We just increased our maid's salary to 2000 a month, but only because she's been with us for three years now and she's been a superb maid. She started out at 1500 and if she leaves the new maid will start out at 1500.
She gets the weekends off with the understanding that when she comes home at night she needs to do the dishes and wipe down the kitchen. When I first hired her I didn't know it was common for maids to spend the nights away, but ours never does and is always back late every Friday or Saturday nights.
I buy extra rice and cooking oil for her and she's allowed to help from our staples, such as salt and pepper, but beyond that she usually buys her own food.
She gets two months' paid leave to the Philipines every summer but that's because the boys and I are in the States for the entire summer and DH doesn't want to be alone in the villa with the maid. He likes having the place to himself (when you take into account that he flies to the States and joins us for two two week periods during the summer, there's only about a month that he's entirely on his own).
It works for us. She has been an excellent maid and in the time with us she's never broken or damaged anything and I keep a close eye on our inventory and nothing's gone missing.
The one thing I would never do is to allow anyone to sleep over in her room on the weekends. That's a flat out no.
<em>edited by Tallybalt on 18/01/2011</em>
We bought some tickets last year from dubizzle. The tickets were for both the men's and women's semifinals. All tickets were bought a day or two before the matches and all tickets were bought at or below the original prices (the women's was below cost and the men's was at cost, oh well, life isn't fair).
There's no need to fall prey to speculators. Every year plenty of people have to cancel their plans to attend the match for legitimate reasons, so I wouldn't lose hope.
I've had a look on dubizzle and there are already some for sale at quite a proft I must add!
Life in Dubai is easy. We may complain day to day about small things, frustration with the Dubai Municipality, finding good maids, landlords and the prices in the stores. But after spending several weeks in the US I've come to realize that the US is just as expensive as Dubai and the US has its own sets of frustrations. There's no such thing as the promised land anywhere and if you can arrange to have a good life in Dubai within your means, kudos to you. But one can have a good life nearly anywhere, it's all about how you arrange your daily habits and expectations. I can be shocked at how much my friends spend for their cramped terraced houses in central London, but they wouldn't trade the culture and opportunities of London for a bigger villa or better weather. One of our friends in London who lived in Dubai for several years admits that the UK winters can be long and dreary, but the Dubai summers are even longer and even more dreary.
For us, we would not be here if we weren't saving substantial amounts of money. I hate the heat of Dubai, it's dusty for so much of the year, the cultural venues are limited, the landscape is generally dreary and I miss the greenery of the US. My family and friends are still in the US. While I do appreciate having a maid, and that I can buy nearly anything (of a luxury item type) in Dubai and I do admit to enjoying popping in at one of the malls, sacrificing so much of what my life would have been like had we stayed in the US is only justified by our savings, and even then I have my doubts.
For those of you who are contemplating a long term stay in Dubai, you really must have savings plans in place for your retirement. Odds are you aren't contributing to a government pension scheme, which severely reduces the pension you will get down the road. DH sets aside a sum every month for our "pension" which is separate from the actual savings.
