Phoenix: A Chinese Supermarket

This is our first visit to Phoenix supermarket. It is located in International city in China City among apartment blocks A3 to A5. International city is just next door to Dragon Mart.

You can get China imported vegetables here which we enjoy in Singapore but is hard put to find any where else in Dubai. The green tea we enjoyed at Lam Kwai Fong, which I could not find any where is available here.

Ready for moving in

It is so delicious to be kay poh. The photo above was shot more than a week ago. I took it from my bedroom window. It was exciting because the apartment block across is finally ready for moving in. Since then, I have not seen lights turned on in the evenings in this unit. It is impossible to see into the house in the day so night time is watching time. In the day, the glass windows of this apartment block is useful as a mirror of sorts to watch for congestion on the SZR freeway. Since the downturn, the roads are much less congested, and we have also stopped this traffic check.

Lunch at Jebel Ali Club

Located near Ibn Batutta Mall, this is a nice place safe the houseflies which are clearly the most dominant species of insects in Dubai. We came here after our very frustrating meeting with the HSBC folks at Jebel Ali. HSBC had botched up our big funds transfer to our US account. With the evidence laid clearly before them, they still refuse to admit liability.

Pork knuckles (so haram!) is available here. I opted for a safe seafood pizza and Daisy had carbonara. Our lunch was interrupted by a call from our HSBC relationship manager. I was really upset and told him to get the details from the officer at their Jebel Ali branch. At this point of writing the money has not yet been returned to our account. It is has been almost two weeks already! Like they say, this is Dubai!

As always Dubai looks like the prettiest pearl from far away. Come and live in the pearl and you will understand that beauty is indeed only skin deep. Even as I write, this porcelain beautiful skin is peeling from want of moisturiser (liquidity) under the scorching sun.

The air here has been too dry

This is our second humidifier, a cool temperature one. We had bought a high temperature one from Westinghouse earlier for Daisy to use. For the winter months, the humidity has consistently been in the 40s or lower. The one you are seeing above is for the girls' room.

We set the humidity at 50% and usually when I enter the room to wake them up for school, it is no longer blowing its gentle mist. This mist is finer than what the Cool House in the Botanic Gardens back home.

The girls' best lunch for school

Except rice, which is of course life's food, we are very small eaters and usually cannot finish the generous portions Jasmine gives us. It is not unusual for us to warm up the food the next morning for the girls to bring to school for lunch. All we need to do is steam some rice in the morning.




OK, now they are nicely packed into the thermos containers. The one of the left belongs to Lin. Zhen has the larger black one. These two were bought at Taka in Singapore. When Daisy got them, I thought this was going to be a wasted purchase.

You may not take pictures

I was waiting for Chua to bring the sumptuous dinner Jasmine has prepared for us, and I decided to take a photo of our community mosque. The security guard walked up to me and objected to it. I tried to explain to him that this is ridiculous. Shortly Chua appeared and we tried to explain how unreasonable he is. Since as tenants we "out ranked" him we just walked off and have our chat before entering the building to pick up groceries from Choittram.

Waiting for the Flyover

This photo was taken on the 26th February. This is a very useful viaduct for us. It spans across the SZR freeway to the other side where Media city, Internet city etc.,So much progress they have made in about three months (see photo below). When completed, it would cut down substantially time taken to drive to work and school.