Tag: accommodation

2016 goals smashed – just. Kind of.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In 2016 I again tried to make continual progress over 12 months in a couple of personal areas I find important:

  • Running 1200kms, and
  • Reading 12 books.

Both of these numbers neatly ensure each and every month I keep running and reading. Or, so I hoped.

In reality, it’s never that simple for me.

My 2015 goals became a real challenge when the priority shifted from running to looking for new job opportunities.
And this past year, after beginning a new role opening an ambitious new attraction I struggled to find the time & head-space to read for pleasure.

Unable to find time is such a cop out. The obvious truth is, if you find something important enough, you make time. But we’ll get to that shortly ..

 

Run 1200 kilometres in a calendar year (supposedly 100km per month)

As it turned out, my running goal was quite straight-forward to complete this year.

In fact, I ran 1374km in all (exceeding even the cliched 110% effort).  This was mostly on account of running a second marathon in the year during my Australian holiday. It really wasn’t planned like this.
My parents coincidentally booked my boys and I into a wonderful resort on the Gold Coast on the same weekend in July as Australia’s premier road race, the Gold Coast Marathon. The marathon course passed two streets away from where we were staying on Surfer’s Paradise. And it happened to be where I ran my first marathon back in 2007. So I saw no alternative but crank up the training in the month before we left Dubai, and run the popular event.

It really boosted my kilometres. Usually my running tally flattens right out in July during Dubai’s summer.

 

Read 12 books in a calendar year (supposedly 1 book per month)

My reading goal on the other hand, it really came down to the wire.

I made almost no progress in the first half of the year. A couple of times I wasn’t sure I’d make it. November became such a stressful ascent, and December’s four books seemed almost insurmountable.

But I kept reading when I could, especially on my commute to and from work.

Right until the final afternoon of 31st of December, I was literally reading while running .. well, listening to an audio book on my final long runs.

Then after my exhausted return from 32.5kms I had to finish reading a final 40-50 pages.   But I managed.  I completed the final 12th book and my reading challenge.

S-U-C-C-E-S-S

It’s a good feeling to again complete these two resolutions, particularly after it seemed that one goal became near impossible.

Maybe it’s a strength to adapt to life and fit in such a variety of things, not focusing on a singular goal.

Perhaps my subconscious enjoys the drama of bringing things back from the seemingly impossible.

If so, perhaps I’d like to retire this part of my subconscious in 2017.

Making some regular progress each and every week would be wonderful to avoid getting into stressful situations with little time remaining.

Let’s see what 2017 brings.

But there was actually something I didn’t complete this year as planned ..

 

Publish 12 blogs in a calendar year (supposedly 1 blog per month)

When I renewed my 1200kms and 12 books challenges, I also thought to myself that I’d like to blog 12 times.  Again, at the start of the year this is a number which seems so easy.

In January an obvious blog for me is to write about the Dubai Marathon that I tend to run. And it seemed like a particularly good story this year as I had trained hard, and even employed a new training regime with an expert online coach. What an uplifting blog to write, in my 9th year of running to return to my best form. Though for a couple of reasons, I didn’t finish close to my goal time and I felt quite disappointed for many weeks.

I thought I’d get over it, and still share my thoughts from the day.  But this disappointing blot kept me from writing for a month. And it kept me from writing in the month after that when we had a nice trip to Ras Al Khaimer, a repeat of the trip we take each year – which I wrote about in 2015 (“Another RAK half weekend – 13-14 February 2015”).

Even in July when I holidayed in Australia I didn’t document my usual notes from our adventures. The fact that I had a resolution to write 12, demotivated me to recover the blog situation. I wasn’t getting back onto the horse.

Finally in December, I enjoyed the Striders half marathon too much and had to pen a few notes from the event, (“Yet another Striders half – 09 Dec 2016”).  And perhaps it was decidedly restarting the practice for the fresh running season and the coming year.

So the final score card has just one blog out of 12, for the 12 months.

Interestingly, when I was reflecting on my 2016 goals and I remembered the blog idea, it almost didn’t seem like a resolution. I gave up on it so early and so easily, I suppose wasn’t really serious about this one this past year.

2017?

I’ll take off the pressure for 2017, and blog as much as I feel – with no reference to any arbitrary numbers.

But I’ll definitely read 12 books & run 1200kms.
I’ve got two years experience that no matter how challenging it seems they are to achieve, I always have them COMPLETELY under control.

*Sigh*


Another RAK half weekend – 13-14 February 2015

Reading Time: 3 minutes

For the second year in a row I ran in the world’s fastest half marathon. The “in” is important here. The RAK half marathon claims this title I think based on the top ten finishing times being faster than any other.

Dennis Kimetto – the holder of the world record for the marathon, started the event after saying something in Swahili. The adjudicator had a bit of a pause and shared that he probably said best of luck to everyone. Truth be told, he could have said just about anything. I had a wry smile thinking he might have said “running’s for losers, get a life.”

I happily started out slow. After around a kilometre I heard the loud barking of a dog coming from somewhere behind me. I figured one of the spectators must have brought their dog and thought little of it. A little later I heard the loud barking again quite close to me, is there a dog running the RAK half? I turned around and it was a runner, cupping his hands over his mouth, and letting out this loud woof. A few minutes later, “woof woof woof!” Ah, I figured it out. He barks at every kilometre marker. My neighbors had a bit of a giggle and probably ran a little more comfortably, knowing there wasn’t a big dog to worry about chasing us. Although getting chased by an actual dog could probably help with posting a great time.

I always run with my iPhone on my arm. It allows me track my progress and record my pace, not to mention receive the odd random call at an inopportune time. It also allows me to listen to music, when it decides to work. I admit having a device on my arm is a slight inconvenience. I won’t complain again though after seeing the guy I passed with what looked like the Samsung equivalent of an iPad mini strapped to his arm. I even thought it looked like he was running slightly lopsided. But if you do want to stop to read a book or watch a movie, he’d have the last laugh.

And I saw the perfect running shirt. It was a standard-looking t-shirt with a picture of Captain America’s shield on the back – set at the height as if he had it stowed there – ready for action – like Steve Rogers himself.

Once again it was a perfectly planned and executed running event. I’m talking about the organisers, not my running. At least I took things relatively easy and was able to enjoy it to the end.

We stayed up at RAK again this year. It gives us a head start in the morning and allows us to enjoy the evening in a different scene and climate – the northern emirates are renowned for being cooler. My brother and his family had come over to stay with us, so it was doubly good reason to stay. We loved the place we stayed at last year so I quickly searched booking.com for Al Hamra, golf, beach which was in the title and made the booking. It was only when we went to check in that I realised I’d stuffed up. There are two or more different hotels with similar names. We had stayed at the (Hilton) Al Hamra Beach & Golf Resort. I now had a booking for two rooms at the Al Hamra Village & Golf Resort. Close enough wasn’t close enough, but it was quite nearby – and clearly a common mistake. Our actual place was nice enough with lovely views over the golf course. But when we looked outside there was a cat sitting on our patio furniture. I wondered if I had made another error, I had thought I had asked for a “cot”.

The hotel had a buffet breakfast that we just made it home in time for. And there was a pool. And in the evening we ate in the bar and the boys – especially the youngest ones – loved dancing to the band. So all in all, it ticked all the boxes.

The next day we had the obligatory expat stop in Barracuda to restock our adult beverages. Then we left onwards to home, til 12 February 2016 when we look forward to doing it all again. The hotel we need, “Hilton Al Hamra Beach & Golf Resort”.

A large update

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I was without internet for so long, that once it was connected I forgot what it was I missed about it.  But I am now able to blog with some sort of regularity, I just have to get back into the rhythm.

As always, we’ve found a lot to keep us busy.  Let’s see how much of the past three months I can remember.

Moving to Tecom
We finally moved into our “permanent” Emirates accommodation in Tecom – Al Barsha.  There were many trials and tribulations in finally getting here, but they’re almost all forgotten now.   And besides, the delays I had were nothing compared to some of the guys before me.

Now it’s all finally happened, I can’t remember all the noteworthy events.  With the internet and TV connected, I can say we’re as settled in as we’ll ever be.  There was a few sad moments when we left our former apartment in Deira. Both Myles and Lewis had grown quite fond of our security guy, Manoj and our cleaners Sathi, and Kargenny.  Due to a mistake in translation we also called him “Clinian” for some time without anyone saying anything.  We’ve dropped in a few times since for a chai (local tea), which has made all parties happy.  In fact the first time we visited Manoj again he said plainly to me, “Please don’t forget me sir” which I could never do.

In Tecom it’s been nice to see other families around, and even most of the cabin crew have been great.  Myles has certainly started making an impression.  I took  the kids up to the pool area last week, and there was a lady and her daughter.  We got on well, and shared our room numbers so the kids could play together.  As we were getting out from the pool the lady had just finished saying it was nice to see other kids around when Myles headed back into the pool, yelling to me “I have to footy snot”.  With this he proceeded to lean down from the pool deck so he could blow his nose in the water – metres from the lady’s daughter.  It was amazing that they could see the funny side of it.  At the time I couldn’t, I was too busy looking for a large rock to hide under.  Myles and I had a good chat following this about proper footy snot etiquette.

Elle and Jo upstairs have taken some initiative and started a facebook group for the families of Tecom.  We probably had 40-50 people attend. It happened to coincide with Myles’s 5th birthday so he had a captive audience to help him get through his birthday cake.

School
We finally got a place for Myles to attend foundation school. He had been enjoying nursery, but approaching five he had the opportunity to step up, so from the 7th of September, he’s been a student of Regent International School. It was an interesting process.  When I first arrived in February I started calling around the different schools, and each and every one claimed to be full, and they had huge waiting lists.  Regent just happened to be the closest school to our apartment, it had all the prerequisite things on the web site we were looking for, and they had plenty of spaces.

Like most schools, Myles had to undertake a brief assessment. It turned out the lady was just looking for any learning difficulties or personality challenges. She tested him by drawing the outline of a car and getting him to put the wheels on, and to colour it. She may have started to worry a little when he proceeded to add a thin vertical line of each and every colour she had.  I can almost visualise her curious expression at him not simply colouring the car simply.  In fact, and she went on to ask him why he was doing it that way, which Myles had an instant reply “It’s the Rainbow Sheikh’s car”.  Classic.  Weeks earlier we had visit the Rainbow Sheikh’s free car museum – which clearly left an impression.

Internet connection
All I’ll say is, I shall never complain about the quality of telecommunication companies or the care they provide in Australia again.

Visitors
It has been good to have some visitors from home come stay with us.  We couldn’t really do it well in our last place, but there’s more than enough room now.  In August we had my brother stay, and early this month we had my parents stay for nearly a month.

We didn’t do too many things out of the ordinary, but it was good to give them both a taste of Dubai.  Corey especially so. He got to see a common site (not really) of a brand new Lamborghini dragging off a brand new Ferrari down Jumeirah Road.  It was something to behold, even for the BMW police car that was parked on the side of the road at the time.

Ramadan
We experienced our first ramadan period. It was certainly different to not be able to drink or eat outside during daylight hours.  But the time went extremely very quickly. We attended a few Iftars, which is the large buffet meal Muslims typically eat to break the fast.

Metro
As per their plan, the Metro was launched on the 09/09/09  for VIPs.  The day after it was for the rest of us, but it was too busy when we tried to catch it.  Unfortunately they’ve had a few teething problems.  In fact there was a story published that the metro had a glitch one night during Ramdan which prevented people from breaking their fast.  It was a nice story that some people apparently divided up the bags of shopping they had to share with their fellow Muslims.

The metro”s a great way to travel though.  It’s hard to believe how quiet it is.  Once our local station opens I’ll consider catching it to work each morning.  I’ve tried it once on the way, and there was a 30 min delay.  And on the way home twice there have been similar holdups. Probably a good reason to leave it a while to get over these hiccups.

Permanent accommodation nearly there

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Things had became quiet on the accommodation front, to the point where I was just about to contact them to confirm everything was alright.

The last I had heard, from someone inside the move, was that the date had moved out to maybe even July.  It was disappointing, but we just accepted it as there’s nothing we could do about it.

However, imagine our surprise when we got advice a couple of days ago to say that we had been allocated an apartment, and we can actually move in around the last week of this month.

I recognise they may slip a little from this date they cite.  But I’d expect that it should still happen in June if this is their current advice.

Interestingly, the apartment we’ve been offered is our current temporary apartment’s number with just a 1 in front of it.  So we’re going up 10 storeys which my wife is already anxious about.  A fear of heights was always going to be an issue living in an apartment.  Out of 25 floors, 14 is not too bad though.  I believe the view become unobstructed from about floor 10 – for the time being.

We’re certainly looking forward to it.

What a weekend

Reading Time: 4 minutes

My family and I have had another hectic weekend.

Tecom

On Thursday – the equivalent of Australia’s Friday – we managed to get a viewing of our permanent accommodation at Al Barsha. Getting into there is not the finest introduction at the moment as due to the rain the ground’s mostly muddy, and there are still plenty of ad hoc signs to get you through the many construction sites in the area.  But the actual building wasn’t too bad.

As there is still a little bit of construction there was definitely no kids allowed, so Elle and I viewed the apartments in turns. I went first.  I firstly had to work out the major things such as which blocks were the ones available and what not.  There were no authorised staff around to start the lifts for me, so I was only able to climb the stairs, which meant I stopped as soon as I could work out how many flights til you got a half-decent view – which incidentally was floor 10.  After my turn, Elle just happened to bump into the facilities manager who took her to the roof so she could view the pool & BBQ area.  Despite some of my colleague’s concerns, the area was apparently not too bad.  There’s been a bit of talk at the office that the area is extremely unsafe as there’s only a 1 metre glass wall stopping you from falling the 26 floors to the ground.  But apparently C block which Elle viewed was a fair bit higher than this, and can be managed.

There’s also quite a bit of talk around the traps whether now is the right time to use company accommodation or not.  The financial crisis has dropped the values and rents of a lot of the real estate.  Allegedly villas are now at prices less than most of our accommodation allowances, so we could conceivably ditch the apartment, lease our own villa, and still get extra money in our pocket.  But you’d be at the mercy of local landlords, and have to manage all the utility costs yourself.  And who knows where prices are going next. Most papers have quite a few competing predictions.

Ski Dubai

I dropped Elle and the boys back at home, then went back to work for a few hours before picking them up again and heading off to Ski Dubai – within the Mall of Emirates.  There’s something not right with the order of things, when my son sees snow for the first time in a desert. All in all though, it was a fantastic first introduction.  We took my boss’s son who is a very competent skier. Elle had to provide some level of adult supervision as she was the only one left who could ski. I say “some level” of supervision, as Alex was zooming down the slopes like a rocket, while my wife had to initially spend some time back on the learner’s slope.

One this occasion Myles and I just visited the Snow Park, which was no problem at all.  The place was great. All the kids there were so adorable with their snow suits, boots, and helmets.  I thought some of the activities would be a bit advanced for him, but Myles enjoyed the tobaggan and donut rides immensely.  I thought they were pretty cool also, but for our next visit the two of us made a pact to learn to ski.  I should add that our baby went shopping with my boss during this time.  Apparently whenever people were watching she was boasting that Lewis was her kid. 🙂

Mall of Emirates shopping

The following day my wife was a little worse for wear from skiing for the first time in many years. We disregarded this though and hit the Mall of Emirates again, but this time only the shopping mall. My goodness!  I viewed it very quickly last November after I finished my job interviews, but I really had no idea of its actual size. The place has a bit of absolutely everything. We bought plenty of things off the shopping list, but as we’re still “setting up” it’s still outside of full scrutiny.

When we returned to our car, there was another example of Dubai’s shoddy driving.  On either side of us there were massive 4WDs over their line wedging us in.  With great difficulty I put the boys into the back, but then had to get into the passenger’s side to get out.

The Gold Souq (Market)

And today to complete the weekend a Prado load of us visited the Gold Souq. We were warned to get a ride there as there are limited parks, and they weren’t kidding. The traffic was horrendous, and there were absolutely no street parks. In the end we were lucky to get a space in the paid car park. From the street it looked like it was already oversupplied, but they managed to squeeze us in on the proviso we left our keys so they could reconfigure the place each time someone needed to leave.

The markets were nice. The constant line of people asking us to go off and look at their copied watches and handbags was no so nice after the 30-40th  suggestion.  The amount of gold on display was almost on the obscene level.  Some of the gold chains would floor Mr T. I should mention only I thought they were obscene.  My wife and boss both thought they were perfectly appropriate.  Go figure.

According to a map I saw, the gold souq was very close to the perfume, spice, and fish souqs also. But that was incorrect.  They had spice and perfumes only.  My wife may have been relieved by this, as I promised to buy equal value of fish to gold.  Actually I think the threat worked a treat, we didn’t buy any jewelry at all.  Although a bit of negotiating with shops occured, and a few business cards were collected.

We did pretty much a full round, and bought only specials which I was happy with.  We now have an authentic beautiful table runner, and a few other useful items. And contrary to a lot of the advice I received before going, we’ll certainly be back. Next time though, we’ll get a driver to drop us there.  Well, actually the next trip is (thankfully) purely for the girls,  so I mean the time after that.