Friday, June 13, 2008

Dubai Diary

hi folks!

just a quickie again - i'll have www access in my office from sunday so will hopefully do some more posts.

been at work a week now and will be very busy i think. i am the project manager for 15km of new sewers and irrigation for Jumeirah Golf Estates - loads of outrageously expensive villas around a Greg Norman golf course. another amazing dubai project - google it and see what its all about. Aishwarya Rai just bought a house there.

in 1 hour or so i'll be off for my first run (or exercise of any kind) for nearly three weeks. gym or a nearby park - i dont know yet.

we have been super lucky so far - my company only had one house available for us and it is better than i expected - in The Lakes - a gated community with pools, play areas etc... its a 3 bed house with a garden. will be able to have bbq's when its cooler (next 2-3 months wil be high-40's celcius!!).

also mega-lucky was that we managed to get Lucas into Dubai British School - 2km from the house.

some interesting things about dubai -

driving on the right (1st time ever for me)
free parking in malls, with a system to indicate where spaces are
its dusty - visibility sometimes 2-3km only
cars and petrol is very cheap
loadsa expats
british DJ's on the radio - they even play The Smiths!
i've never seen so many Hummers, Range Rover's, 4WD's
our housing area feels like a factory for caucasian mums with toddlers and 4WD's
sun rises at 5-5.30am, sets at 7.30pm
traffic is very bad
my day off is friday
many stunning arab women - many very glamorous, some very skimpily-dressed!
men dress very well
internet is censored
only 20% locals live here!
i work with indians, belgians, dutch, scottish, iraqi, egyptians, aussies, french....
blogspot page here is in arabic text - difficult to login!

ttfn

more on sunday.

4 comments:

Simon said...

Hey Adrian, good to hear you're settling in. Blogspot log on language can be changed - it's in Thai when I'm in Thailand for example. Can't remember how I did it but it may be the language or location choice on the sign-in page - set it to English UK - no sure if that's it but trust me it can be changed with a bit of fiddling around.

Cheers

Simon

zulhassan said...

plz post few pic, adrian.

慧沁 Wai Sum said...

glad to know that things are going on smoothly in your new working environment! Feel a little jealous that you can have cheap petrol in Dubai...but pls help to educate locals to reduce usage of 4WD, it wastes too much petrol....save the world...:-)

bola2api said...

good to hear from u!