I attempted to buy a birthday cards for some family and friends recently. Well bottom line…the card stores here SUCK!!! I went to a Carlton card store and they didn’t have much of a selection AND the cards they did have were beyond STUPID!!! Next, I went to a Hallmark store…HELLO!!!! HALLMARK!!! THE STORE FOR CARDS!!!! They had an even worse selection than Carlton and no generic “Happy Birthday” cards. They were all for a specific relation (Think…happy birthday BRO; Another year older SIS!) Lame! Lame! LAME!!!
Finally found a halfway decent card store in a mall near my office. I purchased 13 cards, one roll of wrapping paper and a bow and spent...$66!!!! Doesn't look like many of my friends and family will be getting many cards. I was all about the $0.99 cards in Houston. The $4.50 variety just doesn't fit into my budget or my deep seated sense of cheapness!
Friday, March 18th
We went to church again this morning. Every Friday (well, I started typing Sunday because it's still so hard to get used to going to church on Friday and not Sunday) we meet new people and are seeing more and more familiar faces. This week they had a "Volunteer Test Drive" where you could sign up for short term volunteer opportunities to see if you liked it and wanted to make a longer term commitment. I signed up for the H.U.G. ministry (Hospitality, Usher & Greeter). Right up my alley...talking to strangers! I also signed up for information about the women's ministry. Not sure how much I'll be able to do because I expect a lot of the activities to be during the work week. We'll see!
After church we went to Wafi Mall. Got lost on the way due to road construction and crappy signage! I was actually following our route on our detailed map and all of the sudden, the freeway split in three different directions. Chad was asking "WHICH EXIT DO I TAKE?" and I kept answering "I DON'T KNOW, THEY'RE NOT MARKED!!!" We finally had to stop and get our bearings and I actually think we just stumbled upon where we needed to go but we DID get there! The mall is in the shape of a pyramid and has beautiful stained glass windows...of course I forgot my camera! The food court was on the top floor (top of the pyramid) and had a whopping 4 restaurants and two ice cream stands! Basically we got to choose from hamburgers, Subway, Chinese or Italian. As impressive as the building was, the shopping was just the opposite. There were not very many stores and some of the stores seemed on the verge of closing. Being Friday morning (holy day), it wasn't very crowded.
One of the reasons we wanted to visit this mall was because they had an underground Souk. After lunch and a little shopping, we headed down to the Souk. We passed three security guards on the way down the escalator and no one bothered to mention to us that the Souks were CLOSED!!! Didn't open until between 4 - 5 PM. We did look around a little and the design was very beautiful and ornate but it didn't have the "old world charm" of the Muscat souk. By this time, it was around 2:30PM and we were ready to go. We found out way out and back to our apartment with no wrong turns! Yippee! Feels so good!
I dropped off Mitchell & Chad back at the apartment and headed to a mall closer to our house to find a bed spread for our spare room. I found what I was looking for and had it bought and back home within an hour! (No wrong turns...NO, not even one!) When I got home, I finished unpacking the last of our boxes, organized the spare bedroom, organized Mitchell's room and hung the last two pictures! WHEW! I guess we're here to stay AND we're ready for our first guest! Yeah! My parents will be here in less than 2 weeks!
Saturday, March 19th
Looked like a pretty, sunny day so we were going to head to a water park. We did our research, found our coupon, found where it was located and THEN checked the weather. It was only supposed to get up to about 78 degrees that day so we decided against it...too cold for a water park for these Texans! Mitchell was disappointed but we ended up going to see "Mars needs Moms" at the movie theatre instead. Just like a typical Saturday in Houston! This was Mitchell & my first trip to the movies here. Some interesting movie theatre findings:
1) They sold cups of corn (not popcorn...corn...off the cob) at the movie theatre with a variety of different seasonings. I bought one small cup for about $3 with butter, salt and chili seasoning. It was pretty good! I guess it's healthier than junior mints!
2) Movies are subtitled in Arabic...makes sense.
3) All seats are assigned and they have VIP seats that are higher up and leather for about a $2.75 per ticket premium. The standard seats are cloth, similar to what we have in the States at most theatres. We sat in the regular seats which, for a 3D kid's movie, was about $13 per person!
4) We didn't see nearly the amount of previews as in the States. Not sure how we feel about that.
Other interesting things in and around Dubai
· Dubai Food Court Hygiene...When buying lunch at the mall today I was glad to see the worker wearing rubber gloves to serve up the food...how nice and clean. As she was the only one working the counter, she took my money and gave me my change with the same gloved hand! Different standards!
· They have a store called "Sun & Sand Sports" as opposed to in Houston they have "Sun & Ski Sports" (I guess Ski Dubai doesn't count)
· On the passenger side rear-view mirrors in cars there's Arabic writing that I assume says "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." If it says something different and important...I'm toast!
· When you go to the mall and park, there are ALWAYS guys there to wash your car if you want it washed while you shop. They have portable car wash buggies with water, soap, etc. There is a guy in our apartment parking garage that washes cars and one at our office building too!
· Everything is very clean here. There are people who BUFF THE FLOORS of the parking garages, at our apartment, in our office complex and at the malls! When you turn the corners (even slowly for those of you who have ridden with me and know my tendency to drive on the fast side) your tires squeak because the floors are so clean!
· The speed limit here is a maximum of 100 kilometers/hour...that's only 62 MPH. One section on my drive to and from work that runs right by the Burj Khalifa goes down to 80 kilometers/hr...50 MPH...REALLY?!?!?!? There are speed cameras along most of the freeways that pretty much force you to drive the speed limit. I guess learning to drive slower isn't such a bad thing and it lets me enjoy the amazing architecture!
I suggest going as cyber as possible on the mail thing. We used to pay all our bills via internet and I started using www.birthdayalarm.com years ago. If you type in all your bd and anniv alerts it will send you reminder emails prior to ea event. Then there are free e-cards or you can pay for the premium service for better e-cards like I do. I save money in the long run. Mailing internationally takes a while and if you use company mail you need US postage which you can't buy in other countries so you always have to buy rolls ea summer to bring home to Dubai. The US is always changing the rate too, and you won't get any notification of that, so you never know what the rate is. Believe it or not it is not really easy to find online either!
ReplyDeleteIf you go to my blog I actually wrote up a very long blog on the postage system a few years back. It's one of the earliest ones on my blog. Hope you enjoy it!