Dear me, clearly a sign of advancing age or something, I forgot to blog about my first experience of the Dubai Police, which occurred yesterday. A friend and I decided to go to Ikea to do a spot of shopping. Yes Stu refuses to set foot in the place, and I don’t blame him actually, its always packed full of people with prams when I go there. Anyway she collected me from home and we set off in her little rental car, and were almost at the store, coming around a bend and joining the traffic when a car came out of nowhere and went into us (well bounced off us it seemed). The best (worst?) part was that he just kept on driving! She and I were a little shaken, and astounded. We obviously decided straight away to call the police (you aren’t supposed to move your car until they have been even if no-one has been injured which makes traffic interesting at times), especially as it’s a rental car and we didn’t want any issues with getting it repaired. So she called them, and they arrived after about 10 minutes, very quickly indeed. As the other guy had left the scene we automatically got the green slip (if you get the red slip its your fault), and they left. Very painless actually, well except for the hurt car that is.
Unbelievably, in 5 sleeps time, I will have been in Dubai for a year, and have been blogging about it only slightly longer than that! Honestly I cannot believe it. In some ways I feel like I arrived just yesterday, in other ways it feels like I have been here 25 years. For me feeling settled has a lot to do with making new friends, and we have been extremely lucky to have cultivated some wonderful friendships with some amazing people here. Of course this doesn’t stop me missing my “older” friends back home, not to mention my family. Whilst I think that good friends aren’t necessarily always the people you have known the longest, I do occasionally notice that there is something to be said for knowing people a long time. You can’t go out with new friends and do the “remember when” conversations like you might with old school friends or people that you have a long history with. Maybe that’s not a bad thing either actually, sometimes that can be all you have left in common with certain people. Anyway I digress, the point is that thanks to some great people, I am feeling content here in Dubai. The other thing that certainly helps is knowing where you are going, literally, everyday. I am not getting lost any-more, the street and place names on signs on the highway are no longer baffling and terrifying. This is a major relief let me tell you.
Yesterday I took a walk to Starbucks to get a decent coffee, and noticed they have planted grass outside our building. It looks rather bizarre stuck there in amongst all the building rubble and dust.
My parents would go on (and on) about how I should never ever stick posters (or anything) on my bedroom wall using prestik (known to most of you as blu-tack). I would imagine this rule would also have applied to double-sided tape (although this was a less common item in our household when I was growing up), and if it didn’t it certainly should have. I can safely reiterate you should never-ever stick anything to the wall using double-sided tape. And now why would I say this? Well last weekend, as mentioned, we moved into our new villa to discover, amongst some other annoyances, at least 100 pieces of double sided tape stuck to the walls and cupboard doors in the main bedroom and even the mirrors in the main bathroom. Now I know that the previous tenant had a lot of pictures stuck up because I had seen them, but I honestly had not remembered that many. So apart from spending my day last Thursday scrubbing walls, cleaning cupboards, cleaning the fridge and another oven I also tackled said tape with a chisel and thinners. And yes I did have help on the cleaning, two very hard working girls in fact, and no it wasn’t THAT dirty I am just a wee bit pedantic (OK stop nodding). Removing the tape was no fun, no fun at all. Nor is rehanging Roman blinds incidentally, getting the string equally taught so that they open evenly is clearly a skill I have not yet mastered. I did the best I could, at least they are up!
