{"id":157,"date":"2009-08-11T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/2009\/08\/its-not-completely-over.html"},"modified":"2016-12-18T14:59:09","modified_gmt":"2016-12-18T10:59:09","slug":"its-not-completely-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/2009\/08\/its-not-completely-over.html","title":{"rendered":"it’s not completely over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the signs of recovery they keep going on about on CNN (in an effort to convince us through repetition), and in the papers here, the reality seems to be that we haven’t yet turned the corner. Illustrative of this is the fact that there are two vehicles parked at the small shopping centre close to our house where we go to gym in the morning, and they have both clearly been abandoned. The one, a Porsche Cayenne, has 2 flat tyres now (tragic) and the other, a Pajero, is covered in a thick layer of dust.
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\"abandoned\"
[abandoned vehicle]<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nStu actually noticed a message scratched into the dust the other morning, here it is:
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\nAnd on the window:
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\n\"take
\nAccording to a story in Arabian Business this morning “off-plan property sales are \u2018dead\u2019 and prices continue to slide”. I am not really surprised people aren’t investing in off-plan property here. Not only does it seem to take an age to get finished but the rules change all the time and there is very little protection for the consumer \/ investor. We are still struggling to get our rental deposit back from our previous villa, despite the fact that we vacated 6 weeks ago and the owner was satisfied with the state of it. In fact he has refunded the agent, but the agent has not refunded us. We have logged a complaint with RERA, Dubai’s Real Estate Regulatory Authority<\/i> but it seems they are like a toothless old dog that lies on the porch whilst the burglars help themselves to your TV.
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\"lunch\"
[lunch….]<\/figcaption><\/figure> On a more positive note we have managed 10 days of our warp speed fat loss diet. Stu has lost 3 kgs and I have lost about 1, but I am feeling stronger and more energetic so not too worried about the number on the scale as long as my jeans fit me better and I can wear a bikini with confidence on holiday in September. It hasn’t been the easiest plan to follow, Saturday was our day off in terms of exercise (yay) but this meant that we had an all protein day (aw). So lunch was a piece of steak only (pictured). That’s all, no salad, no garnish, nothing! This is the main reason I have very little to blog about this week; no restaurants, parties or even braais to tell you about at the moment I’m afraid.
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\"beach
[yoga on the beach]<\/figcaption><\/figure> The highlight of last week was moonlight bikram yoga on the beach. This was held on the beach at the Al Qasr \/ Madinat hotel and was thanks to a collaboration between Club Stretch<\/a> and Talise Spa<\/a>. The location was amazing. If any of you have done bikram yoga you know that it’s normally done in a room heated to 45 degrees Celsius. Well nature provided the heating and we were able to do it outside. Yes, it does get that hot, even at night. We were treated to live music played by a Thai lady in traditional dress as an accompaniment. Amazing. And very very hard work.
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\"bikram
[bikram yoga]<\/figcaption><\/figure> Odd fact #11: 75% of the stations, and 44 of 62 trains, on the red line of the Dubai metro, due to kick-off on the 9th of September this year, will be ready for launch day. The full story is here<\/a>. I think I can safely speak for everyone when I say that we all look forward to the end of that construction effort. Now if they would just finish the roads…
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\nRamadan starts in about 10 days or so good luck and Ramadan Mubarak to all of you.
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\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the signs of recovery they keep going on about on CNN (in an effort to convince us through repetition), and in the papers here, the reality seems to be that we haven’t yet turned the corner. Illustrative of this is the fact that there are two vehicles parked at the small shopping centre close […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-firsts","category-odd-facts","category-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}