Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque

Because I know you visit this blog to catch-up on our family happenings and adventures and not to be bombarded with my photography hobby pics (also known as grandparents want to see Piper and Frankie not your personal indulgences Carly), I have started a separate tumblr website for all of my non-family photography. If you want to follow my new website you can find it here.  

Desert Camping Adventure - The Empty Quarter

Naz returned to Dubai last Wednesday and I don't think Piper and I have ever been happier to see him.

However, rather than take things slowly and relax, in true O'Brien style we planned a road trip and camping adventure for the weekend.

We ventured to The Empty Quarter, a unique desert area at the northern tip of the UAE bordered by UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen. It is a vast desert, home to some of the worlds largest sand dunes, approximately a three drive from Dubai (unless you have a toddler who needs to pee every half hour).

We travelled with friends, one of who had befriended a local man on a previous camping trip. We contacted Salem and he was only too happy to meet up with us crazy bunch of expat's and show us around. This kind man led us into the desert, took us to a friends camel farm, tested our 4WD driving skills before finally leading us off road into the dunes to the most secluded and beautiful camping spot.

It is quite rare to share such intimate time with local Emirate's. For the most part expatriates and locals lead very separate lives. But Salem was welcoming and engaging. While the boys set-up camp he took myself and two other friends in his car for a bash through the dunes, it was horrifying and exhilarating at the same time!

Not sure this desert has ever seen a little poodle from Australia before!

Fireside conversations

Sand boarding

My favourite pic - cars on the left, friends up on the dune and the boys sand boarding

Know your thobe

As we prepare to depart for our holiday to Sri Lanka I thought I would leave you with some cultural education! Below is a diagram depicting the different types of traditional dress (Thobe also referred to as a Dish Dash) we see on a daily basis here in the UAE.
Now when you come to visit us you will be able spot the different dress styles!

Glimpse at the trials and tribulations of life here sometimes...

Hopefully you saw my post a couple of days ago, we have finally purchased a car, otherwise known as 'Rex'. The journey to finally owning Rex gives an insight into the complexities of living in the UAE as an expat.

We looked at several cars over the last 6 months and none stood up to what was advertised. It was a frustrating time consuming exercise. Remember the days of the dodgy car salesman tactics....winding back odometers, posting photographs of cars that were not the same car when inspected and any other dodgy trick you can conjure up in your mind, well they are still alive and well over here!

Finally last week we found a car that matched our criteria, one phone call later and Naz confirmed it was an expat owned car and sounded like it was legitimately worth checking out. So off we headed to the outer suburb area, very appropriately called Motorcity! And BINGO it was perfect, the people were lovely, car was in immaculate condition and the kilometres were legitimate (owners were able to provide full service history, unheard of here) so we arranged to meet at the RTA first thing Saturday morning to complete the paperwork and handover. We left floating on a cloud, finally a car, and WOW how easy was that in the end....... oh how wrong we were!

Saturday morning arrived and after an early morning trip to Bur Dubai to the only branch of our bank in Dubai that actually holds money we arrived at the RTA on time...... the owners and car were 45 minutes late so not a great start.
The car passed it's mechanics test and Naz then spent 2 hours in and out of lines to complete insurance and registration handover while I attempted to entertain Piper in the waiting room. Finally we got to the last step... only to discover Naz had an outstanding traffic fine in Abu Dhabi... and this is when the UAE madness really began.

Naz had an incident with a hire car and a taxi that got in the way of his reversing 2 months ago when he was working at Yas Island. At the time we followed all the protocol, checked the website for a fine, had an Arabic colleague of mine read the paperwork and we all came to the conclusion the police officer had not fined Naz (it wasn't made clear by the police officer at the time due to language difficulties).
Wrong - he was fined after the incident?!? All UAE emirates are very distinctly and independently governed so this fine was also not showing up on the Dubai fine website. I should point out you are not mailed your fines here, it is up to the individual to regularly check a website to see if he has received any fines.
You are unable to purchase a car with outstanding fines so we had to pay immediately, which should be easy, it was only a small fine..... but after 3 separate attempts to pay on their 'integrated' system which allows you to pay fines for different Emirates they informed us the system was down and we would need to drive to Abu Dhabi to pay...... yes drive right then and there all the way to Abu Dhabi for 1 lousy fine! The customer service rep was helpful and gave us clear directions to a service station just over the border which contained an automated fine paying machine. Thankfully we had a hire car for the weekend so off we went!

After stopping at the wrong service station we finally found the right one and the automated machine..... which of course we could not get to accept Naz's license or violation number. Eventually we saw a patrol car in the car park and Naz ran out and asked for help. They confirmed the machine was not working and the walk-in office where you can pay your fine was closed for the day.

Completely and utterly frustrated we then drove back to Dubai, returned the hire car and picked up our new car from the RTA car park. The previous owner was kind enough to sign all the paperwork and authorise everything and trust we would complete the paperwork the next day. The RTA Manager also agreed to this and held the paperwork for us to return the next day with a receipt for the paid fine.
All night I logged into the online payment system only to be met with nothing.... I tried every known phone payment service also to no avail.

So come Sunday morning I headed to work and poor Naz and Piper once again headed down the highway to Abu Dhabi. This time however he went directly to the office to pay in person. After handing over his license details he was bluntly informed no fine existed and he must be confused and the fine was in the Dubai Emirate...... do I really need to describe Naz's reaction to this......
After a little vocal encouragement from Naz the customer service rep tried and again and what do you know there the fine was! Back in the car with receipt they headed back to Dubai RTA to finalise our car purchase.
Arriving at midday Naz was then informed by the staff at the RTA only the manager he had dealt with the day before could finalise the registration and could he please come back after 4pm when he started work.
Home again and back again at 4pm..... this time told no again as the manager was not working that day at all! Well as Naz's blood pressure went up and his arms started gesturing wildly (highly offensive over here) I grabbed Piper and headed for the door trying to work out how on earth I was going to explain to my boss that we had been deported! After a long tense stand-off and much gesturing they miraculously found the paperwork, signed it off and presented us with our registration card!!

At this time I have to point out the whole affair had become so ridiculous we couldn't even laugh or smile with relief as we got in 'our' car and drove away, we were exhausted. It should also be noted that our story of grief when relayed to my colleagues and friends was met with a lot of "took me 4 trips to get mine", "that's not too bad I have heard worse", "Oh good you got it done, that was quick" aaaaargh the madness of this place sometimes kills me. In many ways it is so modern and sophisticated and others so backwards it baffles me!

NOTE: I wrote this yesterday and since then experienced my craziest Dubai moment yet this morning but have to save that story for another day as I am still too seething and angry and need to calm down a bit so I can edit my anger.

Happy National Day UAE

The UAE celebrated National Day on the 2nd December and this year was an extra special event as the UAE turned 40 years old. The weekend celebrations also coincided with the Islamic New Year and last week the government kindly announced Thursday was a public holiday so we have just finished a lovely 3 day long weekend.
The Emirati's are an extremely patriotic and proud culture and it was an exciting weekend to be here and join in.
We live in new Dubai, although our area is called Old Town? that is Dubai for you and I am not going to even go there. Anyhow, this meant that a lot of celebrations were centred around our home area so we didn't have to go far to join in the festivities. Over the weekend we have had a classic car show along our Boulevard and the start and finish line for the Dubai Rally was also here. The highlight was this afternoon's National Day parade through the boulevard. Piper loved the parade and it actually exceeded our expectations.
Naz also joined in the festive weekend and headed to the Dubai Rugby 7s tournament with a few others.... not sure he saw much rugby but I do know he had one massive headache this morning!

In typical Dubai fashion there were no signs and very little communication warning traffic about the parade. These cars pictured are part of 4 lanes of traffic that was stopped dead in their tracks for the next hour with nothing they could do about it. It provided great side entertainment watching the frustration during the parade!

A favourite National Day activity is decorating your car. It has been interesting spotting these cars on the roads over the last couple of weeks. A lot of money is spent, I read an article last week about an Emirati woman who had spent over $250,000 dhs (approx $50,000 AUD) on her car decorations. I managed to get this snap below of a decorated Range Rover passing the Parade. The second photo is of of a car completely covered in real dirham coins. Yes that is a real moving car with somebody inside driving it..... UAE tinting rules is a whole new blog for another day!