Sandier Pastures

Thursday Thirteen banner courtesy of Samulli

13 THINGS I LEARNED AFTER 11 MONTHS IN DUBAI

1. All things have their appropriate price. If you bought a well decorated but cheap cake at Carrefour, do not dare have great expectation of the taste!

2. Some people cross the street with a hot cup of tea in plastic/paper cups in their hands.

3. If you want to have a free photograph of yourself, overspeed on certain roads. I have been ‘photographed’ in Jumeirah Beach Road while running at 90kmh. The speed limit was 80 and I did not know since I was new to the area. That was why the reason why the Ferarri’s and the Porches around me were so mysteriously tame!

4. You will never know the real price of gold jewellery at the Gold Souk (Gold Market). You get a necklace, and the seller tells you it’s 570 dhs. You haggle for 500, he says yes. Then you try to take a peek at your wallet and tell him, oh, I only have 300 dirhams now, sorry. You head for the door and the seller runs after you with the sparkling object and say he is willing to give it to you for 300 because you are special.

5. There are more than one thousand kinds of spices sold at the Spice Souk (Spice Market).

6. The Spice Man at the spice souk thinks I have “special needs”. Like the tone of the ancient Ali Baba he came to me and in hushed voice, “Take this herb to stimulate your s_x life, Madam.” My 4 year old chuckled.

7. All that glitters in Gold Souk is not gold. There are also extremely sexy Russian girls with platinum hair and shorty shorts.

8. The internet at the office might not be free.

9. Despite being a Muslim country, Christmas is celebrated with gigantic Christmas trees in the malls, Christmas carols.

10. You can still go swim at the beaches in the middle of December.

11. I learned to never underestimate the 50C temperature and 100% humidity during summer.

12. Petrol is cheaper than water.

13. You can live normally without speaking the official national language that is Arabic.

Yesterday I went out to put gasoline in the car. It was full-tank last Saturday when M left for Japan (for a business trip) but since I had been doing so many errands here and there, the tank is half-empty. I don’t want to be too busy driving to drop by a petrol station and end up pushing the car home so I drove to the petrol station.

Then it struck me: I do not know the kind of petrol we use!!

I had been just a spectator in the passenger seat all this time. I never even bothered to ask my husband how much gas or the type of gas the car consumes. I was stumped. The station boy told me I can put either Super Extreme or Extra Special; funny names, I know and too redundant, don’t you think? 

He suggested Super Extreme and it costs US$1.8 per gallon. The Extra Special, which I learned later was the type that M always fill the car with was a little bit cheaper at US$1.5 per gallon. 

(Actually, we can use whichever as long as it is not diesel)

Anyhow, I am surprised though at how cheap the petrol is here. I guess this is one of the perks in living in an petroleum producing country but then I don’t know the price in other countries aside from Japan.

Is it cheaper in your place?

One of my favorite blogs, The Contest Beat is going big time! They holding a contest and giving away a new Nintendo Wii to one lucky winner soon after Christmas day. The prize is courtesy of their sponsor, CellforCash.com.

Not knowing what to do with your old cellphone when you buy a new one? You can actually recycle your cell phone  for cash at cellforcash.com. You don’t only land in Santa’s good list for being earth friendly, you can even get some cash for doing so to buy gifts for yourself or for your loved ones.

Check out the full details of this wonderful contest at Contest Beat. You could end up to be the one with the coolest surprise on Christmas!

One morning when we were late for work because of traffic due to some very bad accident on our way to work, M decided to drop me a few meters away from my building so that he doesn’t have to take another U-turn and be more late for his work. All I have to do was cross a huge parking lot and except for the sand that tend to get to my feet, it was no big deal.

While walking, I heard a panting sound from behind me. I thought it was some jogger or something but when I looked back, it was a big black dog with tongue stuck out and ready to attack. He (I was assuming the dog to be a male as it was very aggressive) circled around me and barked. There was no one else in the parking lot so even if I begged for help, motorists won’t be coming to rescue me because all of them must be catching up with the traffic flow.

I reached for my bag and thought of things to protect me. I have none. I swayed my bag at the dog to shoo him but instead, he opened his drooling mouth and tried to bite my bag!! An Indian delivery boy in bicycle came and I stopped him. I asked him to please don’t go and used his bicycle as my shield. The Indian hesitated as he seemed to be more afraid than I am.

He left.

The dog was still very near me. A mini bus came and opened its doors for me. Inside it were a group of Pakistanis trying to help. They told me to get inside and took me to my building. The dog was still following but I was quick enough to come inside and into the elevator.

Thanks to the strangers who extended random kindness to me I arrived safely in my office desk, heart racing but unbitten.

They’ve  gotta be kidding us!

The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority has installed air-conditioned bus shelters all over the city in preparation of next year’s summer. One of the purposes of these environment controlled shelters is to lure people to take the public transport to reduce the bottleneck traffic everyday in the emirate.

The capacity of the very badly designed shelter is 14, 8 seated and 6 standing. On the average, 20-30 people wait at bus stops and given the culture this country has, everyone was surprised that the shelters has no separate section for ladies.

~airconditioned bus shelter near my place~

How can they not see, from the design stage that functionality heavily sacrificed for the design? What were they thinking, shaping the bus shelters like the iconic Burj Al Arab?

When a someone told me that I am living in a strange country, I thought she was just mocking me just because she loves to do so, with a scintilla of humor of course. Lately, I am beginning to think that she is right.

Recent events at work can be categorized as strange, peculiar, amusing. Not. It started with glitches with the internet ranging from very slow to completely offline for days. Then the mail server stopped working for more than three weeks straight. What company in the right corporate mind would leave the emails not functioning for more than 24 hours?

Last week, I got a phone call from the accounts department. The manager told me that my salary had been frozen because the company had paid more than 50,000 dirhams (US$14,000) of internet bills and after scrutiny, my name popped up as among those who downloaded at least 10GB of files (video files he said) that resulted in the financial mess.

How do you react to an accusation like that?

First, I do not download files except for WP Themes which all in all is just 30MB. NOTHING else. I asked him to produce his evidence of the 10GB that I supposedly used. Is it the data size of the sites that I browsed over the past months? I have been here for less than a year. (Please note that Japanese sites displaying in Nihongo uses twice the data size than English sites because of the Japanese characters which are two bytes each.) I admit browsing of course (who doesn’t?) and blogging from work but I do it without jeopardizing my job.

It just pisses me to no end that they wanted the employees to believe that it was ok to surf the net (they are not blocking anything) when in truth, it is not and are going to be fined. My colleague told me it is likely that the company will deduct 900 dirhams (approx USD400) from my salary for three months internet use. Three months…looking back, it was the time I started blogging like crazy. I had been surfing, commenting, reading a lot online especially on Saturdays and Sundays at work, a schedule that is peculiar in itself.

The 10GB must be the data packet size of the things I browsed. Well, that might make sense but what happened to unlimited access internet plan? Is it not the right thing to do when the company has more than 5,000 expat employees who would surely be accessing the internet to somehow connect to home? I must add that there was no announcement or warning whatsoever on what and what is not allowed with regards to our internet connection.

The incompetency of the IT personnel to do their part in internet patrol is inexcusable. Their plan to penalize people for browsing the internet is unethical and very very distressing.

Update: My salary was wired to my account intact. There were no deduction but I don’t know if the matter is settled or not. Who knows they might rob me next month.

This week’s theme: Long

This is not photoshopped. You can hire these limos(?) in Dubai to take a tour around the city while having a toast of champagne inside. You think this is crazy enough? Wait till you see making a turn at the roundabout!

Hopeful Spirit has tagged me to participate in this meme. It’s a little bit early for Christmas but here goes:

What is your favorite Christmas gift?

A planner for the next year.

What is your best memory of Christmas?

Years back when we always looked forward to Christmas children’s party at my father’s company. I would go there along with my many siblings and people will look at us because we all look the same.

I had happy memories of the gifts we brought home every year from that party.

Depending upon where you live, do you have a hot or cold Christmas?

I guess I am lucky to have experienced both. It’s a warm Christmas where I grew up, I spent white Christmasses in Japan and now back to warm Christmas here in Dubai.

What do you prefer in a tree? Fake or real?

I never had a real tree in my entire life so I can’t choose between the two. I am stucked to using the fake one.

What is your favorite Carol?

Jingle Bell Rock and… is All I want for Christmas counted as a carol? Because my daughter loves to dance Mariah’s jumpy Christmas tune.

What is your favorite Christmas Dinner?

My mother’s homecooked ham with thick sweet, pineapple sauce.

Do you wear a Santa hat at Christmas?

No, but my daughter does.

Have you ever seen Santa delivering gifts?

Yes, in the movies.

I am tagging:

All people who love Christmas!

Thursday Thirteen banner courtesy of Harlekwin

13 WEDDING CAKES

My brother has announced that he will (finally) get married to his long-time girlfriend of 11 years on their 12th year as sweethearts, on August 2008.

… and what is a wedding without a cake? Here are 13 wedding cakes that make me want to get married again that I think are just beautiful!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

So, which one do you like best?

Whatever happened to blogger blogs? Every time I comment, the comment form is either for Google/Blogger users, Nickname (whatever this means!) and for Anonymous. The new(?) comment form looks like this:

I don’t know if this is the new format to comment on blogger or if the owners of the blogger blogs I visit just happen to set it that way. So far, I have visited more than 20 blogs having the same comment form. Coincidence?

Any of you blogger users be kind to tell me why? Did you set it yourself or it is really the new (and only) form available for blogger? Thank you.

I have a blogger account/blog I created just to facilitate commenting on blogger sites but I would have preferred writing my name and my direct URL on the comment form.