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 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.
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