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.

From all things Abu Dhabi to none

It's amazing how many non-Abu Dhabi-related posts there are on Abu Dhabi forums (ok, for once I'm including the Dubai forums even though, as we are now aware, it's a different city). I mean things that have NOTHING to do with living in Abu Dhabi, or anywhere in the mideast, for that matter.

I offer a few selections of forum subject lines from the past week for your reading pleasure:

"Am I a good mum?"
"How to shop with a baby"
"Who's your favourite politically correct TEFL-er?"
"Gay penguins split in love triangle shock"
"Travelling to Bangkok this summer?"
"Qatar"
"Wedding anniversary present for my husband"

I'll admit that the initiators of these threads have something in common: they happen to live in the UAE, so naturally they are members of a UAE-related discussion forum. But it seems to me that these questions are just as likely to be answered on, say, the Life in Omaha Forum or the Bahamian Beachcombers Discussion Group.

And I, for one, am getting a little weary of sifting through the myriad postings on which type of baby formula to use or how disgusting weevils are when I'm looking for information on document attestation in the UAE.

Thank you for listening. Rant over.

Shop 'til you drop: Going to the mattresses

Five extra readership points if you know what that means.

Today's post means something different.  We're not bringing our fantastic memory foam hybrid mattress with us (we'll need it to sleep on when we come back home for visits, and besides, I think it's time we graduated to queen size).  So we need to buy a mattress once we arrive in Abu Dhabi.

I know what you're thinking.  Why am I wasting space in the ether (not to mention my morning) writing about something as mundane as a mattress?

Think about it.  Unless you're one of those people who survives on three hours of sleep, you spend one-third of your life on a mattress.  So it's pretty effing important.

As usual, we set out on the mattress hunt in our usual way:  I do the silent research, and Mr. Socially Gracious actually talks to the people.  It works great, and those of you who know us know why.

And we found the place to buy a mattress.

It's not just that we discovered (to our happy surprise) that there are identical sorts of mattresses to what we've spent the past five years on in Abu Dhabi.  It's, to quote Dennis Denudo from The Castle, the VIBE we got from the store manager of (get this) The Living Room Furnishing store.  Here's the story:

Once I located the contact information for this outfit (which, incidentally, sells mattresses, not living room furnishings), Mr. S-G fired off an email asking if they sold the kind of mattress that is not all tempurpedic foam, but some sort of hard latex at the bottom and a few inches of memory foam on the top.  This is what he received in response, just a few hours later:

Thank you for your email.

Yes we do have mattress in our own brand, Europedic Memory Foam, which are most reasonably priced and come in following combinations:

8cm Ultra High Density Foam, topped with 8 cm Europedic Memory Foam

Dressed in Feather Touch Terry Fabric and borderline finish

Perfect Comfort13 cm Ultra High Density Foam, topped with 8 cm Europedic Memory Foam

Dressed in Feather Touch Terry Fabric and borderline finish 

All Materials used are anti-bacterial

Memory Foam is temperature and Pressure sensitive

Absolute Comfort - Twin layered

15 cm Ultra High Density Foam, topped with7 cm Europedic Memory Foam

Topped with 3 cm super soft Europedic Material

Dressed in European Knitted Bertha Fabric 

All Materials used are anti-bacterial

Memory Foam is temperature and Pressure sensitive

Ultimate Comfort  - THE Ultimate Sleep Surface for luxurious rest

15 cm Ultra High Density Foam, topped with 10 cm Europedic Memory Foam; specially contoured Encased in UCHD Foam wall to provide comfort and durability over edges

Dressed in European Knitted Bertha Fabric

All materials used are anti-bacterial

Memory Foam is temperature and Pressure sensitive

All mattresses carry 10 year manufacturer’s Warranty

Please do call if I can be of more assistance. Appreciate if you can call me or send me your number so I can call you to discuss this further. For location maps please see The Living Room Furnishing in wikimapia / google maps in dubai / abu dhabi / al ain

Kheman Ganwani

The Living Room Furnishing LLC

Abu Dhabi 02 621 0322

Dubai 04 422 7466

Al Ain 03 755 0428

Al Ain 03 755 3099

For Locations please search wikimapia.org or maps.google.com for the living room furnishing dubai / abu dhabi / al ain

HOLY RAPID RESPONSE, BATMAN!

Upon thanking the fellow, we received yet another email telling us how much he was looking forward to having us visit his showroom and supplying us with the mobile number of his colleague and the specific location of the store (by Madinat Zayed Shopping Centre, behind DHL/behind the corner of Al Falah Street/Sheikh Rashid Road = Old Airport Road).  Yes, that's the address.

Needless to say, we're pretty confident where we'll be shopping for a mattress in Abu Dhabi.

Avoid the grape

Um, I don't actually follow this advice, as should be clear to anyone within view of our recycling bin.  But there's something we discovered over the course of our dining experience in Abu Dhabi, and it's interesting enough to mention here.

Of the seven emirates in the UAE, some of them are dry, some are not.  Abu Dhabi and Dubai are in that second category, which comes as a huge surprise to people I talk to (hey -- those of you who know us should know that the day we moved to a dry country would be the same day you saw pigs flying around overhead).

So yes, you can drink in Abu Dhabi.

Just not everywhere, and sometimes that's a good thing.

With very few exceptions, the only licensed restaurants and bars are to be found in hotels (although not all hotels are licensed, as my husband discovered when he ended up in one of the dry ones last summer and went looking for the bar).  The hotels that are able to sell liquor, however, are chock-a-block full of dining and drinking choices.  I'll get to that in another post.

It's those other places that I'm interested in just now:  The Persian Hatam al Tae nestled in little corner off Hamdan Street behind what used to be an internet café.  Lebanese Flower, with its conveniently-located branches around the city.  Hanoi, the only Vietnamese eatery (I think) in Abu Dhabi.  Just Falafel, which sells exactly what it says it does.  The international-themed Amassi, over in Khalidiya.  Gad Egyptian cuisine (admittedly not my favourite, but where else can you order a "Viagra Sandwich?").  And the sumptuously-decorated India Palace, whose only misfortune is to be located in the construction nightmare of Al Salaam Street.

There are more, and I'll write about them all in detail rather soon.  For the time being, there are two reasons to venture out of your isolated cocoon five-star hotel and head over to one of these independent places:

1. They're cheap.
   
2. I guarantee you'll drink your daily quota of water.
   

That second reason is a pretty damn good one when you're living in the desert.

Why an anonymous blog?

If you've taken the time to read some of my posts over the past month, the answer should be clear.  If it's still a little muddy, here's a handy list of reasons to keep my identity somewhat veiled here in the ether:

1. I guarantee that some of the things I write will get a few individuals' knickers in a twist. Those people might be newspaper editors, religious extremists, altruistic redistributionists democrats, university presidents, real estate agents, chairmen of corporations, restauranteurs, Starbucks afficionados, anyone with a forum screen name like "Mommy123," or whoever. The list could be infinite.  I don't want any of these people finding out who I am and re-enacting Kristallnacht on the street where I live.
2. I think I'm going to like my new job in the UAE, and if that ends up being the case, I'd like to keep it.  At least for a while.
3. My husband already likes his job, and perhaps more importantly, it's paying (most of) the bills.  We'd like that to continue.
4. While the UAE is pretty darn tolerant a society, it doesn't really rank with the US in terms of freedom of expression, so I'd like to keep below the radar of any cultural policing.
5. Despite the fact that I'm posting to the entire electronic universe, I'm a pretty private person.  Except when it comes to Facebook.

So, dear readers, some of you have come to this forum as a result of a Google search for "salons in Madinat Zayed."  I hope you find the information useful.  Others (and you know who you are) have arrived here because I directed you to the site.  Please do me a tiny favour and assist me in maintaining my ethereal anonymity.

Newsflash: "Don't mind the gaze: you're not in London anymore" from The National

Each time I read The National and come across a bad piece of journalism I think "it can't get any worse than this."

Then the next day's edition hits the streets.

Today, this article discusses THE GAZE -- that omnipresent stare that western women who travel to the Gulf are warned about.

To be honest, I don't mind that much if the editors at The National feel the need to fill a few empty column-inches with editorials about how much women get stared at and whether it should or shouldn't bother them.  I DO mind, however, when rubbish like this makes its way into the presses.  So bear with me while I attack critique the journalist and her two fatal mistakes.

Despite professing to follow the rule of "never say never or always...", she has "come to notice that the western women who complain about the unwanted gaze are seemingly always [my emphasis] women that are by normal standards plain or self-conscious."  Hmm.  If I remember correctly, I've done a fair amount of complaining about people staring at me when I walk around the streets.  Guess that means I'm either plain or self-conscious.  A quick check in the mirror dismisses the first hypothesis, so I must be the latter.  Thanks, Madam Journalist, for pointing that out to me.

The second mistake is better.  Or worse.  Depending on how one looks at it.  Our journalist reports taking a blonde woman's "...complaints about the unwanted attention with a grain of salt...But then again, I am not blonde so I don't know.  Or maybe I know better because I am not blonde."

Let's repeat the last sentence:

"Or maybe I know better because I am not blonde."

Wow!  What a slam!  Well, that was my first thought.  My second just chuckled at the fact that the brunette who wrote that has a Master's degree.

This blonde has a Doctor of Philosphy.