Out and About in Dubai

I got my offer letter yesterday from the company I had interviewed with - yay!!  After my last interview, they said the offer letter would be forthcoming in a day or two but that was 2.5 weeks ago. Things are definitely slow here.  My husband waited over a month before his offer letter and contract came through. And I’ve been told that’s pretty good for Dubai standards.

However, knowledge of the fact that things are slower here doesn’t make the wait (nor the job hunt) any easier. I still worried that the company was going to take back their offer and decide not to hire me after all.  I’m glad that wasn’t the case.

So now I’ve filled out and returned some paperwork.  I think the next steps are reference checking, medical testing, and labor card applying. I wonder if I need to have my college degree attested?

Tags: job hunt | 1 comment »

 

The House Hash Harriers is an international running, drinking, and social club. Sometimes described as a “drinking club with a running problem,” there is a hash group in practically every major city in the world. Hashing began way back when in 1938 in Kuala Lumpur by a group of British expats.

The co-ed group in Dubai is called the Desert House Hash Harriers (dh3) and they meet every Sunday around sunset for their runs. There is also a male-only group in Dubai.

Basically, the group (aka the “pack”) meets at the appointed place and time (different every week) and then begins to follow a trail of arrows (marked by spray paint, chalk, flour, sometimes even toilet paper) set earlier that day by the “hares.”

Now the hares are tricky so they sometimes make false trails or trails that lead nowhere so one has to be smart enough to find the real trail. Or at least smart enough to follow the people who think they’ve found the real trail. In this way, while the pack leaders are off looking for the correct trail, the slower folk can catch up so that we all reach the end of the trail at the same time. Because the end of the trail is where the beer is and we don’t want the fast people getting there too early and drinking all the beer now - do we?

In Dubai, the cost is 50 dirhams and that gets you dinner, beer, soda, beer, water, and beer. Did I mention beer?

I have hashed a couple times in New York and this past weekend I did my second hash in Dubai. At this run, their was the usual beer, soda, and water but also GIN and TONIC! Mmm…and they were good gin and tonics - perfectly chilled too! Great fun as always!

I love these runs because you get a bit of exercise (3-5 miles), you get to see different parts of Dubai, and you also get to meet a lot of different people from all over the world. Hashers tend to be a traveling bunch so oftentimes you get visitors from other Hashes.
 

So, if you too have a running and drinking problem - join us! And if you don’t run, that’s okay as there are walkers too.

Tags: alcohol, exercise | 1 comment »

 

What does one do with a new dining table? Host a dinner party of course! I had a few girl friends over recently for an M-themed party.
 

 

We started the night with Mojitos and Martinis.

Then for starters we moved on to Middle Eastern dates wrapped in bacon, Mushroom caps stuffed with parmesan, and Mozarella and tomato salad (with basil from my garden):
 

For the main course there was Meat lasagna…

 

…Mixed-meat paella…
 

…And finally, good old Mac ‘n cheese…

…finishing with a dessert of Maltesers, crushed with vanilla ice cream…

…and then back to more Mojitos ans Martinis.

Tags: food | 2 comments »

 

It’s been exactly two months since I started looking for work in Dubai and there has been some developments since the last round of rejection emails. A very very good development actually. Last Wednesday I was offered a job position and I accepted! Woo-hoo!

But I am superstitious so until I get the actual contract in my hands, I am keeping mum on the position and the employer from everyone. Only the husband knows (of course) and one friend who had interviewed with the same company.

I will say that this job hunting thing is just awful. It’s not exactly stressful as I’ve done it so many times before in New York, Miami, Puerto Rico, Chicago, New York again, and now Dubai. It does get easier each time in terms of interviewing and selling yourself but then again, with each job, you have more experience to sell.

But the parts that I hate are the getting-the-interview and the waiting-game part. For example, I started off by sending my resume to all the major recruitment companies in Dubai as well as applying to ads in Monster, RecruitGulf.com, Bayt.com and a bunch of others. Did any of them get back to me to schedule an interview? Not a single one.

I know I am a great candidate and any company would be lucky to have me. Now these are not my words but words from ALL my former employers as well from a recent interviewer. But why didn’t anyone pick up on my resume? Ah, that was a rhetorical question by the way. We all know the HR game: It’s something like 10% experience, 30% luck, and 60% who you know*. Wait, does that add up to 100%? Think so.

So a month and a half into job hunting, I was starting to get royally pissed off at the lack of response. There’s nothing like anger to get your ass off the couch and do SOMETHING. Drastic. Anything.

Well, I played the who-you-know card, which got me a few preliminary interviews. Then perhaps luck got me second interviews and experience landed me the job. Or, maybe luck landed me the job…who knows.

However, after those first prelim interviews, there was nothing. Nada. Nilch. Not a peep. One week passed. Then two weeks. Then a third. I thought they had forgotten about me. That’s when I got angry again and sent another flurry of resumes to the recruiters - this time I addressed them to the CEO’s and managing directors. I had nothing to lose, right? Seemed to have worked as I did get some responses. And guess what? I think this second anger event created momentum in the form of a second interview for the position that I really really really really wanted: The day after I sent out this second flurry of resumes, a recruiter called me for the first time and just 10 minutes later, I also got a call-back from one of my prelim interviews. Yes, it took them 3 weeks to do so. But I forgive them.

My recruiter interview went okay - though it was only 20 minutes and I felt sort of like cattle beind herded through the gates of job placement commissions. Whereas my other interview lasted an hour and a half and in the end, I was offered the position, and as much as I tried to play it cool and say that I’d think about it, I just blurted out, “I’ll take it!”

So that’s the update. Now I play the waiting game again - this time it is for my contract. Hope they don’t forget about me or wait another 3 weeks…

*not scientific…just my experience.

Tags: job hunt | 2 comments »

Was just checking my website statistics today and I noticed that even though I hadn’t posted anything in the last couple of days, my blog was getting more visitors than usual.

Turns out, my entry on Asian grocery stores was listed in a Dubai periodical - the GulfNews “Blogosphere” article for May 6. You can see for yourself by clicking here (my listing is the last one of the bunch).

I think it’s funny that I’m in the tabloid section.

Tags: blog | add comment »

The days and nights are starting to heat up here in Dubai. Most mornings I wake up to 30C (86F) temps. The balcony garden is going okay. Remember the sad looking rosemary? Well, the poor plant never took root so it died a slow death eventually drying out completely. I tossed it and replaced it with a smaller rosemary plant (top right of pic) which seems to be doing pretty well at the moment. I bent two of the branches into the soil to see if it will root so that I can get a second and third plant out of it. I’m thinking rosemary roast chicken and lamb.

Sage - I have two of these plants sharing the rosemary pot. I don’t know what to do with them except make stuffing but I’m sure I’ll think of something. Suggestions welcome.

Mint - You can also see the mint has flourished very well (bottom border of photo). Mojito time!

Basil - The Genovese basil (top left) suffered from spider mites. I sprayed the leaves with a soap and water concoction every couple of days for a period of two weeks and that seemed to have gotten rid of the pests. The sprayed leaves, however, did not look appetizing at all so had to be removed. You can see that one basil plant in particular has grown like crazy! I used some of its leaves last night on a tomato cucumber salad - yum!

Basil (Asian) - I bought some Thai basil from a grocery in Karama and stuck some of the branches in water. They rooted within a few days and I just planted them into soil (below). They are looking a little droopy and beat up but then again, the poor things have been refrigerated for who-knows-how-long, then stuck into a cup of water, and now into a pot of soil in the searing desert sun. I hope they will make it as it’s extremely hard to get Thai basil here. And a good Vietnamese pho just doesn’t taste right without it.

Thyme - In the middle of the basil pot is a bushy bit of compact thyme. I planted it there because I didn’t have room for it anywhere else. But I don’t think the thyme plant likes it there at all as basil loves water and thyme does not. So I have bought a new pot for it and hopefully it will take to its new home and flourish. Maybe I’ll make a bacon-mushroom-thyme quiche tomorrow.

Parsley and Cilantro - The parsley? Dead. It does not like the Dubai heat I guess. The cilantro seedlings would have died as well but I moved them inside the house and they are growing slowly but surely.

Does anyone else have an herb garden in Dubai?

Tags: gardening | add comment »

 

Although I’m quite keen on learning how to cook Indian and Middle Eastern food while here in Dubai due to the wide-spread availability of key ingredients and spices, I still crave some of my mom’s Chinese and Vietnamese homecooking as well as other Asian foods that I am used to eating in New York.

Since my mom’s not here with me and Dubai isn’t New York, it’s up to me to re-create my mom’s most scrumptious recipes as well as those dishes that I can’t get in Dubai’s restaurants.

Thus my foray a couple months ago to Karama which is about a 20 minute drive North from my apartment (on a good day). I had heard that in Karama there is a Korean supermarket and that it was “behind the post office,” and that there is a Thai grocery “next to Venus restaurant.” Yes, all great and wonderfully precise directions…uh, NOT. Again, I lament on the lack of a real postal system here!

Anyway, I did drive around in circles…not just on one occasion but maybe two or three separate ones. Eventually, through the help of google and a few phone calls, I found both markets as well as the Chinese groceries in Deira (photo above) and even another Thai (possibly Singaporean) grocery in the Karama fish market.

To help future shoppers out, I have pinned the locations to these markets on a google map. Please click here for the map and if you know of any other places where one can get Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Thai products, please let me know!

PS - Still no luck in the search for bubble tea even after wandering all around Al Attar center in Karama.

Tags: food | 7 comments »