Not Long Now!

Wow. Winny is now 36 weeks pregnant and the baby is just about upon us. The due date is 29 January 2008. It’s coming up ever so quickly and we better get preparing the room quick smart!

We received a lovely little parcel in the mail two weeks ago from back home. It had some face washers, a lady-bug bottle and a lady-bug dummy. It was so nice to be sent something from home! Thanks Coral and John!

Between that parcel, Quyen’s mum’s gifts and Mum and Dad’s parcel about 4 months ago, we are getting there with the suppliers. But we better hit the shops in the sales when the start to stock up on plenty more.

Here is a pic of Winny looking just fine and healthy at 35 weeks - taken on Christmas Day. Sooo cute!!! She has been very well with the pregnancy so far with no morning sickness, and not any major pregnancy stuff… the leg cramps are starting to come now.

Yep, me in the pic too.... not quite set in to the shot after running back from the auto shoot! Gotta love those shorts.

All that’s left is to breathe and push. I can’t believe it’s that easy.

Goodbye Al Barsha

Now here’s a story for you… the cost of housing in Dubai has for a long time been creeping up and up. Well, if you call hikes of 40% a year common, that’s probably defined as more than creeping, that’s LEAP FROGGING! However now there is a 7% rent increase cap if you renew your lease in your existing place each year.

We had a fantastic, spacious apartment in Al Barsha before which you saw many photos of on various blogs. After 10 months in the place (on a 12 month lease) we were asked to vacate by the municipality (kinda like the local council) because it was an illegal development.

All Emiratis are given land by the Government to develop a large house on for personal use. The plans submitted to the municipality on the block we lived were for a large house. The owner, however, built a 13 apartment complex – hence the building was deemed illegal – hence we were asked to vacate. The order is for the owner to tear down the internal walls to make it as per the plan.

Coincidentally, or not, we were asked to vacate by 15^th December – the same date as the expiry of the twelve month lease. After fighting and asking questions and looking for support, all tenants eventully secumbed and moved out over the last few weeks. We moved out two weeks ago.

For us, the old place is a watch this space. It’s very possible that this was yet another method used to rid the complex of tenants and hike up the rent with new people moving in. If that’s the case, then the owner would only say “I won the case in court”… conveniently. The rent increase per apartment to the market value is the equiv of $260 per week – yep, that’s Aussie money! Yep, that’s a lot. So, multiply that by 13 and that’s a fair whack of extra money in the owner’s back pocket each year.

OK, enough of the negative – let’s just see…

Hello Arabian Ranches

So, the new place!! It Rocks!! Woo hoo. We have a four bedroom place now, 2 story detached house. It’s about 3 years old in an area called ‘Arabian Ranches’. Sounds kinda wanky but it’s cool. It’s part of a 6,500 villa development that is built around the Montgomerie golf course and various man-made lakes. There are community pools, basketball court and tennis courts and it’s a very expat and family areas. Perfect for our little one!

We are still renting out one of the bedrooms to a friend (Sahbi - Cool Tunisian guy who cross paths with us about twice a week if we’re lucky….a.k.a. the perfect tenant!) and he loves the place too.

The best thing is that there is grass, trees, bushes, paths and the like everywhere. Certainly turned out to be for the better although we had to pay a lot more compared to Al Barsha.

We love it and look forward to you coming over one day to visit us and check it out :)

Faulty Printer Cartridge

We went to a major electronics retailer to exchange a faulty printer cartridge that we purchased a few days before. We bought four and the cyan one was stuffed. It wasn’t the printer as the one nearly empty was working just fine. We went and returned it only to be told you can’t change printer cartridges under any circumstances, even with the receipt – even when faulty.

It was one of those blood boiling, stupid things where it involved a conversation with three people in the store trying to justify why it should be exchanged. They kept on saying the same thing over and over though. Eventually, they tested it and admitted it was faulty – but they still couldn’t do anything. They eventually agreed to send it to Canon for testing and if Canon find it faulty then they will replace it.

It’s worth $20 man!!! Sheesh. Company time surely will cost more. Anyhoo, they don’t see that.

(You can all imagine how Aidan was during the whole situation. He did keep very calm though and took many deep breathes…..you can barely spot the steam coming out from his ears!)

One year in Dubai…

Aidan clocked up one year in Dubai on December 3^rd. Wow, what a fast year it was. Winny has her anniversary on January 24^th. A baby in the first year for us. We don’t muck around.

Long timers in Dubai say the first year is easy and goes really fast because of the distractions of setting up in a new place and the excitements of discovering new friends and things to do and see. The second year is meant to be a little tough. I think though that with the baby on the way we will be plenty busy and have plenty of distractions.

Mum & Dad on the Sheesha!

:) need I say more :)

6 nights in Cairo

Mum and Dad's second week here had us off to Cairo. What an amazing place it was. We all dream of seeing the pyramids one day up close and to have that become a reality was such an amazing experience. We saw Mummy's in the Egyption Museum, the Pyramids at Giza, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, spent a day roaming around the City of the Dead. On top of that, we ate the most amazing food! This is a short video of about 4 other videos we took on the trip. It starts outside the gates of Old Cairo, moves onto the top of a mosque in the City of the Dead (features on the 1 pound note), then Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx and finishes with the Step Pyramid and ruins surrounding it. Some pics will also be posted as part of the 'Mum and Dad visits Dubai' stories :)

Oh, and we searched for Walk Like An Egyption for the background song, but couldn't find it. We used a song which is barely, remotely suitable given that we were in Africa...Enjoy!

Mum and Dad!! Woo hoo!!

Mum and Dad arrived on 26th October, fresh from the gong! They came carrying loads of goodies from home including gravox, vegemite, camp maple syrup and a few other things you can't get (or we haven't found!!) over here in Dubai. They brought us multiple packs of each to keep us going for a while.

After a brief transit stop at Suvarnabhumi Airport (Bangkok - thanks Google), they arrived on our doorstep at home early on a Wednesday morning. We left them to recover while we headed off to work.

There were big big big big hugs all around and they were so happy to see Quyen's belly - huge belly. They were still in recovery mode on the Thursday. Then we were on holidays to chill out with them. The first outing was a Friday Brunch at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel.

I have mentioned before about the spectacular brunches in this part of the world and what a treat they are. When finished gobbling and bubbling we heading up to the rooftop to the 360 bar. We grabbed a sheesha pipe and some cocktails and chilled listening to the DJ (no Eagles or Abba, sorry Dad).
The pics tell the story better.
Stay tuned for more adventures with Mum and Dad.

Istanbul - Part V - Sultan Ahmed Mosque

This is also known as the blue mosque and is the only mosque with six minarets in Turkey. There are more than 20,000 tiles inside and the stained glass detail is amazing! Enjoy the pics!

Istanbul - Part IV - Basilica Cistern

This was an amazing place and a highlight of the trip. The Basilica Cistern knocked our socks off. The detail in architecture and the sheer size was awesome. We got there at 8am and had the place to ourselves for the first 15mins.

Istanbul - Part III - The food!

Istanbul - Part II - The trip from the air

Dubai!


Crater on the coast of Iran


Construction of waterways in UAE


Mountains over Iran

Coming into Istanbul

Istanbul - Part I

We headed off to Istanbul to take advantage of the Eid Al Fitr long weekend in October. It is the public holiday time to mark the end of Ramadan - the month of fasting for Muslims. Four nights in an amazing city! So many people, yet surprisingly clean - and all very friendly. The food was amazing. We expected things to be a little cheaper there - they were surprisingly inline with Aussie prices. There were a few local hideouts in long and skinny alley ways that we managed to find some decent priced meals though.

Our hotel was....interesting.... we changed rooms after the first night for a number of reasons - the most important being that the two single beds were bolted to the floor two metres apart. Not happy with that one. Eventually it sorted out, the new room was a suite and offered views of the Bosphorus. The rooftop also offered some good views.

The city of Istanbul is spread over two continents which we thoughts was pretty cool. Here we were walking along the Bosphorus Straight on the Europe side, looking straight over to the Asia side! Cool! We jump on the public ferry over to Asia and explored that area. It was much more quiet and seemingly less crowded in the streets.

The mosques were amazing, the artwork inside was one of the highlights of the trip. However, THE highlight was the Basilica Cistern built in 532AD. It was used to store water for the Great Palace and the surrounding buildings underneath the town square. It is 65m wide and 143m long, supported by 336 columns arranged in 12 rows. (thanks Lonely Planet!) There are two columns that have upside down Medusa heads at the bottom of them.

(lowlight - 3hr delay at airport getting there, 9hr delay coming back - don't fly Onur Air)

Marble collecting

A short video taken on the way to Fujeirah... hey, we document everything!

Fujeirah pics part 2

A trip to Fujeirah

We jumped in our car and decided to drive over to Fujeirah the other day. It is on the East coast of the UAE (Dubai is on the West side - sort of). We passed through the Hajar Mountains and after about 140km we reached the coast. Wow. The scenery was spectacular and one of the best we have seen in Dubai. Wow again. The mountains stretch all the way down to the sea. The Illawarra coast road still craps all over it, but this was still pretty cool! We grabbed some fruit from the roadside stalls on the way through and had a great old time. We then looped around along the coast and came back through the mountains on a different road, through tunnels galore! Anyhoo, the pics tell the story. Enjoy. Oh, and Fujeirah is into all things big in their roundabouts! (clearly)

Exercising in the park!

This is from the April trip to London.... a blast from the past for us...we thought we should share it with you. This is one of the many wonderful sites of London. Filmed by Winny in Hyde Park - this guy is really showing off his figure and interesting positions.

Finally, a catchup with friends!

The most recent trip away to the big apple was in September. It was the best trip yet!! The plan was to arrive on the Saturday. However, i then learnt that the Monday was a public holiday so it was better to hang back in Dubai to spend the weekend with Winny and head off on the Monday morning. Anyhoo. I arrived at JFK airport, went through customs. Oh, and customs is a dream - organised and fast. LA is a mess. I checked in at the hotel at about 3PM and then headed down to meet Paulie and Melissa!!! Awesome! They were on holiday break to check out the US Open for a few days. It was great to catch up. We had a fantastic meal and shared some stories It was so nice to see some familiar faces from home - and a great way to have it happen!



It was then work in the showrooms for the next 6 days. Mind you, one of the showrooms is in the Empire State Building which is a bit of a tripout.

Off to London, I had the Sunday all free. I caught up with Amanda and Anthony - they are from the Gong and living over there. Again, it was a real boost to catch up and see some close friends from home. We had yum cha for lunch and talked the afternoon away.



After ten nights away - with two of those in the air, it was nice to finally come home to bed. It was also nice that there are no more long work trips away for the rest of the year! Just overnight regional ones. woo hoo.

Enjoy the pics! :)

Has Your Blinker/Indicator Finger Fallen Off?!?!?!

When you hit the roads in Dubai as a driver or passenger you will notice there's next to no car blinkers being used when changing lanes or turning. It must be a syndrome people suffer when moving to here. People must think "You can clearly see I'm changing lanes, isn't it obvious! So there's no need for me to use the indicator. Plus no one else is using their indicator so why should I?"

If you hold a driving license from certain countries like Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and Europe you license can be automatically transferred to a United Arab Emirates license without retaking a driving test. If you are not from a country on automatic driving license tranferral list

The car accident statistics all begins to make sense when you spend 30 minutes on Dubai's roads.

Here are some wonderful pics of Dubai's roads....enjoy

New York, New York!

Aidan is all travelled out. In the past five weeks he has plane hopped all around - he was in New York and LA for nine days at the beginning of August, then over again to NY, London and Riyadh for ten days this month. There is some catching up to do on this blog, so here we go:

Let's start with the New York trip Aidan went on in early August... 3 nights in LA and 5 nights in the big apple and it was a rushed trip. It all started with an initial question from the lady at the Emirates Airlines counter at Dubai International Airport - "Sorry sir, Business class is full, do you mind travelling first class". I thought to myself... 'hello, hello!!!! are you crazy?? Do i mind??'; but I said to her a simple "not a problem, thanks". Boarding was a breeze!

Stepping onto the plane and just about ready for take off, I had consumed all of the olives, caviar and other wonderful condiments offered to me. I was itching to change into my Emirates first class pyjamas to really finish off the nuttiness. Looking around though there was only one other passenger who had changed into them. They looked horrid and very hugging in the downstairs compartment. Let's save that for next time (maybe).

After 14 hours and consuming breakfast, lunch, four movies and a number of campari and sodas, I touched down in NYC - knowing there was another 6 hours to go to hit LA. Mannnn......why?!

Anyhoo... after personally taking my baggage off the carousel at JFK airport and rechecking it in at the American Airlines counter, I hopped on the plane. AA Business class is a little LESS roomy than Virgin Blue ECONOMY in Australia. Yep, crappola.

6 long (very long) hours passed and after waiting at the carousel for one hour for my bag to come out at LA airport, I eventually gave up and headed to the long line of about 100 people at the lost baggage counter for AA (services by 3 people). This is now 23 hours since I left Dubai and I am tired and grumpy. Now 10PM Sunday night.

The bag had been lost, I fill in a form, they tell me there is a 90% chance it will be on one of the next two flights out of NY. I waited for those two flights. No bag. Now midnight.

Checking at the hotel I had one set of clean clothes in my onboard! The Emirates pyjamas! Woo hoo! Style plus. Now 1:30AM Monday.

After hitting the shops on Rodeo Drive the next morning to buy some clothes with my generous $50US compensation voucher, I soon moved straight on to the Beverley Centre where things were more affordable. Long story short, I wore my jeans for 3 days and had the luxury of changing shirts throughout.

Checking in to take the flight to NYC, my luggage was sitting in the unclaimed luggage section. Nice. Not one phone call telling me that. Nice. No point complaining. It would mean waiting in the line again. sheesh.

On to NY to spend the Sunday wearing fresh clothes and relaxing at Liberty Island and Ellis Island. It was a nice, long walk down from West 44th Street to the ferry. I rocked up and went through the three security check points (each with an x-ray machine...hmmm....) to get on the ferry. The two islands rocked!! Enjoy the pics. The first and second are of Gumby's wife, the third is the men and women immigration levels into the US during the time Ellis Island was working, the fourth is a pic of an entrance to a building on Wall Street (big balls, hey!). Nice day all in all! (the next five days were all work - true!)

A day in Kuwait

Looking up at the arrivals and departures screen at Dubai International Airport paints the picture of where in the world Dubai is. 90 minutes to Riyadh - KSA, 2hrs flight to Baghdad on Iraqi Airways, Tehran, Damascus, Fez, Oman, Yemen, Somalia. It's pretty surreal. I was looking up for gate info to board Al Jazeera flight AJ615 to head off on my first.

Let's face it, Al Jazeera is a dirty name in the media-exposed Western mind - not to worry though!

After a three hour delay, we eventually headed off. Customs was a breeze and I was in the express line thanks to Australia being on the list of 'preferred dealings'. People from the sub-continent weren't so lucky and had to wait literally hours for a visa to be issued.

The visit was good and there was a couple of hours to spend out on the waterfront. To think that I was only 80km away from the Iraqi border was pretty cool!

Kuwait is quite green and the people are friendly.

Enjoy the photo :)