Tag Archives: Sisters

Rush-A-Way Dubai

I had a marvelous time during the Rush-A-Way Race event.  I found out about it while looking for fitness events in Dubai for my husband and I to join.  Fitness Link gave me all of the details I needed to know about the race being held December 15, 2015.   Just so you know, Rush-A-Way is actually an interpretation of the television show, ‘The Amazing Race,’ American style, just smaller.

 

Each team member must be at least 16 years old and one of you must have a UAE driver’s license to join in the race.

You and your partner against other teams of two race around Dubai going through a series of challenges.  You and your team complete 10 small adventures from making sushi rolls to presenting at a station.  Each set puts your physical and mental fitness and navigation skills on the line.

 

Before the event started, I received an email advising me of the rules and it supplied me with information on how to register my team. The thing is you won’t have a clue as to what you’ll do until the time of the event. Since my husband could not attend this date, I invited my sister to be my partner and luckily, she was a willing contestant.

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The day of the race we arrived at the Jebel Ali Recreation Club for the briefing.  We were asked to use the team’s account details to create an application on our phones that would allow them access for the day’s challenges.  We could also get our team’s  number once we completed our entry.  Once that number was issued, the race was on!

 

Our first challenge of the day was a riddle.  We had to answer the riddle and come up with a number that would unlock the next task.  If you didn’t get it correctly, you were penalized five minutes.  You couldn’t go anywhere until time had lapsed.  This meant that the other contestants could get ahead of you.  However, we got it right and moved on!

 

We could see our next moves as they appeared on our phones as we knocked them out.  With teamwork, my sister and I, were able to pull navigation off smoothly.  She drove, of course, while I directed.  The tasks were never the same though each one proved to be fun and exciting.  Some obstacles were physical and others were pretty tasty.

 

We didn’t win first prize, but winning is not always about a prize.  It’s about the experience and it’s one I will never forget.  We had a great time discovering the beautiful land of Dubai, we tried something new and it gave us memories that we can talk about for years to come.  My sister and I took 5th place in the Rush-A-Way Race this time; maybe next time will be a little different.

 

You can purchase tickets for 95 $ at RushAWay Website.  If you want to register for the next race this April 8th, go here for more information: www.facebook.com/rushawayuae, www.facebook.com/events/1411308292498073,  https://www.rushawayuae.com/.

 

All contestants will receive a T-shirt and snacks, plus a goodie bag.  Rush-A-Way Race was created for all to enjoy, not just fitness gurus.  It’s a chance to bond with friends and family in a way you would not normally do.

 

 

 

A Muslims Journey to Japan

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Before departing on our trip to Japan where Maysm was attending a conference in Yokohama, we had very few expectations of the country we would be visiting. All we expected was to witness first hand the Japanese’s love for technology, their innovative inventions and their overly polite nature. Our only real concern was regarding food. Being  Muslims, we were curious as to how we would find the food options available to us, but we thought, it’s only for ten days, if we have to give up meat and go vegetarian, it’s not the end of the world! We soon came to realize that it wouldn’t be that easy. We happen to dislike seafood and with sushi bars dominating the streets of Japan and their need to include some sort of seafood in every vegetarian dish, we were hitting some unexpected obstacles. An even bigger problem revealed itself when we couldn’t even grab a bowl of chips because they would have been fried in pork fat.

The language barrier only exasperated the issue. There was so much variation on the words alcohol and pork that even if we were told a dish was free from both, it probably wasn’t. This problem persisted until we discovered an app that would make things a whole lot easier; HalalNavi. The app contained a whole bunch of restaurants and would show which dishes were free from pork products and also present alternative options.

The app managed to magic up other wonders like directing us to a Turkish Halal restaurant which turned out to be a Circassian restaurant! With such a small minority of Circassians in the world, we couldn’t believe we found one in Tokyo of all places!

Even though we only stayed for ten days, we couldn’t get over how polite everyone was. At first we were slightly dubious about how genuine their kindness was until we took the Metro one evening to get back to our hotel in Yokohama. A rather intoxicated Japanese gentleman was sat next to my husband and proceeded to what I can only imagine was to use my husband as a human pillow. Gently pushing the sleepy intoxicated man off, he suddenly regains consciousness. Oh no! I thought, please don’t turn into a fight! On the contrary; the man couldn’t be more apologetic for his actions. Wow. Now these are genuinely nice people!

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The sweet people of Japan.
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Kafkas Restaurant | Tokyo, Japan

Over our ten days in Japan we only encountered two other women wearing Hijabs. With less than 1% of Japanese residents being Muslim, this was not a common sight. As we walked down the street we would get the feeling we were being stared at, only to turn around and for that person to look away quickly. On that note, at no point did we ever feel isolated or threatened by these stares. They were looks of pure curiosity, nothing more.

After accidentally stumbling across a festival in Tokyo we were confronted with a lot of curious locals. They would point at our Hijabs and mutter a question in Japanese. I can only imagine they were asking us a question or maybe paying us a compliment. A word we got rather used to was Kawaii, meaning cute in Japanese.

Even though we had a few obstacles with finding suitable restaurants; We loved our time in Japan and even though there is only a small population of practicing Muslims, we were greeted with only curious and polite looks from the locals (a few requested to have photos with us!) and a ton of great memories from our short trip to this fast paced land.

Tokyo, Japan | 15 May 2015
Sanja Matsuri Festival | Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan | 15 May 2015

اضغط هنا لقراءة القصة بالعربية

~ Sondos Shapsogh