Winny waiting in Sydney

Thanks to Michael S for this pic of Winny at the airport waiting to head off. Now on the plane probably somewhere over Sydney Harbour. The pic of Quyen and her Mum at Sydney Airport. The power of technology.

Cleaners are here cleaning by the way.

Woo hoo!

I'm Back!

Hey Everyone,

Happy New Year!! I am back in Dubai today after spending four weeks in fab Vietnam. It was a fantastic break and was nice to see Winny finally.

There are plenty of emails from many of you to get through but rest assured i will get to them over time.

Winny arrives in Dubai in about 18 hours!!! woo hoo!!! She is at Sydney Airport checking in as I type this email. between now and her arrival i have to get this place looking respectable. not that there is much in here to present, but it needs a damn good clean. I am having hired help this afternoon to clean the place. the amount of fine concrete dust in this place is nuts. I clean one room and move onto the other only to go back and find the cleaned room is gritty again. oh well, trials and tribulations of moving. I want it spotless by 7AM tomorrow.

This coming week will be shopping, shopping and a little bit of shopping. We need to setup this place with furniture and food.

There are plenty of stories and pictures from Vietnam to come over the next couple of weeks. Rest assured though that Winny and I are alive and looking forward to writing to you all soon and post more stories on the blog.

In the mean time, I am off to the mall for lunch... hey, i don't have a fridge!

Home sweet home!

We now have a place to call our own. After much stress, research, and countless kms in three different cars, time was running out to find a place fast and I woke up today and thought to myself… Stuff it. I am going to hire a car and drive myself around Dubai finding my own damn place. And… at 4:30PM I did find that place. Suburb – Al Barsha. Just 10 minutes walk to Mall of the Emirates (that big-arse shopping centre with the indoor ski runs). I was stoked. There are few pics on here for you to enjoy. I was a bit happy with the camera and there are more pics on flickr – just click on any one of the pics in this section. I won’t explain in too much detail. It’s 2 bedrooms, two bathrooms, big kitchen, laundry, parking and other cool stuff. I like it. I hope Quyen does too. It’s about 25km from the office… (30mins without traffic).

If you click on the link below, it will open a pretty cool PDF map of Dubai. Our place is in D3. If you zoom in to that area at about 250% you will see on the left hand bit of D3 is Mall of the Emirates. Just under the text of the shopping centre name is a couple of yellow blocks - our place is in the bottom yellow bit. My work is in section F3 - on the other side of town. I will be commuting against the traffic which helped with the decision.

http://www.gis.gov.ae/en/downloads/pdfs/Major%20Projects.pdf

Deposit time….At the risk of having my name spelt wrong from me spelling it yet again… basically, the majority of people I have to spell my name to over here think when I say ‘A’ it is ‘I’ and when I say ‘I’ it is ‘A’. As a result, my name ends up being written as ‘IADIN’ when I spell it out aloud. I now hand them something with my name on it and tell them to write the name down on it. This guy today though takes the cake. I gave him my AMEX card with my name on it and he writes my name down on my deposit-for-the-unit receipt as ‘REWARDS MAXIMISER’. Yep. Rewards friggin Maximiser. I don’t get how he could do that either. But, pretty funny. I kept that piece of paper. Maybe I can start a scrapbook. Oh.

Winny out of Sydney

Well, the next stage has now begun for Quyen back in Aus… she was absolutely exhausted on Friday night and barely had energy to move by the time her head hit the pillow. Come Saturday morning, mid-sleep and receiving a 7AM Saturday text reminding her that the clean-up job was not quite finished, Dad drove her up to Sydney from the Gong to clean the balconies and do a couple of minor jobs to ensure all was well with the incumbent flatmates.

It’s amazing what Quyen could get done all on her own with packing up the kitchen, emptying the fridge of all the stuff and ensuring it kept cold and fresh by getting bags off ice into the laundry sink!

So, that’s it for Sydney living for a little while at least. Quyen will spend the next week with her Mum before the two of them jump on a place to Vietnam next Saturday for a fantastic holiday – where I will also finally see her after three weeks of battling through a whirlwind introduction to Dubai.

No pics for this one either, sorry! Although Winny scraped some skin off the tip of her nose.... somehow.

I have asked for pics.

First big night out on the town.

Next morning - ouch. It started with a cab ride to a hotel in the heart of Dubai to a karaoke bar to meet up with a few guys and girls from work (there were five of us all up). The drinks were ridiculous prices (consistent with the rest of Dubai) so I had to drink to forget the prices of the drinks. A bottle of Heineken was 30 Dirhams (about $11 aussie) I expected private karaoke booths Sydney style. No - not to be. It was a karaoke bar. I was packing major ones wondering what I should sing. I belted out ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel – to video footage that was set in the Aussie outback. Turned out that there were a couple of Aussies in the bar too that sparked a good hour long conversation about their experiences in Dubai.

Next we were to head to a nightclub (Infinity I think… can’t really remember). On the way out of the hotel where this karaoke bar was we got talking with four ladies to the point of being in the driveway outside the hotel. All of a sudden an extra stretch Hummer limo pulls up and they invite us all to get in it. I did get a pic of the outside with my phone once we had gotten out at our destination. On the inside was gold and leather, plenty of champagne and video screens galore. This thing would have been about 12 metres long. Although, removing my beer goggles it may have been closer to 9 or 10. Either way, it was a monster. Going out. Dubai Style.

Will upload the pic as soon as i can from my phone. technology is a little limited for the moment.

My old work’s Xmas Party!

I missed it…. Damn! Enjoy the pic...

Where to live...

This is by far the toughest part of the whole settling in process in Dubai and making it our home. With rents currently increasing at crazy rates, it’s hard to keep up with the market. There is currently a big shortage of supply due to a few major projects being delayed – approx 150,000 apartments in various areas of Dubai that were due to finish by end of December are now pushed out to end of March – and then people are tipping the prices will start to fall. This is creating a big headache. We have until the end of Jan to find a place. The question is – do I choose a place now if I do see one out there or wait until Quyen comes over?? As much as I would love to wait until Quyen comes over, the risk is that we may find it harder to find a place in our price range, we may get less for our money, or may find nothing at all!

To help with the process though, I am having a look and spending a bit of time in each area that I think would be OK. I have had a couple of whirlwind trips of Dubai to give me an idea of proximities and general feel of the place – this helped narrow the selection down to five key areas. The thing is that they cover all four corners of Dubai, and the middle.

Part 1 – the middle – DEIRA.

(as I type this blog at about 5:15AM Monday morning I can hear the first call to prayer of the day – it’s very faint and it’s only because I am awake I can hear it. On the street though, it’s pretty loud and a well selected place in relation to a mosque is advised!)

(also as I type this blog, i have burnt my sausage. oh.)

I went for a nice long walk in around Deira – starting with the main shopping centre ‘Deira City Centre’. This was the original biggest shopping centre in the Middle East. Deira itself is situated by the creek and has some lovely gardens and parks. I took a few snaps. Here are a few, there are some better ones on the flickr site - http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidanwinny/ . (When more time is available on the net - instead of US$12 per hour i will make this blog a little more technical!) The advice I have had on this area is that you have to choose carefully which spot you live as the horns and traffic noise can drive you mad (yep – getting me back for my years of sitting on my horn).

I am heading out on Tuesday to look at a whole lot more places… and have appointments for actual apartments. Let’s see how we go…