The churches centre at Jebel Ali

Or click here for a larger view

I have heard about a row of buildings in Jebel Ali where the government has built and rented to churches to use. We finally got to visit one of them courtesy of friends here.

It is kinda of out of the way and not practical to visit unless you have a car. I didn't see anyone come by taxi at all. So only the relatively well to do are christians? At least those that come here are. We usually go to another church but half the time we are not at any.

UAE Independence Day

December 1 is UAE Independence Day. This year they celebrate the 37th anniversary of the union of six emirates. About a year later the last emirate joined and they become a federation of seven.

The girls' school has put in a lot of serious work to make this a special occasion. Everything you are seeing in this picture is done in-house. The key pupils involved were Zhen's class. Back home, the school workers would have put up the decorations. Here the teachers and students own it.

A garden city

For weeks I saw lots of workers planting on the road edges and traffic islands. It's time to showcase their work. They were seeding Marigold flowers. I love them. I used to grow them when I was a kid from seeds my mom's friend gave me. They had plenty in their kampung house and even a durian tree in their compound.

The last time I almost as many was in ChristChurch. This is such a welcome sight. Remember this is a desert and consequently these flowers become even more special.

Dressing Respectfully

"Please wear RESPECTFUL CLOTHING", I have seen this countless times on LCD displays all over the Mall of the Emirates. I had wanted to get a photo of it but never succeeded in getting an adequate shot until recently I spotted them pasting them on the glass doors to the mall.

The Mall of the Emirates attract many tourists, but I can tell you they mostly do not care. They are usually the ang mohs, and two of them succeeded at making themselves famous around the world by having open sex on the beach and was arrested by the police.

Now it is not just the ang mohs, Asian girls are almost equally over-exposed. Even today I spotted at least some in church dressed in shorts that are way above the knee. I would love to hear what the emiratis have to say when I get the opportunity. The last time I had the chance to speak to one, we were discussing the global financial crisis and Abu Dhabi reserves.

An "Iconic" view

This is the view with the Burj Al Arab every morning I walk the children into their school. The morning I took this photo, the scene was unusually beautiful and the temperature was a cool 21C.

The view will change as the winter arrives because unlike back home, the sun rises noticeably later and sets earlier. Of course, it was far more marked when we were in New Zealand. Well, just Geography 101.

Upgrading my IT infrastructure

I have been telling some of you about my new Skype speaker phone. Now you can see it above, i.e., the one marked with a red ellipse.

About one to two weeks ago, I bought a 19-inch LCD display for my 8.5" mini-notebook display. This is followed by a Logitech cordless keyboard/mouse and skype speaker phone system several days later.

The AcerOne notebook is wonderful but I often have to squint to read the tiny words. The skype speaker phone is equally wonderful because of its built-in "intelligence". It automatically configures and optimizes itself or skype. When a call comes in it automatically mute whatever sound or music the notebook might be playing.

The Samsung 19" LCD display is about S$220 and the Logitech system S$155

Skinny to Fat

We have noticed this for several weeks now. When we first arrived in September we didn't notice any free flying birds until one of my daughters pointed them out. They were invariably skinny and small looking. We laughed it off that birds here do not have hawker centres like back home to pick up after us, so they kinda of starve. Now the cooler weather is upon us and we have also noticed that the birds are fatter. Have they put on weight or is it a bird trick to keep warm by fluffing their feathers?

Fireworks as seen from my balcony

This isn't the very grand fireworks display at the Palm Jumeirah last night that blew a whopping US $20 million bucks. We didn't stay up to catch that one.

This one came as a surprise. I suddenly heard boom, boom, boom and went to investigate. This is what I managed to catch on video from my balcony.

Amazon.com: 10 days from the USA to Dubai

Got the rare call from the reception downstairs this morning to break to me some very happy news. The parcel from Amazon.com has arrived. We put in our order for express delivery only 10 days ago.

The trip from state side to Dubai was undertaken by DHL global mail. I had tought it would had been US Post. The journey to my place was undertaken by the elusive Emirates Post. I said elusive because I have never seen a postman in all my time here and there are also not many post offices.

Well I am not too happy that they opened the package for inspection. I think they are looking for forbidden books. They should have trusted us but then, they don't know us.

Here are the three books we bought. All of them you can't find at Borders or Magrudy here.

If I were in Singapore, I would just have to check them out from the NLB. Well in this sense the cost of living here is higher.

Waiting, waiting...

We are waiting for this flyover to be built. When this is done, the traffic congestion outside our estate will ease and I am glad that they are working day and night on it.

Dubai Mall - Only because it was convenient

On friday we skipped church in order to locate the meeting place of the fellowship that evening. The last time we met elsewhere, we had quite a hard time locating the residence. So we thought better scout it out first, not nice if we are super late.

The meeting place happened to be very near to the week old Dubai Mall. The traffic unlike opening day was very much lighter. We decided to check it out and here is a photo record of what we have found.




And here is a youtube video of the aquarium

First Rains

I was up as usual at 4.30am this morning. Curious what the temperature was like, I pushed the sliding door of our balcony open and was surprised to see droplets of water on the glass on our balcony. I thought who is this crazy fellows who threw water over their balconies above me. Cannot be, I think this must be rain drops and by now I am trying to slowly absorb what it means. I have not seen rain since we arrived in early September.

Indeed it was raining, when we got out into the open this morning we could feel it. The photo above, shot with my phone camera shows some slight flooding at the children's school. In Dubai, there are no drains, so water accumulate into pools very quickly. Now I wonder if we will have swimming pools every where when there is a down pour.

Seeing Home in a Flash Movie

Link to above Flash Movie is http://inspiringword.net/daily/all-dailies.php?day_is=1115

Found the above flash movie at my own website yesterday. What a joy to see pictures of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, which I have personally shot myself. I never expect that I would be seeing it from so far away. Our family loves the Gardens. We have been there so countless times.

Dubai, and I was told even truer of Abu Dhabi, try to create green oases. Water comes down from the heavens to refresh the grounds in Singapore, but here in the desert water shoots from the ground up and falls back on the greens. I never grow tired of watching these sprinklers in action. It is just a beautiful sight.

I have produced so many flash movies, easily six or even seven hundred of them that I often cannot remember them. At times I feel like I am seeing it for the first time and it felt that another has created them.

Blowing much sand, but was it a sandstorm?

Shot this on my trusty Casio yesterday on the way to Times Square. It was interesting to see strong winds blowing up sand everywhere. What do you expect? This is the desert biome, and it has its beauty too!

No, it wasn't a sand storm. I am tempted to call it one but I know it cannot be. Never been through one, when we were in Beijing, we escaped it. One the day we went to the Great Wall we had clear skies and the driver tried very hard to tell us how fortunate we were. In many ways, we have been quite fortunate here too.

Cheers!

Property in Dubai: The calm before the storm

This guy mostly lifted this from online newspapers published here in the UAE. I have seen several copies of it the day before. LKY told investors to buy with your eyes open forgetting that it is easier said than done. I feel like telling LKY to go say the same to the great Sir Isaac Newton who lost most of his fortune in the South Sea Bubble.

What if you open your eyes but just cannot see, which is the problem with most people. You need trusted people to guide you! Again eaiser said than done because the greatest enemy of most investors are themselves.

Pause and think. Go back to the Supply/Demand balance. The key point here is that they can't sell so now they want to rent it out. What do you think would happen to the supply of rental properties? Up right? So suckers will bite first and then the smart ones will come after and have their pick.

Dubai is retrenching expatriates. There is growth, it is called negative growth. So the demand side is coming down against rising supply.

Should you trust what I say? No, not yet. You need some numbers which I do not have, but I have given you the trend. So if you need to act on this, you need more data.

Remember the middleman doesn't care if you make or lose money as long as there is transactions, he/she makes money.

Dubai rental market on the rise
Concern about the credit crunch has created a movement in the Dubai property market away from sales towards rentals, according to industry experts.

More and more properties are being marketed for rent rather than being sold on. ‘Speaking to brokers, we have noticed a shift in the market. Now that more and more properties are being completed, property owners are looking to rent their properties to manage mortgage repayments,’ said property event director Pooja Rajani.

The trend has also been noticed by Riad Kamal, the chief executive of construction giant Arabtec Holding. He said that more developers would become more reliant on income from property rents as the housing sales market continued to slow.

‘There is a huge demand for rented accommodation and that’s what is escalating the rent prices. What we are going to see is a healthy correction as more accommodation becomes available, helping to reduce the rents which today are just very unreasonable,’ he added.

However not everyone is reporting property falls. ‘Contrary to popular belief not all property prices are falling in Dubai. We see a very clear end-user market emerging both in terms of rental, investors for buy to let and owner occupiers in projects that are completed or close to handover,’ said Vincent Easton, sales director at Sherwoods Property Consultants.

‘The fundamentals and dynamics of both living and working in Dubai are still strong meaning the medium to long term outlook for real estate investment remain sound,’ he added.

Found! The Challenger Superstore equivalent

I have been looking for a computer superstore like the one we have back home in Funan Centre - Challenger. Today on an impromptu "look see" maiden trip to Times Square we found it. This one is really big, at least three times bigger than Challenger flagship store in Funan Centre.

The property market in Dubai

I just wrote something on my Facebook page on the above subject and I might write more over there because with the FB's fine privacy settings I can afford to be more candid. Here you have to wonder what I wish to tell but deferring to better judgement chose to sealed my lips, or may be harden my keyboard.

Even if bits and bytes are practically free, you must have noticed that I do not like to write too much. How to tell you that the real estate market is not well. Something I felt should have happened here two years ago but they were able to postpone it until now.

Yesterday, I bought ice-cream for the children after we had dinner with friends. In the ice-cream parlour was a very thick weekly property market magazine. I told our friends, let's do an experiment. Pick any page in this more than an inch thick magazine and let's see if it has bad news.

The first random page we flip to was total bad news. We repeated the exercise two more times, and got the same result. The only improvement is when one of the page carried adverts. After all, imagine when you flip you have the left and right page.

What is not said is more interesting and important than what is said.

Forget about the beautiful balcony

I finally dedicated some time to clean up our apartment balcony, and was quite satisfied with it now that the family can enjoy the wonderful panoramic views from so high up. The satisfaction didn't last long though. By early evening, the floor is so dusty that you don't want to go out to it any more until you have it mopped again.

This morning Google sent me a news article which explains why.




Desert Dust Quite High in Dubai
Lily B. Libo-on 12 November 2008


DUBAI - The prevalence of dust is quite high in Dubai and most parts in Middle East with the worst being registered in 2005, which was also due to the least amount of rain in the region, Eng. Redha Salman, Director of Dubai’s Health and Safety Department revealed on Tuesday.
He said that results of research works on air pollutants in Dubai showed that desert dust contributes around 25 to 30 per cent of the air pollution, local traffic, 20 to 25 per cent, and local industry and regional sources, 40 to 45 per cent.



Speaking on the air quality management in Dubai at the “EnviroCities 2008 International Conference”, he said the standard of air quality –as per the test- is within the World health Organisation’s standard and even better within UAE standards coming from its 96 readings performed daily.



Since 2003, Dubai Municipality has been reporting daily with a continuous programme monitoring the construction sites and moving earth equipment until 2015. “We are doing this because there is a continuous delivery of construction materials and moving earth day and night all over Dubai,” Eng. Salman said.



According to him, all projects carried in Dubai are subjected to environmental impact assessment before implementation.



He said that in 2006, power stations contributed to 25 per cent of air pollution, energy 21 per cent, industry 18 per cent, and motor vehicles were still the source of the most of it. “Dubai has 1.5 million people who live with their 75,000 vehicles,” he said.



Major air pollution recorded in Dubai coming from motor vehicles was 64 per cent in 2005, 61 per cent in 2006, but it tapered off to 53 perc ent in 2007.



“The reduction is traced to awareness of the fact that emissions from vehicles pollute the air. Dubai is highest among countries in the region in terms of car ownership with 541 cars per 1,000 population.”



Dubai Municipality uses the Remote Sensing Device that monitors the carbon dioxide infra red and ultraviolet, as research results pinpoint to 83 per cent of petrol vehicles emitting more than others.



lily@khaleejtimes.com

Dubai vs Singapore: Flowers

Yet another story that happened yesterday. I have been noticing this bed of flowers for many days as we need to drive by them each morning on the way to school. They glow in the morning light, much more beautiful than my modest camera is able to capture them.

Below are photos of the same type of flowers shot in Singapore along the bike track of the East Coast Parkway. This is not a fair comparison as these were shot with a better camera.

Roses for my wife

I have set up Google to inform me of blogs with "Dubai" and "Singapore" in them. Consquently I have come across so many blogs of people coming to Dubai to work but leaving their families back home. This explains why so many rental apartments are studio and one-bedroom types. It is another way of telling you that Dubai has become very expensive.

We are fortunate that the whole family is together in Dubai. Yesterday, I saw these roses and bought them for my wife. She has never appreciated floral gestures but I still go ahead anyway.

Last night I cook dinner

Back home, cooking for me means trivial stuff like maggi noodle, steamed rice, frying eggs etc., But last night I tried my late mom's recipie of not good to look at but nice to eat chicken wings. It is really simple and I believe just one look you can tell me how I have done it.

Moving to a new city changes your life. I don't think I would bother with this back home.

Dubai Brochure Life - Not for the most of us

This is something along the lines you are likely to see when they promote Dubai to the world. I call it the brochure life, i.e., it isn't real or true for most people living here.

I pass the Burj Al Arab (If you do not know or remember just know that this is perhaps the only 7-star and also tallest hotel in the world) every day. The girls' school is just a short distance from it.

Lectures on Road Signs and Safe Driving

25 years ago, when I passed my driving test on my first attempt, the drivers' training scene in Singapore was still very undeveloped. My driving instructor spoke to me in Mandarin, the basic theory test was called Highway Code test and there was no advanced theory test, much less formal lectures. I trained on the instructor's personal Datsun, now called Nissans. The training car had no aircon, no automatic gears and I also have to learn hand signals. There was also no circuit to train in. I was already out of the car park - read the equivalent of circuit, and onto the road by the third lesson.

I spent the whole morning at the driving school attending lectures. I was hoping to take my Signals test too but the RTA staff were off for the weekend.

Overall the quality of slides and the delivery by the lecturer was excellent. I wonder if those guys back home still use Singlish, but here the gentleman spoke very good English and is also very polite. Nobody were made butt of jokes or what we might say back home as, "tio swan". Some of the attendees were very active and gave very good answers to the questions asked.

Because of the 25-year gap, I can't compare this to Singapore, but I rate them quite highly.

Paying for water

You don't care much for the price of water when what you use for washing and bathing was good enough for drinking and brushing your teeth too. But here in Dubai, we always have to pay for drinking water at the restaurants and certainly also at home. Masafi is one of the cheapest and honestly none of us can taste its difference from the much more pricey Evian or Perrier.

Unlike tap water back home, mineral water is always consistent. What is unwelcome about it is every few days I have to truck up a six-bottles pack of it up to the apartment.

By the way, the children drink for free mineral water from big dispensers at school.

Just as well, there are no new-water here.

Squeezing our Pajero

You can be sure that our next car here would not be a Pajero or any of its brothers. They are just too clumsy to park in tight spaces. So yesterday when we happened to park it in front of this column, I just can't resist myself and took a picture of it.

Location: Spinneys supermarket at Jumeira

This was part of lunch

We have a very late lunch today. We went to this place, Ceramique something which is at the Mall of the Emirates. It is one of our girls' favorite. The food is OK, but what they enjoy is the chance to select a pottery piece and paint it as they wish. Here you can see that Lin has selected a pig. She is going to paint it pink but I can't show it to you here because we have to leave it behind for it to be fired. It would be ready for collection in about a week's time.

Superior Traffic Lights

I feel that the traffic lights here in Dubai are superior to those in Singapore. Don't get me wrong, they haven't move to LED types like we have back home. What they have done is to make the Green light flash first before turning Amber and then Red. Such a simple idea but it is wonderful for safety, and especially the colour blind.

It is all from this small camera

All the photos you have seen and will see are taken by this pocket camera. I carry it with me every where I go. I have a better camera it is but too big and impractical to take with me. No, it is not an SLR as I am not willing to take good care of it, much less learn to use it to its full potential. Nevertheless the limited equipment I owned have not stopped me from getting some fairly nice shots. See some of them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/singcher

By the way, I didn't pay a single dime for this camera. It came from points I accumulated buying stuff at Challenger before it was time to relocate to here.

Cumulus here are unusual

Just got texted by Daisy that there are clouds in the skies of Dubai today. Back home, this would be very ordinary but over here in the desert climate this is rare.

I have heard several times that sometime in the next few months ahead there will be a big spell of rain that doesn't stop for several days. Schools will be closed and there will be flooding. This is obvious because I find it next to impossible to find drains here. Back home they are every where and sometimes adults and more often children fall into them.

First driving lesson

Had my first driving lesson today, more than 25 years after I passed first time in Singapore. What did I learn? My instructor said I drove quite well but I also know I am likely to fail the test if I do not have a few familiarisation classes because the emphasis here is different. Also along the way, we have picked up advanced skills that the tester would not find acceptable.

Naturally I drove like a veteran and my instructor allowed me to go on a long tour faraway from the driving school. I went to International City, Academic City, Mirdiff etc., We had quite a bit of fun.

My instructor was quite good. He mixed fun with instruction on what testers in Dubai look out for. To him, I failed the roundabout test. The truth is actually a communication problem. At the roundabout, I mostly did not know where he wanted me to go, and so I often am forced to switch lanes when I am already in the circle!

By the way, you must have noticed there were so many unused cars in the training yard. I think they welcome a lot more business. Strangely the waiting time to begin training for non-VIP trainees is four months! I paid up for the VIP package, and it costs me bomb. My waiting time to my first lesson was just two weeks. Surely money is not everything but everything is money!

Morning Flowers

Above is a close-up photo of a tiny flower I took this morning. I was there at about 7.30am, hoping that Choitram, the supermart at the community centre near our place would be opened. I found out from the parking attendant that I was half an hour early.

This smaller photo gives you the larger context of the flower. There is so much beauty at the micro level if you slow down and look carefully.

You park here, I block you

In Dubai tower offices and residents' apartments, you may not park freely. Parking lots are assigned to you. This sports Merc had parked at the lot that wasn't meant for it, so when the right person came back and found the lot taken, he/she duly blocked it. If I am not wrong, the driver of this Merc would have to pay a fine.

This has happened to me before, but not being a seasonded Dubain, I have gone to park elsewhere temporarily.