Just when you thought life was getting boring...

...everything changes.

We came back from Australia and everything was as it always was. 

Good.

Then I got very good news:  My 'My daughter" piece was selected for a show in New York.  

Yes, NEW YORK.  My first. To say I'm thrilled is an understatement.

For the local scene I was preparing a new quilt to go into the Quilt Art 2012 exhibition here in Dubai.  I entered two existing pieces and one new (unfinished at the time) piece.

All still good.

Then my Dad got sick. I flew down to SA, spent some good time with him, left him to recover and came home.

Came back to the news that our contract in Dubai will finish soon and it is time to move on. We always knew it was coming, after all, we are expats, we don't stay in the same place for ever. But we thought it might last a bit longer...

While my head was filled with moving and relocating thoughts, my Dad passed away...

Now I am back from South Africa for the second time this month.  I am packing our house. I will go back to SA in July to help my mother pack her house. 

New horizons. For both of us.

But there's a new dawn on the horizon.  We are moving to Australia.  If all goes well we will settle in Adelaide. It's a small, beautiful, green city. Very different from Dubai. 

Life is still good.

(Oh, and the new quilt never made it to the show - still unfinished.)

Dubai in pictures 22

My husband took these photos yesterday.

Here he was in a client's office in the Trade Center area.  

Looking down Sheikh Zayed Road towards the south.

This was just before sunset, taking the dog for a walk behind our house.  We live on the edge of the city near Jebel Ali.  The townhouse complex where we live is surrounded by open veld/desert. 

The difference between the two photos is about 20km's.

Chocol'Art: Art, Movies and Chocolat

Come and join us for loads of fun...and chocolates!

Chocolates and Movies

The big project I am working on lately (and which is keeping from doing much else) 

looks like this:

I am participating in the Chocol'Art - At the Movies art event 

which takes place in Dubai on 30 March 2012.

The theme is Chocolates and Movies and includes fashion, jewelry, street art, performance art, graffiti and lots more.  It promises to be a great event.  Al the art work will be auctioned off  in aid of Make a Wish Foundation and Gulf for Good.  

I am making a quilt, depicting the face of Marilyn Monroe (as originally painted by Andy Warhol). It is mainly made up of fabric but some of the hair and the eye make-up is made from chocolate wrappers.

I have just finished the top layer of the quilt.  It measures 2m x 2m.  This week I have to layer it and do the actual quilt stitching.  I am quilting by hand...

The back of the quilt layer.  See how the chocolate papers are backed with iron-on interfacing to make it a bit stronger.

So far so good...

If you live in Dubai and are interested in buying tickets for the event, please contact me.

Bastikya

Bastikya is one of my favourite parts of the city.  Unfortunately it is on the opposite side of town from where I live and not somewhere I can just pop into whenever I feel like it.  I have to have a reason to go there and plan a trip to that side of town.  Usually I go there to show visitors around, but yesterday I went there on my own, and what a good morning that was!

The Majlis Gallery is one of the friendliest spaces in the Bastikya and it's always a pleasure to visit. Last year I attended an exhibition by Stephen Meakin and was really bowled over by the intricacy of his work and his attention to detail.  He conducted a workshop back then which I really wanted to attend but couldn't, so when heard he's coming back to town for more workshops in March I had to book immediately.

After my visit to the gallery I popped over to the Dubai Litfest's beautiful new space just around the corner from the gallery to book my tickets for the upcoming Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.  What a friendly space and people.  It was a pleasure to visit them. 

I concluded my outing with a coffee at the Basta Art Cafe.  To sit in a traditional courtyard, under an indigenous tree, enjoying an Arabic coffee on a weekday morning is just about the best me-time there is.

With my culture-tank filled up, I am ready for the week.

Have a great one!

Dubai in Pictures: UAE's 40th anniversary

 On the 2nd of December 2011 the United Arab Emirates celebrated it's 40th anniversary.  This is the 8th year in a row we were here to celebrate with them, but this time it was different.  We knew by now that Emirati people love to party on National Day and we suspected that the 40th year would be a big one, but it was way bigger than we anticipated!  What a party! 
  

The preparations started weeks before.  The theme for the celebration was SPIRIT OF THE UNION - the official branding can be seen in the picture above.  The seven founding sheikhs, leaders of the seven Emirates which came together on 2 December 1971 to form the United Arab Emirates were pictured in front of a UAE flag.  The seven emirates are:  Abi Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujeirah. Sheikh Zayad bin Sultan al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi were the driving force behind the unification and is still regarded as the Father of the Nation.

Shop window were made up in the national colours.  Every possible product were displayed in these colours and the windows themselves were decorated.

Flags were everywhere.  Houses, cars, lampposts, trees - nothing escaped a flag.

Memorabilia, decorations, souvenirs and everything else you can think of were for sale in the national colours.  The children wore national colours to school, painted their faces, made up their class rooms and shared in the joy of the nation.

And the cars were something to behold!  No costs were spared to 'pimp' your ride!  The car pimping shops couldn't keep up!

The owner of this Smart car was so proud of his ride!  When I asked him if I could photograph his car, he gave me a guided tour of all his pimps.  It even has string lights in the national colours which lights up his car like a Christmas tree!

 Even the Rolls Royce did not escape!  

This is one of the courtesy vehicles from the Burj Al 

Arab Hotel

The houses were covered in flags - some big enough to cover the whole house!

 The flag below is a huge flag which hangs above Union House in Dubai, the place where the unification documents were signed 40 years ago.

In this time when the world looks on at the unrest in the Arab world, where it is obvious that many of the rulers in this part of the world are not doing what is best for their people and where people suffer at the hands of their rulers, it is a joy to see how the people of the United Arab Emirates love and adore their leaders.  Sheikh Zayed is loved like a father by everybody in this country.  The rulers of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum and his son, the crown prince, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum are loved and respected.  Because they love and respect their people.

It was an honor to be part of these celebrations.

Why I love living in Dubai

Tonight we've been invited by our South African neighbours to a neighbourhood braai.  We were six families living next to, or across the street from each other.

We don't always hang out together, and we are not all close friends, but we greet in the street, the children play together and we look out for each other.

We were two South African families, one German-Danish family, one Lebanese family,

Two Indian families and one South African/Scottish-Russian family.

Our children are all more or less the same age and had a blast running and playing together, all communicating in English.

We had Hommus, Tabouleh, cucumbers and fresh bread for starters.

We ate lamb, boerewors and chicken with potato salad and broccoli salad for mains,

and we had Black Forest Cake and vanilla ice cream for desert.

We had lots of red wine, we talked about music, movies, raising children, travelling, Christmas traditions and sport.  We laughed a lot.

We never discussed politics or religion.  We never talked about how we are different because there are too many ways in which we are the same.

We had a wonderful evening. At home.

Dubai in Pictures 21

Facebook is one of those great inventions which makes me wonder how we ever lived without it.  And I don't mean playing Farmville (I can't stand FB games).  I mean finding people you haven't seen for years.

I had coffee this morning with someone I went to primary school with.  We last saw each other 32 years ago. We found each other on Facebook yesterday, realized we both live in Dubai, and we met at the Dubai Mall this morning for a catch-up.  It was really special.

While we sat there enjoying the perfect weather after the hectic summer, we saw this team of window washers halfway up the Burj Khalifa.

Imagine it was your job to hang on the outside of the tallest building in the world everyday...

I would much rather sit at the bottom with a cappuccino and enjoy the views. Like this reflection in the building across the lake from the Burj.