.: The Red Brick – Dubai College's Student Newspaper :.

Within D.C, there is an abundance of talent. Round every corner is a boy or girl who could very well grow up to be a world leader, a talented musician, an artist or a sportsman. Without exception, one extremely talented student within our school is Rob Miller: a fantastic singer, guitarist and songwriter with a unique style who deserves to be heard. Rob is extremely humble about his talent which makes him all the more special and he was kind enough to talk to the newspaper about his original songs and his feelings towards music in general.

How old were you when music began having an impact in your life?

I must have been about 13 and a half because, for Christmas, my parents and I went half and half on a new guitar. I started off with having some lessons but didn’t really take to them so I decided to teach myself. I focused on looking at learning the basic chords and things like that and then for the harder pieces, I watched the artists playing on YouTube videos so that I could pick up the music that way.

Was there something in particular that influenced you to start?

Can’t say that I am sure what influenced me in the first place but I had always had it in my mind that I wanted to play an instrument and the guitar appealed to me. My neighbor had a broken, 3 string guitar and you could say that I just really enjoyed the instrument even when it was broken like that.

You have already made so many positive steps towards getting yourself heard. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Touring and performing for live audiences?

Well obviously I would love to tour and get the chance to perform my songs in front of people but I think my music will stay as more of a hobby and an interest- performing at open mics and such. It’s up to people to decide how good I am but I’m not counting on anything like that and I’ve never been sure if I’m quite good enough. I doubt I’ll ever stop playing because it’s my way of unwinding and having fun but my music hasn’t influenced my decisions about Universities or anything. I have my own recording equipment so music facilities didn’t play any major part in my choice.

Those who know you are aware of your love of Newton Faulkner- any favourite songs by him?

A pretty impossible question but I would have to say at the moment, the final track on his new album called ‘I’m not giving up yet’. I think it’s special because normally he uses loads of different instruments on his album like strings and bass and such but this song is just on acoustic guitar which makes it work so well. It’s just such a meaningful song and has a great vocal spectrum which actually makes it quite hard for me to sing.

You have a big fan base within Dubai. How many are there exactly?

On YouTube, I have just over 250 following my music and then on Facebook, over 500. It’s not as much as other YouTube artists but I am very pleased with the support I get from people both in and out of the school community.

What is your new C.D made up of?

It’s made up of my own original material, so, songs where I have written the original music and the words. I am planning on releasing a cover album but that would be for free. It would be a good way for people who don’t know me to hear what I can do for free and then decide whether or not they would want to spend the money on my original work. It’s also because I wouldn’t feel right making money from songs that other people have written.

What is your favourite song that you have covered?

I recorded the duet ‘Falling Slowly’ with Tara Mehranzabad which was really good fun and we put in lots of different things like piano and strings, so I would have to say that was my favourite.

And what about your songs; do you have a favourite?

Out of my songs, if any it would have to be ‘Love Song for No One’. It’s probably because I just had a lot of fun doing it. It was played with me on Guitar and Dylan Price on Drums and it started off as a bit of improvisation and just ended up sounding really good.

Rob’s C.D has been released. It’s called ‘Good Enough’ and can be purchased on Amazon and there is no doubt that he has what it takes to affect people with his music and this is not the last we have heard of Rob Miller.

Lily Schuck

Theatre review – A Halloween night out

Plot

Eil Marsh House stands tall, gaunt and isolated, surveying the endless flat marshes beyond the Nine Lives Causeway, somewhere on England’s bleak East Coast. Here Mrs Alice Drablow lived – and died – alone.

Young Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is ordered by his firm to travel up from London to attend her funeral and arrange her papers. At first Kipps is quite unaware of the tragic secrets which lie behind the house’s shuttered windows. He only has a terrible sense of unease. And then, he glimpses a young woman with a wasted face, dressed all in black. Who is she? Why is she there? He asks questions, but the locals refuse to talk about the woman in black, or even to acknowledge her existence at all. So, Arthur Kipps has to wait until he sees her again, and she slowly reveals her identity to him – and her terrible purpose.

Years later, when Kipps chooses to tell his story, he approaches a theatre producer who creates a performance of this story within the play itself. Therefore ‘The Woman in Black’ is almost a play within a play where scenes constantly swap between rehearsals and the performance.

Review

While dressed up children crowded doorsteps and the less zealous Halloween enthusiasts rocked the night away at the Kings of Leon Concert, I was queuing up at the Madinat Theatre ticket booth, spending all my money on watching a show that frankly I had never really heard of. The one thing I knew about ‘The Woman in Black’ was that it was ‘scary’ or meant to be at least. But to be honest with you, I was sceptical about how a play starring two men working with a minimalistic set could possibly impact an audience so much as to leave them ‘shaking with fear’ as claim the quotes on the programme. Even some films fail to truly terrify viewers and they have the advantage of cinematography, gory special effects and tantalising real life settings. I deemed it impossible for two men on a stage to possibly create their desired effect on an audience.

I don’t think I could have been more wrong.

When first stepping into the theatre I was already encapsulated by a false sense of security, the lighting was warm and luxurious, caressing the hustle and bustle of laughing people dodging others in the aisles, excited for the horror filled spectacular still to come. It was not long before the whole theatre was dark and the audience were caught dead in their seats.

As soon as the actors spoke, their talent emulated from within them and they engaged every member of the audience through every line they spoke or action they took. Even throughout the long silences I was gripped, suspended with curiosity and tension as their ghost story was slowly unravelled before my very eyes.

The tone at first was humourous, where the light hearted relationship between Mr Kipps and the theatre producer instigated modest giggles among the audience, driving them into a sense of reassurance that was soon to be shattered by the latter stages of the play. Their chemistry and presence stole my focus, especially when actually role-playing Mr Kipp’s story. I was so concentrated in their actions that I almost failed to notice the third member of the cast hovering right behind me. Black, everything hidden but a white, ruined face and decrepit eyes. The Woman in Black.  Her subtle presence was eerie and hardly acknowledged in Act 1 which made her that much more mysterious and frightening. She could be anywhere and you could be completely unaware of it.

Act 2 brought horrific surprises, and although I sat still and shaking in my seat, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the action in front of me or block my ears when terrible screams and sound effects pulsed throughout my body. The actors were so convincing in their parts, maintaining this despite the fact they had to multirole that I felt so connected to the story, and found it hard to imagine that the Woman in Black was just a regular person with costume and make up.  The set was cleverly manoeuvred and designed as there was no point where the audience saw stage crew come on stage and change the set. To the viewer’s perspective it seemed to just appear as if from nowhere. This is true of the child’s room which the Woman in black haunted, where a rocking chair seemed to rock repeatedly by itself without any visible form of human interaction.

Not only did the direction and actor’s performances in the play completely stagger the audience, but the twists and turns in the story left us frozen in our seats and strongly impacted by the terrifying atmosphere surrounding us. In my case this fear even managed to follow me home that night, despite my scepticism from before, and my dreams were haunted by screaming children and a woman with a white wasted face.

Lucie Turner

“Lost.” This is probably the way many shoppers saw themselves the first time they visited The Dubai Mall, one of the Emirate’s latest attempts to be the first, the biggest and, in general, the best. After opening just over a year ago on the 4^th of November 2008, I’m pleased to say that every one of its 750,000 visitors a week has eventually made their way home again.

At over 12 million square feet, the size of 50 football fields, there are any number of places where you can lose yourself in this maze. The first time I went, I seriously considered taking Hansel and Gretel’s advice and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to the car but I curbed this desire and instead set off into the big, bad mall completely unsure of where I was going and where I’d just been.

Finally, I emerged from that labyrinth completely exhausted after traipsing around the mall for what seemed like hours (which is unusual for me as I love to shop and I never ‘traipse’ when doing so) however, I was also completely and utterly amazed. Despite being so large that it would take several days and a fully planned expedition to cover the entire shopping centre, what I have seen of it the many times I’ve been there is simply astonishing. Although I’m not an expert, I can pretty confidently say there aren’t any other malls in the world where after shopping you can dive with sharks, ice skate, ride indoor rollercoasters, watch otters ‘frolicking’ and eat your own body weight in sweets all in the same day.

Therefore, even though The Dubai Mall has been the cause of many a blister and that even after the many, many times that I’ve been there I still occasionally find myself- well, that’s the problem, I don’t really know where, I think it’s fair to say that it’s incredible. Yes, it is a maze but it’s most definitely an amazing one.

Georgina O’Mahoney

As a training centre for special needs, Al-Noor has been helping children in Dubai since 1981. With professional and effective training programmes, the school provides its students with the best possible facilities in order to aid them adapt to society.

Dubai College students have been volunteering year after year to assist the teachers with the students and so this year I, along with a number of other year 12 students, travelled to Al-Noor as a helper to support the instructors with the students. We were allocated into different areas, which we could choose to help in, and noticed that the school provided a range of classes from juniors to seniors and from baking to sports. I chose to help in the ‘work placement’ class where students above 18 were trained in working skills such as typing and writing letters. This was the first time I was surrounded and communicated with ‘handicapped’ people and I felt it was an interesting experience. Although, they had the appearance of an adolescent, each had trouble with something that we would have learnt as a child. Sometimes, I helped them write a simple letter, and at other times, I would watch them type simple words into the computer and make sure they didn’t get any wrong, congratulating them with a ‘thumbs up’ and a smile every time they finished a line.

It was surprising and heartbreaking to see these children, and learn that they had never experienced the same things as we had. Simple things, that we never think about when we do them and never think of as being an important part of our lives, such as being able to walk, are the things that these students need help to experience. Some had never felt the different textures that we had felt when we first learnt to walk and although we would dismiss them as being insignificant, they were still embedded in the back of our minds and we knew instantly what kind of surface it was. These children wouldn’t know that marble was smooth and carpet was rough and that some surfaces grew hot or cold depending on the weather. They would not know the thrill and fatigue of running and some of them probably never will. However, the fact that there are people willing to teach kids all of these familiar and seemingly simple aspects of life has an enormously positive impact on their lives.

Al-Noor is not considered a ‘hospital’ for ‘special’ children, but a school with students. It not only helps children with special needs, but it also constantly reminds us of our privileges, even in the most simplest form, and that we should be grateful for them every day.

Chae-Yoon Kim

The symptoms of ‘swine flu’ are the same as ordinary flu, which means that some people could have already had the virus without realising.  I, on the other hand, being a great hypochondriac went to the doctors and discovered that I “probably had swine flu.”  However, when I told others, the word “probably” sometimes slipped from memory.

Whenever my brother heard of a case of swine flu (H1N1 virus) in Dubai, previous to mine, he would freak out. So, imagine his reaction when I found out I had it; he didn’t come near me for a week and, in the unfortunate event of having to see me, I was forced to wear a mask. However, in fairness to him, whenever he had heard it mentioned previously, it would be shortly followed by a statistic of how many people the virus had killed.  This was the primary objective of the media at the time, to inform us of the growing death toll, whereas they should have been focusing on the fact that it is just like a regular flu.

Egypt had appeared to have panicked the most, even more than my brother, after planning to slaughter 300,000 pigs despite the fact that no one had yet contracted the disease in Egypt. As well as the fact that the virus is not contracted by pigs. This forced the world health organisation to stop using the term ‘swine flu’ to avoid further confusion and therefore further save many pigs lives.

However, it has now become less of a scare, mainly because people are aware that swine flu is no more harmful than regular flu. The reason for such a huge scare was not the severity of the virus, but the fact that it had been newly contracted and no one had heard of it before. Nevertheless, it is important to ensure that when you sneeze or cough, cover your mouth (which you should be doing anyway) and wash your hands regularly!

By Lauren MacDonald