Baby! (It's cold outside)

It's all relative, of course, but it's a bit nippy here today.

Highs in the 60s with a brisk wind and it feels like ... well, I don't know what it feels like. Not like a SoCal autumn, that's for sure. That chill is crisp and brisk. And not like a Long Beach summer's eve, either. It's humid here, but not that damp.

What I do know is the wind went right through my thin, long-sleeved T-shirt.

And the cab driver had the heat on when I left the office.

But don't worry about me; Paul says temps will be back up where they belong -- in the 80s -- in just a day or two.

p.s. Yes, I am wearing my Ugg boots

The Cost of Living

Before we came here, we were warned that the city was expensive. We steeled ourselves for the worst.

In fact, the worst came in the form of rent prices, among the highest of any city in the world. We live in roughly 400 square feet and we pay a little less than $2,000 per month, but the apartment is furnished and it includes utilities (and, supposedly, maintenance). We'll see some of the savings, sure enough, come summertime when the A/C is all cranked up. It should be mentioned, too, that our rent is substantially lower than what most people pay for an unfurnished one bedroom in a decent neighborhood. But our space is less, too, it's true.

It's not unusual for grown people to share homes, with multi-bedroom apartments housing multi-roommates. Some of this has to do with the fact a lot of people are here sans spouse or other. But most of it has to do with the price of the apartments here and, more importantly, the scarcity of housing.

The problem is less one of high-cost housing so much as low-availability housing, and in the end, that's all that matters.

But the rest of daily living almost makes up for it. First, there are no taxes. No renter's tax, no sales tax, no income tax, no gas tax, no sin tax. (OK, a little sin tax: An alcohol license is about $80 per year, and alcohol is taxed at 30 percent). So the money I make is what ends up in my bank account and the price on the meal I'm eating or the new shoes I'm buying is what I'll be asked to pay.

It's pretty cool.

The tricky part in figuring this out, and why it has taken me three months to really come to grips with it, is the currency exchange. The UAE dirham (not to be confused with the Moroccan dirham) is worth 27 cents in a fixed exchange rate with the dollar. So there's a lot of math. This was a problem, too, when France was still using the franc. And that currency fluctuated, so prices changed all the time. Add in metric measurements for things and it takes a little work to get to the price of things. I believe I had the same three-month revelation in Hong Kong when I finally figured out the proper exchange rate there.

So I might balk at the concept of something costing Dh100, but it's actually $27, and when you figure my microwave (Indian made!) costs Dh128, then it's a wow! moment. But there's definitely a psychological barrier to a Dh100 bill when so many things cost less than Dh20 and nobody here likes to give change. This isn't helped one iota by the fact the cash machines dispense 100s, if you're lucky, and 500s and 1,000s more often.

It's like buying a candy bar at home with a $20 bill.

Which brings me back to my original concept of the cost of living. Each week I go to the bank machine, take out a whopping Dh1,300 and the machine almost always gives me Dh1,000, Dh200 and Dh100. You can't just go to the corner grocery with that kind of cash.

And after the bank machine I go straight to the grocery store to get some change. I've found myself in trouble a time or two, waiting too long to get to the cash machine and having only Dh100 for a cab to get me to the bank. That actually doesn't work, so I have to go to a medium sized grocery and buy something stupid, like a loaf of bread, which costs Dh3.50, so I can have change. I try to remind myself that everyone should have the problem of too much money.

Anyway, I've been going to the big grocery store after I hit the ATM. This has been a weekly thing, due to work schedules. And my grocery bill for a whole week runs about $60. I bought 54 items the other day, and only four of them cost more than than Dh10: Milk (Dh10), a Greek salad for lunch (Dh11.25), 8 oz of sliced butterball turkey (Dh18.50), and some cheddar cheese (Dh17.75). I also bought yogurt and sliced cheese and bread and several prepared meals, a variety of fruits and vegetables, some cookies and some bottled water and the most I paid for any of it was a little over $2.

And I thought making the transition from French groceries, which are reputed to be expensive, to US groceries, which are, was tough. Going from food prices here to those back home is going to be one huge jolt of culture shock.

It extends to other parts of my life, too. In Hong Kong, our housekeeper was cheap -- $8.50 an hour. Here, it's reaallly cheap: $6.80. And, just as is it is California, it's off the books for everyone. (My housekeeper has a regular cleaning job at a company; she does housework on her own time, and as far as I can tell cleans for at least half a dozen people in the newsroom).

After picking up some laundry the other day, I was muttering about the cost - Dh25!! Then I realized I'd had a full set of sheets and pillowcases washed and ironed, two pairs of pants and two men's shirts. Gulp. $6.80.

Taxis are a bargain. Flag fall is Dh3 (81 cents) and a trip from work to home is $1.50. With a tip, it's $2.70. Because we have our own drive to work, we pay a bit more -- a whopping $5.50 because he shows up every day at the appointed time, seven days a week.

So yes, we are living well while living frugally. And it's a nice reality.

The Provenance of Food

It's something I've been thinking about for a while, and going to the Indian Food Festival on Friday made me think of it again.

Where does your produce come from? And how do you make a choice? In France, the markets are required to tell you the provenance of the produce. Of course it usually varies with the season. Strawberries in February are usually from Spain and they don't come from France until a few months later. Just like winter fruits in California come from Chile.

But here in the UAE, it's not as simple as what's in season. They don't grow much here in the desert, although more than I had thought as evidenced by this feature on locavores in The National last week. Of course dates, but apparently carrots and eggplant and zucchini, too.

A colleague has an Abu Dhabi blog and he writes about something similar there, at Abu Dhabi Do!

I am particularly fond of bananas from the Philippines. They are sweeter and more flavorful than bananas from South America, in my opinion. (Of course, this is all just my opinion). I started eating them last year in Hong Kong, and here I have a choice. Bananas from the Philippines, from India or from South America. There are two brands: Chiquita and Estrella. I prefer the Estrella bananas.

And it's not just bananas. I prefer Indian pomegranates to Tunisian or Egyptian ones. They are sweeter and juicier. I also usually prefer tangerines (or mandarins or clementines -- they vary) from Egypt, but those from Pakistan, which are lately on sale, have been pretty good. The ones from China are very tiny, and seem hardly worth the effort.

I can choose from Omani or Jordanian eggplant, Arabian potatoes and mangoes from Thailand or India. There is a huge supply of produce from the US and from Europe, but aside from the French apples, I don't usually bother. (An exception being celery, because a lot of places don't grow eating celery, they have cooking celery, and the US is an exception).

We are seeing a lot of summer fruits from South Africa right now: Peaches, nectarines and apricots. And as the price is going down, I can tell we are getting closer to the season.

There was a better-than-usual selection of produce from India this week: Green cardamom and bitter squash and tapioca and gigantic yams. I have no idea what to do with any of this. But I took some pictures. I wanted to try some of the more unusual fruits: jack fruit and snake fruit, which looks like it has snake scales on it. But I was discouraged by someone who knows better.

But it's something to think about, knowing where your food comes from. The bigger surprise -- to me -- is that there is such a difference.

The World's Longest Palindrome

Somebody told me today that Malayalam -- the official language of Kerala, India, and a language spoken by 35 million people world-wide -- is the world's longest palindrome.

It isn't quite; it's one of a few that are the same length in English, and a Finnish word for soapstone dealer is officially the longest.

But never mind. Malayalam is spoken by over 773,000 people in the UAE, a country of only 5 million residents.

And I'm thinking about this because I learned the Malayalam word for saunf, a Hindi and Urdu word for fennel . In Malayalam it is called peruncheeragam. In Tamil it is shombu.

In English, it's called: sugar-coated-fennel-seeds-they-give-you-after-dinner-at-an-Indian-restaurant-that-taste-like-Good-n-Plenty.

This is all part of my quest to have some of the delicacies of Indian food in my home so I don't have to wait to go out to eat. I learned all these words so that I can go to the grocery store and, if I can't find what I want, I now know three different words in four languages that someone at the supermarket might understand.

Phew.

The Subcontinent Groove**

*This is long and disorganized. Bear with me, please.
**Link added to Indian Food Festival

Indian food.

I have it at least once a week, but I probably think about having it five times a week. I don't have enough free time to try all the things I think I'd like to.

I'm not sure if it's serving as a replacement for Mexican, or that Lebanese is now so plentiful at home I don't feel the need to make a special effort here. But it's what I think about. All. The. Time.

And today I made a breakthrough: A colleague gave me a basic do-it-at-home Indian 101 primer.

It started when she went out to cover the Indian Food Festival. She called in to check with me (I'm her editor) and said, "And it smells so good here!!" And then I said, "Well then you should bring me some!" And she did.

She arrived with three kinds of biryani (rice dishes), a dried beef dish (spicy), a cauliflower dish (it must have a real name) and some Indian sweets. It was a ton of food, and she was right, it did smell good. We shared with the others in our cluster (lest you think two of us ate four tubs of rice plus)

This venture of course opened the door for me to ask lots of questions. It's very multicultural here, and I don't think anybody minds answering questions, but I don't want to make assumptions. My colleague is Candian by way of Calcutta. I know from things she writes that she is a foodie.

She got me special rice with cashews in it. Nice. I discovered that the grocery I usually go to is known among subcontinenters as having quite good prepared Indian food. When the tea boys (men from Bangladesh and India) asked where she got it, they seemed pleased, and knew that we would share with them.

Every week Paul and I go to a restaurant called Nihal and every week I get the lamb vindaloo. After experimenting a bit in the beginning, I'm now afraid to try anything else because what if i don't like it as much?? If I were going five nights a week, I might be -- maybe -- willing to experiment. Switch it up a bit. But mostly, no.

So this gave me a chance. I have another chance next week when two of the interns who worked at the paper are taking me to a good Indian restaurant. I have decided to put my fate in their hands and eat whatever they order. But more on that after it happens.

Anyway, my colleague is amused that I like this food so much. I ask about the beef. Isn't that a bit unusual for Indians? No, she says, the Muslims eat a lot of beef. She goes on to tell me about some Goan pork curry at a place she knows. Pork? Yes, because Goa has lots of Portuguese influences because it was colonized by Portugal. I had heard about the great fish curries from Goa, so this was new, too.

So she decides to write down for me how I can eat Indian at home without too much cooking, since my kitchen is so sad. She tells me how to cheat with frozen parathas, and says I can cook them in the frying pan without any oil. And now I know that "aloo" means potato!

Next up: pappadam. I believe I may have mentioned this previously. She reveals that I don't need to fry a pappadam, no sirree, I can just pop one into the microwave and it will crisp right up. I cannot believe my good fortune in learning this. She tells me to look for a brand called Lijjat made by women in small villages in India, with a label in Hindi. The package is yellow and red.

(Please click the link to Lijjat, it's a fascinating history of seven semi-literate women from Gujarati who started a cooperative business that now employs 42,000).

So, for the pappadam, she says: Put only one in at a time, don't cover it, don't put it on anything. Microwave it for two minutes.

And don't worry if it smokes. Because it will clear up right away. Um, yeah.

I'm off tomorrow, and headed to the Indian Food Festival to check out the goodies. I have a recipe here for easy spinach curry, and if you leave a note or e-mail me, I'll pass it along.

Meanwhile, I'm going to buy some frozen parathas, some uncooked pappadam and I'm settin' up the microwave.

Afterward we can all have saunf.

The Teeny Tiny Apartment

More photos here at least until I can get them on Flickr, which is blocked in the UAE.

A Tale of Two

There are two interns who sit across from me at the paper.

One is Bangladeshi and one is Indian. They were both born here and neither is Emirati.

Their parents came here in the 1970s in search of a better life for their families. The grandfather of the Bangladeshi girl came even earlier, and would split time between Abu Dhabi and his home village. Both girls have two countries and none at the same time. Neither has spent any considerable time outside of the UAE, yet it is unlikely they will stay here. Each holds a passport for her ethnic country.

The UAE has no policy to naturalize citizens. It is happy to welcome immigrants to work, and even their families. As long as they leave.

There is a mandatory retirement age of 60 here and it applies whether you are Emirati or not. It is possible, from time to time, to get an extension of perhaps two years. But in the modern world, most people don't retire at 62. And while most anyone is welcome to work here, that's where the hospitality ends. Once a person has no job, that's the end of the line. Thirty days to leave town before the visa expires.

So imagine that you are one of these girls. You have friends and a community here You have attended college here. You would like to find a job, but as all over the world, jobs are a little more scarce than they used to be. You would like to plan your future, but you have no idea where that future will be. You are Emirati, but you're definitely not. Once the fathers of these girls retire, the girls must leave too.

They contemplate their options and try to think of places they could go. They are tourists, strangers really, in their "home" countries. And soon they will not be welcome in their adopted country, the only one they have ever known. There is a two-tier system here even for those who contribute to the society, who helped build it up. There is Emirati and there is not. Two families can live side-by-side, working at the same jobs at the same rate of pay and if you look closely you can see the discrepancies. Until recently, only one could own property. One will have a generous retirement. One will have free schooling for his children. One will have access to a marriage fund. And the other has to leave when the work is done.