Monday, 17 August
We started off by sending a list of villa repairs (complete with pictures) to our real estate agent and the property manager, then yours truly headed across town to check out Tahboub Bros.kitchen shop as it appeared to be the only place in Abu Dhabi where one could purchase a Sub-Zero refrigerator and Wolf cooker. Fantastic place, with fantastic prices to match: the Sub-Zero price (before discount, naturally) was 49,000 Dhs and the Wolf range was a mere 39,000 Dhs. I thought it best to return to Carrefour. But they did have some lovely things, including Franke sinks, Asko dishwashers, and Grohe taps. Sigh.
Next stop Jumbo Electronics on Hamdan Street to find out whether ANY televisions for sale in the UAE were wired for SCART cables. The answer was something along the lines of a blank stare, eventually followed by a "No, Madame." Ok.
Nearby, just next to the Sinbad Automatic Laundry and underneath the Extreme Team Law Offices (yes, really), was Shadows Decor, one of the highly-recommended places for custom curtains. I did, in fact, just say "curtains." That's because villas in Abu Dhabi come pretty bare -- no appliances, no curtains, sometimes not even any lightbulbs (we were more fortunate in this last matter). I spent over an hour with a lovely Indian lady who hefted about a million fabric books from what appeared to be complete disorganisation (is there a Dewey Decimal System for fabrics?). I couldn't actually pick out anything specific, mostly because I have the design sense of a gnat, but before I left I was told that I could probably outfit my entire villalavishly for about 10,000 Dhs. That's $2,722 US. Just in case you missed it, I said:
I could probably outfit my entire villa lavishly for about $2,722 US.
And my villa happens to be about 4,200 sq. ft. I just don't know what else to say here.
Exhausted from my fabric-pawing, I found a taxi and made my way to Al Wahda Mall to suss out the appliance situation at Betterlife before meeting up with my husband and some colleagues at The Noodle House for lunch. This was fantastic, even though I stayed somewhat conservative and ordered the Paad Thai. I suppose the only negative experience was that ONE of the colleagues decided that he would shorten my name to what he thought was a reasonable familiar form. I corrected him.
After lunch my appliance researcher and I headed up to Betterlife to pick out the kitchen appliances. It took a bit of time, but wasn't too taxing. About ninety minutes later, we had purchased a 90 cm-wide Electrolux dual-fuel range; a Siemens side-by-side refrigerator with ice maker, water dispenser, and one of those little pullie-outie doors on the 'frig side for getting things that one uses regularly; a wine fridge; a Siemens dishwasher that holds 14 place settings and runs at less than 40 dB (that's deciBels, and 40 might as well be complete silence); and a Siemens washing machine and dryer. They were scheduled for delivery and installation on Wednesday -- two days later.
Now it was time to dash over to the villa and meet up with our fantastic real estate agent, who agreed with us that there was still a substantial amount of work to be done. Within minutes, the maintenance manager appeared and the agent went to work.
Dinner was delicious take-away from Caravan Restaurant and dessert consisted of another midnight planning session on the roof terrace.
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