Upon arriving in Abu Dhabi, I did what I always do when temporarily unbound from the responsibilities of family and out on the prowl: I had a nap; and then went grocery shopping.

The Hypermarket is next door to the hotel, so I wandered around at 11 p.m. The place was bustling with young families, singles, and endless staff obsessed with cleaning. That seemed like a good sign.

I collected the usual basics for before- and after-meal snacking: berry juice, yogurt, Greek salad, tabbouleh, whole grain bread, Dairy Milk chocolate, and cheese (in North America it’s Extra-Old cheddar, in Australia it’s Extra Tasty, in the United Arab Emirates it’s Extra Mature).

Driving from Dubai to Abu Dhabi was eerily similar to driving from Tucson to Scottsdale, although Arizona has more hilly bits. Desert, gas stations, concrete monuments and groovy architecture.

Tim Hortons?

The venerable Canadian coffee and doughnut shop was everywhere. Can’t find one in Australia, can’t find one in the southern U.S., but they’re everywhere in UAE after opening their Dubai outlet in Sept. 2011. A local paper noted at the time, Tim Hortons is to Canadians what the falcon is to the UAE; an intrinsic part of the culture and an inescapable symbol of Canadian life.

I tried to explain to the driver who Tim Horton was. That didn’t go so well.

Tim Horton was a bruising (ice hockey) defenseman who won 4 Stanley Cups with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1960s. Born in 1930 in Cochrance, Ontario, Horton spent his formative years playing in mining communities surrounding Sudbury, Ontario (that’s in Canada; my sister and her family live up there). He got noticed by the Leafs organization and moved to Toronto when he was 17-years-old. He died in a car accident in 1974 after a 24-year National hockey League career
. Horton had a reputation for enveloping players who were fighting him in a crushing bear hug (sorta like my uncle, who played small-town hockey in Northern Ontario). Boston Bruins winger Derek Sanderson once bit Horton during a fight; years later, Horton's widow, Lori, still wondered why. "Well," Sanderson replied, "I felt one rib go, and I felt another rib go, so I just had—to, well, get out of there!” 


Tim Hortons Inc. was founded in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario by Canadian hockey player Tim Horton. In 1967 Horton partnered with investor Ron Joyce, who quickly took over operations and expanded the chain into a multi-million dollar franchise. There are almost 3,000 Tim Hortons in Canada, and another 50 in the U.S. The chain accounted for 22.6 per cent of all fast food industry revenues in Canada in 2005. Canada has more per-capita ratio of doughnut shops than any other country. In Canada, owning a Tim Hortons is like owning a license to print money (that’s the Tim Hortons sign in Cookstown, Ontario, north of Toronto, where my father is from)..

I never bought Tim Hortons coffee – I can make better stuff at home. But I will track down an UAE outlet and savor the nostalgia of a still-warm, sugar- encrusted apple fritter. Maybe even some Timbits – doughnut holes – just like the ones used to bribe my girls with to get to 6 a.m. hockey practices. I bribe 3-year-old Sorenne to her 7 a.m. swimming class in Brisbane with fresh melon. Different climate, different motivations.

The National reports that every sample of rocket salad leaves tested from 64 shops in Dubai and Sharjah was contaminated with high levels of potentially deadly E. coli bacteria, researchers have found.

The leaves - also called jarjeer, or arugula - came from outlets ranging from small stores to large supermarket chains. Millions of faecal coliform cells and hundreds of thousands of E. coli bacteria were found in samples of one gram, about the size of a small leaf.

The samples were analysed by Dr Dennis Russell, a researcher at the American University of Sharjah. After washing the leaves three times he still found hundreds of thousands of viable faecal coliform microorganisms per gram, and thousands of E. coli bacteria.

Washing with diluted chlorine bleach did not remove the bacteria.

Dr Russell's research is published in the current issue of the Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences.

Dr Tibor Pal, a professor of microbiology and immunology at United Arab Emirates University, said that although E. coli was not always harmful, high levels indicated faecal contamination and risk of other serious diseases.

Dr Russell said he had been unable to determine where the rocket leaves had been grown - whether they were from UAE farms or imported - but he said he suspected they all came from the same farm or a group of farms that had used liquified raw faeces for fertiliser rather than compost soil.
 

Sandeep Sequeira bought a can of Kimball baked beans from a grocery store in Bur Dubai on Wednesday morning.

"When I got home I opened the can and I spotted something weird. So I took a spoon, placed the spoon under what was bothering me and lifted the spoon. It was half a lizard. I was lucky enough that it was right on top of the can. I was going to eat half the can only. I can only imagine if it was at the bottom of the can."

Sequeira contacted the municipality and a food inspector was sent to investigate the matter (image, right, from Sandeep Sequeira, Gulf News Reader).

"The inspector met with me and took the can and the lizard so that they can test it," Sequeira said.

Ahmad Al Ali, head of the Food Inspection Section at Dubai Municipality, told Gulf News on Sunday,

"We have already pulled all Kimball baked bean cans with the same manufacture date and lot number as the one found to be contaminated."

When people ask if I speak other languages, I say, sure, I speak Canadian and American.

But from my WASPy roots I’ve grown to appreciate the role different languages have in making a global citizen. I took the lazy solution and travel with someone who knows languages.

In Dubai, more than 60 per cent of food workers in the capital who took hygiene training courses last year failed them, many because of language barriers.

Sure, most food safety training sucks, trying to make HACCP experts or microbiology geeks out of line cooks, but language can be a huge barrier. That’s why we have food safety infosheets in French, Spanish and Portuguese. We can do a bunch of other languages if someone wants them.

Stephen Pakenham-Walsh, a food-service consultant based in Abu Dhabi said relying on English was “short-sighted” on the part of food tutors.

Indians make up 65 per cent of the food industry workforce. Other Asian nationalities comprise 20 per cent of workers, with Arabs making up 12 per cent. The results indicate that the large majority of workers are not getting effective hygiene training.