It's the stuff they don't censor that always makes me laugh

Living in the UAE is interesting for a thousand reasons, but I'm not sure I will ever get used the random cuts that are made on television shows. I am always left saying 'hey!' at kisses that last one second – the finale of Bridget Jones' Diary, for example, I know that kiss went on forever – or whenever two people who were talking suddenly end up sweaty and laying down. A friend told me the word "Hanukkah" was cut out of an entire episode of Friends, the one where Ross can't get a Santa suit so he dresses up as "the Holiday Armadillo", making it extra hilarious because he just mouths it over and over.

But I giggle at all the other stuff that slips through. Like in a hip clothing shop, where the blaring music is full of swear words and sexy talk. Or the commercial with a woman strolling through her living room clad in a thong. Although the Sex and the City movie never played here, I managed to find a graphic copy of a book issued to go along with it, complete with an in-the-buff picture of Samantha's next door neighbour and some of the film's raciest dialogue. In the supermarket. I saw the Ben Stiller movie Tropic Thunder and though I have no way of knowing what was cut out of it, I was quite shocked at all the stuff they left in. And then of course, there is the violence. Saw IV is due to play on television here, and I can never find a movie I want to see at the cinema because the selections are always mostly mayhem and violence.