Dear Desert Diary: Mani, pedi and around the world in 1hr 15 mins...

I have a little icon on my desktop that tells me the temperature in my selected cities; Sydney so I understand why you all have colds, London so know what rain I'm missing and Dubai so I know how quickly my clothes will dry on my verandah. When I got up this morning it said 21 degrees, so I thought I would go for a jog. It must have been reading the temperature somewhere in doors in a mall or something because I lasted 10 minutes before I had to go inside and retreat to conditioning. I just flipped to it now at 10:48am and it says 32 degrees which is how its going to stay for the rest of the day. Just awesome. We've finally been able to sit on the balcony and the giant and I spent Friday evening sipping a few and rehashing world news and current affairs (mainly the Kardashians). My new Belarusian friend from across the hallway popped over for a vino and joined our scintillating discussion. She is an amazing cook. Every time I walk down my hallway I seriously feel like I am Yosemite Sam and my nose sniffs out the way to her door. A few nights go she showed me how to make Belarusian rissoles which I improvised that night- though there were none left for her to try. They were sensational. She's been here for a few years and so was telling me the ins and outs, as the Dubai veterans do, and said she would take me to the best and cheapest place to get a mani-pedi in Dubai. I gladly accepted and cleared my diary on Tuesday afternoon.

I was even more willing because it was in a place called 'International City' which I had never been to and I knew it would create a perfect segue for one of my next blog entries which explores the "cities", "villages", "worlds" and "lands" of Dubai. 'Knowledge Village' where the finest universities of the world have campuses like the University of Wollongong, 'Media City' where all the publishing houses of the world set up shop, 'Internet City' where businesses like HP and Sony reside and so 'International City' has always puzzled me- was it a city made up of all the countries of the world, with restaurants from all parts of the globe and housing for the masses? Yes, yes it was. So we had our mani-pedi and then quickly popped to Persia, Spain, Greece, Italy, France, England and Russia. Its all we could fit in in an hour...

SPAIN