Do you live in Jumeirah?
1. You find the ‘Jumeirah Jane’ stereotype funny – after all, you might live in a roomy villa in the posh suburbs of Jumeirah, but your air conditioning spews out dust before cranking up, and you live next door to a 10-bedroom palace with a security team stationed outside.
2. You don’t find it remotely strange when you pass a peacock on the way home from the local shop. In fact, you probably know his name.
3. Neither did you ever express surprise when you spotted a giant cage over the wall of a nearby villa and hear that ominous roar!
4. You hear friends and family back home complaining about the postman knocking on the door and waking their babies up. For you, however, it’s a low flying helicopter that gets your wrath.
5. Forget after-school clubs, scouts and brownie packs, and CBeebies marathons on the TV. Your kids spend their afternoons on the beach, splashing in the sea, or strolling the Corniche with an ice cream in their hands. And better still, you can walk to it all.
6. And for that reason, the entrance to your home is full of buckets, spades, body boards, beach umbrellas, inflatables, and sand. Lots and lots of sand.
7. Forget needing a giant can of de-icer and thick gloves in the car for those cold British mornings. As a Jumeirah resident with limited covered parking, you plan every trip out during the summer months around the required 20-minute period pre-departure of running outside, turning the car ignition, and switching on the AC to max before the troops are allowed to enter.
8. You’ve become an absolute pro at directing taxi drivers, delivery men, and visiting friends to your villa. In fact, you could recite the directions in your sleep (but let’s face it, they’d probably still get lost).
9. You miss the smell of cut grass in the summer and log fires in the winter – but the warm, heady fragrance of jasmine and frangipani at sunset will now always remind you of ‘home’. And seeing a brightly coloured parakeet flying amongst the trees in your compound definitely beats crows and sparrows on the lawn – even if he is being followed by several stray cats…
10. Your villa may be a little run down, the streets dusty, and directions tricky – but you would never swap it. After all, you have fallen in love with the character of Jumeirah, your close-knit community, and the fact you really do feel like you live in the Middle East with your local neighbours, the sound of the call of prayer, and mosques at every turn. And once you move to Jumeirah, you rarely leave – and that is beauty of making one of Dubai’s oldest and best loved neighbourhoods a home.
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