Daily life

So my friend Nancy e-mailed me today asking about our daily lives here in Dubai because I so often write about being one big vacation. I was talking with my neighbor the other day and we started complaining about the crap around here. She stopped and said well let's not slide down the slipper slope any longer. What she meant by that was there is so much crap in your daily life here that if you complain about it you end up hating it here and it's not like you can pack up and go home whenever you want - well we could but we won't - ya know.

For instance, it has rained for the past week. More rain than Dubai has seen in years. When it rains it floods all over the place. Oh and did I mention that building are not built with rain in mind? ALL (in caps on purpose) of our windows leak. Last night our ceiling started leaking too. So you say, you're renting, just call maintenance... laughing... laughing some more. You call, "what you villa number" "A04" "ok, we come" hours pass, you call again "what you villa number" "A04" "ok, we come." You call at least 5 times before someone comes. When they get here, "ah... bad building" he says with his head cocked to the side. "Yes, bad building, you fix it" "ah... bad building" As you can see there is lots of repetition in conversation here. It's like marketing 101, repeat what you want people to remember at least 3 times. Then the dude says that he needs a part or it is too wet to fix, blah, blah, blah. Things pretty much never get fixed.

Ok, enough slipper slope. Daily life here is not that bad, really, there are lots of good things, but many days the crap out weighs the good stuff.

On the good side, we are learning so much about the rest of the world. I finally had a girls night out the other day with 4 British ladies. It was fun to learn more about their world and tell them about ours. Very different, but also very much the same.

Well, gotta run. We are going to Global Village tonight. It's a place where they have pavillions from several different countries with food, crafts, rides, music, etc.