Chef Invasion

Last week HR told Ben that they would get the Swedish guy to swap rooms with a Thai guy who lives in an apartment on the ground floor, cos the Thai guy is a Junior Sous Chef working with Ben so they think they might get along. It was a really stupid suggestion cos Budak Baru actually wants to move to some place closer to work, not to another room where he’ll have to share the flat with two other guys. I dunno if they did propose the idea to him and then realise how stupid they were.

But anyway, Budak Baru moved out on Friday to Jumeirah Village. Yup, to a tiny ratty studio like the one Ben viewed. At least he’s a little closer to work and the place has a gym, pool, pool room, internet access etc. So great, he’s here less than a month and he gets what he wants.

That’s what it’s like here. All hail the angmoh gods! If you’re not Arab or angmoh, you’re treated like pond scum. Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, Bangladeshi… all Asian, all bottom dwellers of the Dubai ‘caste’ system.

So we’ve got the apartment to ourselves again, till Wednesday when Tinnakorn moves in. Tinnakorn just started at the hotel about a month ago. He’s supposed to be working at the new restaurant too, but like Ben, he’s now at Al Mahara till the new restaurant opens next year (now they say June 2007). So I’ll be living with two chefs. In the words of wacky Form 2 Geog teacher, Mrs Nathan, “Tuhan selamatkan saya”.

Maybe more like “Tuhan selamatkan dia” cos at work, it’s like “Yes, Chef”, “No, Chef”, “Ok, Chef”. Then when he comes home he still has to see Chef and live with Chef. Poor guy. Ben already stresses him out at work, and now tells him, “So you can teach my wife to cook Thai food yeah”. I guess with him being South East Asian and a chef, he should hopefully be more “normal” – the “normal” Ben n I are used to. At least he won’t be put off by stuff like belachan and durian.

Hopefully it’s third time lucky and we all can live happily ever after. But Tinnakorn’s very unhappy at work cos he, like many others, specialise in Thai or Chinese or Japanese cuisine, and come here only to find out that the opening of the new restaurant has been delayed till mid next year. Then they’re thrown into any kitchen to do something almost alien to them.

So he may decide to up and leave. Like Ben’s first flatmate, Hiro-san. He stayed here at Ewan for less than a month cos he works at Emirates Towers and had to move somewhere closer to work too. He went back to Japan after two months cos he told Ben the standards here “cannot make it” and he couldn’t bear to watch the restaurant serve such sub-standard food and pass it off as some sort of Japanese fusion fine dining. Against his principles. A chef with pride.

I’m afraid this place is really killing the chef in Ben too. He says, everything he’s learnt, all his blood, sweat, tears, and the blood, sweat, tears of all the chefs who have been a mentor to him, all gone. Everything good they’ve taught him doesn’t apply here, and it kills him to watch how the so-called chefs and cooks here commit what a chef back home would consider sacrilegious. They have no pride in the work they do, even when they act so proud.

Of course they have the right to act all high and mighty. They’re angmoh. Chef Julien used to always tell Ben and the rest, “You can cheat the customer, but you can never cheat yourself”. Ben says now he really knows what Julien was talking about. And now it makes sense why lots of things here get by if you just close one eye. You know how they say, in the land of the blind…

Power Root

I bought Ben this bottle of Valerian Root pills the other day. No, it’s not Tongkat Ali. On the contrary, it’s to put you into a DEEP SLEEP. Ya, Ben has insomnia and it’s worse when he sometimes he has to work for 7-8 days in a row, from 9am till midnight or 1–2am. So he asked me to go to the Nutrition Zone shop to look for something to help him sleep, something “herbal” instead of sleeping pills. The pharmacist there recommended this bottle of Super Snooze, containing valerian root and melatonin, and he insisted that one would wake up refreshed after taking it, even if one had just 2 hours of sleep.

So Ben tried it and it really works. Within half an hour he’s like all groggy and falls into a deep sleep, “real POW-wer” is how he described it. But too power. You don’t wake up rejuvenated, you just wanna continue sleeping cos it feels so good. The first day after Ben took it, he said he could hardly stay awake at work. There was one day, he was sleeping until so shiok that he didn’t wanna wake up and when I told him he just missed his 8am bus, he said “Nevermind, I can take the next one”. Then he overslept some more and missed the 9am bus! Now he takes it only when he’s off the next day.

Ben’s created a monster. Guess who’s listening to Jay Chou regularly now...

Someone’s turned my world upside down!

I found it quite strange that the crescent on some logos and displays here were inverted. I mean, I know Arabic is read from right to left, but I guess it hits you that you’re really in a foreign country when you start seeing stuff that you’re used to seeing in mirror image. I mean, back home, you have the crescent on the Jalur Gemilang, Red Crescent Society logo, atop mosques, and even on cans of abalone.


So on the third day of Eid (pronounced “eed”, for Eid al Fitr, what we know as Hari Raya Aidilfitri), I decided to look to the sky for answers. Yup, you see the moon upside down or front to back or whatever here.


I guess I never thought about it. I mean, I know you have different constellation maps for the Northern and Southern hemisphere, but it never struck me that even the moon would be inverted. So that means as I stand on the balcony some evenings to watch the sun set, you could be standing somewhere else in the world at a really funny angle, watching the sun rise. Amazing.

Budak Baru Also Cannot Make It

Inilah Tragedi Oktober...

It was fun while it lasted – having the entire 2-bedroom apartment to ourselves after the Budak Busuk left. Two weeks ago, a new “Budak” moved in, a 23-year old Swede. I won’t mention his name except that it sounds like “swollen” when pronounced. Ben was having one of his sleepless nights when Budak moved in at 3-something one morning. So Ben sat him down to tell him the house rules, then showed him around the kitchen, pointing out what was ours and what belonged to the apartment that he could use. The next day I met Budak and showed him where the bus pick-up/drop off point was so he could take the shuttle to the “White House” (Jumeirah’s HR office). Ben’s colleague Paulina was at the bus stop waiting for the same bus so I introduced Budak to her and asked her to show him where to drop off when they took the bus later.

That night, Ben said Paulina was all dreamy-eyed when he met her and she gushed about how “handsome” our new housemate was. Budak isn’t the blonde and ‘pucat’ type of person you would picture when you think “Swede”, but a tall, dark-haired, well-built guy, with chiselled features and hazel eyes.

Within one day of Budak moving in, he managed to find time to send an email to his HR to complain that he wanted to move to Gardens cos he has to take two shuttle buses and it takes him an hour to get to work at Emirates Towers, and also that he didn’t want to live with us cos he was promised a place of his own. Like ya, get in line, buddy! Most people have to wait at least 3 months before HR finds them a “better” accommodation.

A few weeks back Ben n I viewed a one-bedroom apartment at Acacia Court, which is along Sheikh Zayed Road, next to Novotel and Emirates Towers. It has a really great location cos it’s about 15 minutes away from Burj Al Arab, the city, Deira, etc. Unfortunately, it was a really old apartment, with its kitchen cabinets falling apart, the sofa yellowish-brown with dirt or sweat or something really gross, and the bathtub had yucky brown glue all over, covering big cracks. It looked like someone had painted the cracks with gula melaka. What was worse was the smell in this fully carpeted apartment. The guy who showed us the place said the carpet could not be removed cos it was glued down. It’s a pity HR couldn’t bother to refurbish the place cos it seemed like a nice and cosy room.

Then two weeks ago, Ben was shown another place at Jumeirah Village, which is within walking distance from Burj Al Arab. This time, it was a studio, as tiny as our current living room, with one single bed. Ben was so fed up that these idiots wasted his time, what with the Accomodation Director herself saying that they usually don’t “pull strings” to offer places like these to staff, blah blah blah.

So I asked Ben if he’d rather moved to a cramp and crappy place for the sake of convenient location and privacy, or just finally settle in happily in our spacious, clean and quiet apartment here at Ewan, and hopefully get along with this new guy. I mean, Ben’s been here at Ewan for almost 5 months, and me 3 months, and we’ve gotten used to it. And even if we do finally get a one-bedroom apartment at Gardens (Ben’s like number 20-something on the waiting list), apartment blocks are much bigger at Gardens, meaning there are a lot more people living on each floor, so it’s not peaceful like it is here. So we decided to stay put and have been really nice to Budak too.

The plants and shrubs around Ewan Residence are thriving now that summer is over, so the place looks much greener, less barren and concrete-like.

And after taking these pictures at Ewan and Gardens, I just realised that Gardens doesn’t have any greenery… no trees, no shrubs and flowering plants, just a patch of grass… no gardens.

So Ben n I are happy, and Budak seems happy too and we’ve been getting along fine. But he still wants to move to somewhere closer to work cos he says the long bus ride gives him a headache. The idiot keeps reading the bus timetable wrongly and ends up waiting for the bus when there isn’t a scheduled bus, then has to wait an hour or two for the next one. So on Sunday, Budak waits for the bus to Gardens at 11.45am. But the schedule clearly shows: 7.45am, 9.45am, 12.45pm, 1.45pm... This is the third time he’s read the schedule wrongly. It’s not like they change it everyday, it’s a set schedule, I know it by heart, and even know which one my favourite driver works so that he can drop me off at the Mall.

Now I know why we’re taught to read time the way we’re taught… not the stylo-milo angmoh way. 12.45 is twelve forty five, not quarter to one. 4.15 is four fifteen, not quarter past four. So when you see 12.45, you know it’s within the hour “twelve”, no dumbass way of getting it wrong, right? But when you use quarter to, quarter past, ten to, five past… what happens? You screw up. Cos if you read 12.45, your eyes tell your brain 12. Then when you’re not looking at the schedule, the number 12 comes to mind, and you think quarter to twelve.

And so, Budak comes back to the apartment all pissed of that there’s no bus, and instead of kicking himself for being so stupid, he calls HR to complain again about how inconvenient it is for him to get to work from Ewan. Now instead of telling them, “I’m angry cos I’m a dumbass and I dunno how to read time so please provide me lodging in the bus so that I won’t miss it”, he complains to HR about us, thinking it will expedite his move. He tells them that he’s not “comfortable” living with a married couple cos we need our privacy and he needs his privacy and whatever. So today some imbecile from HR tells Ben that we have to move out once they find us another place, whether it’s crappy or not, whether we like it OR NOT. Cos HR now thinks Ben n I are the problem since both Budak Baru and Budak Busuk complained about living with us. Budak Busuk said the same shit about how he’s not comfortable living with a married couple, AND, that our KIDS were noisy! And of course the people at HR are so lazy and stupid that they don’t care about whatever crap you say, they just wanna wash any problems off their hands.

The super bodoh thing about how they work is that they just “postpone” the problem until some sort of “deadline”. Like they knew by end-May that Ben would be arriving in mid-June, and that he is entitled to a one-bedroom apartment. But they just put him up in a two-bedroom one that he has to share with someone else. Then when he requests for a one-bedroom apartment in Gardens, they put him on the waiting list, and a month ago they say he’s still 27 on the list which is plain bullshit. And when there was the big hooha about Budak Busuk, they shoved the ratty Acacia Court and Jumeirah Village studio our way, thinking Ben would be desperate enough to take the place and settle our accommodation problem that they started in the first place.

So since Ben has rejected two places, and Budak has complained about not wanting to stay with us, they’re saying WE have to move out. Instead of moving Budak out when he’s the one who wants to go, these bloody bodoh memang takde otak people must be thinking, “This Benjamin Lim’s problem is reaching our 6 month deadline, must quickly settle. The Swedish fella’s problem is only two weeks old, can postpone for another 5 months. Insya-Allah they’ll give up complaining then we have more time to sip coffee and compare tudung styles.”

At first I convinced Ben not to get angry with Budak cos if we were in his shoes, we’d feel lousy too, about being promised a place of his own then arriving here to find out he has to share an apartment with someone else. I told Ben that if he wanted to be pissed off, he should be pissed off with the idiots at HR. He had a huge argument with the HR imbecile and when he realised the “discussion” was getting nowhere and that all they wanted was to get us out of Ewan, he told her, “You’re penalising me for being married?! I don’t know how the #@%* you do things in this country or this company, but from where I come from, we have proper values and we believe in strong family values. Now I know I’ve joined the wrong company.”

And NOW, now I dunno what to say about Budak. What’s up with these budaks complaining about “sharing an apartment with a married couple”? It’s not like Ben and I are all mushy lovey dovey and grossing them out. I hardly even see Ben. I probably see Budak more often than I see Ben. And when Budak’s already asleep when Ben comes home at 1 or 2 plus in the morning, we eat quietly in front of the TV, with the TV volume so low we can hardly hear what’s going on, while we whisper about how our day went. And we don’t even impose Ben’s OCD clean n neat rules on him. He’s not messy, but I know Ben likes the place clean and in order so I sweep the floor every day and mop it every 3 or 4 days, arrange the cushions, and shoes, and anything else in the neat-freakish way Ben likes them. So it’s not just Ben who comes home to a clean and neat home, Budak gets to enjoy it too, without having to lift a finger or touch the mop.

In fact, since Budak moved in, I hardly even fry stuff cos I figured these Europeans might not be used to the smell of Chinese/Malay food, so even if I cook rendang or something, I try to cook it earlier so that the air is cleared by the time Budak comes home, and when Ben’s on his way home then I re-heat the food or leave it in the oven for a while. The reason why I’ve been trying so hard to get Budak to like us is so that he stays put, and we all can live here happily without moving out. Cos if he moves out, we’d have to worry again about who’s gonna be the next craphead moving in. So now if we’re forced to move out first, I hope Budak gets a taste of what it’s like to live with people other than this “married couple”. Try living with Budak Busuk or one of his other smelly friends. Try living with the lifeguards who party all day and night, or just someone really lazy and dirty. (BTW, Budak showers before work but doesn’t when he comes home after a full day at work. Perhaps in angmoh-land it’s too cold to take a bath at night, but this is Dubai man, all 40-plus degrees of sun, sand and more sand)

I remember back when I was renting an apartment at Pasir Ris Block 210 with Shan, Cherie and some other girls. I got along well with the landlord but when we moved out, he turned against me and said I betrayed his trust. Because of money. He wanted us to pay for polishing of the parquet floors, for re-painting the bandung pink walls, for a new gate lock that was already rosak… He was like “Why Bernie? Why?!! I treated you like family tau…” Of course it didn’t help that Shan’s ex threatened to call the police when the landlord said he wasn’t going to return the deposit, and there was a lot of shouting between those two outside the flat while the kaypoh neighbours suddenly decided to take time to smell the roses. Very drama. Sungguh tra-ge-di... Maybe I should try my Sandiwara skills with Budak huh. Why Budak, why?

Recent Pics

Here are a few recent pictures, taken early this month. My brother Andrew had a four day stopover here and since it was still Ramadhan, we didn’t really go anywhere. With summer over and the high 40-degree days over, Ben n I find the weather SO much better, especially by evening, it’s really cool. But that’s also cos our bodies have adapted to the weather.

So when Drew was here, he kept saying it was really hot n humid n probably thought Ben n I were crazy when we said the weather was lovely. Drew stayed with us at Ewan for 3 nights (when Budak Busuk was still around). I only brought him to the places nearby, like Ibn Battuta Mall and of course, Burj Al Arab, Madinat Jumeirah and the beach by Jumeirah Beach Hotel.
It was really nice having him here, and Ben was really excited about seeing a familiar face from home. Unfortunately we got Andrew’s detailed roster only a week before so Ben couldn’t schedule his off days to coincide with Drew’s visit. We managed to have drinks at Bahri Bar the first night, and Drew had a nice time taking a million photos and pictures of the hotel from the balcony seating area at the bar.

The night before Andrew flew off, Ben n I met him when he was back in his hotel, and we had dinner at the Chicken Tikka Inn nearby. Really good stuff… Yummy crispy prata with cucumber/tomato raita, and really nice chicken tikka of course.

Here’s the most recent pic of Ben n I, taken during dinner at The Rib Room in Emirates Tower Hotel on Ben’s birthday. As you can see, I’m quite a ‘well-rounded’ person now.

And here’s Chef Ben, after one of his usual 12-14 hour work days.

He's Out!

Yup… Budak Busuk has moved out! We’re not exactly sure if he requested to move out or if he was asked to leave cos we have different parties giving us a different story each. Here’s what happened, according to our side of the story.

First there were his China gang “parties” where he’d invite his noisy mates over and have a big cook-out and makan. So Ben told him nicely, “You can have your friends over but keep the noise down”.

Then there was the big get-together with almost 10 of them here, making damn a lot of noise, messing up the whole kitchen till they cooked the pot black, drinking, eating like pigs (they really eat like there’s no tomorrow, stuffing their mouths while talking at the same time with bits of food flying about)… So Ben was stern but nice when he told him, “You’re earning good money, a lot more than what your friends are earning, so be wise about the kind of friends you keep”. The aftermath of that party… a blackened Tefal pan and a melted spatula.


So after that, he had fewer friends over at a time, but even with just 2 girls or guys, it was still really annoying cos they’re just so loud, and of course they made themselves at home, switching channels while I was watching TV, cooking almost every night using rice, sauces, etc that I bought.

Ben wasn’t happy about these fellas coming over and watching TV as I hid away in the bedroom. There was one time when Ben came home early and The Housemate’s friend (we shall call him Freeloader) was in the hall watching TV. When Ben brought his dinner out to the hall, Freeloader asked “Eating dinner?” and Ben said, “Ya, do you mind?” and the fella buggered off.

I started keeping cooking stuff in the bedroom – rice, olive oil, vinegar, kitchen towels… Ya paper kitchen rolls. Each time they had one of they’re cookouts, they’d use up an ENTIRE roll of my paper kitchen towels!

I even asked Ben if he wanted to keep away his expensive Global knives, cos you know about chefs and their knives. No one touches a chef’s knife right, so I say to Ben, “The Housemate had broken a few glasses, melted the spatula, scratched my rice pot… do you wanna hide your knives in case he spoils them too?” Ben wanted to, but then he decided against it cos he said it may be “pantang” to keep knives in the bedroom.

And whadya know… Just a few days later, he MUTILATED Ben’s Global chef knife! Useless dumbass used it as a hammer! I heard a lot of hammering one afternoon and knew that he put up a small mirror opposite the mirror in his bathroom, cos he wanted to cut his hair on his own instead of going to the salon. But that night as I was preparing dinner, I picked up Ben’s knife and realised something was wrong with it. The Housemate used the butt of the knife to hammer in the nail. So now the stainless steel surface is pock-marked all over with rough and slightly sharp dents/scratches.


I sms-ed Ben immediately, and the other Sous Chef insisted Ben leave work early when he heard what happened. So Ben came back earlier that night and came into the kitchen to inspect the knife. The knife itself is still ok, it’s just that the handle bit is like crap now. So Ben purposely screamed out “Wahlaneh!!” and went out to the hall where The Housemate was watching TV. He asked him if he used the knife to hammer something and the fella said yes and apologised. Ben didn’t raise his voice at all, but just started grumbling on and on… “This is my personal item… brought all the way from Singapore… expensive and personal… I’ve had it for so many years…now it’s destroyed…” and about how he didn’t say anything when the fool broke glasses and all cos it’s company property, but this knife was HIS.

After that incident, the tension between Ben and The Housemate was obvious. Ben showed his disapproval when The Housemates friends were over by mumbling stuff like “Ya get out of the way” and “Useless!” if he had to walk past The Housemate’s friend in the apartment. One night we came home really late and found Freeloader sleeping on the couch without his shirt. Ben gave him a pissed off look so Freeloader ran into The Housemate's bedroom to sleep.

Then one evening, Ben said “The Housemate has moved out!” And I thought how could that be when he just asked me that same afternoon if we wanted to apply for an internet connection and cable tv service for the apartment. So Ben n I checked the apartment. His shoes which usually lay astrew near the front door… gone. Most of his stuff from the kitchen… gone.

The next afternoon, The Housemate came back and took a few more of his things and I asked him if he was moving out. And he said he met a friend of his who studied with him in Switzerland, and the guy just arrived in Dubai and is a Management Trainee with Jumeirah too. Since he just moved in to his apartment here at Ewan, The Housemate requested to move in with him too, and it was approved immediately.

Now all this time, Ben had already put in a request to move to a single-bedroom apartment which is his entitlement. After the big “China party”, Ben went to HR again to complain about The Housemate and his noisy gatherings. Then after the knife and other smelly incidents, Ben and the other Sous Chef made a couple more complaints to HR to expedite Ben’s move to a better apartment, or get The Housemate to move out.

So the day The Housemate moved out, he and Freeloader came over to get the last of his stuff, and Ben came back that night saying that HR told him that The Housemate was asked to move out. So I don’t know if he was really asked to move out or if he requested to move in with his friend. Ben said he could hear the usual noisy gathering going on in The Housemate’s new apartment cos it turned out he moved to the unit just diagonally across from us, and I wonder why he didn’t dare tell me that when I asked him where he was moving to. So that night, Ben n I celebrated the fact that the Budak Busuk was out.

That same night at about 3am, I heard a sound in the apartment. Ben was really tired and fell right to sleep, so I didn’t wake him and just said a decade of the Rosary for safety. Then in the morning when Ben’s alarm went off at 7.30, I heard The Housemate’s bedroom door open and his bathroom door close. So I got out of bed and sat on the couch, waiting to see who was gonna come out of the bathroom. Ben woke up and asked what I was doing in the hall, and when I explained what I heard and that someone was in the bathroom, Ben got real mad.

He must have literally scared THE SHIT out of the guy in the bathroom. It was Freeloader who was in the bathroom. Ben hammered on the door really hard and shouted, “Who’s in there?” No answer, so he hammered some more. “Who the @#%* is in there?!!”

A shit-scared Freeloader answered “It’s The Housemate’s friend” and Ben continued, “Come out NOW!! @##$$%^%$!!#!!

Freeloader sounded like he was almost crying, “Wait wait… I in toilet”

“COME OUT NOW! @#*%^KNN#*^%#!! What’s your staff number? Give me your staff number?!! Get the #*^%# out!!!”

“Wait wait…”

Freeloader finally came out of the toilet and Ben demanded for his staff number and the apartment keys, warning him that he was actually “breaking and entering” and Freeloader said he didn’t have the keys cos they were with The Housemate who was sleeping peacefully in his new apartment. So Freeloader ran out saying he’d go get The Housemate. From the hall I could hear Freeloader wailing to The Housemate in Mandarin like really kau-peh really really loudly and it really sounded like he was crying. Of course, The Housemate was too scared to come over and hand the keys to Ben, even though they actually took the same bus to work that morning.

Ben of course went straight to HR to report what happened, and this time it wasn’t just the other Sous Chef with him, but one of the Exec Sous Chefs, who then went straight to the HR Director. The HR Director then got the Accomodation Manager in charge of Ewan Residence to get the keys back from The Housemate by that evening. The manager Habib came by the apartment that afternoon to get a full report of what happened, so I told him, and also showed him the melted spatula and told him about the broken glasses.

We’re guessing The Housemate must have gotten a warning or something cos Ben saw him the other day and he of course wasn’t happy to see Ben. So now we actually have someone living just across from our apartment who hates Ben. We don’t think he’ll dare try anything funny, and Ben’s pretty sure he’s gonna piss off his new flat-mate soon enough too. His new flatmate, although a “friend” of his, isn’t a Chinese national but an African, so with all the regular “Chinese-nationals-unite-and-make-some-noise” get togethers, the flatmate may either request to move out, or if he’s just as immature and irresponsible, he may piss The Housemate off with his own gatherings and stuff.

On the other hand, I guess it must be pretty hard for people to live with chefs, unless they too are chefs and have that same obsessive compulsive standard of cleanliness, hygiene and order. So here’s hoping the next flatmate we have is more mature and responsible, and maybe even from Singapore or Malaysia, cos we now know how the Chinese here live. The Filipinos here are just as noisy cos they make friends with everyone and sing all the time. And the angmohs here think Dubai is just one big night club where you can party and pick up girls all day and night.