Quick Snippet

Quick update on villa situation. The issue last night was that "narcotics" had been found in the container two before ours in the queue, which meant that all customs attention was focused on that rather than looking at any other containers. In the end we've been informed that our container will be cleared early tomorrow morning (as long as they don't find Jo's Marmite), and delivered to the villa at around 10am.

That's good news, although when Jo visited the villa today she discovered that whilst the maintenance work has been carried out, the villa has not been cleaned, and believe me, it needs cleaning. As a result of Jo kicking up a bit of a fuss, a minibus full of cleaners turned up late this afternoon to start the job, so hopefully by the time the container arrives the lounge at least will be clean!

The Internet man also visited the villa today, but disappeared fairly quickly tutting about it being "broken", so I'm not sure when it will be connected. Hopefully quite soon.

School continues to go well, Archie and Flossie are making more friends every day, and Henry is impressed by the facilities available at the school, and also by a number of his teachers.

I'll update when I can, subject to availability of Internet.

Thanks for reading as always.

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That Was The Week That Was

I can't believe that I'm already at the end of my first week in the new job. This is a public blog so I can't disclose any confidential information, suffice to say I'm certain I'm going to enjoy the new role. There is lots for me to do, but lots of good things to build on.

I've already been out to a number of meetings with potential clients. I'm learning about all sorts of businesses, including operating mega ports, digital oil fields, developing enterprise skills in UAE nationals, and reclaiming land from the sea. I've met people from all sorts of countries, including the UAE itself, India, Pakistan, Sudan, France and one or two from the UK. All have been friendly and welcoming.

View from my office window

There is definitely a lot to get on with, but it is all new and exciting, which is good.

Out of work there has been progress as well. We have signed our tenancy contract, which means we have been able to arrange for the electricity and water to be turned on (hopefully this will happen tomorrow or Saturday), which means that the landlord can get on with sorting the villa ready for our arrival.

Our container is being processed by customs on Tuesday, and will then arrive at the villa on Wednesday, when we will move in. On Friday a large delivery will arrive from Ikea, and thankfully they will build everything for us. So by next Saturday we should be properly in and getting ourselves sorted.

Archie and Flossie enjoying their five hour Ikea experience

And possibly the best news of the week is that the first school day (well it was only an hour actually) went well for all three children. Flossie is still third on the waiting list for Al Yasmina so I took her off to Pearl Primary this morning. She was a little nervous, but did really well, and got on with meeting her new classmates and having a look round the school. Jo took Archie and Henry to Al Yasmina, and again, they both got on absolutely fine. All three of them seem to be looking forward to their first full day on Sunday, which has to be a good result.

Day one of school (please note Henry refuses to have his photo taken in his natty green trousers)

Other than that Jo has done a fantastic job of keeping the kids entertained this week, and getting to know lots of people staying at these apartments who are in the same position as us. She has been introducing lots of children to each other, which I am sure has contributed to our kids feeling more relaxed about going to school today.

Thanks for reading as always. More coming soon.

 

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House Hunting in Abu Dhabi

Employers in Abu Dhabi are legally required to provide accommodation or an accommodation allowance. Some large organisations have their own compounds or residential complexes, but my employer does not fall into this category, meaning that we are receiving an allowance rather than a specific property.This means that one of our first tasks has been to find somewhere to live. I had been hoping to get this sorted before Jo and the kids come out next week, but this was always a long shot given how long things take here.

As we are not familiar with the area, or what is available, we opted to use a real estate agent. The upside is they do all of the work for you, the downside is that it is an extra cost. We are not yet at the end of the process, but I think on balance we have done the right thing, even if it has had the potential to be frustrating at times.

Our search began a few months ago when Jo and I spent a few days in Abu Dhabi shortly after I'd been offered the job. We spent a day being shown round by a friend of a friend who lives here, and another day being shown round by two agents. This allowed us to get a feel about what we could get for our money, and the general area where we want to live. It took us a little while to get used to how house hunting works, for example:

• Landlords do not spend anytime making empty properties "presentable" to potential tenants, meaning you are often looking at properties which are very dirty, and in a poor state of repair. It can prove difficult to visualise what it would be like living there.
• People think nothing of driving round and "breaking into" empty properties to have a look around. Breaking in is maybe putting it a bit strongly as there is often a door unlocked somewhere, nevertheless we were a little shocked when this is what happened with the first property we looked at.

Having decided on the area we want to live in, near to the school that Henry and Archie (and hopefully soon Flossie) will be going to, when Jo and I came out last week we were able to go back out with the agent and focus our search on a smaller area. We saw a number of villas, none of which gave us "that feeling", but eventually we found the one and instructed the agent to secure it for us.

We returned to our hotel to cool off (believe me, viewing houses in 40+ degree heat is unpleasant), and to have a refreshing beer, and were disappointed to receive a phone call to inform us that the villa had already gone. Thankfully there were two other villas available in the same compound, so Jo and the agent rushed back to have a look at them, and we were able to secure one.

That was the first hurdle. The next stage is to wait for an "offer letter" from the landlord, which we finally received yesterday, ten days after we said we wanted the villa. Once we are happy with the offer we pay a deposit, and then have to wait two or three weeks whilst the villa is made habitable. There is scope for this to be frustrating as our container has already arrived in Abu Dhabi so we are incurring storage costs for that, plus we will need to pay for temporary accommodation until we can move in. However, we need to not let ourselves get frustrated as I am already learning that there is no point putting pressure on people out here, things will happen at their own pace. "Insha'Allah", or God-willing, is a phrase I am becoming very familiar with.

Our container arrived in the UAE a couple of weeks ago

So this part of our adventure is to be continued. In the meantime I shall leave you with a few pictures of our soon-to-be new home.

Our villa (semi detached)

Our only outside space downstairs (bit different to Stonestack), but we do have a roof terrace.

Roof terrace.

Kitchen

A typical room (they all look very similar)

The communal pool, one minute walk away.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave any comments below if you have made it this far.

 

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Will They Have Sand in Abu Dhabi?

Well, it was all much smoother than we were expecting. By 3pm this afternoon our container was on its way to Abu Dhabi, and everything we hoped would be in there had been accommodated.

The packing team arrived just after 9am this morning to finish the rest of the packing, and to start labelling all the boxes and summarising their contents. Each box has to be individually numbered, and its contents recorded on the shipping schedule ready for perusal by customs.

At 1pm the container arrived, and following some skilful reversing managed to back up the driveway without destroying too many trees.

We were quietly nervous that not everything would fit, but the packers seemed relaxed and proceeded to demonstrate their skill in making maximum use of the space that was available to them. Our essential possessions took up 97 boxes, but in the end we managed to get a number of our reserve items in as well, making a total of 115 boxes (goodness knows what is in them all!).

Once it became clear we were going to get some of our reserve items in, Jo decided to clean the barbecue, just in case there was room for it. This resulted in one of her classic lines, as she emptied the drip tray of its layer of sand, "do you think we'll be able to get some new sand in Abu Dhabi?". I politely reassured her that I didn't think this would be an issue! In the end the barbecue didn't make it anyway, so we don't need to worry.

It only took a couple of hours to load all of the boxes, so shortly after 3pm we were able to observe the locking of the container with the official seal, not to be opened again until it reaches Abu Dhabi. The truck driver had a minor panic at that point, because when they shut the container doors it trapped a few stray branches from a nearby tree, so he was concerned that customs may be concerned that we were importing something dodgy! Anyway, the debris was soon cleared so I don't think we need to worry about that.

It was then time to bid farewell to the container, with our fingers crossed that we will see the container again in six or seven weeks many miles away. Before he left, the driver reminded us that we are able to track the progress of the container ship on the Internet. Jo's comment (sorry Jo) at this point was "so is that like we can track Father Christmas?" (as we have for the last couple of years using the (fictitious) NORAD website). I said it was similar, although in this case our container ship really does exist!

We then spoke nicely to the packing team, who have been fantastic over the last couple of days, and they were happy (once we had made it worth their while) to move some of our surplus furniture from the house to upstairs in the garage where we are going to store it.

It's strange seeing the house almost empty, we've not seen it like this since the building work finished as we moved in before it got to this point. There is still some final sorting out to be done, but that is a job for tomorrow and Thursday.

Since the container left we have only found two items that we forgot to pack; an ironing board and a remote control for the TV, so I don't think we've done too badly.

The other piece of good news today was that I have now received my entry permit for Abu Dhabi (thank goodness!), which allows me to enter the country in August and start the process of applying for my full visa.

Time to relax now, so I shall leave you with a snippet of our container disappearing.....

 

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