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Showing posts from September, 2009

On The Road to Dubai

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Dubai - a place that is almost but not quite totally unlike civilization!

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Random pictures from Dubai. Not the full monty as it were. I was with mates and they had things to do. So I only saw a part of the city. The pictures were taken from the metro and from the car. A word about the metro... remember when New York City and London first opened their metros ... OH ABOUT A HUNDRED YEARS AGO!!! London - 1863; Paris - July 1900; New York City - October 1904. Yeah.. Dubai September 2009. *sigh* Yeah... I now know what it must have been like to be in those cities at the turn of LAST CENTURY!!!! at a subway opening. The confusion. The chaos. The fear. The technical glitches. "We'll look back on this and laugh." I was told. We weren't laughing yesterday. Oh my no! It was stupid chaos. It was mismanaged. It was FUBAR to the nth degree! First we waited outside the station - yes OUTSIDE the station for almost ten minutes. Why you ask? Well, the man in the suit said it was because it was to crowded downstairs. When we finally got downstairs we entere

Eid Mubarak

Musings from the Eid holiday. Please don't ask me what an Eid holiday is. I really don't know. All I can tell you is that it involves people buying new clothes. How this is different from every other day in the UAE, I can't tell yas. But it's some sort of religious thing. That involves sales and clothes. So yeah..... For "my" Eid, my mates family and I went to a water park. This was actually FUN!!! I mostly played Sudoku in a lounge chair under the shade. Of the five that I played (of various levels: easy, medium, and hard) I 100% completed four of them - it was one of the easy ones that stumped me! LOL Coming back, we drove thru an emerates called Sharja. There are no women in Sharja. I kid you not. We started playing, for fun, "spot the female". First one spotted "wins" five dhiram. LOL Pretty crazy. It's almost like a Lord of the Flies for grown ups. Bachelors is what they call them. Just hundreds upon hundreds of men. Nothing else.

On your own in Al Ain, UAE

So it's pretty much official. We got the keys to the flat very late last night. I signed the flat lease tonite and delivered it to the housing dude. So now we are on our own. ^shrugs^ The flats aren't clean, the molding and caulking are atrocious. They were thrown up in a hurry with no rhyme or reason. There is only one person for the housing in Al Ain and there are at least three more groups and families from the first wave he's got to house. . . Good luck with that. So I think I've got off a bit easier than he has. LOL I can hit the ACE hardware store and buy caulking and silicone and recaulk the flat. It needs it!! We are thinking of hiring someone to come and clean the flats. It's pretty bad. LOL It's still construction dirty. A mate called the building supervisor and the supervisor answered in English. As soon as it was clear that it was a new tenant and that stuff needed finishing and fixing - then the dude could no longer understand or speak english. Clas

Random Pictures of Al Ain, UAE

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These are just random pictures of Al Ain, UAE. Enjoy!