) have something useful to contribute to society or business, and we are granted a visa to live and work here (I don't, I am a burden on society, I am on a spousal visa but that's another story).

 These figures, published last year, suggest that just 11 per cent of the 9 million odd population are actually UAE Nationals, with the biggest nationality group Indians at 28 per cent and Pakistanis at 13 per cent. Presumably the Brits are lumped in with "all other nationalities", although I've seen suggestions that the numbers in Dubai alone are in the hundreds of thousands. So basically, unless you do something pretty special, when retirement comes around, if you are not being sponsored by someone else, you are out. 

I digress, as the purpose of this post, then, due to my magnificent failure to do it elsewhere, is to say Shukran and Ma'a Salama to Barnaby, who has been the fearless leader of the Dubai Chamber Orchestra since 2008. 

The Dubai Chamber Orchestra is an impressive 13 and a half years old now, which is positively ancient by Dubai standards - Barnaby joined the orchestra in 2005, sitting in the viola section - that most mocked of instruments - sample joke:   

                         What's the difference between a viola and a coffin?

                         The coffin has the dead person on the inside.

Then he took over as musical director. I can only speak for the time since I joined in around 2011 or 2012, but I have always been staggered by his commitment - choosing repertoire, organising concert dates and venues, sourcing sheet music, badgering us all to turn up every week, and he has gone beyond that - composing and arranging music for the orchestra, and this is all on top of a full time job working at a university.  

I may have raised an eyebrow at some of his more unorthodox repertoire choices from time to time, but I can honestly say I have never looked back on any of our concerts and thought "well, that really didn't work". It's a long time since I've had stage fright, as I have been playing music in one form or another for (cough) 32 years, but I have never been so frightened in all my life as I was the night we played the really quite difficult Shostakovitch Chamber Symphony at our 10th anniversary concert. But, Barnaby has always managed to make it work in the end, it has always been alright on the night. 

It is a huge challenge conducting an orchestra in a place like Dubai. As I explained previously, most of us are here at the whim of some multinational company or other, so the orchestra line up changes on a season by season basis. Barnaby has always managed to search through his encyclopedic knowledge of orchestral repertoire and think of something that can be played by 10 violins, 3 violas, a couple of flutes, one oboe, two horns and a trumpet, or whoever happens to be available that season, or persuade absent or new players to join and make up the numbers. Or, failing that, he composes or arranges something himself. Just that one sentence alone sums up how incredibly lucky we have been to have someone like him in charge.

Harking back to my own early experiences of the orchestra, it's fair to say we have come a long way in five short years. When I joined, I am not sure I had opened my violin case for several years, but decided joining an orchestra would be a nice way to meet some new, like-minded friends. I turned up to Safa Private School and scraped away at the back of the violins really quite abysmally, my fingers stiff and unaccustomed to finding the notes and my bowing arm aching like crazy after just two short hours of rehearsal. I felt pretty discouraged by my horribly inept playing and considered leaving and never coming back, but I sidled up to Barnaby for a chat at the half-time break, and he said: "Can we do this over a cup of tea? I'm absolutely parched." 

It was if a window had opened in the ceiling and the sunlight poured in at that very moment (it hadn't, it was evening, but suspend your disbelief, damnit)  - the use of English colloquialism "parched", said with the ever so slight Southern England twang, - the desire to drink hot tea for refreshment even though it was several billion degrees Celsius outside. It was like coming home. "I think I am going to like it here," I said to myself. 

Since then I have played in as many concerts as I could when not heavily pregnant or dying of baby-related exhaustion, the orchestra's audience has swelled in size and enthusiasm, with us frequently receiving standing ovations. We have moved to a new rehearsal venue, the superb Centre for Musical Arts, and each season, I have watched new players arrive and be greeted with warmth, kindness and enthusiasm by Barnaby. 

Being allowed to play in the orchestra, in such a supportive, friendly environment, has done a huge amount for me - it opened the door to paid work as a musician, something I never would have had the opportunity for back home, including with the UAE's flagship orchestra, the NSO, and met and made friends I am sure I will keep for life.  I will always be grateful to Barnaby for those opportunities, because without him, they would simply have never happened. I am sure I am not the only one who can say that. 

Thank you, Barnaby, safe travels, and viva la musica. 

We are gold!

Living in a place with the international reputation for excess that Dubai has, you often hear the phrase "Only in Dubai" bandied about the place. There's the police super cars, the gold vending machines, the gold-laced and super expensive foods, and the sometimes but not always unfair reputation for coating everything that will stay still in gold. It won't surprise you to know that the super-glitz hyper-expensive side of life is of little relevance to us ordinary Dubai-residents, but every now and then, something happens to you that you know would never happen to you anywhere else in the world.

I have been debating writing about this as I am worried that you mere mortals may read it and then come and flex to my crib one night and steal all my swag. That's right, the vain usage of out-of-date street slang will give you a clue as to what is occurring here, yes that's right, Him Indoors and I have finally made it in Dubai, we have finally accessed the pot of gold that everyone thinks is going to fall into their lap when they move here. Yes, we have won gold.

Or for those of you with more, ahem, mature tastes:

How did we win gold? You may ask.
Well, first of all, here is a picture of the stupendous riches of which we are now in possession. Don't get too excited. Don't start the begging charity letters just yet, but here you go:

Calm down!

Stop rubbing your hands with glee, Gollum!

Four whole grams of gold! We are surely in the money, that must be worth, millions????? No?...... OK. Thousands.......? ... No, hundre....d????s OK, one hundred, $160USish depending on the gold price. Well, it's better than a slap in the face with a wet fish isn't it?

Let's face it, we would have to be in pretty dire financial straits for the bother of heading down to Dubai's Gold and Diamond Park in order to cash it in.

Goldie, as I have named him, was our reward for buying a massive shiny new fridge-freezer. We have been in Dubai well over six years now, and try as hard as you like, some of the sheer Dubai-ness of it starts to rub off on you and you gravitate towards the big and shiny.  But, it's not that bad. Despite having moved house, oh, I don't know, 11 billion times at the last count, Him Indoors and I have only ever bought two fridges in our time. The first was for our most recent old flat - our first flat ever to have not a stick of furniture, no fitted kitchen, no appliances, no nothing, so, having just dropped a minimum of AED 10,000 (2,200GBP at current exchange rates) for the privilege of moving house, we bought the rubbishest cheapest fridge we could find, which lasted a while, then we stored a large amount of fresh vegetables from Kibsons (don't judge us, we haven't become w***ers, it actually works out cheaper than the supermarket) in it, and it basically wet itself, by which I mean it sprung some kind of leak and set about urinating water all over all of our food and generally stopped being a fridge and became more of a cold swamp.

So, as we have a small child now, who requires about eight litres of fresh milk per day, and we do, *eugh, I really hate this phrase, it's bandied about on mum forums by martyrish witches who suddenly turn into Martha effing Stewart the second they reproduce*, "batch cooking" (vomits) it seemed a good idea to get a massive fridge-freezer. And because it was during the Dubai Shopping Festival, it has been decreed that he/she who spends a large amount of dosh at Carrefour in Mirdif Centre shall receive several scratch cards with which they can win gold if successful. Actual gold. And sure enough, one of them told us that we had won four grams of gold. So, off we went to the Carrefour cash desk to receive our prize, with Him Indoors saying: "They're not actually going to give us gold, that would be silly, they're just going to give us the cash equivalent of what the gold price is to.... Oh. No, they have given us gold, an actual gold coin. Bizarre."

What are we going to do with Goldie? I don't know. One idea is, that we could melt him down and make him into something nice for Desert Baby. Or we could just keep hold of him, chuckle to ourselves occasionally at his existence, and vaguely consider cashing him in if the gold price reaches an all time high, but actually never get round to it. That. That is what will happen to him, I expect.
But now, it is definitely one of our best "Only in Dubai" anecdotes - the time we won gold because we bought a fridge at the supermarket.