My first New Year’s Eve in Dubai

Yesterday we celebrated our first New Year’s Eve in Dubai. An old colleague and her family were in Dubai on vacation, so I invited them over  and we therefore ended up being 9 persons for the dinner, which I had spent the last few days to prepare. Fortunately, it all went well, and we had a lovely evening.

I could not find any fresh chanterelles down here, so instead I made a mixture of portobello mushrooms, oyster mushrooms and ordinary brown mushrooms, which worked out fine.

Though, what I was most happy about yesterday, were the chocolate fondants, which came out perfect with lots of gooey chocolate inside. Since I needed the ice cream maker for the peach sherbet, I had to skip my intention to make homemade vanilla ice cream. Instead I let Häagen-Dazs take care of that part of the menu.

Dubai is world famous for its spectacular New Year’s Eve show at Burj Khalifa. In addition to grotesquely huge amounts of fireworks, the show this year also included a performance by Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, so every tourist in Dubai gathered around Burj Khalifa to get a glimpse of yet another “world’s biggest..”-event.

For a brief moment we also felt tempted to join the crowds, but the thought of heavy traffic jams and all the hustle and bustle, quickly made us skip the idea. Instead we enjoyed the view from our balcony, where we could watch most of the Palm Jumeirah fireworks as well as the fireworks on the beach just across the street. It was not quite Burj Khalifa-caliber, but still much nicer than the two whistlers and a firecracker, we’re used to back in Denmark.

January 1^st often tends to be quite an anticlimax. The champagne is gone, the party poppers have popped and the guests have left, and nothing looks so sad as slops, crushed potato chips and lazy streamers.

Though, my sweet guests had been so kind to clean up after themselves before they went to bed, so I woke up this morning to a shiny, pleasant-smelling apartment. What an amazing start of 2013, -I’m sure the rest of the year will be absolutely brilliant!

New Year’s Eve also means New Year’s resolutions, so I’ve tried to put together something with particular relevance to me:

• I’ll get a haircut. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t suffer from hairdresser phobia or anything else that could explain why it’s almost a year since last time I got a haircut. I guess it’s time to pull myself together and get rid of some of that Pocahontas-mane.

• I will try not to wear my cycle helmet indoors. It looks cringingly embarrassing! My helmet is of the old-fashioned, polystyrene-eggshell-like type, and it is so ugly that no one wants to steal it (I’ve forgotten it several times, and when I come back for it, it’s always right where I left it).

There is absolutely no excuse to wander around in the supermarket wearing that ugly helmet (no, the canned tomatoes will not fall down and hit me in the head), and yet I’m always too lazy to take it off.

• I want to go to a Jay-Z concert. I’m a huge, mega Jay-Z fan, but I’ve never seen him live. Does that count as a New Year’s resolution?

• I will make an “About Mitzie Mee” page for the blog. I’ve read somewhere that people only bother to read your blog if you have an “About” page. I’ve never had one, so maybe it’s about time to make one in the year to come?

PS: Happy New Year and thanks a lot to all of you, who’ve been reading my blog in 2012 in spite of the missing “About”-page:)

Read about my New Year’s Eve 2017 in Dubai >>