Author: misschryss

Ejo #23 – Arranged Marriages in Dubai; Or How I Tried To Find Leewin A Suitable Wife

Learning About Dubai, , Leave a comment

Allow me to introduce you to Leewin Nainan, another colleague of mine.  His family is from Kerala, India and today he is turning 31 years old.  Leewin is funny, intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful, easy-going, handsome and nice to his mother.  He’s interesting, sporty and sociable.  He’s also really good at his job (which is to provide assistance and support to the air traffic controllers at Al Maktoum International Airport).  Working with him is a real pleasure as he’s very switched on – which makes my job a lot easier.  Leewin (pronounced LEE-ven) is currently single and well, to be honest, he’s quite a catch!

 

 

Does what I’ve written so far sound like a single’s ad?  Well, it kind of is.  You see, Leewin is looking for a wife.  Hang on, that’s not quite right.  It’s Leewin’s family that are looking for a wife for him.  Yep, Leewin is in the market for an arranged marriage.

 

Now, before I go on, I want to emphasise that not all marriages arranged by family are for the greater good.  Often, a young bride is betrothed against her will to a man as payment or reward or some other, less than savoury, reason.  I think everyone would agree that this is wrong.  But it would also be wrong to condemn arranged marriages on the basis of these incidents.  They are not the same thing and it’s not what I’m discussing here.

 

OK, so let me tell you a bit more about Leewin.  He was born and raised in Dubai to Indian parents.  Mum, Saramma, was a nurse.  Dad, Nainan, worked for the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA).  He has one brother and one sister, both older.  After graduating from high school, Leewin enrolled in a Bachelor of Commerce degree at a local university.  Sadly, in 1999, just six months into Leewin’s degree his father passed away and it was left to Leewin to support the family, meaning that he had to drop out of school (it was decided that it would make more sense for his older brother, who was in his final year of university, to finish his degree).  Leewin was able to get a job with DCA through his Dad’s connections and over the years he has gained experience in several different areas within the department.  His current role as an air traffic control assistant rounds off this experience, putting him in the unique position of having a broad overview of the entire system.  Coupled with his intelligence and ambition, I have no doubt that he’ll be very successful.

 

The pressure to get married started when Leewin was 25 years old.  But at that stage it was just gentle, nudging encouragement.  After all, his older brother had just married so there was no real rush.  Family members were just interested to know when he too would start looking for a wife.  Leewin, however, was in the first flush of romance with a girl he’d been friends with for a few years.  He was more interested in exploring that relationship than thinking about getting married.  Unfortunately though, it was doomed from the beginning as Leewin is Christian and his girlfriend was Muslim.  Neither of their families approved of the relationship because of their different religious beliefs.

Naturally, the topic of marriage was raised during the three years they were together, however in the end the pressure exerted by their families became too great and they broke up.  He was not welcome at her house, and if she wanted to spend time with him she had to lie to her family about where she was.  Leewin and his girlfriend loved each other but the strain just got too much and they decided to call it quits.  He’s been single for the last two years.

 

Over the years, the pressure to get married has intensified.  When Leewin turned 30 however, it escalated to the point where he was no longer being asked to get married, but being told.  He’s not too happy about that, but he is a good son and feels obligated to fulfil the wishes of his mother and their extended family.  If he refuses he risks being disowned and outcast, bringing shame on his mother.  It’d be considered a selfish act and the entire clan would be disappointed and humiliated.  So, he has agreed to go along with it.  His brother, who also now lives in Dubai, immediately sprang into action and registered Leewin to a number of matrimonial websites (check out www.m4marry.com to get an idea), the marriage equivalent of “online dating”.  The same premise applies.  You advertise yourself – your age, height, build, education, religion, profession, hobbies and interests.  And you can also specify what you are looking for in a prospective partner.  The only difference is that the “first date” does not involve the guy and girl meeting over coffee, or a candlelit dinner.  Instead, they meet accompanied by both families.  And as opposed to the Western version, talking about marriage and babies on a first date is NOT considered a social faux pas.  It is, in fact, encouraged.

 

So, whilst Leewin has acquiesced to his family’s demands that he actively search for a wife, he is steadfast in his determination that he do it his way.  He was not raised in the small town of Pathanapuram, Kerala with the attendant small town mentality.  He’s big-city, born and bred, and he’s been exposed to big city ideas, influenced by the modern, Western world.  So the woman he weds must also have the same liberal viewpoint (otherwise it couldn’t work, right?).  He’s insistent that the first meeting between him and the girl be arranged by the two of them, without any interference from her family.  Also, he’d like to meet the girl without their entourages, over a coffee or perhaps lunch.  This, to most people I know, seems perfectly reasonable.  However, the culture that Leewin is from deems it unacceptable.

 

Leewin has kindly shown me the profiles of a couple of the girls that have taken his fancy on the m4marry.com website.  But so far, he hasn’t had much luck.  When (as is customary) his brother made the initial, introductory phone call to the parents of one of the girls, they rejected his request for Leewin to contact her directly.  As far as Leewin is concerned, that’s instant disqualification.  He doesn’t want to marry into a family so restrictive.  His brother approached the family of another girl who’d caught Leewin’s eye but they rejected him because, even though he is Christian, he is not a “born again” Christian.  Huh?  It seems that the girls out there (or, more likely, their parents) are extraordinarily picky and demanding.  Fair enough – but sometimes their demands are unreasonable.  Almost all require that the future groom be university educated with the majority insisting on at least a Masters.  That’s fine.  But when they demand that the guy’s parents also be educated to this level, it’s not only silly but eliminates a lot of hopefuls (Leewin being one of them).  The irony is that a great many of these “desirably educated” men will end up as bank clerks, while Leewin (who only has a high school diploma) will almost certainly be successful at whatever he puts his mind to.  Ultimately though, he’s not bothered by the extreme conditional requirements as it simply buys him more time as a free man.

 

Leewin is not alone in his enforced quest to find a wife.  All his friends around his age are also now being “persuaded” to marry.  One friend recently went back home to Kerala to meet a girl that his parents had lined up.  After the meeting he told his family he’d need time to think about it but they told him that the girl’s parents had given him only two days to decide.  When those two days were over, his parents asked him again what he thought of her and he told them that she seemed nice.  Unbeknownst to him they took this to mean that he approved and they started proceedings for the marriage to go ahead.  By the time he found out, it was too late to back out.  The engagement ceremony is scheduled for this month and he is getting married in January.  He hopes that his quickly formed assessment of his future wife is accurate.  Too bad if it’s not.  (Incidentally, he found out afterwards that the reason her family had wanted an answer so quickly was that if he hadn’t been interested, they had another guy waiting in the sidelines.  If you think the Western dating scene is a meat market, you ain’t seen nothing!)

 

At a recent gathering of people he’s known since he was a child, Leewin was told by one older gentleman that if he wanted to attract a wife he would have to cut his hair (which he’s actually growing long).  His reply of “I don’t want to marry any of your daughters, so what do you care?” didn’t go down too well.  But the incident demonstrates that if his own people are so willing to judge him on the way he looks, any young woman’s family are likely to do the same.  If they can’t get past the long hair, they’ll never find out about his character, which is above reproach.  And unfortunately, the arranged marriage process allows for only a perfunctory (and thus shallow) examination of a potential partner’s attributes.  Looks, education and interests are usually considered just a starting point where I come from.  It’s then normal to take the time to actually learn more about that person before committing to marrying them.  But in Leewin’s world, it is these characteristics which decide whether a marriage will go ahead or not.  Learning about your partner occurs after the wedding.

 

Is there any way of saying which is the better method for forming a union between two people?  It depends on your definition of a successful marriage.  If it is to join two families together, and to further develop and strengthen that coupling by having children, then arranged marriages probably make a lot of sense – you aren’t just marrying one person but their entire family.  If, however, your notion of a successful marriage is to find a soul mate, someone to share the rest of your life with and (if you so choose) to make your own family with, then the very idea of someone picking your partner for you is abhorrent.  In the West it is seen as a freedom and a right to choose for yourself.

 

And that, fundamentally, is where the two schools diverge.  In Leewin’s world, marriage is not a selfish endeavor where you get to select someone because you are attracted to them (the way they look or the kind of person that they are).  It is a pursuit for the greater good of the entire family (taking into consideration, of course, that if you have common interests and backgrounds you will, over time and with effort (yes, effort!), come to love each other).  We all know that romantic love does not last.  The honeymoon period is just that, a period.  Even the most in-love couple in the world will need to compromise and work at the relationship in order to make a marriage last the distance.  Euphoria and lust are pleasant but they aren’t enough.

 

What the arranged marriage does is remove the trippy flirtation of those initial, heady emotions.  When they’re taken out of the equation, both types of marriages are left with the same amount of work to succeed.  But in the West, we are raised to crave those emotions and to believe that they are in fact what constitutes love.   When it fades, we sometimes believe that the love has also faded, and the union is doomed.  And whilst an arranged marriage has no guarantee of success, the incidence of divorce is significantly lower than the 30-40% divorce rate in countries such as USA, UK, Europe and Australia.

 

I have divided Leewin and myself into the very different categories of East and West but it’s not entirely accurate to do so.  Just one generation ago, in Greece, my Mum was faced with the prospect of an arranged marriage.  Let me tell you her story.  My mother comes from a very poor family that lived in a small village in Greece.  As a young girl her family couldn’t afford to send her to school so she worked as a shepherdess, tending the family’s sheep.  From the time she was about fifteen, her father would bring men home to look her over as a prospective wife.  At first she didn’t realise that was what was happening, but soon her mother started asking her what she thought of the men.  My Mum retorted that she thought nothing of them – they were old.  And ugly to boot!

 

By the time she was sixteen though, her parents were desperate to marry her off as young as possible because they didn’t have the money for a dowry (which it was necessary for the bride’s family to provide to the groom’s).  My Mum would pretend to forget that a man had been scheduled to visit, and stay at her cousin’s house as late as possible chatting over whatever it was sixteen year olds chatted about back then.

 

When my mother turned seventeen her father told her, in no uncertain terms, that she must accept the marriage proposal offered from an older business man who was involved in a deal to buy some of the family’s sheep.  If she didn’t accept, they told her, they were going to have to ship her off to Australia so she could earn more money to send home.  My mother was angry, sad and scared but she decided she would rather immigrate to a strange country than marry a disgusting old dude.

 

The day she left her home to go to Australia she sat in the taxi, crying her eyes out.  Her father took her in his arms and told her she didn’t have to go.  My Mum just looked at him and said, “I’ll be OK,” before being driven away.  It took many years to heal the fractured relationship with her parents.  She felt betrayed and abandoned by them, and they had thought she was acting selfishly.  They were all wrong.  My mother’s parents loved her but they didn’t have the means to marry her without a dowry and they didn’t want her to end up poor, alone and unhappy.

 

Whilst it must have been a horrible experience for my mother to go through at such a young age, I must admit I’m glad that she said no to the arranged marriage and went to Australia –after all, if she hadn’t I wouldn’t be here today and you wouldn’t be reading this.  I think we should all be grateful, really!!!

 

Leewin is now in the unenviable position of having to fulfil an obligation to his family to get married which clashes with his own desire to marry someone of his own choosing in his own time.  This month’s ejo serves not only to explore the topic of arranged marriages but also to put Leewin’s story out there in the hope that perhaps a young, modern, Indian girl with liberal views and realistic expectations will notice him and give him a chance.  That way, both his and his family’s needs can be met, and everyone will be happy.  He really is a great guy and will make some lucky girl a wonderful husband.  If you think that girl might be you, please get in touch with me (via a comment) and I’d be happy to (just this once) play matchmaker.

 

 

Ejo #22 – Our Flight To Madrid, Spain (Or; How Emirates Airline Completely Screwed Us Over, And Yet Managed To Redeem Themselves As Well)

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I’ve been known to have some zany stuff happen to me.  Of course, nothing comes even close to the travails of Dangerous Doug, but still, I’m prone to predicaments.  Our recent flight from Dubai to Spain was quite an adventure.  Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8am, so we left the house at 5am.  We like to get to the airport the full three hours before a flight, to avail ourselves of the free champagne on offer in the Emirates Silver Lounge.  Yes, even at 5am!  Don’t look at me that way!  It’s free Veuve Clicquot; you drink it no matter what time of day it is!

 

Anyway, things went awry from the moment we checked in.  We were advised that it was a very busy flight and we should proceed to a different counter to drop off our bags and collect our boarding passes.  This seemed odd, but we casually sauntered over to the other counter to complete the check in process.  When we got there we were asked for our paper tickets.  I think I guffawed.  Paper tickets??  Was it 1997?  No, we said, we don’t have paper tickets – we’ve already checked in and just need to drop off our (already tagged) bags and pick up boarding passes.

 

The lady behind the counter then looked at us funny and asked, “Chryss and David?”  We looked at each other warily and nodded.  She plastered a smile on her face and told us that the flight had been overbooked and we may get bumped to the next day’s flight (there’s only one a day).  She then proposed a pretty sweet deal – if we voluntarily took the next day’s flight, we would each be given another ticket to Madrid (valid for 12 months) – for free!  We asked for time out to confer and entered into deep, frantic discussion, quickly weighing up the pros and cons (like some weird game show).  We came to the mutual conclusion that even though it was a tempting offer we’d prefer to take our chances and try to get on this flight.  After all, we had already booked (and paid for) a connecting flight to Barcelona, accommodation and a fancy dinner that night.

 

The lady looked at us with a glint of admiration in her eyes and directed us to the standby counter.  As we turned to leave, she whispered conspirationally, “I hope you get upgraded to Business”.  Gee, I thought, that’d be nice but I just hope we get on the frigging flight!

 

So we went and registered, along with dozens of other people (all bound for different destinations around the universe) and  waited.  And waited.  And waited.  A couple of hours of waiting later we had to accept that a pre-departure glass of champagne wasn’t looking good.  In fact, it was looking like we’d have to hail ourselves a taxi and go back home.  Having just finished working a night shift, David was visibly starting to flag.  He’d been awake for about 24 hours.  I’d had only three hours sleep and was beginning to feel rather fatigued myself.

 

All but resigned to spending another night in Dubai, I figured I might as well try to find out what was going on.  Our flight was due to leave in 35 minutes and I didn’t hold up much hope but thought it might be worth asking anyway.  I approached the busy counter, jostling my way through the throngs of people and said to the lady, “Madrid?”  She asked my name, typing it into her computer.  When she looked up at me I immediately knew we were on the flight.  The skies opened and the sun shone onto her face as she smiled and said, “Bring your bags!”  The disgruntled crowd parted as we loaded our luggage onto the weighing station.  She printed off our boarding passes and handed them to us – 10F and 10J.  Business class, baby!  Woohoo!

 

It was now OK that we’d missed out on Lounge time because we could get as much free champagne as we wanted on the flight!!  Seriously, I would have been happy seated in economy (yep, even between some morbidly obese guy with a BO problem and a baby with seven hour screaming capacity).  We were on our way and that’s all that mattered!  Business class was just a bonus.

 

We rushed to the departure gate and were the last ones shooed onto a bus which took us to the aeroplane.  On the 20 minute ride David actually started looking pale with exhaustion.  I wasn’t feeling great either.  But there were no complaints out of us!  We were going to Spain!

 

When we finally got onboard, it was already 15 minutes past our scheduled departure time.  We were then delayed an additional 90 minutes because of an air-conditioning problem.  We happily passed the time sipping champagne and, eventually, we took off for our seven hour journey.  It did cross my mind that the three hour buffer we’d allowed ourselves in Madrid to make our connection to Barcelona might have dwindled a little bit, but I never really considered the possibility of missing it.  I’ve been close a few times but in all my years of air travel I have never actually missed a flight.

 

So, we arrived in Madrid with about an hour and fifteen minutes to catch our domestic flight.  Madrid airport is enormous and, unfortunately, we were departing from a different terminal to the one we’d arrived in.  But first we had to jump on the airport monorail for the ten minute ride to Baggage Claim.  Once there, we grabbed our bags and made a dash to the information desk to find out how to get from Terminal 4 to Terminal 2.  The information guy told us, in tortured Spanglish, to catch the “green shuttle bus”.  With time ticking we ran outside, carting our bags, and couldn’t believe our luck when we saw a green shuttle bus waiting to depart.  We jumped on just as it pulled away from the curb and we both breathed audible sighs of relief – we might just make the flight with 50 minutes left until departure.

 

A few minutes into the bus ride, I looked around at the other passengers and noticed that, oddly, no-one else was carrying any luggage.  A bad feeling ensued.  The bus eventually pulled into a large car park and everyone disembarked.  We just stood there, bewildered, tired and confused.  We must have looked quite pathetic because one guy came back to inform us that we had somehow got on the bus to the staff car park.  My heart sank like an anvil.  When we told him where we wanted to go he very kindly directed us to another (green) bus parked up ahead and told us to catch that back to Terminal 4 whereupon we should catch a different (green) bus with T1/T2/T3/T4 on the front.  As we shuttled back to the airport we started to worry for the first time that we actually wouldn’t make our flight.  I felt really bad for David who had been up for over 30 hours by now.  Still, we had to try to make that flight to Barcelona.  We weren’t giving up.

 

Back at Terminal 4, we jumped on the next green bus to Terminal 2 (yes, we made sure that was, indeed, its destination) and arrived there five minutes later.  There were still forty minutes before departure time.  We’d formulated a plan that David would put all the luggage on a trolley and that I’d race ahead to check in and get them to hold the flight for us (brilliant plan, no?).  I started following the signs to Check-In: around a corner, up some stairs, around another corner, up two escalators, down a travelator, around another corner – wondering the entire time where the hell check-in was.  Eventually I found it and waited in line while David caught up.  When it was finally our turn, we breathlessly asked the check in guy about our flight.  He looked at us with compassion in his eyes and shook his head.  Check in for that flight was closed.

 

I had now officially missed my first ever flight.  It was not a very good feeling at all.  Unfortunately, all remaining flights that day were solidly booked up.  We tried the other domestic carriers in the terminal – same thing.  No flights left today.  We were told that the only other option was Iberian Airlines, which operated out of the International Terminal.  Yep, we had to trudge back to Terminal 4 on that ridiculous lime green bus.  We were certainly becoming experts at negotiating the Madrid Airport transport system.

 

Back in Terminal 4 we approached the Iberian Air ticket counter and were told that it would be better for us to go to “Puente Aero”.  Hmmm, OK, sure.  Why not?  It just added to the comedy factor at this point (I could almost hear the Benny Hill theme song in my ears).  We found the Puente Aero counter and plaintively asked if they had any tickets to Barcelona.  When the answer came back “Yes” we were taken off guard.  Perhaps our luck had changed.  We were so happy that we didn’t mind paying the full fare of €460 (though it does sting a bit in retrospect, especially as the original tickets cost only €70).   The next flight was boarding immediately so we got right on the plane, relieved to be on our way at last.

 

We got to Barcelona airport OK but the fun and games were not over.  When we got to Baggage Claim we couldn’t find our flight number on the display board.  This rang alarm bells, of course, but we were so tired that we just followed everyone else from our flight to Baggage Carousel #15.  We figured it might just be a printing error on our boarding passes.  Haha, how optimistic of us!  Half an hour later, when everyone else had collected their luggage and ours was nowhere to be seen, we figured we’d better ask someone what on earth was happening.  I certainly wouldn’t have been surprised if it transpired at this point that our luggage was on its way to Iceland.

 

We asked around and were told that we’d have to go to the dedicated Puento Aero baggage carousel to collect our luggage.  Naturally.  Where was that?  Why, in the next terminal, of course!  This time it was only walking distance so we dragged ourselves, like a couple of zombies, across the airport wondering when these shenanigans would end.  When we got to the special Puento Aero region of the airport we were shuffled back into the airport (huh?), through the x-ray machines and security.  What the hell?  We went in and then right back out again (our minds boggling, the entire time) and, lo and behold, there were our lonely looking bags waiting for us.

 

Exhausted, but happy, we grabbed a taxi and checked into our accommodation without a hitch.  We also managed to get to the restaurant on time, and had an amazing 7 course degustation dinner.  Unfortunately, we only remember a few of the dishes as we kept dozing off during the meal – and no amount of kicking each other under the table helped.

 

There were bruises the next day, but that night we slept the sleep of the dead.

Ejo #21 – Dangerous Doug Narrowly Avoids Death (By Shopping Trolley)

Dangerous Doug, Learning About Dubai, Leave a comment

This month’s ejo is a relatively short one as David and I have been travelling (yes again!) – this time to Spain for three weeks.  I’ll be writing a bit about that in a future ejo but in the meantime, if you are interested in checking out my new photographic series, titled “The Balconies Of Madrid”, you can do so here: The Balconies Of Madrid.

 

In other news, you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve been chatting to my friend and colleague, Doug, about another of his interesting “life experiences”.  When he was living in the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah several years ago, he would often drive into Dubai to do his weekly grocery shop, as the supermarkets here are larger and better stocked.  One hot summer morning, about ten years ago, he made the 20 minute commute to the Carrefour supermarket at Deira City Centre Mall – shopping list in hand, ready to stock up for the coming week.

 

He shopped up a storm, filling his shopping trolley with groceries.  Walking past the fish section, he noticed that they had a really good discount on fresh salmon – his favourite!!!  He jumped at the chance to buy a whole (three foot long) salmon as, even though he loved it, he rarely bought it since it was usually so expensive.  He was very excited at the prospect of several salmon dinners, and smiled contentedly as the fishmonger cut up the fish into 25 steaks, wrapping the whole lot up in paper.

 

After picking up a few more items, he made his way to the register and paid for his shopping, pushing his fully laden trolley out of the supermarket into the busy mall.  Now, Doug assures me that in those days, in Dubai, you could take a trolley onto a step escalator – there were no poles barring the way.  So he did what he always did, which was push the trolley onto the down escalator, holding the front of the trolley up.  Usually this worked.  But for some reason his trolley was fuller and heavier than usual and he was having a bit of trouble holding it up (maybe it was the extra 5kgs of salmon?).  No problem, he thought, and very carefully lowered the front of the trolley down until it rested on the step below – which was quite a steep angle but made it much easier to hold.  Problem solved.

 

He made the journey to the bottom of the escalator without incident.  However (and you were kinda hoping there’d be a ‘however’, weren’t you?), when he got to the bottom, before he had a chance to lift up the front of the shopping cart, it jammed in the lip of the escalator and got stuck.  The escalator, of course, kept moving.  Somehow, in attempting to lift the heavy trolley up and over the lip, Doug lost his balance and fell down, and before he knew it he was carried under the trolley by the force of the forward movement.  In a split second he was trapped under the trolley with the metal bar pushing up against his neck – unable to push the trolley up and over his body and inexorably being dragged forward by the moving escalator.  He saw his life flash before his eyes.

 

Luckily for Doug (and for us all, really), a guy who had been about to step onto the other escalator going up, noticed that Doug was about to meet his maker and jumped over the partition onto the other side.  He lifted the trolley up, freeing both it and Doug from almost certain death (or at least serious injury).  Our friend was unceremoniously dumped in a quivering heap with several of his groceries at the bottom of the escalator.  By Doug’s estimation, if the guy had been another two seconds it may have been too late.

 

He profusely (and sheepishly) thanked the good Samaritan and, quickly gathering up his strewn groceries, got the hell out of there to avoid any more unwanted attention.  His whole body was shaking with adrenalin as he pushed the trolley to his little Astra and unloaded the shopping into the boot.  He carefully drove home, still quivering and thanking his lucky stars for his narrow escape.  He couldn’t help running the scenario in his mind, over and over again – thinking of just how close he had come to perhaps dying under a supermarket trolley in a crowded mall.

 

When he got home he tried to shake the whole thing off and, even though it was just after lunchtime he poured himself a soothing glass of scotch to help calm his nerves.  He’d just had a near-death experience after all.  It was medicinal.  Anyway, he spent the rest of the day relaxing and taking it easy.

 

The next day Doug was rostered to work an afternoon shift, so after lunch he went down to his car to head over to the airport.   Approaching the car park he noticed a foul smelling odour, but thought nothing of it.  It was the middle of summer after all and sometimes the heat makes things pretty stinky.  As he got closer to his car, however, the stench became more and more unbearable.  And when he opened his car door and sat inside, he slowly came to the realisation that the smell was coming from inside the vehicle.  He got out and opened the boot after it finally dawned on him that, in his shaken state the day before, he had neglected to unload his groceries from the car.  What he could smell was the decaying funk of five kilograms of putrid salmon that had been left in the car for close to a day and a half.  And not just the salmon, but fruit and vegetables, milk, cheese and yoghurt.  Everything perishable had gone terribly, terribly off in the 40°C (104°F) heat.  Doug threw the rancid contents of his boot away and drove to work, gagging the whole way.  In fact it took close to a week of driving with the windows down to get rid of the smell (and it never really totally disappeared).

 

Two weeks later, Doug went back to the mall only to find that barrier poles had been placed in front of the escalators to prevent trolleys being pushed onto them.  Doug reckons some security guard had seen his incident on CCTV and initiated the safety measure.  Not that he would have been in a hurry to repeat his performance anyway, but it was probably a very good idea!