DXB Brinkworth

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

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

My family and I have had another hectic weekend.

Tecom

On Thursday - the equivalent of Australia’s Friday - we managed to get a viewing of our permanent accommodation at Al Barsha. Getting into there is not the finest introduction at the moment as due to the rain the ground’s mostly muddy, and there are still plenty of ad hoc signs to get you through the many construction sites in the area.  But the actual building wasn’t too bad.

As there is still a little bit of construction there was definitely no kids allowed, so Elle and I viewed the apartments in turns. I went first.  I firstly had to work out the major things such as which blocks were the ones available and what not.  There were no authorised staff around to start the lifts for me, so I was only able to climb the stairs, which meant I stopped as soon as I could work out how many flights til you got a half-decent view - which incidentally was floor 10.  After my turn, Elle just happened to bump into the facilities manager who took her to the roof so she could view the pool & BBQ area.  Despite some of my colleague’s concerns, the area was apparently not too bad.  There’s been a bit of talk at the office that the area is extremely unsafe as there’s only a 1 metre glass wall stopping you from falling the 26 floors to the ground.  But apparently C block which Elle viewed was a fair bit higher than this, and can be managed.

There’s also quite a bit of talk around the traps whether now is the right time to use company accommodation or not.  The financial crisis has dropped the values and rents of a lot of the real estate.  Allegedly villas are now at prices less than most of our accommodation allowances, so we could conceivably ditch the apartment, lease our own villa, and still get extra money in our pocket.  But you’d be at the mercy of local landlords, and have to manage all the utility costs yourself.  And who knows where prices are going next. Most papers have quite a few competing predictions.

Ski Dubai

I dropped Elle and the boys back at home, then went back to work for a few hours before picking them up again and heading off to Ski Dubai - within the Mall of Emirates.  There’s something not right with the order of things, when my son sees snow for the first time in a desert. All in all though, it was a fantastic first introduction.  We took my boss’s son who is a very competent skier. Elle had to provide some level of adult supervision as she was the only one left who could ski. I say “some level” of supervision, as Alex was zooming down the slopes like a rocket, while my wife had to initially spend some time back on the learner’s slope.

One this occasion Myles and I just visited the Snow Park, which was no problem at all.  The place was great. All the kids there were so adorable with their snow suits, boots, and helmets.  I thought some of the activities would be a bit advanced for him, but Myles enjoyed the tobaggan and donut rides immensely.  I thought they were pretty cool also, but for our next visit the two of us made a pact to learn to ski.  I should add that our baby went shopping with my boss during this time.  Apparently whenever people were watching she was boasting that Lewis was her kid.

Mall of Emirates shopping

The following day my wife was a little worse for wear from skiing for the first time in many years. We disregarded this though and hit the Mall of Emirates again, but this time only the shopping mall. My goodness!  I viewed it very quickly last November after I finished my job interviews, but I really had no idea of its actual size. The place has a bit of absolutely everything. We bought plenty of things off the shopping list, but as we’re still “setting up” it’s still outside of full scrutiny.

When we returned to our car, there was another example of Dubai’s shoddy driving.  On either side of us there were massive 4WDs over their line wedging us in.  With great difficulty I put the boys into the back, but then had to get into the passenger’s side to get out.

The Gold Souq (Market)

And today to complete the weekend a Prado load of us visited the Gold Souq. We were warned to get a ride there as there are limited parks, and they weren’t kidding. The traffic was horrendous, and there were absolutely no street parks. In the end we were lucky to get a space in the paid car park. From the street it looked like it was already oversupplied, but they managed to squeeze us in on the proviso we left our keys so they could reconfigure the place each time someone needed to leave.

The markets were nice. The constant line of people asking us to go off and look at their copied watches and handbags was no so nice after the 30-40th  suggestion.  The amount of gold on display was almost on the obscene level.  Some of the gold chains would floor Mr T. I should mention only I thought they were obscene.  My wife and boss both thought they were perfectly appropriate.  Go figure.

According to a map I saw, the gold souq was very close to the perfume, spice, and fish souqs also. But that was incorrect.  They had spice and perfumes only.  My wife may have been relieved by this, as I promised to buy equal value of fish to gold.  Actually I think the threat worked a treat, we didn’t buy any jewelry at all.  Although a bit of negotiating with shops occured, and a few business cards were collected.

We did pretty much a full round, and bought only specials which I was happy with.  We now have an authentic beautiful table runner, and a few other useful items. And contrary to a lot of the advice I received before going, we’ll certainly be back. Next time though, we’ll get a driver to drop us there.  Well, actually the next trip is (thankfully) purely for the girls,  so I mean the time after that.

Ryan Adventures accommodation, financial crisis, gold souq, mall of emirates, ski dubai, traffic