Dubai Meets Aus

Emirates Airlines has announced the first six star resort to be built in Australia- 100 million bucks worth! Click here for the SMH article.

Maccas with an Arabic twist

McDonalds Dubai
Originally uploaded by TheSnakeMan.

We haven't tried McDonalds here in Dubai yet, but there is an Arabic angle as you can see here on this menu...

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.