Moving In

After 10 days in the Shangri La and loads and loads of shopping trips we have finally moved in to the flat.

It is all a bit echo-ey with the lack of furniture but it is very nice to be in at last.

We moved in on Saturday and luckily our mattress arrived promptly along with a nice screen and our balcony furniture. We went to Marina mall to buy a few bits from Ikea and do a supermarket shop - as well as getting me a pay-as-you-go sim card for my new, local, phone. The supermarket visit was cut rather short due to the ridiculous queues at the tills and O needing to get back so he could go paintballing, so essential essentials were bought and then we rushed back. With O paintballing I got my exercise while I cleaned our bathroom (not a small task I might add) and unpacked the toiletries delivered in the air freight in preparation for the next morning’s showers.

On our first night we went to the Sheraton Khaldiya for food and to watch the football so not having done a big shop was not such a biggie. The next morning I went across the road to a French café (La Brioche) for breakfast and got myself a Subway for lunch while I waited for some more furniture to arrive, after which I cleaned the rest of the kitchen and unpacked the kitchen stuff that had also arrived in the air freight.

A brief aside: On the day we left Derby movers came and packed up our flat. It was incredible to watch, they were like a whirlwind and since we found ourselves mostly in the way we went out for lunch and a last wonder around the shopping centre. I’m so SO glad we didn’t have to do it ourselves because we would have made a terrible job of it, however upon unpacking the kitchen stuff I noticed a couple of little amusing results. We have mugs, glasses and cutlery but no crockery. We have some of our pots and pans but only one lid, and not the pot that that lid is for. Much amusement and only mild frustration at having to buy new crockery since we were going to do that anyway but were trying to decide which ones to get. Anyway! Cracking on…

We actually managed a proper shop on Sunday, after another Ikea trip – yay!, and it was quite an experience. I’d already gone for a stroll around this Carrefour so knew pretty much what to expect but it was still rather fun. The fruit and veg section is huge with the origin of the products displayed clearly above the crates and punnets piled up. The fish section is also huge and beautiful with the fish carefully and lovingly displayed on giant ice-filled stands that stretch way back. The whole supermarket is immense, it not only sells food and the standard UK supermarket sort of fare, but also household goods, furniture, garden furniture, computers, white goods, TVs, hi-fi equipment, shoes and clothes. It would be easy to lose a few hours in there, but once again we had to get a move on because the man with the gas canister was coming to hook us up between 8.30 and 9. We were set up but I was exhausted so we went across the road to the Arabic restaurant/shisha café that we can see from our balcony and is, luckily, pretty good.

Yesterday I tackled the balcony. It is glorious, giving a panoramic view of the Corniche (the rather pretty road running along the coast) all the way from the harbour up to Marina mall but it was dusty. Really dusty. It is also rather large so I knew it was going to be a big job. Doing the railing and wall-bits around the balcony was the worst, the wall bits especially because they are almost pebble-dashed only without the pebbles. So a lot of dabbing with a damp sponge was required to get all the dust off. Then it was the turn of the floor of the balcony and I filled a bucket with water, got my squeedgie-broom that O bought on our first trip to Carrefour and began at one end. I threw a couple of buckets of water on the first trip across the balcony, squeedgieing and sweeping the water along till I reached the drain on the far side of the balcony, which I then discovered was very slow in draining so I pushed the water back again. Then I did the whole thing again starting from the slow draining end finishing with coaxing what was left of the water down the working drain. I left it to dry while I had a spot of lunch and then positioned the plastic sofa, chairs and coffee table we had bought for sitting out in the air and relaxed for a bit. It looks infinitely better and is a real joy to sit on now.

Our first home-cooked meal in Abu Dhabi was delicious, grilled mackerel with rice and stir-fried veggies, followed by dates and Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. I didn’t even mind the washing up this morning.

A.

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!!!

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.