Iranian Dinner

Our main activity in the evening is where to have cheap and good food near our appartement. We live in the area called Bur Dubai, a very cultural mixed place and one of the only areas in Dubai that are lively. So there are several places close by where you can have decent food. One of our favourites so far is a place called “RAVI” a Pakistani place, with plastic tables and chairs on the street, always packed with people, Pakistani and Westerners alike. DELICIOUS…

 But some days ago i found another amazing place, an Iranian restaurant around the corner. A very tiny place, with old pictures from Dubai (meaning Dubai 15 years ago) on the wall, owened by two iranian brothers, one of them a former body builder. The food itself was fine but the whole atmosphere was pure entertainment. They were joking and fooling around with us during the whole dinner. I enjoyed every second i spent in that restaurant.
And there were even locals having dinner there. That it so extraordinary in Dubai to see them somewhere “normal” having normal dinner and not in a GUCCI store or driving their HUMMER.

So whoever wants to come for a visit… be prepared for some fun dinner at this place.

Fire in Al Quoz

View from our balcony on the morning when the storages in Al Quoz blew up.
The sky was all black from the smoke and people first were panic-sticken that some terrorist attact might have happend.

Trip to Muscat

I finally got my email adress from work today plus a guy from the bank HSBC was here as i will get a local bank account. Finally feels like I am settling in… Unfortunately I still dont have work – so finally I have time to write about our Oman trip last weekend. One step at a time…

We were 8 people on the trip. My landlord and his Italian girlfriend/wife (I’m not sure about their status) 3 of my flatmates, one girl from the flat upstairs and another French guy. The trip started fine at 6 am in the morning, we were early at the border, didnt have to line up for a long time, got our visas and the car insurances and could continue Muscat.
Close to Muscat the problems started to appear. Cause obviously Shahid, our landlord had some other plan in mind than the rest of us. He wanted to stay in a fancy Hotel and started looking for one somewhere in the outskirts of Muscat without really knowing where to go… (we weren’t asked about asked about our opinion at all) so while driving around in circles the fight between him and his gilrfriend/wife started… and didnt stop. After what seemed to be hours we finally could convince him that all of us wanted to stay somewhere cheap close to the center… Then we started looking for a beach and the whole driving around without any clue where to go started all over… I have no clue how many wrong turns we took… But we did find some beach in the end and even were lucky not to pay anything. Unfortunately the sun was already down so we soon had to head back to the hotel and the whole arguing started another time about where to have dinner… not to mention that we took the wrong road back from the beach and were lost one more time…
But in the end we had some decent dinner and we found the market/souq to walk around… which at this time already closed down.

So next day we decided to change plans and split up into smaller groups so everybody could do their own thing and was happy in the end…
I ended up wandering around the city with Audrey, the French girl from upstairs, as we both had the same idea about how we wanted to spend the little time we had. The weather was beautiful, the sun was shining so we went to discover the city. Only once we were disturbed by a yound Omani guy following us in his car trying to hit on us… but after several turns and twist we got rid of him as well…
We went back  to the market where we spent hours bargaining for the scarves made in Oman… too many colours from which to decide…. but in the end we were successfull and broke… After lunch we headed back to Dubai where we had fantastic cheap Pakistani dinner.
As we only have two bathrooms in our flat the only fight we had was who could shower the sand and dirt off first…

I loved Oman. Its not the most exciting place to be but its a beautiful place to be. The landscape is amazing and the people are so layed back, relaxed and friendly. If you live in Dubai its amazing to see locals working as Taxi drivers and in the supermarkets… actually amazing to see locals at all. All dressed up in their traditional local style. All of us girls decided unanimously that the Omani man are pretty handsome.
Definitely a place where you can relax from Dubai – the city that never sleeps… and definitely worth a visit!

View from my office

My Building

My first day at work

That was my first day at United Colours of Benetton.
And i liked it.

I directly found my office. Its in the 14th floor of a pretty new business building and all the windows are completely out of glass so i have the most beautiful view over the city and the creek – and the swimming pool of the Hotel next to our building

The Benetton “family” consists of like 10 people, most of them Armenian/Libanese. So i am pretty lucky that the libanese accent ist the only one i do understand – at least half of what the people say So far i can say that i feel comfortable … The team, the atmosphere and the office remind me of my former Greenpeace office in Beirut – only that the office is alot (ALOT ALOT ALOT) nicer and cleaner…

And i finally found out what my work will be: i will be responsible for the Customer Services of the shops in Africa. (thats all i know so far – so please dont ask me what exactly that means )

Right now the collections for Autumn/winter 08 arrived and the customers from the Middle East and Africa will come into the office to decide what they will buy for their country. So today i helped unpacking all the clothes, accessories, bags and shoes… I’m living a girls dream!!! (SO MUCH PINK!!! SO MUCH PURPLE!!!) Now i can find the clothes matching to my nailpolish and lipstick )))) Unfortunately i wont get the sample clothes for free – “only” cheaper…

Thats what i can tell you so far from my first day experience…

Hallo Dubai

… Ich bin in Dubai angekommen … und hab als erste Tat gleich mal mein Handy verloren…. Willkommen in Dubai.

Nachdem ich es geschafft hatte, meinen Vermieter tatsächlich in dem Chaos des Flughafens von Dubai zu finden (geh aus dem Flughafenbereich raus, überquer die Strasse, geh 100 m nach rechts, da steht ein weisser Pajero mit Warnblinkanlage) ging es direkt in mein neues zu Hause. Im Auto noch schnell in die Schweiz geschrieben, dass alles gut geklappt hat und ich nicht einsam und verlassen am Flughafen übernachten muss. Kaum “zu Hause” angekommen, ging es auch schon gleich ein Stockwerk tiefer zu einer Geburtstagsparty, wo ich gleich mal fast alle Mitbewohner der 3 Wohnungen, die meinem Vermieter gehören, kennen gelernt habe… Also gleich mal das erste Bierchen auf dem Balkon in der schwülen Wärme genossen.
Als ich dann irgendwann wieder in mein Zimmer ging und mein Handy aus dem Rucksack holen wollte, war es nicht da wo es hätte sein sollen. Es ist weder im Auto noch sonst wo zu finden – ich kann mir auch nicht vorstellen, dass es jemand genomment hat, aber meinen iPod und meinen Computer da gelassen hat. Nun ja, einer meiner Mitbewohner hat noch ein Altes, was ich jetzt benutzen kann.

Also ab morgen bin ich über Handy zu erreichen!!!

Mein Zimmer ist klein aber süss – ein Bett, ein Schrank und eine kleine Ablagefläche – alles was man haben muss.
Ich wohne mit 2 anderen Mädels und 4 Jungs zusammen – die Nationalitäten gehen von Deutsch, über Südafrikanisch, Kanadisch bis hin zu Französisch. Sehr bunte Mischung…

Die Wohnung liegt ca. 10 Min von meinem Büro weg, das Bürogebäude kann ich vom Balkon aus sehen. Zu Fuss zur Arbeit zu können ist ein Luxus hier in Dubai.
Alleine heute haben wir, um von einem indischen Take Away Essen zu holen 1,5 Stunden gebraucht… Und wir mussten nur in einen angrenzenden Stadtteil.

Das Wetter ist WARM. Ich war heute schon am Strand und hab ein bisschen den Luxus Sonne genossen, bevor es morgen mit dem Ernst des Arbeitslebens los geht.

Wie und wo und was meine Arbeit sein wird berichte ich dann…