One tiny word

I just noticed a post on one of the more popular expat forums asking for advice on what to bring to Abu Dhabi - in one word.  It's early yet, but things like satnavs, passport photos, and patience have already been mentioned.  Let me add another one that trumps them all:

CASH.

Cash can buy you any of the material goods you might have forgotten to pack (including satnavs and passport photos -- do people really not understand that there are photo shops EVERYWHERE in this city?  Jeez.)  It enables you to hop in taxis eight times a day for the first week or two and tip generously without blinking.  It will pay for a month (or two or more) of car rental so you no longer have to stand in the sun during rush hour waiting for a taxi.  Cash will cover your prescription medication in the event your doctor jots down the wrong diagnosis code and then leaves on holiday.  That expensive Etisalat USB modem that will allow you to remain connected to the world while you're sitting in a month-long queue waiting to have broadband installed at your villa will no longer seem so expensive with a pocket full of cash.  It can create a beautiful garden where there once once a sandpit and turn an empty villa into a furnished home.  Cash is an expeditor and a doorkey.

Cash is King.

The Twelve Days of Moving: Day Three

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.

The Twelve Days of Moving: Day Two

Sunday, 16 August

You would be completely reasonable to think something along the lines of "Naturally, you slept late and spent a leisurely Sunday recovering from jetlag."  And you'd be right.

If it weren't me you were referring to.

No, THIS gal had to go to work on Sunday at EIGHT O'CLOCK BLOODY AY-EM.

Yes, you read that right, although it was mostly administrative stuff (contract signing, meeting the Powers That Are, and being processed for my residence visa).  The latter was the best part of all:  the PRO took half-a-dozen of us to get our medical check-ups and had us in and out of the Disease Prevention and Screening Centre, located at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, in thirty minutes flat.  This is truly evidence of modern-day miracles, as pretty much everyone else I've spoken with in Abu Dhabi has spent at least a half-day at the zoo establishment.

That done, my work day was over and it was time to inspect our new home.  This seems so long ago now, that I don't remember my exact response, but I believe it included repetition of the phrase "Oh.  My.  God." over and over again.  It was nothing like the wreck I had seen in those pictures from way back in June.  And it is immense.  Think Anna and the King waltzing proportions (ok, ok, maybe not -- Deborah Kerr's skirt needed a LOT more space).

Next stop was Marina Mall to check out appliances at Carrefour and cheap furniture at Ikea. I decided that latter was a bit too cheap, so was determined to scour the streets of Abu Dhabi looking for something better.

In the evening we made a trip to our friends at The Living Room Furnishing store to pick out a mattress.  We chose the queen-size (a mere 150 x 200 cm) tempurpedic/hard foam hybrid. Delivery was scheduled for Tuesday evening.

Again, a good day, and at the end of it we planned our to-do list for the next one.  At one-o'clock in the morning.

The Twelve Days of Moving: Day One

As you've probably guessed from my conspicuous absence from the ether, this has been one hell of a first two weeks.

Here's a short recap of the events of the past twelve days.  Hang in there, it's gonna be a long one:

Saturday, 15 August

We leave our lovely home (and neighbours) in the UK with two suitcases and one carry-on each. Picked up by Etihad Airlines chauffeur service, Heathrow was a madhouse (August, you know).  Even the flight was packed, so my world-traveller husband didn't get his usual upgrade to first class.  Which means we had seats that looked like this:

Instead of this:

Right, so business class is blue and first class is gold.  Other than that, not much difference. And in the end it really didn't matter because the stewardess (yes, I still use that word) spilled champagne on me before the flight even took off, so I got my very own size small sleeping costume, complete with storage bag.

Arrival in the UAE, some seven hours later was pretty uneventful.  The only difference was that THIS time I had an employment visa waiting for me at the Visa Delivery Desk and had to go in for an eye scan.  Then on to one of the largest villas I've ever seen to spend the first of what we assumed would be several nights while our Apocalypse-Now-Wreck-of-a-Villa was getting made ready.

I don't remember anything else.

Last day

Here I am, having my usual morning coffee and doing my usual morning things -- reading the news, writing my blog, laundering clothes, making the bed, going to the Friday morning market. And a few unusual morning things, like emptying out the refrigerator, pulling the last few bits of clothing out of the wardrobe, tucking the barbeque away in the shed.

Because it's our last day here in the UK.

In less than twenty-four hours, we'll be on a plane (business class, thank you very much).  In less than forty-eight hours, I'll be finished with my medical check-up and my residency visa will be in the process of getting done.  A day and a half after that, we'll probably be at the British Club answering trivia questions at quiz night.  The spare time in between work and play will be filled with shopping for a mattress, investigating the villa, buying furniture, and planning the garden.  Our work week will change from Monday-Friday to Sunday-Thursday.

This is, without a doubt, the strangest experience of my lifetime.

T minus eight days

And at this point I just want to go.

I'm ready.  I've got my employment visa and plane ticket.  An attested marriage certificate and diploma, international driving license, and 18 million passport photos are waiting patiently in my moving folder.  Bank accounts in yet another foreign land are set up.  My wardrobe has been trimmed down to what will fit in two suitcases (the rest will go by air or sea).  The medical exam for my residence visa (basically, a blood test and a chest x-ray to prove I don't have consumption -- does anyone actually have consumption these days?) is scheduled for the day after I arrive.  One team of movers is coming on Monday; the other crew on Tuesday.  Farewell get-togethers with the neighbours are set.  Our villa looks (we've heard) as if it's actually going to be ready by the time we land in Abu Dhabi.  I'm still cooking, but that's about to stop once Monday morning arrives. Anxiety, excitement, impatience, and a general feeling of queasiness are the ruling emotions of the day.  And why wouldn't they be?  We look at one another at least once a day and say:

We're moving to Abu Dhabi.

Crikey.

Countdown to the move

You know, each time I move house I say the same thing to myself (and to everyone else who will listen):

Never again.

Then Charles Laughton enters in a barrister's wig and calls me a chronic and habitual liar.  He's right.

The thing is, moving bites.  Not because of the fear of transplanting oneself to a new place (and in our case those places have been and are going to be really new), but because one ends up living in limbo at both ends of the relocation process.  And even though that limbo does have an end, there are couple of months when it seems interminable.

Take my dining room.  Or what used to be my dining room.  It's got forty-some-odd boxes in it and the remainder of its flat surfaces are strewn with all the little items that are destined for air freight.  I've managed to carve out a small wedge for my computer, calendar, and moving notebook, but that's about it.

The kitchen is just as bad.  Most pots, pans, and utensils are either packed away or arranged in a sort of stainless-steel-house-of-cards so that Mr Air Freight Surveyor Man can come in and assess whether they'll fit in to our 1,000-lb. allowance.  Just the other day I had to rifle through box number B-243 and dig out my quiche pan.  (See, there ARE benefits to being anal retentive well-organised.)

All the pictures have been taken down from the walls.  There aren't any fresh flowers anymore because the vases have been boxed up.  Our carpets look as if the Battle of the Bulge had been fought on them (twice), as hoovering is now a practical impossibility.

And it's all going to get worse before it gets better.

One if by land, two if by sea

I guess that should be one if by air, and no doubt it would have been if they had planes back in Paul Revere's time.

It took me the better part of a day (not counting the past month's worth of enquiries to freight forwarders), multiple phone calls and emails, constant consultations of the calendar, and then a few more phone calls.

But it's done:  we've got air and sea freight locked down and scheduled.

Here's how it all works:

Air freight:

We, essentially, do nothing.  (I love this part)  A fella comes 'round to our house, looks at the stuff we're sending via air, confirms it will not exceed the maximum weight/volume, and then sends a band of little men around the following week to pack it up and take it away.  About two weeks later it magically arrives at our villa in Abu Dhabi.

Sea freight:

We do pretty much everything.  Pack up the boxes.  Hire a local removals company to be here when the container arrives.  Inventory everything that goes in the container, seal it up.  Ten days later it sets sail for the UAE, with an estimated transit time of TWENTY SIX days (Ben Hur wasn't available for the rowing crew), passing through the pirate-infested waters around Somalia:

A week or so after arrival in Abu Dhabi, and maybe, just maybe, without some hot-headed bureaucrat deciding to rifle through everything we own looking for porn, we'll have the fun of unloading the container and setting up house.

That is, yours truly will be setting up house while Mr. World Traveller heads over to the states to renew his driver's license.

I hope he has to fly economy.

Musings on the moving process

Oh, what I'd give to have a bunch of little men come and pack everything up and make it all magically appear in Abu Dhabi.

Instead, here I am watching my Excel moving workbook give birth to even more worksheets -- one for the box inventory, one for the list of stores in Abu Dhabi that we'll need to hit upon arrival, one for the pre-move list of things to be done, one for the list of things to bring in the container (and another just like it for the things that are going by air).

There are manila folders for moving expense receipts.  Folders for vital records.  Folders for stuff that's neither expense-related or vital.

There are piles of moving blankets, carefully stacked and balanced -- all 100 of them.

There's a notebook with daily to-do lists of at least ten items on every page, some of which I manage to get done.

A sea of boxes exists in the dining room, carefully parted so that I can open and close the window and blinds without having to sign up for the Cirque du Soleil Acrobat Training Program.

Decisions about what clothing to move by sea, by air, and by checked baggage consume the better part of my mornings.

We ring the property management firm in charge of turning our wreck villa into something habitable by mid-August on a daily basis.  We're told that it "will get done, so stop calling."

The list goes on.

I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for us.  We clearly brought this on ourselves.  You see, there are two types of relocation packages offered by employers -- the Luxury Package and the Adventure Package.  Sure, we could've rented a brand new villa out in the middle of nowhere a lovely new development, arrived with a couple of suitcases, gone on a spending spree at Ikea, and saved ourselves all of this trouble.  Instead, we chose the road less taken.

And discovered that sometimes the 'road less taken' is less taken for a reason.

Sea freight: the last of the red hot deals

Some things are really expensive:  diamonds, platinum, a house in London, plutonium, for instance.  But we often forget about the remaining great bargains in our time.  Things like salt, glass, used paperbacks, and sea freight.

That's right, sea freight -- our topic for this morning.

Moving things around on a boat is incredibly cheap, especially if you're not looking for full-service relocation packages.  And when you're married to a gal like me, you don't need full service because I am a packing MAVEN.  If you don't believe me, I'll send you my Excel workbook.

The quotes for getting a 20-foot container's worth of our stuff from England to Abu Dhabi have come in and average about £2,000.  That number includes getting the container to our door, giving us a couple of hours to load it, making it appear in Abu Dhabi, and delivering it to the Tornado Villa (which still resembles something out of 1980's downtown Beirut, as suggested by a friend).

I looked back at our invoice from 2006 from the UK move and the breakdown was:

export documentation:  $100

delivery of empty container to our house:  $725

ocean freight:  $920

destination CSC (whatever that is):  $205

customs clearance:  $200

delivery to new flat:  $710.60 (why bother with the sixty cents?)

ocean freight:  $920 !!

Now if that isn't the bargain of the century, I don't know what is.

How to move a household halfway around the world (and not die trying)

Right, so it's not EXACTLY halfway around the world, but Abu Dhabi is pretty far from the US East coast, and if the Pacific Ocean weren't so bloody big, I wouldn't actually have to exaggerate.

This will be our third transcontinental move in as many years and as before, we're doing it ourselves rather than hiring a full-service moving company.  I have a feeling this time around will be a bit more complicated than the last two, mostly due to the Procrustean policies of our respective employers.

To be fair, some of the complication arises from the fact that we've been given choices -- a good thing, since people vary in terms of what they want to bring with them when moving halfway across the world.  Some want their entire household, some want a subset of that, and some would prefer to arrive in their new home with nothing more than a suitcase full of clothing and purchase everything locally.  It's not the choices themselves that are maddening, it's the fact that the individual who came up with the relocation allowance policies doesn't seem to have made it past third grade math.  Here's why:

Take me, for example.  I've been offered the following options for my relocation allowance:

1.   sea freight of a 20-foot container
2.  air freight of 661.38 lbs
3.  cash of US $340.32

Based on our experience and research, we know the approximate cost of sea freight and air freight, so let me revise my relocation offer in terms of cost to the employer in dollars:

1.   $2,000
2.  $2,000
3.  $340.32

Huh?

But maybe that's just one company's weirdness and other employers have staff who are actually able to add.  Let's take a look at another relocation package:

1.  sea freight of 20-foot container + $5,000
2.  air freight of 1,000 lbs + $10,000

As before, I'll substitute the shipping costs with actual dollar amounts and restate the allowances to make comparison easier:

1.  $7,000
2.  $14,000

The reason this doesn't make a bit of sense is because air freight costs more than sea freight.  A lot more.  The average cost of shipping a 20-foot container with something like 4 or 5 tons of cargo is $2,000, the same as the average cost of shipping a half ton via air freight (and by the way, that half ton is volumetric weight, and therefore actually quite less than half a ton).  So why the cash incentive to ship LESS when the cost to the person paying is the SAME?  Imagine if the Sphinx had posed such a question to weary travellers instead of the four legs-two legs-three-legs riddle.  No one would have ever gotten anywhere.

So here we are, not only packing up half the house, but now running complicated Excel scenarios trying to optimise the volumetric weight allowances, segregate the packed boxes into air and sea freight groups, weigh EVERYTHING that's going by air, deal with two different freight forwarders, and schedule two separate moving exercises.

And all because someone can't add.