A hop, skip, and a week...

It's been a week since we moved into our new home. Though the past week has felt like an eternity, this is what we've been able to accomplish throughout the week. 

We had living furniture delivered (yay a place to sit), a bed for our spare bedroom (yay a place to sleep), all our kitchen appliances (yay I can cook and store food), and a washer and dryer (yay for laundry). We finally have a SEPARATE dryer. So that means our days of waiting 10 hours for our clothes to dry are O-V-E-R.  Dryers are seriously a luxury that us Americans take for granted. I hugged our new dryer today when I pulled out dry clothes in under 2 hours. I suggest you do the same. Seriously. 

This weekend we will get cable and Internet along with our new smart TV. It's been torture not having Internet during the day. But hopefully this is my fourth and final time to go to an Internet cafe. Four times in seven days, not bad eh? 

We still await the pending arrival of our UK shipment and the next 2 weeks cannot go by fast enough. I've discovered that with age I've become more impatient. I do not like waiting 29 days for my stuff to come from the UK. 29 days?! Really?? I do not like waiting for my visa to come through, I still have to get medical tests done. I do not like waiting another 2-3 weeks to get my driver's license and car (side note, I must have a no objection letter from my husband that I can drive, WTH). My list goes on, but I'll turn it around.  

The best part of my day is a) waking up with Luca and b) having a pool. We've been getting it cleaned over the past few days so hopefully we can take a dip tomorrow. So is not all bad. It's the simple things in life, right?  Okay, these next 2 weeks need to hurry up!!! 

Alright, so life is not all that bad. It's the simple things, right? 

-- 

Tanvi Nagarsheth Aiyer

http://aiyerinternational.blogspot.com

The Carrefour Experience

Anytime we visit a different country, the first thing on the agenda is to look up restaurants. Anyone else plan their trips around food? When we moved to a different country, one of the first things on the agenda was to check out the grocery store. Which begs the question, what do they not have that I need? In the UK, it was hard to find some basic food items, so we were interested to see the difference in Dubai.

As I mentioned in my last blog, most of the grocery stores are located in the Malls. The grocery store in the Mall of Emirates is Carrefour, which is known for their cheap prices. I would say it's like Walmart, a one stop shop for groceries, electronics, and clothing. Our first time we made the mistake of going on a Saturday (work week here is Sunday-Thursday).  It was packed and people are not accommodating. They are never in your way, you are in their way so you need to move. And since this was our first time at the grocery store, we had to go down every aisle.

We started by perusing the meat section. Immediately we noticed they don't sell mince turkey (or any form of turkey aside from deli meat).  Okay, no worries. Upon further inspection, we noticed that none of the meats contained caloric information and they all expired within 3 days. Furthermore, the label cautions against freezing. Say what?! This is why I have to go to the grocery store EVERY. OTHER. DAY.  For a city that prides itself on vision and modern technology, they can't find a way to make the food last longer? Really efficient guys.

We soon discovered the lack of caloric information goes for EVERYTHING and the 3 days expiry limitation is for all meats, dairy, fresh fruit & produce.  I think this is the Universe's way of telling me to stop counting calories. Hmmm. Next we hit up the produce section. No surprises in terms of variety here. They had pretty much everything I needed and I began to bag my items, one by one. As we started going down each produce aisle, we began to notice huge crowds on 2 different ends of the produce section. We saw a sign that said "Weighing Point." Ram and I looked at each other utterly confused. Surely they weigh and price your produce at the checkout, no? NO. I was so close to ditching all my produce in that moment, but I decided that would be stupid. Stupider than waiting in that stupid line. So we stood and waited 15 min to get all of our produce weighed and priced. Ain't nobody got time for that.

As we hit up the rest of the store, we could not find Pam or any form of fat-free cooking spray, no carbonated lemonade (got addicted to this in the UK), no cooking utensils (no spatula in our hotel), nor could we find a few other must have American food items. Seems like, just in the UK, I may have to go to several grocery stores in order to complete my weekly list. There was one cool thing to note. They have a section where you can select your seasonings and only purchase the amount you need. So if you're like me and try new recipes often, you can now buy the spoonful of a seasoning you may never consume again, instead of being stuck with the whole bottle. And they allow you to do this for grains and beans too! Touche.

Dubai Shopping

January is the month of the annual shopping festival in Dubai.  All the stores are required to offer some type of sale on a majority of the items in their store.  This is the time you may be able to get that couch you have been eyeing for 30% off or those shoes you want for 40% off.  It seems like the whole month of January is like Black Friday in the US.  Depending on what you're shopping for, it may or may not be a good deal.

By my count, there are 13 "Galleria-sized" Malls in Dubai, over 50 shopping centers, and 10 more malls/centers under construction.  Because 60+ shopping centers is just not enough for the population of 2M, y'all.  To date I've been to 2 Malls and a handful of shopping centers. Temporarily we are staying at a hotel near the Mall of Emirates and I've been there almost everyday. At first, the sheer size of the Mall was intimidating. Flash forward 1 week and 5 days later, I know where everything is. Before you judge, you should know that most of the Malls have grocery stores (a whole different blog topic) in them so it's necessary for me to go the Mall everyday, okay? Okay. Moving on.

There are some other cool types of markets here. The most popular are the Souks. (Reality check, we're not in Europe anymore!) There are a few Souks in Dubai.  When I think of a Souk, the scene from Sex and the City 2 instantly comes to mind:

Blast from the past!
Source of Photo

In Dubai, I've only been to the Madinat Jumeirah Souk.  It's smaller than the one in the movie, but it's really artistic and I fully intend to buy a thing of two for our house from there.  I was too lazy to snap pics there, so here's one that's an accurate image of what I saw:

Source of Photo

The area surrounding this Souk is filled with restaurants and you get a great view of the unique architecture and buildings that draw people to Dubai (if you're into that sort of thing).

Today, I visited Satwa, another open air market that's nicknamed "Little India."

Source of Photo

I was on a mission to find a merchant to get our UK IPhones unlocked so I didn't really look at the other stores. Apparently, it's a good place to get things repainted, reupholstered, and misc. items for a bargain.

In Dubai, the cell phone companies do not believe in the whole 'sign a contract & get a free/cheaper phone.'  Nope, over here, the IPhone5 costs ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS and the IPhone4 is around nine hundred. Had I known about this rip off scheme, I would have purchased unlocked IPhones in the US or had our UK ones unlocked before we left. (Reality check, we're not in Europe anymore!) Of course, asking a posh Mall merchant, located conveniently within walking distance of my hotel, to unlock my phone was greeted with roaring laughter in my face.

But I've been hearing that Satwa or Karama are the places that will take care of this sort of thing for 150 AED ($43). The cell phone merchants at Satwa must've been confused with my American accent and olive complexion because they wanted 370 AED ($105) for each phone and I had to leave it with them for 1 week. Um, yeeeeaaaah...NO. I'm pretty sure you're ripping me off fellow Indian. My attempts to negotiate were ineffective.  After he offered to come down 20 AED ($5), I did the whole "forget it" and walk away bit but he didn't bite. Fail.

I intend to check out another market called Karama this weekend. I plan to take the beard along and let him do all the talking. Hopefully the beard will prevail. Of course this is all anti-climatic since I cannot get a phone plan until I get my residency visa, but at least all this nonsense is keeping me entertained.

Dubai: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

It's been a week now that we have landed in the city of sand. We've covered some ground already, so here are my initial observations about our new home.

The Good
1.  Restaurants: We've reacquainted ourselves with PF Changs, Shake-Shack & Nobu (multiple times). We tested out Buddha Bar and Siddartha for some yummy Asian fusion food. And the Lebanese food here is just amazeballs. They also have an Irish Village here. Sitting next to people with British accents felt like home.

Friday Brunch @ Warehouse

Buddha Bar

My handsome man at Siddharta Lounge

2. New Years Eve: we had a low key night at the 360 lounge overlooking the city. At midnight we got to see not 1, not 2, but 3 firework shows. It was pretty spectacular. Here's a pic of one:

3. The Weather: the constant 23 degree weather (70 F) is nice. Not having to drag along a raincoat everywhere I go is nice. But I know I'll be singing a different tune come June, so we're sitting on patios and sporting our sunglasses until then.

4. House Hunt begins on Tuesday! CANNOT WAIT.

The Bad
1. Taxi drivers: do not know where anything is! Coupled with the dodgey internet service at our hotel and no smart phone = major frustration. I also miss the friendly chatter from my local Scotsman during the drive. Over here, no one cares why you're in town and why you have an accent.

2. Residency visa: Apparently I can't get mine until they process Ram's. He begins the process this week but if that goes beyond 60 days I will have to leave the country and come back. No visa = no car, no cell phone & no DL. There's got to be an easier way...!

The Ugly
1. I don't get to see my baby Luca everyday. The hotel we're staying at does not allow pets. Dubai is not a pet-friendly city, which is a major bummer. But we have visited our little guy a few times at the kennel so far and he greeted us with this smile, so he's definitely a trooper:

2.  It's not Aberdeen. I'm very homesick (and the home I'm referring to is the 'Deen). I miss the countryside. I miss my friends. I miss my house. I miss our life there. I'm finding it very hard to not be sad these days. At least I have a few meet ups to look forward to this week, so stay tuned.