Six Days Trip To Tehran

When I started this blog, I though I would spend at least 20 minutes every day to keep it up-to-date. Now as you see, there hasn't been a new post for quite a while.

Anyway, I recently had a short trip to Tehran,Iran. That's where I'm originally from, that's where I was born. It had been almost ten years since my last visit. The nature of the trip was pure pleasure :) and indeed I enjoyed every minute of it. The Dubai - Tehran fligh was a bit shorter than 2 hours and the best part: my sit was in the front part of the plane, the part they call.... business class ...lol. After the landing, I passed the pass-control (fortunately, no problem there) and went out to get a cab. I took a cab directly to my parent's place. Since no one lives there anymore I had to go up to one of our neighbours who's in charge of the entire building to get our keys. The apartment was dusty and had been empty for a long time. A few hours later, one by one my cousins and friends who were aware of my arrival came to see me and after lots of huging, talking and remembering the old memories , they started cleaning the apartment (trust me, they insisted) and... finally turned the empty apartement into a club ;))) I think we were up until 4 in the morning, drinking, dancing and having fun
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A few days later, my parents finally arrived from Sweden, and man!!, I was happy to see them. Even though, I've lived independent for the past 10 years, I still miss them a lot. After their arrival, the atmosphere of our home was different. Most relatives, old and young ones came to our home to pay a visit. It just felt great seeing the family, talking about the old days, and getting to know my own roots better. It was lovely and at the same time strange to see my cousins who in my memories were small children becoming young men and beutiful ladies. Some of them I hadn't met before, but somehow they all knew me. Overall it was a great experience and I hope to find more time to do it again soon. My cousins promised to come for a visit to Dubai. Let's see if they keep their promise or not!

Persian, Russian and Swedish!

I've been away for a while, apparently there's something called "work" which my employer seems to think I must do on daily basis. A lot has happened since the last update. My former colleague Mattias, arrived in Dubai on September 6th and we've been out a few times. On the second day after his arrival I took him to see the Ibn Battuta Mall which is very close to my apartment, then we went to the Jumeirah Beach at night and ofcourse paid a visit to my favorite pizza place, The Pizza Company.

Last weekend, Bahareh and I took him to dinner in a persian resturant, Zaytoon in Deira and he seemed to love persian food. After the dinner, we went to the Shishe section and he tried Shisheh for the first time. After that we drove back to our area of town and went to a beach bar where we met another friend of mine, Dimitry. (Me, Dimitry and Mattias in the photo)

Bahareh

Today is Sunday and I found some free time to update the blog.
It's been a while now since my fiancé Bahareh arrived in Dubai. She arrived on 28th of July and since then we've been just busy buying furniture and home appliances. It feels very good now that she's here; some relationships get a bit shaky when one of the partners moves to another country. Consequently after a while of being away from each other they go their separate ways.

Back in London, she started looking for a job in Dubai and found a very good law firm and they offered her a good position. She’s been with them for a month now and she seems happy.

Driving Licence, Purchasing Car and Salik

Obtaining a driving licence in Dubai is a big challenge for many expats. I consider myself one of the luckiest ones who simply exchanged the driving licence without going through the hassle of redoing the tests. There’s a new law coming into force under which the expats are required to do the tests once a year.
The process of purchasing a new car in Dubai is pretty much straight forward. Basically, you select your car and in case you’re considering financing the dealer in association with your bank will take care of the loan.

The cars and most importantly the gas is extremely cheap in comparison to the rest of the world and that is the main reason why many expats usually buy 4x4 vehicles with big engines. After doing a lot of research online I selected a Mitsubishi Pajero 3.0 2008. It’s a full off-road SUV which is very popular in Dubai. My second option was a Toyota Prado which later on I found unnecessarily expensive. I’d never owned a 4x4 SUV before and I can say it’s a very pleasant experience.




Dubai has a toll system on the main high ways which they call “Salik”. Salik is a free flow tolling system without toll booths, barriers, or gates, allowing traffic to move freely through the tolling point at highway speeds.There will be two tolling points: Al Garhoud Bridge and Sheikh Zayed Road near the Mall of the Emirates. Each time you pass through a Salik tolling point, the toll of AED 4 will be deducted from your prepaid toll account using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.Your vehicle will be identified to the system through communication with the small, thin Salik sticker tag affixed to your windshield. Whenever your Salik balance is low, a sms will be sent to your mobile phone to remind you to refill.

Ramadan Kareem

Today is the first day of Ramadan, and most people in Dubai are fasting. Fortunately, during the month of Ramadan the office hours will be reduced to 6 hours a day, usually between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM. Eating, drinking and smoking in public during the day is strictly prohibited and will guarantee you a jail time during Ramadan, if caught by the police. Most restaurants in Dubai Media City (where our office is) will be open and will use thick curtains to cover the windows. I see this month as a good opportunity to quit smoking.

The day before the flight

Almost three months has gone and it feels like it was yesterday.
The day before my flight, I called up my closest friends and we agreed to drive to KaSjon which is a beautiful lake near Gothenburg. It was a remarkable day and I enjoyed every minute of it. We had many laughs and at the end of this perfect day we all drove to a friend’s apartment and spent the rest of the evening over there. I remember reviewing the day in my head during the flight, and it just put a big smile on my face.

I love you guys! I really miss you.

The Trip

Well, I know I haven’t kept my promise. I promised to update this weblog and send a post for every step of the way. I guess you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that this weblog is almost empty. Anyway, I will not insult you with my excuses and will tell you exactly what’s happened since I left Sweden.

The plane took off from Gothenburg Landvetter Airport at 10:50 AM. Since my ticket was issued by Lufthansa, I had a stop-change in Frankfurt. The plane landed in Frankfurt and two hours and three glasses of Heineken later, the boarding started. Back in Sweden I’d kindly asked the Lufthansa lady behind the desk to give me an aisle sit, (bad experiences from window sits on the flights between London and LosAngeles). Anyway, I entered the plane and located my sit and sat down, started looking at the Taxfree magazine, reading newspaper and playing with the headset and stuff (things you usually do when you’re completely bored waiting for other passengers to take their sits!).

The plane was almost full; mostly business men and most of them were preparing their laptops to turn on after the take off. Anyway, I was enjoying my sit especially when I realized that the three other sits on my right hand side weren’t occupied. But actually, I was thinking It would have been nice to have someone to talk to during the long flight, elder couples are usually very good at starting conversations (somehow, you always look like someone they know or have known ) and they usually have untold memories from WWII. But I guess Jini totally misunderstood my wish and by the time I was done reading the first page of GulfNews, one loud and rude arab family (Husband, wife and a very rude 5 or 6 year old boy) occupied the three empty sits beside me. From the minute they sat down, they started giving everyone, especially the cabin attendant headache. I won’t waste your time going through the details of what exactly happened but whenever I remember that trip, I think to myself , if only he was my boy !!!!

Anyway, five hours and one anger-management-movie later we landed on Dubai International Airport. I followed the instructions which had been sent to me through email and went to the visa collection, picked up my employment visa, did the eye scan, went through the passport control and almost an hour after the landing, I was out of the airport. The company had sent a driver to pick me up from the airport and drive me to the guesthouse.
The very first time I breathed outside, it felt like having my head over the heater in a sauna. It felt like my lungs were burning. Just images, the air you’re breathing is warmer than your body temperature. That was an unusual and unpleasant experience. Anyway, after almost an hour of cruising through the high buildings , we arrived at Dubai Marina, JBR (Jumeirah Beach Residence).
It was a spacious guesthouse on 30th floor with lake view. Just beautiful!.

Emloyment Visa

Yesterday I found out that the HR department of the company who hired me wants me to post a few passport photos, a copy of my passport, also to have my education certificates attested by UAE embassy in Sweden in order to process my employment visa. I have no idea how long that's gonna take for the embassy to attest my certificates and post it back, and for me to post all the documents through currier to Dubai, but I hope it doesn't change the plan much.

Dubai Red-Tape

Hi again, today I received a great book named Dubai red-tape. It's a complete step-by-step handbook covering all aspects of daily life in Dubai. One of my colleagues who also will be moving to Dubai recommended this book to me. It's a very inexpensive book with invaluable guides and information from what to prepare before moving to how to open a bank account in Dubai. Priceless information and perquisites on how to rent an apartment, buy a car, get a cell phone, connect the electricity and get a driving licence. It's all there. Since the book was sold-out in Sweden I had to order it from Amazon UK and strangely enough I received the book only three days after I placed my order. Nice job Amazon !! Anyways, In case you are thinking about moving to Dubai, this is a very useful handbook.

Three weeks before moving

Hello there, today I have a little time over to put up a new post and tell you a bit about how things have been going so far. After signing the contract with the company in Dubai, the first thing that I did was to resign from my position at my current job in Sweden. To be completely frank, this wasn't easy. Even though I am very excited about moving to Dubai and starting a new life over there, I'm a bit bummed over leaving my colleagues who I really enjoy working with. But sometimes life's a bitch that's just the way it is. People move on.

Anyway, It's been around six weeks now since the day I handed in my letter of resignation and about three weeks from now I'll be on a plane on my way to Dubai. During the last six weeks I've ticked a lot of bullet points on my list. I have sold my car, rented out my apartment, unsubscribed the magazines, notified the phone company, el-company, the gym, sold some of the stuff I didn't need, took care the loans, closed some bank accounts , etc. and very soon I have to move out the rest of my stuff to my parents. I'm thinking of throwing a goodbye party a few days before I go or maybe just take some friends out to a bar or something, so we can spend the last hours together.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog.

I have created this blog in order to share my "living-in-dubai" experience with people who are interested in moving to Dubai, also for some friends who want to know how this whole new experience is working out for me. I will try to update this blog as much as I can.

In advance I would like to apologize for all the miss-spelling you will see in this blog. I'm sure many of the posts will be written on-the-go and hopefully you'll understand how stressful it sometimes can be to turn on the laptop and start typing when you're outside.

Anyway, this is how everything started. A few weeks ago I received a job offer from a telecommunication company in dubai and almost without hesitation I accepted the offer. Just for the record, I have never been in dubai, not even accidently, not even landed on its airport for a stop change. So, am I nervous?, you bet! Having this said, I have heard a lot about the city, seen a couple of construction-movies and documentaries about living and working in Dubai. But what really caught my attention was the experiences and stories that my friends shared with me. So, in comparison to the quietness and cold weather of Sweden, Dubai's multinational culture and life-style and its fast growing atmosphere has been the main reason for my huge interest for the city. I have prepared a list of everything that needs to be taken care of before moving, such as selling my car, renting the apartment, taking care of the loans, closing some of the bank accounts and finally cutting up and throwing away the credit cards. I'll let you know more on how things have been going in the near future.