NEW year ...life... kickoff...resolutions ...and rite of passage...

Year of the Tiger exchanged the Year of the Buffallo promising to have the characteristics of a tiger: courage, power, passion and who knows what else. It is said that hot passion meets the cold steel with the arrival of this year promising that things will get in motion:)

For each of us the transition of years is a time when we recapitulate, chew over our past year´s actions and we look up at the new upcoming year with hope, that everything will change and will be better. So here come the resolutions like no more cigarettes, more gym, more relax, less junk food, definitely a diet, be more stressproof...etc... all the same over and over again:)

For me the transition of years represented another change ... I left behind my Dubai life and decided to come home ... it was rather a coincidence that my homecoming fell on this transition period. And thus it has somehow become my private rite of passage. This universal phenomenon (and anthropological term) represents a ritual that a person must go through in order to progress to the next stage of his or her life.
Mr. Arnold Van Gennep, the father of the concept, would be happy to know that I have given his term a new broader meaning :) Or maybe he wouldn´t ...

So here I am going through all the phases of the rite: separation, transition and incorporation. My separation phase wasn´t only symbolic since I was moving from one place to another even changing roles and statuses (not on Facebook!!!). Since in this phase a ritual of detachment from the "familiar" is needed here I can go with return flight or with all those boxes stuffed with my belongings that were sent home... or maybe a residence cancellation (which hasn´t been done so far, so maybe therefore I am stuck somewhere in-between:) ) Before I reach the final phase of incorporation and accept my "new me", my new, identity I need to struggle along the second phase of transition. If a picture was needed to describe this phase I am sure it would be my photo :). Transition is characteristic by being a period between states. Literally you have left one place or state but you still haven´t entered the next one. And this transitional period exactly represents where I am stuck at the moment – my private twilight zone.

I am trying to figure out what move to make, which direction to go and although I am willing to go I am sort of paralysed in this no man´s land. Standing on this crossroad I am looking for my private ritual to say goodbye to the separation phase in order to enter the last phase. But as one of my favorite poems goes:

“ When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,


full of adventure, full of knowledge…


Pray that the road is long.


That the summer mornings are many, when,


with such pleasure, with such joy


you will enter ports seen for the first time…”(Constantine P. Cavafy)

Bearing this in mind I know that I have set out for a journey. I am gonna go through my private rites of passage many more times in my future life and probably gonna be asking the same questions as now…but I know that this is a process and not a destination.

Therefore I am not worried that I am stuck in some liminal phase.

As a matter of a fact I´m gonna buy some fancy postcards and send it to all of you from my no man´s land :)
I hope they have some post office in this phase:)

Veeery beery meery Xmas :)

We all enjoy challenge ...

Change is the only sure thing about life. Almost two years ago I packed my suitcases and decided to meet my personal challenge, leaving my whole previous life behind. I came to Dubai to broaden my knowledge in various working fields but I have learnt a lot mostly about myself. I realized that I am capable of doing things I have never done before, that I can overcome my own shadow and leave the worries behind... I needed to prove myself (and probably others) that I can do this and that I can conquer my personal limitations and that was my permanent engine.

I cannot even remember the first six months here ... it was a constant nuthouse. Trying to integrate into this bustle of Dubai life and focusing on work I didn´t even have time to look around so I was just technically taking no notice of the fact, that I am in Dubai - a place quite worth to be discovered (if you know what to look for). So I adopted a feeling that there is nothing to do, nowhere to go ... probably just because I was too tired or too lazy to look for it. So I was sort of postponing everything to some mythical time somewhere in the future...when there will be less stress, more options, better conditions, more friends, nicer weather, cooler water in the sea ...

It took me some time to realize that the time is NOW. That all these little delights can be found within every day.... suprise, surprise...even in Dubai:) So looking back to the past, and having a chance to do so, I would probably change some aspects of my life here. Sitting on the sofa in our vila some ideas have already crossed my mind. Here we go:

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  I would definitely more enjoy all the weekends here
  
  
  
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  I would start off road driving much more earlier and spend more time in desert
  
  
  
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  I would wake up early in the morning and go to the beach ...for a walk...for a coffee...
  
  
  
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  I would probably enroll that kayaking course :)
  
  
  
• 
  
  I would definitely take more pictures than I did
  
  
  
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  I would finish my advanced level diving...and actually go diving:)
  
  
  
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  I would quit bitchin´that there is nothing to do
  
  
  
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  I would start learning Arabic
  
  
  
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  I would cross the borders of UAE and look what is behind :)
  
  
  
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  I would ....ehm... I just keep this one for myself
  
  
  

....I would jump from every mountain, I would sail the seven seas, I would fly up in the sky.... (if God was me) ...as the lyrics goes in one of my favourite songs:)

So, here I am, six more days to go and in front of another challenge. I don´t know precisely where it takes me or where not but the first step, to leave Dubai, has been taken already. And as Martin Luther King said: "You don´t need to see the whole staircase to take the first step".

I would stop here since I need to go and find out which one of the above mentioned ignored things I can accomplish in six days:) But I´ll be back.....

My very first English blog entry....or what is the Dubai challenge like...

Half a year ago I wrote this couple of words for our company magazine under the title "Blogger´s confession" ... well let me share it with you and celebrate my very first English blog entry:) Kindly apologize my mistakes ...cannot be perfect in all aspects:))))

"As a lot of you know since my trip to Mexico an idea to start my own blog has crossed my mind. And here I was, by following a quote of David Livingstone saying: „I am prepared to go anywhere provided it be forward“ I started to put together the first sentences to move me forward . Writing that blog became a part of my daily routine, it helped to retain my memories, it was my way of comunicating with people who could not experience and see what I did and to share my perceptions. One could not imagine how much time I spent finding the right words to express flavours or to describe feelings. As long as I came back from Mexico I did not know that the blog became „popular“ and that my friends are forwarding the link to other friends. All of a sudden I kept receiving e-mails asking me to write more, not to neglect the readers of the blog so it has somehow become a commitment to write an entry.


When I decided to accept a job offer in Dubai it was a good chance to bring the blog back to life and carry on sharing my impressions. The style of all my entries was rather lightened because I was more than sure that people would like to read more about positive stuff than negative. So I tried to stick to the style exchanging only Mexico for the UAE. However, my very first Dubai entry was a big dissapointment for everyone who has read it. It was not lightened, it was rather depressive and full of despair but I could not help myself since I wanted to be honest. Everything was in a mess, my life was turned upside down and I was not sure whether I really want to jump in at the deep end! Somehow I managed to live this through and got back to the lightened style of writing, mentioning mainly positive impressions and funny memories so I could make people laugh and let them dream about other corners of the world where even the everyday reality MUST BE better.

There is just a few people who know that life is not that easy here as it seem to be from my blog. Life here can be compared to a proverbial quixotic fight against windmills. And to be honest, waking up in Don Quijote´s shoes every morning is not really what I want to face each day. The well-know windmills are hidden everywhere in different shapes. The morning here cannot do without being a part of a road rage, trying to avoid car accident every five minutes. If you steel yourself for that you have a chance to stalk into office with a smile. Then the phone calls will come where every second one is a tele-marketing stuff offering some good rates for hotels, wellness oportunities etc... Then you need to go to bank, or to check if the accounting company did totally forget that we exist, not answering e-mails, phone calls..and here comes the bank appointment where we sit for three hours, explaining that all these papers were signed two months ago and that we really need that account, and no we are not interested in another seven packages, yes we wish to have credit cards, and again the same papers are submitted which we got rid of a months ago. Then a report needs to be sent to the HQ that not we are not joking, but we really cannot get to the money, that the estimation of two-weeks time to activate account was completely wrong and we are scheduled for another 15 appointments with different departments and passing a mirror I am realizing that I was honoured with a knighthood of the same kind as Don Quijote was!!!

T o be honest to you, most of the time I am desperate. Am I really going forward? Writing that blog in lightened style I am giving a pretence to whoever it reads, that the life here is undemanding, that we are not spending 15hours a day in the office, that I have time to go diving every day, that I do not need to open a laptop during the weekend, that we are not undergoing a „battle for life“ here and that lying on the beach is our daily routine.

Let me finish using words of Don Quijote again who said that :“ Where one door closes, another opens“. And this is exactly what we are trying to do here. It takes lot of knocking on the door or facing the closed door, but we are trying to open the door for all of us, whether they represent new personal or business achievements. All it needs is a bit of understanding and support.

Most of this painful daily routine appears in my blog entries but wrapped in sharp-witted style so I admit that the person who reads the blog and is not present here can come to believe that we live like in clover here :)
I´d rather re-think the style of writing the blog entries:)".

Well, the latest update is that there are 2 months to go ... and my contract here is over...and so the Dubai life is:) I´m not sure now if this is the very first and very last English blog entry at the same time ... it depends...but I hope you gonna like it:) It was rather a difficult delivery:)
J.

Ex post...

Otázku ci uz neblogujem, som za tých par mesiacov, čo som nepísala, počula velakrat. Neprestala som blogovať, neprestala som cestovať, neprestala som vnímať veci ... Prišlo však obdobie, kedy bolo treba riešiť veci, čo fakt vie napísať len živoť a nič sa mi nezdalo dostatočne vhodné, dobré, pekné a zaujímavé na to, aby som to sem písala a podelila sa o to...boli proste veci dôležitejšie ... za tých 9 mesiacov som absolvovala koncerty, zvládla nájazd mami, krstnej a ségry, ktoré ma vytrhli zo šedej reality a keď už bola dubajská rutina neúnosná letela som domov, co sa stalo presne 3x... a presne 3x som sa sem aj vrátila.... vyliezla som na kopce a aj z nich zliezla, prečítala som všetko čo sa mi pod ruku dostalo... stretla nových ľudí a ustála aj väčšie a menšie personálne zmeny v mojom živote...


No a tak som zase v Dubaji , kedy sa môj pobyt preklopil do svojej poslednej fázy, čo ma seriózne núti si to všetko v hlave zrekapitulovať ... či to stálo za to, či mi to niečo dalo, čo mi to vzalo...atď... ale toto vám sem písať nebudem, na to zvolám samostatnú tlačovú besedu :) Keď tu zrazu, avšak...zachcelo sa mi písať a rozhodla som sa, že privediem svoj blog opäť k životu. Comebacky nebývajú ľahké, nevyhneme sa porovnávaniu kvality príspevkov minulých s dnešnými a asi nebudeme mať ani bohvieaké PR ...ale snáď vám zatiaľ postačí moja prinavrátená chuť písať:)

Nechce sa mi písať o veciach, ktoré sa za tých 9 mesiacov stali... bolo ich rozhodne nemálo a pokrývajú teda široké spektrum rozličných zážitkov a vnemov. Som tu len pár dní po dlhej dovolenke na Slovensku, neviem ešte čo všetko ma čaká a neminie(veď kto by to aj chcel vedieť). Chcela som len napísať nejaký odkaz aby ste vedeli, že som pri živote, v celkom povznesenom stave a že písať budem :)

Môj druhý dubajský október sa nesie zatiaľ len v pracovnom duchu... domov na dovolenku sme leteli pred mesiacom, takže majoritná časť Ramadánu šla tento rok pomimo nás ... znovu môžeme chodiť na obedy všade naokolo, nemusíme sa krčiť v autách, keď sa chceme napiť, na cestách nás neohrozujú hladní a smädní pološialení postiaci sa moslimovia... ktorí vlastne aj v bežné dni jazdia tak isto. Zostali sme tu zase traja ...tak ako sme začínali. Zdá sa že kruh sa uzavrel a tí, ktorí sme tu bojovať začali, tento boj aj dokončíme...s menšími či väčšími traumami...ale dobojujeme. Neviem, či sa hodíme do popisu „bojovníkov proti kríze“ :) ale vytrvalí určite sme. Za 2,2 mesiaca sa vraciam domov...na rodnú hrudu... na čo sa véééľa teším a asi tak isto sa toho aj obávam. Opäť pôjde kufor hore na skriňu, túlavé topánky pôjdu pod posteľ a začlením sa do bežného života na rodnej hrude. Tento krátky úvodný monológ pred novou fázou blogu ukončím slovami z jednej hry Gunagu .... „domov je všade tam, kde je Internet“...

Takže kým som tu, budem písať z Dubaja o Dubaji a o veciach s tým súvisiacich...ale kde bude „doma“, to ešte neviem :)

Idem doštudovať tie off road trasy v okolitom púštnom teréne, lebo ma svojou návštevou poctí opäť moja drahomilená sestra jediná ...takže sa idem na to zodpovedne pripraviť :)

This blog is under construction :)

Na texte sa priebežne pracuje ... a blog sa resuscituje:)

Januarove blues

Živo si pamätám deň keď mi v lete volala moja Hana z letiska vo Viedni, že ju nechcú pustiť do Kanady a že či môže priletieť za mnou... veď jasné prečo nie? A tak mi tu pristála o 6 mesiacov neskôr, týždeň po mojom návrate - pripravená spoznávať zákutia tohto mesta... Ja v pracovnom kolotoči stále ale pripravená ukázať čo sa dá a čo stojí za to!!! Ubehlo to ako voda a ja som bola konštantne v eufórii z toho, že tu mám takúto "starú" (pardóón!) spriaznenú dušu... a samozrejme, že som jej chcela dopriať tie isté pocity, ktoré mám z toho či onoho miesta ja! Tak sme si to strihli na večeru do Madinatu... čo je ten veľký "umelovybudovanýhistorickýkomplex", ktorý slúži ako kvalitná pastva pre oči turistov... štýl sa mu uprieť nedá, takže aj ja naň rada položím zrak:)!

Jedno japonské príslovie hovorí... "ak ti nie je jasný charakter človeka, pozri sa na jeho priateľov"... a ak by počas tohto krátkeho pobytu tu mali Hanu hodnotiť podľa mňa a mňa podľa nej, tak by to nebolo ďaleko od slov, ktoré použil jej ocko, že miestami sa to podobá až demencii:))))) No a v tomto duchu sme tu strávili pár spoločných dní a večerov. Ochutnali sme čo sa dalo z libanonskej i inej kuchyne, vyfajčili vodnú fajku u nás na záhradke... vybrali sa na trh, do púšte ba i na lodičku.... vlastne všetko sa to zbehlo asi takto: s Maťom som vybartrovala, že keď nás zoberie do púšte, kam sa ja sama neodvážim ešte a neviem či vôbec trafím, tak mu zoženiem film čo chcel - a keďže Hanulka film doniesla, šlo sa v piatok ráno do púšte! Zvolili sme celkom easy trasu, čiže nejazdili sme šialene po dunách ale sme proste šli púšťou, ja držiac mapu, rátajúc kilometre podľa nej... niekoľkokrát zle navigujúc ale inak pohoda. Hneď po východe slnka, nás cesta zaviedla k dostihovej dráhe, kde namiesto koní stretnete ťavy...a ťavičky lebo tam boli aj nejaké juniorské družstvá! Tak sme vytiahli foťáky a fotili čo sa dalo...zbiehali sa tam jednotliví "džokeji" so svojimi zverenkyňami, ktoré boli zabalené v rôznofarebných dekách...no neviem či to bola nejaká zimná úprava alebo len aby im svaly nezachladli!!!Lokálni šviháci nás dokonca na raňajky volali...ale keďže sme chceli stihnúť prejsť celú trasu až do emirátu Ras Al Khaiman, museli sme túto dobrodružnú skúsenosť oželieť! Takže sme zliezli do púšte, ktorá nás vážne veľmi priateľsky privítala... počasie bolo veľmi príjemné a po výdatných dažďoch na púšti kde tu vyrazili zelené rastlinky rozličného charakteru, stretli sme veľa lokálnych obyvateľov na ťavách...ktorí mali ale všetci obďaleč odparkované svoje džípy od obrovských až po megaveľkééé... Z Dubaja, sme pozvoľna prešli do susedného emirátu Sharjah, potom do Ajmanu a nakoniec sme v diaľke videli kopce z Ras Al Khaiman, emirátu kde sme sa otočili a šli naspäť. Cestou v púšti sme zišli z cesty, lebo som asi skvele navigovala... a samozrejme ten sprievodca bol už "starý" takže niektoré záchytné body ako "5 stromov naľavo" alebo "červené oplotenie napravo" nieže neexistovali, ale tam už teraz stála dedina, prípadne tam bola vyasfaltovaná cesta!!! Zastavili sme sa pri jednej palmovej farme, kde sa Maťo rozhodol, že ide kúpiť ďatle! Samozrejme, že po anglicky tam nikto nevedel, my po arabsky vieme slová, ktoré sa do zdvorilostnej konverzácie nehodia, takže nastúpili ruky a nohy... Maťo tam proste vošiel, brána sa za ním zavrela a ja som ďakovala bohu, že mi stihol dať aspoň klúče od jeepu:)))) Potom sem-tam zvnútra zakričal, že je OK, že niečo kupuje ale že nevie čo to je... že mu nič nehrozí... a že nevie, či to bude vôbec jedlé! Víťazoslávne vypochodoval z brány s plnými dlaňani niečoho čo vyzeralo ako kaleráb... tak sme sa dozvedeli, že to boli výhonky mladej palmy...bolo to celkom sladké..chutilo to podobne ako cukrová trstina... sme sa ale náramne bavili na tom, že prečo sa tí domáci na nás tak šklabia...dúfali sme, že dožijeme aspoň cestu domov:))))
Nedostavili sa žiadne žalúdočné ťažkosti, žiadne známky bioterorizmu... do RAKu sme došli v plnej paráde...sadli sme si na kávičku... pofotili ulice... podiskutovali na tému "čekoslovakia" a otočili to späť do Dubaja. No ale skoro by som zabudla, ako sme zaparkovali jeep na pláži rovno vo vode a s lietali sme tam ako bláznivé, skákali vo vode, strašné pózy hádzali na fotkách... až sme si zase vyslúžili zápis do kolónky "dementné". JA som si vyskúšala šoférovať tu veľkú kravu FJ Cruiser v uliciach mesta...dokonca ma policajti zastavili ale snáď za úsmev mi prešlo aj to, že som moc v zákrute gumami hvízdala..:) Večer grilovačka už v polospánku... Ráno sme sa vybrali do starého mesta... pobehať trošku trh a samozrejme na lodičku..počasie bolo kráásne... Hanka mali výstrih ako stvorený na to, aby sa promenádovala po tom trhu, plnom hormonálne nevyrovnaných príslušníkov rozličných národností...takže hneď na začiatku sme kúpili šatku a omotali jej všetko čo sa dalo:) Na trhu sme si to užili ako sa patrí... zjednávali sme čo sa dalo, kupovali darčeky a spomienky pre toho a tú...Hankin ocko si dokonca hrdo odnášal z trhu lokálny oblek dish-dashu...ze bude doma sediet pred odchodom a lákať zákazníkov... potom priložím link na google map, že kde majú obchod aby ste to šli skontrolovať:)))))
Zbehli sme na kávičku kde sme si s Hankou dali povinne náš milovaný keksík MILA... z čoho sa už pomaly stáva tradícia a vláčime ten keksík s nami všade kam sa dá! No a potom šup na abru..na malý loďkotaxík, ktorý nás hoďku vozil po celej zátoke...fotili sme ako šialené zase, ja Hanu, Hana mňa... spolu sme fotili budovy a lode... a vodu :) Spoločný čas nám utiekol rýchlejšie ako šla naša loďka po vode... Hanka sa vrátila domov, plná dojmov z tohto pobytu a ja som po dlhom čase zase písala niečo pozitívne o Dubaji:) Hanulka nerozprávaj každému ako je tu "dobre"...lebo neviem kde vás všetkých ubytujem:))
Nabudúce to bude o leteckej show v AL AIN... a iných vskutku neobyčajne obyčajných zážitkoch z tejto časti sveta...ktorá je tiež postihnutá globálnou krízou:))) Jeden by neveril.....