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…
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment