Meditation in Dubai

So yes, the all spoken about 'M' word.

It is mentioned so many times that it loses its intensity. Especially in Dubai the M would largely be for Materialistic pursuits. Meditation? Bah, who has the time!

I insist though:
M = Make Time

I am very new to meditating or really even listening to my thoughts. Paying attention to their effects on my body, on my external and internal reality is something I am still getting used to. Its started off with my husband looking for some activities, I decided to tag along and we ended up at Illuminations JLT. It was the introductory self-hypnosis course run by Soneeya. The investment was low and overall there was nothing to lose.

We sat in the free Self Hypnosis class in Sep 2014 and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The takeaway was to listen ones thoughts and feelings. We were taught about Affirmations. 

I took up an easy measurable affirmation and after 6/7 cycles of starting and breaking the flow in between, then restarting, I finally completed a full 21 day cycle in Feb 2015. I would say the effects were substantial. 

Since then we started following the Chakra series - held every two weeks on Wed evenings for 2 hours each. Our first session happened to be just my husband and me so we enjoyed the personal attention from our lovely coach Bharti Jatti Verma. 

She became our personal guide, mentor, shrink, hypnotherapist, friend and philosopher all rolled into one. We have taken a few personal sessions from here which we're expensive for sure but well worth it. 

Strongly recommended to anyone with a need to get rid of baggage in life, resolving emotional blockages, gaining strength and grounding = basically all of us. 

Live Light! (as their logo says)

Dubai Marina Kitchen Before and After

I will keep the words to an absolute minimum for this post. Hope you all enjoy looking at the makeover below. Let me know your thoughts:

Funky Town Cafe: Parsi style Dining in Dubai

We were randomly in the mood to try something new for breakfast in the vicinity this weekend so ended up searching on Zomato by area.

We came across this novelty concept in JLT, it seemed fairly interesting and close enough to try.

https://www.facebook.com/CafeFunkieTown/

We tried:
Gunpowder potatoes (4/10 - nothing new really)
Cheese Toast (Came on a soft bun or pav - 8/10, absolutely amazing)
Kurkuri Bhindi (5/10 - average)
Masala Chai (8/10 - pretty good for me as I am not a chai drinker since childhood)

The cafe has funky interiors that might make you nostalgic about Bandra. The Parsi owner has put some interesting heirlooms on display too. His personal attention is evident as we have seen him sitting on the sofa in the corner on two occasions :)

Kitchen Renovation Part 2 - Kitchen Cabinets in Dubai

This can be quite tricky in the whole scheme of things. One starts to see pictures on Pinterest and read blog posts on Houzz/Apartment Therapy and starts to form a picture. The picture though is unfortunately not always doable in Dubai. Even if it is, you would either have to be very resourceful or be ready to dish out massive amounts of cash. We wanted to do neither of the two :)

We invited suppliers and suppliers to come over, measure the kitchen, do the drawings and give us an estimate. They came, measured and quoted upwards of 50,000 for cabinets and labour which was way over our budget. We were quite stuck when one of the interior designers invited us to look at one of her finished jobs. She had used IKEA kitchen cabinets with branded appliances and a Quartz worktop.

We were quite against Ikea at the beginning, we thought labour is cheap in Dubai and India is closeby - we would be able to find something in our budget. How wrong were we! Rents are extremely high in Dubai and all products/services are priced to include this rent. In contrast if you think about Ikea prices and Scandinavian design put together, its hard to say no to these drawers right?

We wanted a simple, modern design that would also fit the budget so we ended up with an Ikea kitchen. It cost us AED 20,000 and we are very happy with the finishing as yet. I will do another post after living in the kitchen for a few months.

On a sidenote, do you also find it very hard to find clean, modern home decor in Dubai on a budget? We either find excessive Golden/Silver decor or extremely expensive Ita-bloddy-lian straight simple furniture. I would love to see more stores sell my simple Scandinavian style, or God knows I will open my own store! Who knows.. :)

Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year to all my readers.

Can't believe it is now a year and a half since I started working on this blog. It only started as a hobby on the side as I found a gap in knowledge when I moved to Dubai. I continue to write my posts with the single aim of bridging that gap and hope that you all enjoy it.

This year, my resolution is to achieve a state of overall Wellness - mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. It is only a way to kickstart the process and hopefully continue for the rest of my life. To be free of our own emotional constraints, emotional restrictions and resulting physical pain is true freedom. Amen!

What are your resolutions this year? Do you have any?