Girl's Night In

Rents in Dubai have come down significantly since we first moved here, and we now live in a much nicer, larger space. Our room provides sanctuary from the city's madness, with its stunt driving, endless construction, and damp heat. Today is the first really hot day since last summer, with humidity at 42% and an apparent temperature of 107 °C.

With the impending summer blaze nearly upon us, I'm reminded how Dubai is a place of interior spaces built to replicate the outdoors. This is a place where people spend an alarming amount of time indoors and the architecture reflects that, not just at Ski Dubai. For instance, I recently wrote an article about an apartment tower with six large gardens for the tenants to enjoy-- all of which are indoors. You live here and you feel contained almost all the time which is why, even though our room is a container too, it's important that it be something more than that-- that it's our home. For now.

One side effect of our general disinterest in Dubai's night life, is that we've seen a lifetime worth of bad television here, including several episodes of MTV Cribs. This in part because we have free satellite TV included with our place, but with a pretty poor selection of channels, at least for English speakers. It's also because, for whatever reason, we find life a little bit more fatiguing here, so we rest a lot. In some ways, life in Dubai is like perpetually living in an episode of Cribs, in that you're constantly in awe of the garish shit that people buy. 

To add insult to injury, when we're not watching people say things like "you gotta see this, this is my other Hummer," much of what we select falls under MBC4's "Girl's Night In" programing line up. So not only do I feel guilty for watching a bunch of crap, there's a not so subtle suggestion that I'm not man enough for the testosterone fueled smorgasbord over at MBC Action.

At first I thought Girl's Night In was on Thursday nights, the last day of the working week here in the UAE. But then I realized that the MBC family of channels is actually based in Saudi Arabia, which is an altogether different place than Dubai. I think the best way I can put this is to say that every night in Saudi Arabia is girl's night in-- or else.  Even if we set aside prohibitions on traveling outside the home without a male family member or other escort (such as a hired driver,) there's still the fact that women can't drive there. And so, what I wrongly assumed was a sort of Friday night line up, is really an every night line up, sponsored by Clean and Clear.

Girl's Night Out, sponsored by Paris Hilton's Champagne-in-a-can, can be viewed on the public stoning channel.