Boxing day

On Boxing day (the day after Christmas day) we went to Berts boss Samir's home to meet his lovely family. Samir and his wife were born in Algeria but have lived in Australia for 15 or so years and his children were just delightful. He took us to this beautiful Indian restaurant. The decor was stunning and the food fabulous. Good food, good company, and beautiful surroundings what more could you want?

Ibn Battuta Mall

Shopping malls in Dubai are not just about the stuff in the stores, they are just so beautiful its a pleasure to spend the day there. I usually hate shopping, but Ibn Battuta mall near our house just might change that for me. It is divided up into areas, China, India Persia, Tunisia and Egypt where Ibn Battuta once explored.

This is the India section

And so this is Christmas!

Pumpkin pie, apple pie and cherry pie. Jane and Bills dogs. We bought them a rawhide bone each for Christmas and they were pretty excited with their gifts.

And Caleb with his rawhide bone, tragically this was lost soon after the photo was taken and he had to wait until Jere's was chewed in half so they could share.

It is Christmas evening and I have survived Christmas without my Mum, kids, dog etc. Our lovely friends Bill and Jane from Texas invited us to spend Christmas day with them in Abu Dhabi and they had other guests from Bills work, and Michelle and Brian. Michelle and Jane I met at church and they have been very kind to me and helped tremendously in helping me get settled here.

The hardest part was because of the time difference making a phone call home to speak to loved ones was difficult, but I spoke to them yesterday, and will probably be able to catch them tomorrow at home.

We were surprised at the number of text messages we received from Muslims wishing us a Merry Christmas. We really need to be sure to learn the right thing to say for the next Muslim holiday.

Thanks Bill and Jane for making what was potentially a very difficult day away from home, lovely.

Wedding anniversary

Today is our seventh wedding anniversary.

In those years we have sold a house and bought another house, then sold that and moved into another house, 6 weeks later, bought another house and moved into that. We have sold several cars, and bought several more. Moved temporarily to South Australia and then the following year moved for 5 months to Perth Western Australia. We drove to Perth and back with two dogs, thats about 3,500 kms each way. We have done two around the world trips, and one trip to Germany last year. We were involved in a very stressful court case, Bert had major surgery and Berts children have given us three granddaughters born.

Then the whole Abu Dhabi job situation arose, so we have spent most of 2009 in limbo. I started packing back in February and just today our boxes were delivered in Dubai. Bert lived and worked between two continents for most of the year and this is my third trip here.

He has now started new employment with a UAE based company.


Is it any wonder we are tired and never want to pack a suitcase again for a while.

After all that, its been a great 7 years and I wouldn't change a thing, I perhaps just would do it all a bit slower.

New apartment

I have not been able to log into blogger for a while, the internet where we are living is sketchy so I am sorry for the delay.

We are in the new apartment. I feel like we are living in a goldfish bowl because of the lack of drapes, we have them, but not the tracks to hang them from and there is nothing to even just tack them up with. The installer promised they would be finished last Tuesday, so maybe tomorrow... Inshallah or God willing.

Despite the long drive after long days Bert is happy we are living here too. We have a ton of services at our fingertips. Laundry, ironing and drycleaning is picked up and delivered every second day (yeah!!!) The local grocery store delivers several times a day, so I email them a shopping list and its delivered later that day. We also have five or six restaurants who also deliver free of charge to our apartments.

Floods across the Emirates.

A trip to hospital.

I have dealt with medical emergencies now in Malaysia, USA, Germany and now UAE and I do think this one was the easiest to handle.

I have a vitamin B12 deficiency and have injections once a month to keep things ok. I had one a month ago when we were in Australia and thought by the time the next one is due we would be settled and know where to go etc.

Yesterday I was feeling pretty ordinary after a long day of packing, moving, travelling, cleaning, unpacking and then a round of extreme shopping with Bert the day before.

I woke up this morning and it hurt to move, everywhere. I felt like I was watching the world from under water or something because everything felt foggy.

We were due to pick up a young Indian guy who works with Bert as he comes to church with us. So Bert called him and Eddie sent us to a hospital near where he lives. Our insurance still isn't through because of problems getting our visas processed due to the Eid and National day holidays here.

We were so impressed. I saw a doctor who listened to what the problem was and he gave me a quick once over. He said I needed to see another doctor at another hospital and they would take me. So within a few minutes I was put in a car with a driver who took me to the other hospital. It really was only a short distance and if I had been well you could have walked it. Bert was still parking the car by this time but Eddie was running between the two of us making sure we were ok.

A short wait for the doctor and everything was fine. I was very impressed with him, I do believe he knew more about B12 deficiencies than my doctor at home in Australia. So I got the injection, and his card and phone number for future injections or appointments.

I am already feeling much better, the relief is almost instant with the injection.

Lots of news

See it really is GREEN, we don't have lawn that green at home in Melbourne. What you cannot see that as soon as you are out of this development is the sand, everywhere! Theres a whole lot of nothing out there until you add water.

inside our apartment looking out, we are on the second floor

looking back towards the kitchen, apartment here are almost always rented without appliances of any sort, so we have no cooker, no washing machine, no fridge. In fact we do not own a stick of furniture apart from a Christmas tree. We will hit ikea.

This is the view from our balcony. We are a short walk to a small mall and supermarket so I will not have to rely on taxis anymore.

Forgive me for not updating our blog as fully as we would have liked, its been a tumultuous couple of months.

Bert has changed jobs. He is now employed by a local company doing the same sort of work he was for the Australian company, only now he has support and organisational structure around him. It is a huge relief.

We have been living in the hotel apartments I mentioned earlier since arriving here and just yesterday we secured a place to live.

Berts office will be off the island of Abu Dhabi in a slum errr suburb called Mussaffa. It's a dust bowl that no one willingly lives in. It had always been our plan to live as close as possible to his workplace to try and minimise his work hours and stress load. I am not going to drive here in Abu Dhabi, the driving and congestion is a nightmare, and they put the steering wheels on the wrong side of the cars just to add to my confusion! So to live off the island means isolation for me, only very limited ways of getting into town.

So after a lot of searching, we made the decision to move to Dubai. This is a huge shift in thinking for us, for the past year we have read everything we could get our hands on regarding Abu Dhabi, now we are not going to live here. We have got a fabulous apartment on the very outskirts of Dubai for a third of what it would cost us anywhere in Abu Dhabi. Berts commute will be an hour of freeway driving instead of 40 minutes of heavy traffic. I hate the idea of adding two hours to his work day but it just made sense when we saw how lovely the area we are moving to is. http://www.greencommunity.ae/

Bobble heads

How funny are these? We got them at the gift shop in the Beach Rotana Hotel.

Virtual - The World

Virtual - The World

Great website with some fabulous photos from around Abu Dhabi

St Andrews Church gets funding from the Sheik.

Articles like this never make the media in western countries do they? The Emirates is a Muslim country yet they take tolerance of other faiths to a new level when they assist with the funding to the rebuilding of the Anglican church here in Abu Dhabi.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091113/NATIONAL/711129868/1040

ABU DHABI // The Crown Prince has pledged to help fund the refurbishment of the capital’s St Andrew’s Church compound, a group of ageing buildings that draws tens of thousands of worshippers every week.The announcement that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, who is also Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, will “take care of any shortfall of funds” in the project to revamp the complex into a modern place of worship was made by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, at a Remembrance Sunday service this week.

Young Emiratis

We were at the local ADNOC petrol station the other night and I was watching a group of young boys in Burger King. They looked to be about 13 or 14, and were all dressed almost identically. Like these boys in this picture. Long white dishdash, red and white headgear. However, like all young teenage boys everywhere in the world they were tossing fries at each other and slouching in their seats. I wonder how teenagers here rebel, if they cannot wear outragous clothes that shock their parents, or a strange hairstyle that scare their grandmothers.

New car

We got a new car today, its fabulous. A Crysler 300c. Its white with a white leather interior, very swish indeed. Now if we could just find a carpark big enough to hold it.

Parking

The hotel we are staying at has underground parking. Unfortunately the carpark is only big enough to hold about a quarter of the guests cars, so if you try to come home after about 5pm you have to find a place on the street. I have mentioned this to several friends and I struggle to explain just how crazy the parking here is.

This photo is in daylight hours, but double the chaos for what it is like after dark.

A fellow blogger from Abu Dhabi, Neil, posted some excellent photos from his apartment of the streets outside during Friday prayer time.

Here. http://neilandcaz.blogspot.com/2009/10/friday-prayers.html?showComment=1256364230123#c3636217642680325392

Good news.

If they were yaks eyes they taste like tuna! Does John West can yaks eyeballs?

Abu Dhabi, an update

This is a strange view of our hotel apartment I found on the hotel website (its neater than our place) Its taken from the servery from the kitchen out into the dining area. We dont have a spiky plant (thank goodness) and we have a big flat screen tv instead of the one pictured. We have two actually, there is one in the bedroom too.

Bert and I have both been here for two weeks now. Bert has been travelling back and forward between Australia and the UAE for 8 months now and it's been exhausting. Working in two time zones in countries that have different weekends pretty much means he has been working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Add to that a liberal dose of jetlag and its an unhealthy mix.

I came here in August for a few weeks and despite the brutal heat at that time of year I liked it here.

So here we are, living in a hotel apartment in the centre of Abu Dhabi. This has been an easier situation than arriving and needing to find somewhere to live and be out on our own. For example the simple act of posting a letter, I just ride the lift down and hand it to the concierge.

We haven't had the battles getting telephones and the internet connected. If something goes wrong I pick up the phone and dial 1 and tell reception to please sort it out.

We have a small kitchen, with a microwave and two burners and today we bought an electric frypan and are now preparing a few basic meals at home to cut down expenses. But even then its still easy, I grilled some steaks the other day, and made a salad and called room service to deliver a serve of chips.

We have a washing machine / dryer combined. This has proven to be quite a challenge. The only way to dry appears to be cooked to a crisp, so we have clothes in varying degrees of dampness sitting on the window sills.

Bert has the use of a car here, its just a toyota corolla but its got excellent airconditioning which as you can imagine is vital. He spends a lot of time reading car magazines and looking at car showrooms and cannot decide which car he wants when we finally get settled here and his contract kicks in.

The biggest challenge so far is parking, and grocery shopping. Very few things look familiar, so it all requires a lot of label reading to work out if I'm buying a can of tuna or yaks eyeballs.

The hotel has three levels of underground parking. By dark all of the carparks are full and the boom gate wont open, so Bert drives around looking for a park, which is near on impossible. I will take a photo of the streets around our hotel at night to explain this. It's a narrow road, but every night there are two rows of cars in the centre of the road. As well as on the kerb on each side.

I read a post from someone here who described parking as "rockstar parking" where you just drive to the front of whatever building you want to go to, and get out and leave your car where it inconveniences every other passing car. Its a perfect description of most Abu Dhabi parking.

Bert and his girls.

Bert his lovely daughter Jennifer and her two daughters Ella and Heidi.

Happy birthday Diana

This time last year we were in a bad situation in Germany. Bert's younger brother had died and Bert got seriously ill in Germany and had to be hospitalised. This left me without a driver or a translator. Berts cousin Diana drove a long way to come and visit and I enjoyed meeting her so much. I hope she has a wonderful birthday.

Another beautiful granddaughter

We are still here in Australia, thankfully! Berts daughter Jenni and her husband Matt are today the parents of another beautiful little girl. Heidi Louise. A sister for Ella and cousin for Amelie.

We both leave for Abu Dhabi next Monday so Bert will try and get over to Perth to meet the new baby before we leave.

Beautiful buildings

Dhow

I love this photo, it looks so peaceful. That is Lulu Island in the background, an artificial island that was built after the corniche or seafront was damaged in a storm. Bert took this photo from a building in Abu Dhabi.

Sandstorm

This beautiful mosque shrouded by the sand that has been covering Abu Dhabi for the last two days

Abu Dhabi Mina port area

If you look really closely you can see the faint outline of the buildings in the background

Today the sky was full of haze or sand or something! The buildings were barely visible.

Jebel Hafeet

Jebel Hafeet is the highest mountain in UAE. The mountain actually straddles part of the border with Oman. The mountain rises 1240 meters and offers an impressive view over the cityof Al Ain. Unfortunately some bright spark allowed Mecure Hotels to build a huge hotel complex on the summit which is such a shame to spoil such natural beauty. An extensive natural cave system winds through Jebel Hafeet. It is completely devoid of any trees as is most of UAE that I have seen so far except for the extensive roadside planting and tree farms.

Sand dunes

Can you see the plastic bag in the above photo? See the things are everywhere!

More photos from around Al Ain. I am amazed by the beauty of the desert and sand dunes. I expected them to be well....nothing, just sand!