DXB Brinkworth

The middle east has been relatively stable since we arrived nearly 20 months ago. Just recently however, tensions have reached breaking point in Lebanon/Syria/Israel.  I am sure that I’m partly responsible.

Less than a month ago I suggested as our family’s first overseas holiday that we “hit” Lebanon. Lebanese people are abundant in Dubai, including my workplace, and they all speak so fondly of the place, all the pictures look lovely, and as the icing on the cake, we get a chance to eat their food quite often. And after a little research it seemed like a lovely place to visit, we even had the offer of a friendly colleague to be our tour guide. But as soon as I put the idea in my head, war broke out!
I subscribed to the Australian Government’s travel warnings for Lebanon, and almost every day for the past week and a bit I’ve received an update with a more strongly worded warning. So our plan to fly to Beirut are now shelved for some time.

I’m sure we can find another interesting location in a similar proximity to the UAE. Sri Lanka looks the most promising at the moment.  Their civil war finished last year, after 25 long years.

Interestingly with the Lebanese conflict, I heard some news which I thought would surely help sort things out. It seemed the US were sending in the Hof - which got me excited that things may still be possible.  But it turns out it is not David “Hof” Hasselhof from Knight Rider fame.  Instead, it was US Diplomat Fredric Hof. 

What can he do that’s nearly as useful as a talking crime-fighting sports car?

Ryan Adventures, Family news, Newsworthy Lebanon, middle east, Sri Lanka, The Hoff, travel

Last weekend Myles and I went to Dreamland Aqua Park which is a waterpark in Umm Al Quwain - another emirate within the UAE. The trip from Dubai is around an hour, but the time went pretty quick as we saw lots of interesting or new things.

In fact Myles counted the interesting things on the way to the water park:

1. Flamingos in Ras Al Khor sanctuary
2. Very different traffic lights in Ajman - they had little clocks counted how many seconds the lights were remaining on Red or Green (they were also laid out horizontally instead of vertically)
3. Six “tornadoes” (whirly winds)
4. No pictures of HH Sheikh Mohammed (outside of Dubai it makes sense)
5. A picture of a man that looked like Fazza (Dubai’s Royal Prince) but wasn’t (he was a different Ajman’s Royal Prince)
6. Sharks in the water (sticks in the water)
7. A big old abandoned plane used as an advertisement

Emirates employees get a generous discount at the park, but there was an even more generous coupon in the entertainer book which encouraged us to visit this particular water park over the other three.  We’ve been to Wild Wadi a couple times, and Elle and the boys had been to the a bit run down Wonderland.  The only one we now haven’t visited is Aquaventure which is in Atlantis - The Palm, so possibly the most well-known.

In a word, Dreamland was awesome. Myles had to be convinced that it was different to Dreamworld back on the Gold Coast in Australia. There are things to appeal to all ages. There is a good maze to have a relaxing float with babies, but we didn’t take Lewis on this occasion.  There are plenty of other rides for larger kids, and the obligatory number of scarier rides still for the adult-aged kids. There was also a bar or two if you wish for a break to whet your whistle.

I had to give Myles an impromptu Arabic lesson, more of a reminder, when I had to clarify that “yulla” is Arabic for hurry, or let’s go. Myles originally thought all the guys were unhappy because they wanted to go on the yellow slide, not because they were extremely impatient.

The only downside of the day, was the heat. We made the mistake of going barefoot from the change rooms and lockers. So throughout the day we had to run between the slides, and deviate our course to take in a bit of grass now and again til our scorched feet had reduced to a normal temperature.  Well, my feet at least. I put Myles on my shoulders most of the times.

One of the other downsides was the amount of body hair on display. I’m on the paranoid side of having body hair, and in the past have generally shaved down for triathlon events. But it was nothing, compared to the spectacle you’ll see at any water park in this region. It was interesting that you’d see what you thought was the hairiest guy at the park. But the guy would always be outdone by the new hairiest guy. You never really find the winner, you just get sick of noticing. Or you’ll spot the hairiest guy in the world, and there’s instantly no where else to go.

Myles enjoyed all of the rides he was allowed on.  There was still a few things he was not tall enough for. But we’ll certainly be back.

The trip also had second hidden agenda for the way home. Next to Dreamland is a place well-known to all expats, particularly from the West. It’s called Barracuda Beach Resort, but it’s really only famous for one thing, cheap alcohol.  But just as impressive, is the huge variety of stock they carry.  The first time I visited, I was like a kid in a candy store.  They have a fantastic Australian wine collection, with possibly more wines than a standard Australian bottle shop. And they have all the most popular Australian beers at fantastic prices. The XXXX cartons were AED 90, which equates to less than AUD $30 - must cheaper than in Australia! I’m sure anyone outside of Queensland would want to insert joke here about cat urine, but I’ll move on.

The trip home takes you through the emirate of Sharjah - which is a strictly dry emirate. So there’s always a bit of uncertainty whether we’re breaking the law or not. But the consensus is providing its within personal consumption levels, and you are licensed to drink within your own emirate, it should be fine.

We spent around 5-6 hours at Dreamland, but you could easily spend even more time.  Myles was so active the complete time we were there he was asleep within minutes of leaving Barracuda.  It was a fantastic day, and we’ll certainly be back again. Although Wild Wadi is less than 10 minutes from our house and Dreamland is at least an hour away, it has a larger layout, caters for adults a little better and is quite a bit cheaper.

Ryan Adventures, Family news alcohol, Barracuda, Dreamland, Umm Al Quwain, waterpark

Elle & I, and a few tables of friends attended this year’s Black and Gold Ball held at the Grand Hyatt. It’s an important Dubai institution around ANZAC day for particularly all expats that hail from Australia and New Zealand. Our mob demonstrated the laziness of Australians and Kiwis when I think back to how we came together and bought tickets. All communications were over email, instituted and purchased between a Brit and a Papua New Guinean.

The ball’s title should be obvious to those from the Tasman. No, they don’t supply weird mixed drinks of Guinness and mid-strength XXXX. For anyone stuck, Black relates to the All Blacks the world champion rugby team, and the Gold is one half of Green and Gold - the proud colours of Australia, world champions in most other sports ;-).

Despite the effects of the financial crisis, and people allegedly leaving the region in droves, the ball continues to grow each year. This year saw 600 people in total, up from 450 the year before. All attendees were also quite generous. Around AED 30,000 was raised for charity during the night.

In one short sentence, the night was fantastic. After paying respect to those ‘who shall not grow old’, there was quite a long speech by organiser, Graham McNally. I heard on the grape vine that Graham completed almost the whole organisation of the evening himself - which if true is outstanding. He tried his hand at some humour, and made me chuckle at a few standard Oz and Kiwi jokes I’d heard before. And yes, having AUS and NZ the focal point of a ball, he felt it was necessary to mention “that” delivery. I believe the subject was changed pretty swiftly after to take the piss out of South Africans.

They played one party game our British friends forewarned us about called head and bums. Since playing the game at last year’s ball also, they have been of the belief it was a common Australian pastime. If you’re unaware of the game - which we were - it’s really simple. Everyone stands and chooses whether to put their hands on their head or on their bum. The announcer chooses one of the options, and if you chose correctly you remain standing to play another round. We were quite hopeless. In fact the only person from our entire table who did well was Bob our resident Scotsman. He made it just about to the round where those remaining in the game move to the dance floor to find the eventual winner. But unfortunately he followed the advice of someone from our table, and chose to put his hands on the option which had more hair. I’ll leave it at that. He was very smartly dressed in a tuxedo and kilt, we didn’t want to go any further.

The Aus/NZ inspired menu and specially imported food was tremendous - although two friends claimed to have inconvenient issues after some oysters. Eating high quality lamb from home was one of the highlights of the night.

The night was like all the balls I’ve been to. There was great company all looking very spectacular, great food and drinks, a real reluctance to get onto the dance floor but once there we danced the night away. Lionel Ritchie’s song All Night Long got us singing more than we ordinarily would when it sounded like the lyrics included a local suburb:

We’re going to Party, Karama, Fiesta, forever, Come on and sing along.

Toward the end of the night it was a mystery where the whole night had gone. When the ugly lights came on to encourage us to leave, we could not believe it was after 3am.

Actually this ball had a few significant differences from the balls I attended previously. Those in years gone by were safely held before the onset of social networking, 3 megapixal Blackberries with WiFi connection, and inconspicuously sized digital cameras with HighDef video recording. This ball, and every moment for ever more is open to the gazes of the web’s population. It was interesting to know that photos of our escapades were getting uploaded to Facebook in near real time.

When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t recap on the night by reading Facebook status updates. I watched an edited video megamix of myself making some terrible dance moves. What ever happened to ‘what happens on tour…”

Unfortunately one thing that wasn’t caught on film was one of the highlights toward the end of the night. We heard The Proclaimer’s, 500 Miles and insisted on getting our other Scottish friend up to dance with us - knowing full well how much she hates the song. Good times.

Ryan Adventures, Family news, Newsworthy ANZAC, Black and Gold ball, Facebook, web2.0

Yesterday a number of Tecom families gathered downstairs on the Floor 1 terrace to celebrate Easter.  We had a well-received egg hunt for the kids - large and small, as well as a BBQ lunch and a few drinks with good company. Interestingly some of the kids didn’t go crazy with the chocolate. Lewis was the obvious exception, he had half his face, and pretty much his entire t-shirt covered in a mixture of chocolate and baby slobber.

It’s probably the first time my kids participated in such a big Easter egg hunt. And a few good lessons were learned.  Probably none more important than Myles learning no matter how full your basket of eggs becomes, NEVER put chocolate eggs in your pockets if the temperature is warm.

The kids enjoyed playing football, hide and seek, and chasing each other on bikes.  But once they grew a bit tired of these games, they seemed to go their own ways.  It was interesting to see Myles walking up and down the garden speaking some “foreign” language. I had to ask what he was doing, to which he replied he was being an Indian. He was equipped with a spear made from a frong from the garden, so I figured he was the American variety of Indian.

Trying to fit the theme I told him about traditional Indian names (without mentioning the standard two dogs joke).  We started with the animal, which he chose a Rhino. I was pleased, as it’s my favourite animal.  But I would soon regret the whole activity. As he’s just five I simply asked what is the Rhino doing, as it would be the first part of his name.  He responded it’s Pooing.  So “Pooing Rhino” it was for the afternoon.

Some friends set out to eat fish, in compliance with the tradition. It encouraged me to also get some prawns for the BBQ which was a very nice touch.  But the longer we stayed down there, the hungrier we were, and they conceded that fish was just not to cut it.  So they walked across to Carrefore and bought a full leg of lamb to throw on the BBQ.  It was delicious, even if a little heathen.

Ryan Adventures, Family news, Interesting, Woops Easter, Myles

This year we had our first Christmas in our adopted country, Dubai. Being a Muslim country and away from all family, it was always going to be different. But it was still extremely enjoyable with some good friends taking the usual place of family.

It seemed that most of our friends went home, or decided to travel over the Christmas break. I should mention, the Christmas “break” was a break by accident only. The holiday season is irrelevant over here. We were just fortunate that December 25th happened to fall on a Friday - the first day of our weekend.

We knew a handful of friends were staying in the building Christmas day, so we invited them to come to our place for a traditional Christmas lunch. Well, not quite traditional. We happily substituted the baked ham for a baked lamb as we had Muslim friends join. And also, the Christmas crackers that we’d expect to pay a few dollars for in Australia were the equivalent of $77 AUD a packet. So we got the cheapest kiddy ones, and used them sparingly.

For the months before, there were quite a few shops advertising the Christmas season which surprised me. We were even able to buy a tree - we chose the only one that would survive the attention of a headstrong 1 year old called Lewis. So it was certainly beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We even had a Christmas lunch at work which was unlike any Christmas lunch I’ve ever had. Karaoke was the theme of the day. And Santa was not as pale as I recall. He had dark skin from the Asian subcontinent, as well as a penchant for Bollywood dancing, which made for a fantastic entrance!

It also seemed at least one of the local police were in the spirit of the season when he booked me just one muqalifer(?) - fine - instead of the two I was deserving.

The traffic infringement happened on the way into work. I found myself in the wrong lane for the turn I wanted to make, so just like everybody else - which is apparently no excuse - just before the traffic lights I cut over a solid line when I saw a break in the traffic. This got the attention of a policeman on a motorbike, that I did see a few minutes earlier. He shouted a few things at me, and the only thing I comprehended was driver’s license which I gave to him. After this he wanted to see the car’s book (registration). I was driving a friend’s car while they were out of town, so I had no clue where the rego paperwork would be. I tried all the obvious places starting with the glovebox. I didn’t want to make the policeman more angry so I started handing him each piece of paper in there. Handing him things from the kids’ school didn’t help matters. We drove a little further where we could stop. He started dishing out a few more fines to people as he parked his bike - man this guy was efficient! I used the extra time to search the car completely, but to no avail. When I checked the boot I spotted an “I love UAE” scarf on the back window. I half-considered inconspicuously putting the scarf around my neck to appeal to his patriotism and let me go. But I thought better of it. At times like this there’s probably a fine line between trying to make a genuine connection with a guy in authority and taking the piss. The fine was just for “Not presenting vehicle registration card when required”. He dropped the charge for cutting the line. Ho, ho, ho.

Otherwise the Christmas was great. Technology enabled us to beam into my family’s Christmas celebrations in Australia, where everyone was well. Our boys loved riding their new bikes and Insha’Allah won’t break any bones. And our table full of friends - who incidentally spanned four continents - all shared what Christmas has always meant to me, having fun and enjoying the company of others. That is, despite all of us eating way too much - an obligatory Christmas tradition!

In fact we had plenty of food remaining, so we filled a few plates and sent them to the security guys who work in our building. Ordinarily they’d gobble this up and be extremely grateful. But it was sort of pleasing to hear that they couldn’t accept the food. Their fridge was already overflowing from loads of other tenants sending down food for them also. ‘Tis the season.

The day after Christmas I woke up early at 5:00am to watch some of the Boxing Day (Cricket) Test match - a bit of an Australian festive tradition.  After watching just half an hour of play between Australia and Pakistan, I had the clearest demonstration of the time difference between Dubai and Australia I’ve had.  Despite rising before the sun did in Dubai, play had already finished for the morning and it was time for the lunch break!

I hope everyone else had a lovely Christmas.

Ryan Family news, Interesting bikes, Christmas, fine, police

After eight months living abroad we finally took our first holiday. On October 17 We headed home to Australia for four full weeks.  Work had been quite hectic leading up to this. My manager is still unsure how I managed to get her approval for this amount of leave.  It was quite simple really, quietly mumble the request while she was distracted talking to someone else, and just take any of her body language as a positive response.

The flight from Dubai to Australia is a long one - wind-assisted and direct it’s still 14 hours.  I scored some big brownie points and let Elle take the business class seat, while I had the kids in economy. The plane was so full we had no choice, despite us deciding to forego our contractual business class seat to sit altogether.

On my own it was a little worrying to think of the large number of hours for a five year old and a baby to fly, but it really did go quite quickly. Myles and Lewis were an absolute dream. Lewis, our baby beefcake, is now 12kgs which means he’s too heavy to go in the bassinet to sleep, but not light enough to want him sitting on your lap for almost a whole day.  It started with some humour. Myles always took a lot of interest in the safety card of each aeroplane.  He’d study it for 10-15 minutes, each side, and ask lots of questions if there’s something he didn’t completely understand. Well, this time it was Lewis’s turn. To keep him occupied, I handed him a few different cards from the seat pocket, and Lewis started reading the safety card intently. Myles noticed this, and gave some classic 5 year old big brother advice, “Lewis, that’s a sad, sad, story”.

I managed to get a lovely neighbour from the UK named Pam who was very helpful when things got too busy. She didn’t have to do too much, but it was great at times such as when Myles decided to go to the toilet more often than normal. The novelty of the small toilets was too much for him.  He also suggested he needed to brush his teeth numerous times after they gave him a tiny toiletry set.

The cabin crew were really good to Myles, and they clearly enjoyed his company. This was despite Myles earlier showing no loyalty to our beautiful Emirates airline, and buying an Aer Lingus airport set. This is the second time he’s done this. When they flew to Dubai he came proudly displaying the same airport set with QANTAS insignia.

Elle did a stint in economy, which allowed me to at least get some business class tucker and watch a movie.

And before I knew it, we were in Brisbane to start our holiday.  My brother picked us up in our X-Trail, and we had a go at driving on the other side of the road again. Funnily, it’s harder to change back from left-side drive to right-side drive, than it was to originally change over. We had to modify our driving considerably from how we’ve learned to drive Dubai for fear of getting locked up by Queensland Police.

We got to my parent’s place where a huge Welcome home banner got our immediate attention.

We deliberately made very few concrete plans in case any of us suffered badly with the effects of jetlag. In the end there was nothing major,the kids adapted particularly well. Before we left, Lewis was napping four times a day, and eating at every other opportunity. The six hour time difference just means meal #3 lines up with maybe meal #1, which he has had no complaints about.

The only thing scheduled for our trip was my graduation ceremony on the 22nd of October at Monash University in Melbourne. This left us about a week of hanging around Burpengary to relax into holiday mode. Which did take a little while.  One thing that helped though was trying to complete a cryptic crossword for the first time. They really a nonsensical form of torture. Their baffling effect focuses all your thinking on just how unintelligent you are - a great way to forget the stresses of work.  Eventually I probably got a quarter of the clues, and that’s where it was left.

We were quite fortunate to have my brother take Myles & I out fishing in his boat on his day off.  The location was Scarborough, and with Corey living less than 2 minutes from the boat ramp I correctly assumed he had sufficient local knowledge to make it a successful trip.

Myles & I talked it up in the car about who was going to catch the most number of fish.  Obviously I supported his totally unrealistic goal to catch the most number of fish, but put little actual thought into it coming true.  It didn’t take long to learn that Myles was a superior fisherman to me, with is probably not too surprising.  But landing more fish than Corey - the keen angler - and LARGER fish as well was quite unexpected although a great result for any five year old.  The results were Ryan 1 fish, too small. Corey 3 fish, all too small. And Myles 5 fish, 4 of them HUGE enough to eat. Which we did that evening. Thanks Corey!

And after a day and night in Melbourne the travel plans were to spend two weeks in Tasmania, then one final week in Queenland before flying back to Dubai on the 12th of November, which is approaching at the speed of light.

Ryan Adventures, Family news Australia, Brisbane, Corey, fishing, holidays

I was without internet for so long, that once it was connected I forgot what it was I missed about it.  But I am now able to blog with some sort of regularity, I just have to get back into the rhythm.

As always, we’ve found a lot to keep us busy.  Let’s see how much of the past three months I can remember.

Moving to Tecom
We finally moved into our “permanent” Emirates accommodation in Tecom - Al Barsha.  There were many trials and tribulations in finally getting here, but they’re almost all forgotten now.   And besides, the delays I had were nothing compared to some of the guys before me.

Now it’s all finally happened, I can’t remember all the noteworthy events.  With the internet and TV connected, I can say we’re as settled in as we’ll ever be.  There was a few sad moments when we left our former apartment in Deira. Both Myles and Lewis had grown quite fond of our security guy, Manoj and our cleaners Sathi, and Kargenny.  Due to a mistake in translation we also called him “Clinian” for some time without anyone saying anything.  We’ve dropped in a few times since for a chai (local tea), which has made all parties happy.  In fact the first time we visited Manoj again he said plainly to me, “Please don’t forget me sir” which I could never do.

In Tecom it’s been nice to see other families around, and even most of the cabin crew have been great.  Myles has certainly started making an impression.  I took  the kids up to the pool area last week, and there was a lady and her daughter.  We got on well, and shared our room numbers so the kids could play together.  As we were getting out from the pool the lady had just finished saying it was nice to see other kids around when Myles headed back into the pool, yelling to me “I have to footy snot”.  With this he proceeded to lean down from the pool deck so he could blow his nose in the water - metres from the lady’s daughter.  It was amazing that they could see the funny side of it.  At the time I couldn’t, I was too busy looking for a large rock to hide under.  Myles and I had a good chat following this about proper footy snot etiquette.

Elle and Jo upstairs have taken some initiative and started a facebook group for the families of Tecom.  We probably had 40-50 people attend. It happened to coincide with Myles’s 5th birthday so he had a captive audience to help him get through his birthday cake.

School
We finally got a place for Myles to attend foundation school. He had been enjoying nursery, but approaching five he had the opportunity to step up, so from the 7th of September, he’s been a student of Regent International School. It was an interesting process.  When I first arrived in February I started calling around the different schools, and each and every one claimed to be full, and they had huge waiting lists.  Regent just happened to be the closest school to our apartment, it had all the prerequisite things on the web site we were looking for, and they had plenty of spaces.

Like most schools, Myles had to undertake a brief assessment. It turned out the lady was just looking for any learning difficulties or personality challenges. She tested him by drawing the outline of a car and getting him to put the wheels on, and to colour it. She may have started to worry a little when he proceeded to add a thin vertical line of each and every colour she had.  I can almost visualise her curious expression at him not simply colouring the car simply.  In fact, and she went on to ask him why he was doing it that way, which Myles had an instant reply “It’s the Rainbow Sheikh’s car”.  Classic.  Weeks earlier we had visit the Rainbow Sheikh’s free car museum - which clearly left an impression.

Internet connection
All I’ll say is, I shall never complain about the quality of telecommunication companies or the care they provide in Australia again.

Visitors
It has been good to have some visitors from home come stay with us.  We couldn’t really do it well in our last place, but there’s more than enough room now.  In August we had my brother stay, and early this month we had my parents stay for nearly a month.

We didn’t do too many things out of the ordinary, but it was good to give them both a taste of Dubai.  Corey especially so. He got to see a common site (not really) of a brand new Lamborghini dragging off a brand new Ferrari down Jumeirah Road.  It was something to behold, even for the BMW police car that was parked on the side of the road at the time.

Ramadan
We experienced our first ramadan period. It was certainly different to not be able to drink or eat outside during daylight hours.  But the time went extremely very quickly. We attended a few Iftars, which is the large buffet meal Muslims typically eat to break the fast.

Metro
As per their plan, the Metro was launched on the 09/09/09  for VIPs.  The day after it was for the rest of us, but it was too busy when we tried to catch it.  Unfortunately they’ve had a few teething problems.  In fact there was a story published that the metro had a glitch one night during Ramdan which prevented people from breaking their fast.  It was a nice story that some people apparently divided up the bags of shopping they had to share with their fellow Muslims.

The metro’’s a great way to travel though.  It’s hard to believe how quiet it is.  Once our local station opens I’ll consider catching it to work each morning.  I’ve tried it once on the way, and there was a 30 min delay.  And on the way home twice there have been similar holdups. Probably a good reason to leave it a while to get over these hiccups.

Ryan Family news, Newsworthy accommodation, Corey, school, Tecom

This weekend we attended a fancy dress pool tournament party at a friend’s place. They had a wonderful villa with their own private backyard which is a bit of  a luxury in Dubai. They made the most of it and had two large dogs running around. It would be so much better environment than the majority of dogs in Dubai - including the ones we hear in our apartment complex.

It was tough to come up with something for me and my pool partner go to this party as.  We wanted to either bring something Australian, or locally. The final idea, after many options, was to do a delightful corny play on words and dress as “Sheikh, Rattle & Roll”.  We bought some local Kanduras (robe/dishdasha) for the sheikh part, we had baby’s rattles, and - running out of inspiration - we hung some bread rolls from the outfit.  The final piece was perhaps not the greatest idea, as we had the dog closely following us around for most of the time.  My head piece was probably normal sized, so it failed to fit my watermelon-like cranium. So unfortunately it fell quite a few times which gave the dog the split second opportunity on two occasions to quickly snaffle up the bread rolls I had.

We thought the dog was just following Paul & I for the bread rolls, but it turned out the dog was actually owned previously by a local guy who wore the same clothing. The story goes that the dog may have been mistreated as he is apparently not a big fan of the local dress. So it was perhaps our fault when the usually friendly hound nipped the chin of one of our fellow revelers, in an unprovoked attack. Or perhaps it was just the excitement of the evening.

The night was organised for a number of reasons. It all came clear when the cakes took over the pool table, where we were allegedly playing a keenly organised and Microsoft Excel powered tournament. Not a lot of competition there, one of the games was lost off the initial break — by none other than my wife, Elanor!  Perhaps she could have been more useful out on the street, she and my boss dressed as ladies of the night.  The party was for the one of the ex-PNG pilots who made Captain, as well as a host of birthdays which would prove difficult to celebrate together as most people avoid the Dubai summer.

A good night was had by all - even the “Man in skirt” who briefly masceraded as dog food.  Unfortunately we had to be one of the first to leave, as we probably had close to the youngest kids there. Lewis was asleep for a great deal, but the noise became too much. And when he finds that second wind, it’s difficult to put him back to sleep.  And also difficult to make him enjoy himself.  Mind you, this was 12:00 midnight when we left, early. The party consisted mostly of the local PNG community, who know how to party!  Just ask my Aunty in Cairns who has PNG folks next door.

The other good thing about PNG parties, is they know how to put on a feed! We were tasked with bringing Elle’s famous potato salad, but left it on the bench at home. I intended to return home alone to fetch it after we arrived, but the hosts insisted there was more than enough food, which there was.

Ryan Adventures, Family news dogs, party, PNG

Things had became quiet on the accommodation front, to the point where I was just about to contact them to confirm everything was alright.

The last I had heard, from someone inside the move, was that the date had moved out to maybe even July.  It was disappointing, but we just accepted it as there’s nothing we could do about it.

However, imagine our surprise when we got advice a couple of days ago to say that we had been allocated an apartment, and we can actually move in around the last week of this month.

I recognise they may slip a little from this date they cite.  But I’d expect that it should still happen in June if this is their current advice.

Interestingly, the apartment we’ve been offered is our current temporary apartment’s number with just a 1 in front of it.  So we’re going up 10 storeys which my wife is already anxious about.  A fear of heights was always going to be an issue living in an apartment.  Out of 25 floors, 14 is not too bad though.  I believe the view become unobstructed from about floor 10 - for the time being.

We’re certainly looking forward to it.

Ryan Family news accommodation

Thursday afternoon I picked up our set of wheels.  We had gone without for quite some time, but the last three weeks I’ve had the use of my boss’s other car and it’s just way too convenient to have your own vehicle.

I originally thought I’d go through a dealer, but the right second-hand Prado came up at the right price so we saved ourselves some money. This  meant we didn’t have to deal with bank loans with lots of interest so it suited us right now.

The whole experience was more pleasant than my experiences in Australia. Over there I always felt like I was getting screwed.  Here, the prices are generally so much cheaper it’s hard to see any of the cars as a bad deal.

We went for a 2006 Toyota VX Prado. It’s a V6 with a 4.0 litre engine, but with petrol so cheap it didn’t phase me.  I’ve seen a similar vehicle perform amazingly on the dunes.  In fact, one guy mentioned the only car here that does better is the same vehicle in the short wheel base.  I can’t wait to take it out.

A guy named George from Egypt sold it to me. It was his wife’s car.

The Sharia Law is  a major advantage to buying a car in Dubai. This means there is no way to buy a stolen car, or car with any existing finance or fines owing.  Well, it would have been a total comfort at the time if I had understood some of the process. The whole thing was in other languages. My seller’s Public Relations Officer (PRO) was speaking Arabic, all the forms I filled out were Arabic, and when the RTA folks did converse with me in English I mostly needed the PRO to translate anyway.

I did what I could and just matched my name to my license number to the car’s registration number, and so on.  I probably wouldn’t be too surprised if George drops in to take one of my kids away as a result of the forms.  Or alternatively leave me with a whole brood of his kids.

Unfortunately the car has never been serviced in its 52,000km life.  Almost ironically the inside still has some of the protective plastic on the duco, so it’s at least been partly looked after well.

Just like every other time I’ve bought a new car I notice only after I buy it that there are a billion other ones on the road.  We’ll need to be on our toes when we park at shopping centres, cause there’ll usually be a dozen other models exactly the same.

The price of home and contents insurance here is cheap as chips. But for automobiles it’s a hell of a lot dearer. And with good cause.  Less than three days after getting the car we had our first traffic incident.  On a routine trip to Deira City Centre (shopping centre), we were stuck in quite a bit of traffic. Nobody was going anywhere, yet as we sat there I heard a bump next to me, and low and behold a police car had hit my mirror as he tried to struggle through the traffic! It was at very slow speed so there was no damage, except to maybe the police man’s ego. He looked a bit embarassed by the incident. An added plus was his mirror was folded back, where as ours was proudly unaffected.

Ryan Family news cars