With our graduation coming up, the girls in my year are showing a solicitous interest in what everybody else is going to wear so that they can buy something prettier. Grad, or senior prom, is a perfect excuse to indulge your fantasies of looking like a princess or trying out salon treatments such as fish pedicures without seeming like a preening narcissist. Everybody else is doing the same thing.
The prom dress is no longer just a nice gown you happened to buy. It is an institution that clothing giants have mercilessly cashed in upon. We will resort to all sorts of methods - tantrums, coercion, eight-hour shopping trips - to obtain the perfect prom dress (and clutch and shoes) for our special day.
My long-suffering dad was on a business trip to London recently and inspiration struck. London for me has one meaning: Oxford Street. A little Googling later, I had compiled a list of possible dresses from Coast, Miss Selfridge and Jane Norman.
The web links were emailed to him so that he could buy the dresses in London. He then had to painstakingly read out stuff like "peach chiffon with ruched bodice and crystal detailing" to salesperson after salesperson who all shook their heads and regretted "to tell you, sir, that this item is out of stock".
Next stop, Mall of the Emirates - a bit closer to home. We couldn't find anything appropriate in Debenhams so we contemplated the Fashion Dome. Its array of high-end stores makes you instantaneously aware that you have wandered into forbidden territory, with your split ends, no red soles under your stilettos and, well, no stilettos. A chill dread settles; can you be prosecuted for trespassing? Out of sheer curiosity, though, we took a tentative step into Gucci.
Five assistants chorused "Good evening", bowing and showing us in into the private recesses of the store. They were all exceedingly polite, taller and better dressed than we were, with whiter teeth and sweet smiles. I'd expected them to be slightly intimidating - they outdid Godzilla. We escaped as quickly as we could.
In Dior, when we asked for evening dresses, we were shown a shapely black number with hideous metal protrusions covering it like chickenpox. "Hmm," I nodded sagely, "Very ... avant-garde."
"You'll stand out," the assistant agreed.
"May I ask the price?"
"Just Dh45,000."
"Ah. Oh, ah. Well, that's reasonable. Just what I'd expect for this masterpiece of couture. But, er, it's not quite what I'm looking for." The assistant was looking more and more suspicious every second, so my friend yelled: "We'll come again!" and we practically sprinted out, falling over each other.
We spent a pleasant moment admiring Harvey Nichols's display, where the dummies' heads were replaced with those of giant chameleons. Who comes up with this stuff, anyway?
By the end of the expedition, our heads hurt and none of us had a prom dress - or any dress - for that matter. It was finally Splash that saved the day by providing calming retail therapy with discounts of up to 60 per cent, although still no dress.
Ah, well. No one's mistaking us anytime soon for the target readers of The National's Luxury supplement.
Lavanya Malhotra is a 17-year-old student in Dubai
The National photo project
Chris Whiteoak, a photographer at The National, spent months taking some of Jacqui Allan's props around the UAE, positioning them perfectly in front of some of the country's most recognisable landmarks. He placed a pirate on Kite Beach, in front of the Burj Al Arab, the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland at the Burj Khalifa, and brought one of Allan's snails (Freddie, which represents her grandfather) to the Dubai Frame. In Abu Dhabi, a dinosaur went to Al Ain's Jebel Hafeet. And a flamingo was taken all the way to the Hatta Mountains. This special project suitably brings to life the quirky nature of Allan's prop shop (and Allan herself!).
Gender pay parity on track in the UAE
The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.
"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."
Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.
"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.
As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.
Cases of coronavirus in the GCC as of March 15
Saudi Arabia – 103 infected, 0 dead, 1 recovered
UAE – 86 infected, 0 dead, 23 recovered
Bahrain – 210 infected, 0 dead, 44 recovered
Kuwait – 104 infected, 0 dead, 5 recovered
Qatar – 337 infected, 0 dead, 4 recovered
Oman – 19 infected, 0 dead, 9 recovered
Day 3 stumps
New Zealand 153 & 249
Pakistan 227 & 37-0 (target 176)
Pakistan require another 139 runs with 10 wickets remaining
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
Country-size land deals
US interest in purchasing territory is not as outlandish as it sounds. Here's a look at some big land transactions between nations:
Louisiana Purchase
If Donald Trump is one who aims to broker "a deal of the century", then this was the "deal of the 19th Century". In 1803, the US nearly doubled in size when it bought 2,140,000 square kilometres from France for $15 million.
Florida Purchase Treaty
The US courted Spain for Florida for years. Spain eventually realised its burden in holding on to the territory and in 1819 effectively ceded it to America in a wider border treaty.
Alaska purchase
America's spending spree continued in 1867 when it acquired 1,518,800 km2 of Alaskan land from Russia for $7.2m. Critics panned the government for buying "useless land".
The Philippines
At the end of the Spanish-American War, a provision in the 1898 Treaty of Paris saw Spain surrender the Philippines for a payment of $20 million.
US Virgin Islands
It's not like a US president has never reached a deal with Denmark before. In 1917 the US purchased the Danish West Indies for $25m and renamed them the US Virgin Islands.
Gwadar
The most recent sovereign land purchase was in 1958 when Pakistan bought the southwestern port of Gwadar from Oman for 5.5bn Pakistan rupees.
