I'm turning into a Ruski

It's official. I'm turning into a Ruski and there's not a thing I can do about it.

Where clothes are concerned, if it sparkles and glitters, I have to have it! Sparkly, glittery and dangly earrings, golden belts, lacy mini-dresses, snakeskin stilettos... There's a strong chance that in six months I'll be walking around in diamond-encrusted jeans and too tight halter neck tops (the quintessential uniform of Russian women in Dubai).

I guess you can't help what you love and a few days ago I bought these amazing snakeskin stiletto sandals. It was a battle of wills and my boyfriend actually left the shoe shop in a strop about them.

“They're hideous,” he told me, in no uncertain terms. “If you buy these shoes, we're getting a divorce.”

And yet as I pranced about in front of the mirror in these wonderfully glamorous shoes, I knew I had to have them.

My decision was helped by another customer, a Russian lady, who pointed at my feet and said, “those are NICE!”

“I know,” I sighed, and the decision was made.

When I first came to Dubai for my interview at the local newspaper as a fresh-faced 26-year-old, I was surprised when in just one day, several people asked if I was Russian.

The first was during a trip to the beach. I had just two days before flying back home, so my theory was that I should try and experience everything that Dubai has to offer – just in case I didn't get the job and wouldn't be coming back. So I headed off for the beach (I seemed to be the only woman there) and proceeded to go for a lovely swim all by myself.

Well as I dried myself off and walked off down the beach, a young kid of maybe 16 came running after me.

“Are you Russian?” he asked me.

“Russian? No. Sorry.”

This didn't seem to deter him and he kept up his pace beside me, asking me a few more times if I really might be Russian after all.

I got to the road, my hair still wet, and hailed a taxi to take me to one of the old market souqs for a few hours of shopping.

Well it was a bit of a weird taxi ride and thankfully I've never experienced anything like that since.

So the taxi driver starts asking me if I was Russian and by this stage I'm quite amused and thinking there must be someone in Russia who looks just like me.

He then tells me that he doesn't want to take me to the souq but wants to show me a quiet beach that he thinks I might like. Errrrr, how about NO!? Lol

He refuses to believe that I'm not Russian and also refuses to believe that I'm in Dubai for a job interview with a newspaper.

“Tell me where I'm from,” he asks me.

I reel off a few places – all of them wrong, and he tells me that unless I can guess where he is from, I am clearly a fake and couldn't be a “proper” journalist. The fact that up to that stage in my career I'd cut my teeth as an arts journalist didn't seem to matter.

Eventually he tells me he's from Afghanistan and shows me a picture of his wife – a beautiful, heavily made up but rather miserable looking woman who looked like she was about to burst into tears. He tells me he recently gave a lift to a German couple who were in Dubai on holiday and had a child but weren't married – God forbid! He asks me what I think about this, so of course I raise my eyebrows and say I think it is terrible... By this stage I'd figured there was a line of thought that was best not crossed.

By now I'm starting to get a sinister feeling from the guy who is still driving around the back roads and insisting on taking me to random places, so I raise my voice in a rather unladylike manner and say 'take me to the flipping souq or experience my wrath', or something along those lines.

As I hand him my taxi fare, he examines it closely and looks at me quizzically.

“Is this even real, or is it fake like you?” he asks me.

I raise my eyebrows and quickly jump out of the car – and boy was I relieved to be out of there!

Well it didn't put me off Dubai and I've never again had a taxi journey like that. Only when I got the job and moved to Dubai a couple of months later did my colleagues enlighten me that many Russian women in Dubai are prostitutes.

Ahhhhh, so that explained a few things.

I guess my going for a swim alone, and walking around with wet hair had raised a few eyebrows (even though I was wearing long sleeved baggy clothes). But Ruski, I wasn't... at least then.

Well I'm definitely not a hooker now either, but I am borrowing a few things from the glitz and glam of the Ruski persona.

What can I say, I'm a magpie at heart. Anything glittery and sparkly will be mine by hook or by crook!