Crowns, Cars and Uniforms

It's a few days since my last update, and today was my first day at work. More about that another time but for now let's rewind to Thursday.

Jo and the kids spent Thursday morning settling into the apartment and enjoying the pool. I headed into Abu Dhabi for my first experience of the local healthcare system. On Wednesday afternoon I had lost a crown from one of my teeth (no idea how it happened, it was certainly nothing to do with the Riesen chews, honest), so I had managed to secure myself an emergency dental appointment before the weekend.

I'm not the biggest fan of going to the dentist at the best of times, so wasn't looking forward to the prospect of doing it in an unfamiliar country. However, I need not have worried, as the whole process was very straightforward and the care was very good (although getting a text message seconds after leaving the premises asking if I'd enjoyed the experience was perhaps a little much). I need to go back in a few days to have the new crown fitted, but the idea of doing that is far less intimidating than it could have been.

The next job was to pop into the office to collect the Arabic translation of my driving licence, and then to head to the Service Centre where I would hopefully be able to exchange this for my UAE licence. If you've been following this blog from the start you can probably imagine how it went.... take a numbered ticket and wait to be called forward to the counter.

The lady dealing with me didn't understand much English (why should she?) so it was a fairly challenging process. The first hurdle was to get her to understand what country I am from, I would have thought the translated licence would have helped here but it didn't. After running through various countries including Bermuda and Bahrain, an Emirati man sitting at the next counter helped with the translation, so we could move onto the next question.

The next question caused a great deal of excitement between the lady on the counter, the lady at the next counter, and their boss who was sat at a desk behind them. They spent at least five minutes discussing it before asking the Emirati man to translate again. I was getting a little concerned by this point, so was relieved when the question was only "do you want a licence to drive a small car or a big car?"! Not sure why it caused so much excitement but there you go.

Having battled through the rest of the questions I handed over my 200 dirhams and had my photograph taken. At this point I was sent back to the waiting area, I thought to wait to be called for an eye test. However five minutes later I was called back to the counter and presented with my licence. All in all probably 20 minutes from start to finish, you can't really complain about that.

Once I was back at the apartment it was Jo's turn to head out, with Henry, to the uniform shop. She was a little concerned about this due to the chaos I had described from earlier in the week. However she returned a couple of hours later, with everything she had gone for, telling me it had been one of the more organised uniform shops she has been too, and certainly better than anything she has experienced in Bolton!

The rest of the day was spent by the pool and going out for dinner, so all in all another good day.

As always, thanks for sticking with me, and for the kind comments.

 

 

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Money, Money, Money

I seem to have spent the last couple of days handing over piles of notes to various people. I can't get a UAE bank account until I have my residency visa (which still hasn't come, but will come tomorrow I'm sure (Insha'Allah)), which means I don't have a local chequebook, and therefore everything has to be paid for in cash or international bank transfer (not an ideal option as these take four or five days).

The main logistical challenge has been with the villa. Having accepted the landlord's offer to rent the villa to us, we now need to pay a maintenance deposit, and a full year's rent in advance, before the process can continue. As an aside, it is only after we have paid all this money that we get to see the contract, which seems a little back to front to me, but "that is just the way it is" (another phrase I'm hearing more and more).

Anyway, as we want to get in the villa as soon as possible I needed to pay the maintenance deposit in cash, so I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning, moving money between accounts online, and using my maximum withdrawal allowances to cobble together the money. I then headed to the landlord's bank to pay the money into his account, although the taxi driver didn't quite understand where I was asking to go, which meant he took me to Al Hilal Luxury Car Showroom rather than Al Hilal Bank. I didn't have that much money with me!

This afternoon's task was to find the uniform shop to order some trousers for Henry, as he is too tall for the standard sizes. The school had sent out a vague map of the shop's new location so I confidently showed this to my taxi driver. He got me to the general area but there was no sign of the shop. After driving in circles for ten minutes, with the driver getting increasingly agitated, I decided to get out and continue on foot.

This turned out to be a mistake. The temperature here has dropped from last week, but it is still in the mid 30s today. I wandered up and down the block where I was convinced the shop was, but could not find it, and was getting increasingly hot and bothered. Eventually I decided to walk round to the back of the block, and hey presto, there was the shop.

Down I went to the uniform section, where I was presented with a numbered ticket (they seem to have this queuing system pretty much everywhere), and told to take my place in the queue. The room was big enough for maybe 15 people and there were at least 20 of us in there, and from what I can tell, the queuing system was being completed ignored.

I decided to join the scrum, so approached the counter and explained why I was there, namely to order some specially made trousers. The lady behind the counter was adamant that I didn't need to do this, even when I shared Henry's measurements. She called a few colleagues over and a very animated discussion took place, which I didn't understand a word of. Finally they decided that yes, it would need to be a special order, and (of course) there would be a 50% premium for this. Eventually the paperwork was completed and I handed over my credit card, but of course it was cash only. Given that the villa deposit had pretty much cleaned me out I was a little concerned that I didn't have enough cash to pay for the trousers and get a taxi back to my hotel, but thankfully I did, with a few dirhams to spare.

It's now time for me to pack up as I am checking out of the hotel tomorrow, to move to a serviced apartment ahead of Jo and the kids to arriving on Wednesday. Hopefully we won't be there for too long but let's wait and see.

Thanks for reading, as always. I am aware that a couple of people have tried to leave comments on previous posts without success. I have changed some of the settings, which may have sorted this, but do please let me know if you still have a problem.

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