Fantastic Burgers

Is a burger still classed as junk if it’s not of the fast-food variety?

To celebrate getting a car yesterday – yay! – we took a not-uneventful drive to Marina mall to get some lunch and get Ikea customer service to order the sofa-bed cover we didn’t ask them to order last time.

Lunch consisted of Fuddruckers (I’m going to have to check got that name right because I always get the name wrong and it is usually a little bit rude – answers on a postcard: what do you think I call it?) who, according to their signage, make the “best burgers in the world” and do you know, I think they might be right!

The burgers range between 1/3lb up to 2lb I think, they have a variety of basics from which you start (I always get triple cheese, mmmmmm, but O had one that comes with cheese, beef bacon and guacamole) and come with great potato wedges and then you get to go and add all your extras yourself. All the salads, onions, relishes, coleslaw and sauces are for you to help yourself! I am in great favour of the spicy mustard (which isn’t actually spicy) and then a splodge of ketchup with hot jalapeno cheese sauce in a little tub to dip my wedges in to. Talk about artery-blocking goodness! This is why Fudrockers is a treat and not a regular occurrence. Plus! I put, like, tomato and lettuce on my burger. That counteracts four kinds of cheese… doesn’t it?


In other news. Our air freight arrived a few days ago and our sea freight is due to be in country by the weekend! Hurray!!!

Bear with me...

... while I'm playing with the layout and colours in the blog. I just can't seem to get it right!

Had another stressy day today. O has been doing proper work related stuff all day so I took myself off to the flat on my lonesome to wait for the deliveries that were all due "this morning". The washing machine and dishwasher arrived fairly promptly and I busied myself with cleaning parts of the bathrooms and the kitchen until they arrived. The grumpy delivery men got grumpier still when I told them to cut the power cord for the dishwasher and then wire it together again so it would fit through the hole left in the counter top, they punished me by cutting it so that the join shows above the counter but hey-ho, it's in so all is well.

A couple of gorgeous arm chairs we bought were also due to be delivered in the morning but they didn't turn up until 3.30/4 by which point I had given up on cleaning (I brought books and my DS to entertain me should cleaning begin to lose it's appeal so I wasn't just sitting and twiddling my thumbs) and was getting cold and grumpy because I can't work out how to turn the air conditioning down. They finally arrived though and look great!

While out looking for a mattress yesterday, O and I had a brief outing to the (Old) Airport Road where a mattress shop had been recommended. Unfortunately it was closed, so we walked down the road and came across this jolly little place:

My mum now has the link to this blog, so hopefully it will give her a bit of a giggle.

A.

Christina Aguilera and the "joy" of shopping

The last few days have been busy busy busy!

In Abu Dhabi pretty much all properties are rented unfurnished (we did see a couple of furnished places while we were looking but they tend to be let by hotel groups and look just like hotel rooms so they were an instant "no"). When I say 'unfurnished' I actually mean 'empty shell'. Let alone the lack of furniture, there is no kitchen. That's right, no fridge, no washing machine, no cooker.

So we've had to buy everything, and we did it all in one go in a fantastic magical place known as Costless - and it certainly does! Well, compared to the one other place we looked anyway. It's very difficult being a foreigner because you simply don't know where all this stuff is sold! In the UK I'd know exactly where to go and could reel off a list of names for you, but here we need to rely on friends to tell us where to go (friends have been fantastic by the way, always answering the phone when we call to ask annoying questions, even if it's in the middle of the working day, and for that I salute them!).

The difficulty is compounded when adding the no-car factor into the mix, we have to rely on the taxi drivers to know where we mean when we give the vague directions we have, and then we have to rely on there being one there to take us home again when we've finished! I feel a headache coming on just thinking about it.

But! We have got all the white goods our little hearts could desire and a glorious cooker with 5 gas spider burners and a huge fan assisted electric oven (it's 90cm in width - we did measure the space for the cooker, thankfully, and it will fit). I'm itching to get my hands on it and start concocting totally inedible creations until I get used to the way it works.

Yesterday was another monster shopping day, allbeit productive because we now have our dining room chairs (I was agonising about those - our table is a little... unusual and I was worried we wouldn't find any chairs that we liked to fit with it) along with some other bits and pieces that I'm praying will look ok in the flat.

Are you wondering about the Christina Aguilera bit? On Friday we were invited to a private party in the club at Emirates Palace (the theme was "Bling") and who happened to be playing her first UAE concert at the self same Emirates Palace? That's right! Miss Aguilera!

Much of the evening was spent observing the rest of the club engaged in a mass meerkat impression trying to get a look at her and there were constant stage whispers regarding whether or not she had made it into the club yet or not.

No, I didn't see her and no I wasn't particularly looking either. I did hear that the concert was pretty terrible though.

A.

In the beginning...

First blog. First post in first blog. Second night in Abu Dhabi as a "resident" rather than a tourist/house hunter.

We arrived last night and we are staying in the rather swish Shangri La which has only one downside: the cabs don't want to bring us back here because it is so far out of town. I should explain that everywhere in Abu Dhabi is no more than a ten minute drive away. The Shangri La is fifteen minutes. Yes, my eyes are rolling around and around in my little head.

We ate in the Vietnamese resturant in the hotel last night, it was pretty disappointing to say the least - O had freshwater prawns which I thought tasted pretty nice but he wasn't happy, I had quail and it was cooked well but completely smothered in allspice. The vegetables and black rice were delicious though!

Room service tonight was terrible.

Anyway! I can report that Ikea is tiring in any language and that I am cursed when it comes to Ikea sofas, lifting them causes injury - of the annoying rather than debilitating variety. I am currently two for two and will not be testing the theory any further.

Priorities at this juncture are getting a car so there are no more death-defying cab rides, various bits of furniture so we can sit and sleep in the flat and visas all round. Woohoo! This living abroad stuff is fuuunnnn.

That being said, my flip-flops are well and truly cemented to my feet, my sunglasses are permanently attached to my head my jumpers are safely in storage so if it sounds like I'm complaining know that I've got a great big smile on my face.

A.