After almost two weeks in Dubai I’m still not in love with this city. I’ve made my ways around a little bit: I’ve place to run, which is in the walking distance from my hotel. It’s Greens Community and Lakes Community. If I go running in the evening I run only in Greens as to get to Lakes you have to run about 500m along the busy road and I don’t want to be hit by a car and still it does not feel too comfortable to run in shorts and top during the night along the road in a country where you should not show your knees not mentioning your tights or shoulders. In those closed districts when you do sports it’s still acceptable and you will not be caught and taken by police for that.
It’s difficult to run during the day as it is too hot. It literally feels like polish summer, so the only option is to go in the morning or in the evening, unless you want to go to the gym and do your workout on the trade mill, but that option I leave till it gets warmer when it’ll even be impossible to run outside in the night.
In Greens there are some grocery stores and mini markets. They also have some restaurants and cafes (what was a nice surprise to see Caribou cafe which I know from my time spent in Rochester, MN for IBM) which makes me feel much better and I guess that will be the place where I’ll be going more often, as where Grand Millennium hotel is it feels like in the middle of a business park which is still being under construction, so there is mostly steel, glass, concrete, dust and sand.
I’ve also managed to find nice beach, where you can freely wear bikini and sun bath. What’s more there is free shuttle bus from hotel to the beach and back which makes things easier too. The only thing that I regret is that I can go there only during the weekend.
The only thing that I did not find, and I guess I’ll not manage to do so, it’s public swimming pool where I could do laps. There are swimming pools in hotels (even in mine), but they are either something like 15m long or if they are 25m admission is far too high for my standards. I’ve heard about one public swimming pool, but it’s meant to be crowded and water quality is not too good, so it makes no sense too, so probably it’s better to use our 14m hotel swimming pool. At least it’s free and very close – only 9 floors up from my room. It’s also annoying there that swimming pool is situated between two towers in a way to forbid any sun there, everything is shaded.
Recently I’ve also gone through some bureaucracy procedures in Dubai. To legally work in Emirates you have to make medical check, which involves lungs x-ray and blood check against HIV and C hepatitis (HCV). As my mum pointed at least I’ll find out if I caught something in Asia.
When we went to the hospital with a colleague of mine, we literally did not know what’s going on. We were being redirected from one room to another, showing papers that we were given in the office, giving them out, getting something back, being redirected again to other room, having x-ray, blood check, going somewhere, coming back, etc. It was like some surrealistic movie (here is even something at the back of my head, that I’ve seen cartoon or short movie on this topic). But in the end of that long way we got out health cards which entitle us for treatment in public clinics.
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| My running routines in Dubai |
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| Polish accent in Dubai |
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| Jumeirah Park Beach in Dubai. In fact it was forbidden to take photos there so I had to take hidden shots. |
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| Jumeira Park Beach |
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| Room service always supplies me with 8 bottles of water after last weekend all I wanted from them was water. They've tried to clean my apartment 3 times, but each time I was telling them not to do so and give me only water. |
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| Dubai Marina by night |
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| Dubai Marina by night |
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