I love this place!

by Cindy

Jeff has posted about our dry cleaning prices before.  We get great prices, they pick up and deliver and when you are not home, they leave it anyway.  They'll just collect their money next time.  They're nice people and everyone still trusts each other.  Have I mentioned before that I love living here?!?!?!

Bulk Shopping

by Cindy

Jeff just posted about our food prices.  I thought I would also post about our bulk food.  The things you buy in bulk here are different that what you find in bulk in the US.  Here we have all kinds of frying oils and they come in containers that have to be close to two gallons.  We also have rice.  This just amazes me because 1) it reminds me of the animal feed on my uncle's farm and 2) I couldn't eat this much rice in a lifetime, even if I tried.

An entire aisle devoted to rice

How long would it take you to eat this much rice?  It's 40 kg or 88.18 pounds of rice!

Not IF but WHEN

by Cindy

The driving here is nuts, really nuts.  People don't wear their seat belts, they pass on the shoulder and if they think you are going too slow, they flash their headlights at you and that means, "move out of the way."   There are a lot of reasons for all of this and we'll save those for another blog.  But, the driving is crazy enough that Jeff and I always talk about when we get in  wreck not if we get in a wreck.  Sure enough, we got into a wreck.  We are so fortunate that it was a very mild fender bender and no one was hurt.  We are also fortunate that the person who hit us admitted his fault and everything was resolved without incident.  You definitely hear horror stories and wrecks as well as assessing blame.

Not only are Jeff and I thankful that no one was hurt, we are thankful for our very, very safe Volvo which has been fully repaired at this point.

Bargain Shopping

In case you wonder what types of food we have available - and what we pay - here is a recent graphic from our paper here showing food prices here in the Emirates as well as in the US, the UK, France, and Australia (click here for an article from our newspaper - or click on the picture below to enlarge it).  Prices here in the Emirates are in red, prices from the US are in yellow.  All of the prices here are in UAE dirhams, so you can either mentally divide by 3.67 or you can just look at the percentage difference to get an idea of the prices.  Enjoy.

Mission Impossible 4 - Location, Location, Location

OK - I don't know if you've seen thee new Mission Impossible movie.  Whether you have or not, we thought we'd take a few moments to blog about the real star of the show - DUBAI.  What did we think about how our city was portrayed in the movie?

1. Sand Storms - They're worse in Lubbock, TX than in Dubai.  Seriously.  Let's consider some evidence...  Where is the only place I've ever seen the streetlights come on during the middle of the day because of dust?  Lubbock.  Where is the only place that I've lived and had little piles of dirt in my window sills after the dust blows?  Lubbock.  Where is the only place I've ever tasted the grit of dirt in my teeth during a dust storm?  Lubbock.  OK - final question - a 'haboob' - the Arabic word for 'intense dust storm' - in the Wikipedia entry for this term, where was the picture taken that illustrates this type of storm?  Lubbock.  I rest my case.  [special shout-out to my panhandle friends from Spearman, TX for having a picture on the 'haboob' entry, too].
2. Cityscape - The city is bigger than it appeared in the movie.  Mission Impossible 4 made it look like we only have one tall building.  Not true.  In addition to the 2,723 foot-Burj Khalifa (almost twice as tall as the Empire State Building), we have 17 other buildings over 1,000 feet - more than any other city in the world.  And for those of you forward-thinkers who like your measurements in meters, Dubai has 63 buildings over 200 meters  - again, more than any other city in the world.
3. Development - The city is more developed than it appears to be in the movie.  There are no camels on the streets [I won't tell you which one of my family members I had to set straight on that - I'm embarrassed that this individual asked me where we tied up all the camels].  There is no market with dirt roads within walking distance of the Burj Khalifa.  We do, however, have the biggest mall in the world right next door...

Tom Cruise on the Burj Khalifa

And one more interesting tidbit for you - the Indian billionaire in the movie who is supposedly hosting a party at his mansion in Mumbai?  Well, that was actually the Jumeirah Zabeel Saray - a hotel in, you guessed it, Dubai.  It's on the Palm Islands, actually.

Needless to say, people here were way excited about the movie.  In the theatre, when Tom Cruise told his team that they were headed to Dubai, everyone cheered.  We hear from friends that on opening night, people cheered EVERY TIME Dubai was mentioned.  It's a great city. 

Ring us up the next time you're passing through - we'd love to show you around.