Of dragons n barbie-wannabes

On Wednesday Ben n I decide to go to Chinatown to look for stuff like rock sugar, barley, "liang teh", etc. We tell the cab driver "Chinatown"... He says, "China, at Battuta". We say "No, China-TOWN, market". He says ok, "China market... We go Hatta road...". Driver then takes us towards Hatta n I flip out my Dubai Street Directory (paid another Dhs.20 for this to exchange the useless Dhs.25 map I bought the other day). And I find that Hatta is way out of Dubai...near Oman! Finally the guy brings us to this place called Dragonmart.

We felt really bad after that cos the cab driver didn't have change when we paid the fare, and while trying to get change from other cab drivers around and with a line of impatient cars behind us honking away like mad (they do that here...just honk if they have to wait even 2 seconds)... The driver finally returned us our change, which Ben counted later to be something like Dhs.120 more than what he was supposed to return us. Poor guy...

So anyway, this Dragonmart place turns out to be a HUGE complex (what's new), not a mall, just a warehouse-like complex with shops run mainly by Chinese nationals selling stuff from toys to industrial machinery, bags to household electrical goods. We finally find a tiny shop selling some Chinese foodstuff. No barley, but we got our rock sugar n liang teh, and I spotted this, which of course made Ben all excited...


But our best find would be what we saw at a shop selling school bags... Nice pretty pink Barbie bag, and then next to Barbie...


It's Fulla! Shops also sell Fulla dolls, with different indoor and outdoor clothes. Outdoor fashion is of course, the trendy abaya with tudung, in chic black, or white.

Bride n Broom

Husband expects me to get down on all fours to sweep apartment with this device that he dares to call a broom?


After complaining, husband says, I gave you 600 dirhams... Buy a nice broom lah.

Wow...with Dhs.600, I can choose any broom I want! Let's see what Choithram has to offer...


Man! People here probably don't use brooms cos they only had these same sad mini brooms, and really hard brush-brooms for scrubbing, and even some made from something like "lidi sticks"! Finally found one from Carrefour that sort of does the job... And this pretty thing costs Dhs.24.90...


PS. Soon we'll have to get a new mop too 'cos since we don't have a big pail, The Housemate washes the mop in his toilet bowl!

Yesterday I got a small taste of the frustrations Ben had to deal with when he first got here. We took the shuttle to JBH. Waited for about half an hour for the shuttle to Lamcy. It doesn’t matter if you’re waiting in the shade or not, as long as you’re outdoors, it’s hot, hot, hot! It’s literally a sauna out there. Didn’t help that I didn’t get much sleep the night before also because it was warm n stuffy in the bedroom, so standing outside in the middle of summer even for 2 minutes feels like hell!

After we got to Lamcy, we walked in the sun towards Lamcy Plaza and took a cab to Rashid Hospital. At the information counter, alamak… a taste of home (Malaysia). You get the same type of “pow tau” moving in slo-mo, saying to you in that familiar lazy drawl that you hear in Malaysian immigration offices, “Health card…? … Today no health card… Closed today… You must come Saturday… The other building…”

So we left, waited in the heat again for a cab. Told the cab driver, Immigration, typing center. After driving for a bit he says “Immigration?” And Ben’s already pissed from the reception at the hospital, so he says “What now? Immigration also closed? In Dubai no one needs to work? All useless!”

And cab driver says “Er you want to go Immigration can. But I think closed. Thursday Friday, all closed…what you call ‘hukuman’? Is all closed… But you want to go, I bring you.” So we go back to Lamcy Plaza instead. Have brunch while Ben cools down.

We walk back to the Jumeirah staff residence at Lamcy, wait, again, for the shuttle back to Madinat Jumeirah. By now I’m like melted to a pulp. The pictures of the Madinat Jumeirah look really nice, but mind you, standing outside for those few seconds just to take a photo fries a few brain cells each time.


Inside the Souk Madinat, it’s just alleys and alleys of tourist-targetted shops. Kinda like an upmarket, air-conditioned souk.

Here we step out for a few seconds again just to get a few more shots of the Burj and the Madinat, then hop back into air-con comfort again.

Later Ben n I walk back to the entrance of the Madinat Jumeirah to wait for the shuttle to Gardens. So we wait, again, in the desert heat. Gardens is another accommodation for Jumeirah staff which is a little less “ulu” and closer to where Ben works. Ben’s on the waiting list for an apartment there. It’s not as quiet and peaceful as Ewan, but if we get to move there we’d at least have a one-bedroom apartment all to ourselves instead of having to share this 2-bedroom one with another staff.

Right now our housemate is Yang, a Chinese fella who’s a Management Trainee with Jumeirah Hotels. He’s a nice guy, but these Chinese nationals really stick together huh. Every now n then Yang will have one or two friends over, and he’ll be like “This is my friend. We just met at the supermarket or on the bus”!

So anyway, we reach Gardens, and walk in the bloody afternoon sun to Ibn Battuta Mall. By now I’m just dragging my feet… I’m like the opposite of solar-powered. I complain to Ben that although he’s been waiting 6 weeks to show me around, he really didn’t have to squeeze it all into two days, right in the middle of summer.

The mall is huge n we start walking from China Court, to India Court, then Persia n Egypt. There’s also Andalusia Court somewhere near Egypt, and I dunno if there’s one more ancient city here, but by now I’m too tired to take notice. We stop for ice cream at Baskin Robbins, then shop at Geant (like Giant hypermarket). Here, we are swarmed by salesmen like how you get attacked by those idiotic insurance or credit card sales or survey folk outside the MRT station or bus interchange. Men in suits approach you, “Sir, looking for a microwave?” --- “Good evening. Are you residents here? Have you heard of Showtime?”

So Ben signs up for Showtime, a cable tv company that gives us 52 English channels on top of the regular hundred and fifty over local n Arabic channels. He gets a 20% discount and installation fee waived cos he’s a Jumeirah staff, so once they can finally figure out how to install it in our “ulu” desert home, we have to pay about Dhs.170 a month for cable – movies, sports, serials, CNN, etc.

This place is so huge, they even have a bike showroom in the mall.

After dinner at some Lemongrass Thai joint at the food court, we took a cab home. By this time I was down with a sorethroat, runny nose n slight fever. Still battling with a sorethroat n sniffles now n trying hard not to let it develop into a full-blown flu. Doesn’t help that I can hardly breathe in the bedroom. Worst part is, here, you can’t just simply step outside for some fresh air!

The Start of Ben n Bernie's Dubai Adventures

Yesterday evening I took the shuttle to JBH to meet Ben after work. Caught my first glimpse of the Burj Al Arab from a distance. Although it’s really hazy here, just seeing the Burj for the first time in real life kinda gives you goose bumps. I guess cos each time I saw it on TV I’d think to myself, my husband works there, how cool is that? And now to see it for real…

Then we took the shuttle to Lamcy, and a cab to the Dubai Museum where we were supposed to meet Andrew. But due to miscommunication, Andrew was waiting for us at Deira City Centre. So Ben and I took another cab to City Centre to meet Andrew and had dinner at Japengo. Andrew’s one of the chefs at the Japengo outlet at Madinat Jumeirah.

After dinner we took a cab to Regal Plaza Hotel and had drinks at an English pub there. There were a few Chinese men at the next table conversing in Hokkien, so Andrew said must be Malaysian or Singaporean. But of course once you hear familiar phrases like “wa lau eh” and “k-n-n” you know for sure where they’re from lah. Before we left Andrew n Ben chatted with them a bit. They’re in the Construction business here, and come to this pub often for live soccer matches. They also said there was gonna be some kinda gathering or party the next weekend to celebrate National Day at the Singapore Consulate or whatever.

After that we got Rana to send us home. We dropped Andrew home first and had a look at his place. He’s paying 3,500dhs a month for a really crappy place. He lives in Deira, in a tiny one-room flat. It looks clean n new inside, but really cramped with only enough space for a bed, tv, small cupboard. The ‘kitchen’ is the same size as the bathroom… like ‘hobbit’ size, and even his laundry has to be hung at a funny angle in the kitchen or it wouldn’t fit. Poor guy’s still asking Rana to help him find a better place. Even the location is really bad. It’s like in some dark n dingy back alley, and it’s true that it’s like Geylang… just that those living n ‘working’ there are Nigerian ‘kai’.

Today Ben brought me to the “white house”, Jumeirah’s HR office, to get my paperwork done and apply for my medical check-up. So now it’s my turn for the big Dubai run-around. Apparently I have to go to Rashid Hospital to get a Health Card, and then to the Immigration Typing Center to pay 150dhs to get my visa application typed. This is after Ben’s crazy Dubai run-around plus a few hundred dirhams to apply for my visa that got me here in the first place.

The “white house” is located opposite Jumeirah Beach Hotel and Burj al Arab, so I finally got to take some pics of the Hotel. But this is the closest outsiders like me can get to the hotel – the security gate.

Then we headed over to the Mall of the Emirates.

Apart from being a huge-ass mall, Emirates Mall has this Star-Wars-X-Wing-Fighter-docking-bay-looking thing sticking out at one end. This part of the mall is actually Ski Dubai, an indoor ski and snow park.

Ben waited till I was with him to step into their posh “department stores” like Harvey Nichols n Debenham’s. You have salespeople dressed in designer suits waiting on you so it’s really quite intimidating to walk around the store. Then Ben n I had tea at Armani Café cos he says when ever or where else would we be able to have kopi at ARMANI café… Paid something like 80 dirhams for a skinny latte, a fruit cocktail, tiramisu and apple pie.

We bought some household stuff from Carrefour – electric kettle, laundry basket, foldable laundry hanger-rack thing, etc, then headed home. We watched a rented DVD on my laptop – Wicker Park. Really nice movie… Why was it rated R(A) in Singapore? Or is the stuff we get here really censored big time?

Anyway, how DVD rental goes here is, Ben pays the shop 300dhs. He gets to borrow 30 DVDs (no time limit). Each time he borrows a DVD, whether one copy or 3 at one go, he has to return it within 12 days. Once he’s completed renting 30 DVDs, the shop will return him 150dhs. So it costs about 5dhs a DVD lah. A movie ticket here costs 35dhs!

Ewan Residence

OK, this is where Ben n I live – Ewan Residence, located within the Green Community and Dubai Investments Park… somewhere in the desert near Jebel Ali. There's a place not too far off where you sometimes see camels grazing too! Seriously...


It’s a nice and quiet place, and the apartment is spacious, clean and new. Ben really likes this area although it’s a bit “ulu” cos in other areas it gets pretty congested.


Funny thing about living here is that even though it’s scorching hot, you have to dry your laundry indoors because of the sand and dust. Here’s how dusty it gets even with all doors and windows shut…

This amount of sand/dust settles after a week

It’s actually not cold at night as Ben said it was. There are just two thermostats in the apartment. One in the hall and the other in the bedroom. How it works is it shows you the temperature of the room, and another button is to reduce the aircon temp. So the lowest it can be set at is 10 degress Celcius, which usually gets the room temperature to about 22 degrees. The aircon in the bedroom doesn’t seem to be working and so the temperature in the bedroom is always about 26 – 27 degrees, which really sucks cos I find it quite hard to sleep cos it gets really warm and stuffy.

There’s a half-hourly shuttle service to and from the Courtyard @ Marriott which is just a 5-minute drive away. It has a mini mall with a Choithram supermarket, eating outlets, money exchange thingie place where the guy can transfer money directly into our POSB accounts (at a fee of course), video rental store cum internet cafe, clinic, pharmacy, bookstore, etc. It costs 10 dirhams per hour at the internet café here, and in the city area some internet cafes charge 5 dhs.

The pharmacies here are well-stocked with everything from Tiger Balm to Actifed, tanning oil to contact lens solution, although Ben says anyone who wears contact lenses here must be crazy. The supermarkets cater mainly to locals, Europeans and East Asians, with lotsa instant or heat-n-serve meals like pizzas n pies, briyani n soups. Ben’s been eyeing the dessert fridge for some time now, waiting for a special ocassion to buy this really yummy looking apple pecan pie that costs something like 35 dirhams.

Whole fresh chicken here costs about 9-10 dhs per bird, and smells pretty “chicken-ny” if you know what I mean. Like how sometimes beef has a really strong “cow” smell or how mutton has a much stronger smell compared to lamb? The “fresh” pork here looks pretty pale, but they also sell a whole range of imported canned pork foodstuff like pork n beans that Ben says is yummy. Anyway, we get Indomie here, Kikkoman soya sauce, lousy Lee Kum Kee Panda brand tau yu n oyster sauce and a few other generic condiments.

Only thing missing here is vegetables! I miss my green leafy vege!! No kangkung, no kailan, no chyesim, sweet potato leaves, tauge… A small bunch of Holland “paksoy” (really sad-looking pakchoy) costs 18dhs! But for just 1dhs you can buy an even smaller n sadder-looking bunch of wilted, worm-eaten China ‘paksoy’ from the “fresh” herbs section. So we have to settle for cabbage, lettuce, brocolli n green beans… just cook everything with my Mom’s homemade sambal haybee can lah.

Ben insists we must ration our goodies from home carefully. His fridge, freezer n kitchen cabinets were full after I unpacked my bags. So far he’s had one small epok sardin, one ‘butterfly’, one serving of kaya toast, and chicken pongteh. The ‘butterfly’ really sucks after defosting n re-toasting, but he says at least he gets a taste of home. You should have seen how he looked at my tupperware of pandan chiffon cake… Like sayang-sayang. And when he had a sip of my instant chrysanthemum tea, he just closed his eyes, probably picturing himself sitting at 136…

Ben misses church a lot too, and I got him depressed when I played some of my Praise n Worship mp3s with familiar songs that we could imagine the OLPS choir singing. One of his Filipino colleagues told him that St Mary’s is actually a Protestant church but I’m pretty sure it’s Catholic since they say so on their website right. We’ve yet to check it out ‘cos it’s located somewhere near the city too.

I bought a map of Dubai for bloody 25dhs and it doesn’t show shit. How we get around here is either by shuttle, cabs or Rana. Rana is a 'car lift' (unlicensed taxi driver) whom Andrew met, and he can pick us up from anywhere in Dubai and send us anywhere, at almost half the amount a normal cab would charge us. And of course he’s nice and friendly. He knows Ben as "Ben", but on his handphone, Andrew is listed as “Singa Pur” cos he says “Ben name easy… Your name I cannot… So I call Singa Pur”.

The shuttle services that we take cater to Jumeirah staff or those living in the same residences as Jumeirah staff. There’s the shuttle from here (Ewan) to Courtyard. Then there’s an hourly shuttle from here to Jumeirah Beach Hotel (JBH), Burj Al Arab (BAA) and Madinat Jumeirah (MJ). From JBH and MJ, there are other hourly shuttle services to Gardens, Emirates Towers and Lamcy Plaza. So if we’re going to any part of the city (Bur Dubai, Deira, Dubai Creek), we take the shuttle from Ewan to JBH, then the shuttle from JBH to Lamcy, and then a cab to wherever. Most of the cab drivers here are rude so Ben says must be ‘kwai lan’ when we take cabs or else they’ll cheat us.