Tallybalt | ExpatWoman.com
 

Tallybalt

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EW GURU
Latest post on 25 March 2013 - 08:49
If we're talking about fine china, in the old days the standard was twelve plate settings as that was the ideal number for a formal dinner party. My wedding china was Limoges and I registered for twelve settings but ended up being given fifteen settings. Since I have multiple sets of china, my wedding china and other dinner services I've inherited, I like to mix them up so I use one set for the main course and another set for the dessert course. It makes for a more interesting table display. If you have a big, boisterous family and expect to entertain them a lot you're probably better off getting what I'd call semi-china, nice good quality crockery of the kind you can easily find at Crate & Barrel (or Williams Sonoma in the US) and just get tons of it as they're not expensive. Ask only for twelve settings on your blessing list so you don't appear too greedy and top it up as needed out of your pocket.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 13 March 2013 - 14:35
Almond flour is the same as ground almond. Almond is never as fine as regular flour but coarser, like breadcrumbs. Since I bake a lot I bought them regularly from the nut counter at Carrefour. One of the bins in the almond section will be filled with ground almond. If it's not fine enough for your purpose, just tip the ground almond to the food processor and whizz till it's even finer.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 09 March 2013 - 12:02
It's interesting reading the comments on this thread. Like most people I'm not going to point fingers at my sons and say "you must be a lawyer, you must be a doctor, you must become a CEO someday." I do want them to find a passion or profession that interests them and ultimately become successful in whatever they've chosen to do. Being completely hands off, while understandable, does have downfalls. Looking back I certainly had friends whose parents only said "do whatever you love," with the result that they ended up floating without much guidance into various degree programs that they only had a vague interest in and into jobs that didn't interest them very much. Some quickly realized the missteps they had made and corrected them, others are still stuck in positions they're merely ok with. All of them agree that if they could turn the clock back they would have chosen different career paths. The last thing I want for my sons is to have a midlife crisis when they're only 30 after wasting their 20s pursing certain degrees and career paths only because they didn't know what else to do. As a parent I do think I have a guiding role in helping to avoid this from happening. At the same time the pragmatic in me says few people end up doing what they genuinely want to do as not everyone is a budding architect or a vet or has an inner passion that easily translates into a certain occupation. One way or another most people end up working for some company in occupations they never dreamed of as a child. As DH says there's lots of tricks of trade in navigating the corporate environment and moving up the ladder, some of which each person has to learn on their own but others which can be gained via valuable advice from experienced people. My sons must learn that they will have to work very hard in whatever they chose to do if they want to be financially successful. They must also realize that advancement is all about taking advantage of the opportunities presented to them. They must learn how to take advantage of those opportunities. I also do think it's worthwhile that we stress to the boys that there are clear financial benefits in following certain career paths and industries over another. At the end of the day it will be their decision in what they want to do. But we will provide as much advice and guidance along the way as we can.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 08 March 2013 - 11:49
I know you said you wanted to do it yourself but we exported our cats with Alison of Dubai Doghouse. http://www.dubaidoghouse.com/inner.html She was very thorough, handled all the export permit paperwork and was quite reasonable (I think 600 AED?). The cats came with us as accompanied baggage so we had to get advance permission from the airlines. While it was clear I could have done the export paperwork myself there's something to be said about going with an expert to make sure all the paperwork is correctly in place. The last thing one needs during the panic and stress of moving is to find out at the last minute your pet can't go due to missing/wrong forms.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 05 August 2012 - 16:54
Thank you. So it should take 3-4 days to do the whole closure. I'll have him start on it pronto the moment he steps off the plane. We want that deposit back! Hi there, we've got a feature here on how to get DEWA switched off and get your final bill etc. http://www.expatwoman.com/dubai/monthly_home_garden_Making_A_Graceful_Exit_From_Dubai_9055.aspx Hope that helps!
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EW GURU
Latest post on 23 June 2012 - 16:19
I don't know if this appeals to you, but if you're only looking for a place for a few months have you considered finding a flatshare? If you go on Dubizzle there are a number of shares in the Marina and JLT that state couples are allowed. It'd be much cheaper and probably far less hassle. We have a young friend who did a flatshare in the Marina for a few months to cover the gap between the end of his lease and when he left Dubai. He said it was fine and a fairly anonymous experience as everyone remained to themselves and one of the rooms was occupied by a British couple who were in Dubai for only a year and didn't want the hassles and expense of a lease in their name. If you have lots of boxes, well, there are times in our lives when we have to be pragmatic and put up with inconveniences for a while if it's the best thing to do.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 21 May 2012 - 11:48
Why not try Dubai Pet Sitting? They visit your home daily and take the dogs out for walks and feed them. We have friends who have used them and were very happy. 050-5651742 [email protected] <em>edited by Tallybalt on 21/05/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 16 May 2012 - 12:24
There are pockets of pleasant villa areas surrounding Satwa. We have friends who live in the part of Satwa between the "high street" and Al Wasl Road, near the Iranian Hospital. It's almost like a secret little area that no one knows about and is lined with lush greenery so one can almost believe that they're in Singapore and not Dubai. The area is properly called Al Badia but it's still considered part of Satwa. I only have two caveats about living in Satwa: the traffic in and out can be heavy, especially along Al Wasl Road and during rush hour, so despite its proximity to SZR and other parts of Dubai it may still take some time to get in/out. Apparently some of the compounds closest to the "high street" have been converted into shared housing for Filipinos. If the villa you're looking at is in a compound double check that the neighboring villas aren't housing villa shares. It's one thing to have a group of western expats living one to a room, it's another to have 3-4-5 Filipinos per room.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 14 May 2012 - 13:13
Lime Tree gets my vote. As for buying cake flour, I've bought it at Spinneys (Umm Suqeim), Choithrams and Carrefour. Any large supermarket should carry it.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 13 May 2012 - 09:35
From what I've been told by various people is that the big difference in costs is due to whether the pets fly on the same flight as you do or if they're being shipped separately. If the cats go with your daughter on the same plane they are treated as part of her checked in luggage, so there's only a small surcharge added to the ticket fare. If the cats are shipped separately you essentially pay the cost of a plane ticket plus the shipping/handling charges. The British Airways website has rather detailed information about shipping pets although a fairly new requirement is that you must go through a registered pet shipper rather than doing it yourself, but the total cost will still be dependent on whether your daughter is on that flight or not. KLM is another airline that ships pets and as far as I'm aware they don't require the services of an official pet shipper. So, the best thing to do is to call around the airlines and speak with their representatives about the options. Speaking to the vets out here may also be worthwhile.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 29 April 2012 - 15:28
It does seem like an onerous amount of work but if the house is already largely clean then most of the cleaning is actually only touching up the surfaces rather than deep hardcore cleaning, so the maid would mostly only spend a few minutes on each task rather than hours. It's the laundry/ironing that's time consuming. But there's no way around it.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 20 April 2012 - 10:46
There are several junk...err...antique shops in the Blue Souk in Sharjah selling oldish knicknacks. Whether they're actually old or simply distressed goods made in the old style in a factory in India last week is anyone's guess. But I do remember seeing some old coins.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 18 April 2012 - 14:04
Unfortunately you have to begin and commence your travels before 6 June. Not good timing for those of us with children still in schools. Is it just me but have airfare prices become significantly more expensive over the past year and half?
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EW GURU
Latest post on 16 April 2012 - 10:47
ASD's charter granted directly by the previous Sheikh Maktoum deliberately excludes the school from having to comply with KHDA / ministry requirements, so I doubt the school will be changing their schedule. As it is, having the school year end in practically mid-July is ridiculous. ASD's calendar still lists September 2nd as the first day of the 2012 academic year, finishing on June 13, 2013. Exactly how it's normally scheduled in the US. My daughter's school hasn't changed their academic calendar for 2012-2013 yet, but they're still on holiday and the announcement was only made yesterday, so I would expect it to change shortly. I think what this chap says makes a lot of sense (quoted from today's Gulf News): Quote: Raymi van der Spek, executive director of University of Wollongong in Dubai not in favour of unifying holidays. He said the institution did not receive any official document from the MOHESR recently. However a request was sent by the MOHESR's Commission for Academic Accreditation to universities at the beginning of the year to change their holiday and spring semester dates he said. "It will be extraordinarily difficult for private universities to do this because there are universities that align themselves to the parent campus in terms of delivery of the curriculum." He added that the decision will greatly affect those schools and universities that offer an international curriculum. "When it comes to school exams, for the International Baccalaureate or the ICSEs (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education) or the GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education), they have exams across the world at the same time. "You cannot have an international curriculum with a local time frame," Van der Spek said. Unquote. If the Indian curriculum schools are exempt from this alignment because their academic year begins in April, I wonder if international schools could also be exempt because of having to comply with external exam dates? <em>edited by Tallybalt on 16/04/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 16 April 2012 - 09:52
ASD's calendar still lists September 2nd as the first day of the 2012 academic year, finishing on June 13, 2013. Exactly how it's normally scheduled in the US.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 15 April 2012 - 13:06
Costs for shipping animals varies greatly. The biggest factor is whether the pet flies on the same flight as you as part of your checked in luggage or is shipped separately. It's far, far cheaper to have the pet fly with you than shipped ahead separately.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 29 March 2012 - 09:04
Marina, Downtown, Business Bay/Executive Towers, the Greens, JLT, TECOM. It's all about your budget and where you want to be. Dubai has a very young crowd compared to other cities.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 29 March 2012 - 09:03
Bedbugs are dark brown, almost black and the most popular description for them is a resemblance to apple seeds. Same size, same color, same shape. If you have tiny black specks the size of pinheads you may actually have fleas. Do you have pets?
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EW GURU
Latest post on 27 March 2012 - 17:24
More expensive than Spinneys but excellent quality, really, much better than anything at Spinneys. We get all our steaks and lamb from there and the sausages are delicious. But no pork products, unfortunately. While more expensive it's not that much more expensive. <em>edited by Tallybalt on 27/03/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 26 March 2012 - 11:08
Absolutely get the Paris Pass: http://www.parispass.com/ It's not cheap but it includes all the museums entry fees and it allows you to skip all the long queues and you can walk straight into the museums most of the time. My favorite places in Paris: Notre Dame, Ste. Chapelle, Rodin Museum (small and in a lovely old house), and the Orangerie, which has Monet's famous water lily paintings. The Marais district is charming to walk around in. Latin Quarter is quite touristy. Chartres is a gorgeous cathedral in a lovely village a hour outside Paris and within easy reach via the suburban commuter train. The same train will also take you to Versailles, which is only 15-20 minutes from Gare Montparnasse train station. I did go up the Eiffel tower years and years ago and the lines took forever. I imagine you could skip this if you go to Sacre Couer which gives you fabulous views across Paris. If you are starting in Paris and ending up in Denmark, a good trip to plan would be Paris - Bruges (lovely small historic city in Belgium, possibly one of the prettiest places in Europe) - Amsterdam - Denmark/Copenhagen. With only two weeks you don't want to move around too much and try to spend several days in each place rather than moving to a new city every other day. I'd spend five nights in Paris, then two nights in Bruges, then three nights in Amsterdam and the rest of the time in Denmark.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 25 March 2012 - 08:41
We have a Pottery Barn queen size bed. The sheets are all from the States (not bought at Pottery Barn) and they fit.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 14 March 2012 - 15:31
Can you get the visas to travel to Saudi Arabia? Saudi is very stringent about granting visas and it's bad enough for people needing business visas. Jeddah is the most liberal part of Saudi. From people who have been there you wear the abaya but you don't need to cover your head. There's some interesting old bits of the city and the beaches/snorkelling on the Red Sea coast.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 14 March 2012 - 09:32
Waitrose, Spinneys and Choithrams are worth checking out. Look at the smaller bags of organic flour. A very good and reliable source for special types of flour is the Organics Supermarket in the Greens and presumably at the Dubai Mall as well. They carry a selection of imported organic flour including whole wheat from the US.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 01 March 2012 - 11:55
How long ago was the order? If you order from the US website it can take as much as a month to deliver while the UK website will deliver within the week. <em>edited by Tallybalt on 01/03/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 01 March 2012 - 11:54
Every apartment in the Greens should come with one allocated parking spaces in the basement parking garages. You may not have noticed but all the low rise apartments have two levels of underground parking underneath the buildings. The difficulty is getting a second parking space if you need two, but quite often the building management can arrange to rent a second one to you. Our friends did that when they lived in the Golf Towers. Thanks a lot for all of your replies. judxb, Seems outside parking is nearly impossible in there. I went there last weekend & after serching parking for more than 1hr came back without sucess. I think have to depend only on allocate parking there. Are you facing any problem with allocate parking?
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EW GURU
Latest post on 01 March 2012 - 08:26
Fiction? I looked at the link. Yesterday's post talks about how it's been so foggy in the morning so the ma'am makes the sir drive the kids to school. Reality: can't remember the last time it was foggy in the morning.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 28 February 2012 - 09:00
Then it comes down to the damage done by the airmiles and the damage done by raising local vegs with desalinated water and imported fertilizers/nutrients. I honestly don't think there's an easy way out for people who want to be organic and environmentally friendly in the UAE... @talllybat - it's the airmiles that are doing the damage.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 28 February 2012 - 08:40
It's easy for us to want to believe that Asma Al Assad is somehow innocent. We look at her and see a drop dead gorgeous woman with a fabulous style of dress and it's hard to connect her beauty with something as horrific and ugly as her husband's regime. But as others have pointed out below, she willingly married into the Al Assad family. There's really no telling what her private views are and history is littered with examples of beautiful wives who pushed their husbands to stay in power at all costs.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 28 February 2012 - 08:37
I've wondered exactly how environmentally friendly it is to buy local vegetables over imported ones. We live in a very arid country and the natural water table levels in the UAE is already severely depleted, so most of the irrigation must be from desalinated water. On top of that much of the fertilizers, other soil enrichment nutrients and various agricultural sprays are probably imported. At the end of the day is it truly better buying veggies here than imported ones from Europe or Australia? Cheaper, yes, but more environmentally friendly? I have mixed views towards local vegetables. Some are fine but many seem to lack the depth of flavors of imported ones. I've found local broccoli to be rather bitter whereas ones imported from Spain or elsewhere taste better. Local (or regional) cauliflower seems to bruise and spoil very easily compared to imported ones. I've now ended up buying a mix of frozen vegetables which are flash frozen and thus still quite nutritional, and some fresh vegetables that we consume right away.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 21 February 2012 - 08:27
Hire a car/driver. There seems to be thousands of tour agencies in Delhi who will offer a guided tour to Agra from Delhi airport. We have friends who did this on a long layover in Delhi years ago. If you've been to Agra, what do you suggest is the best and safest way to get there from the airport in Delhi?
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EW GURU
Latest post on 15 February 2012 - 17:09
We have Bupa and it's been wonderful. We do end up paying for the treatments/visits out of pocket but every penny has been reimbursed within six weeks of filing our claims. No copays.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 14 February 2012 - 14:54
I haven't been to Shabestan but would love to someday. So far the best Iranian food I've had in Dubai is at the Noon-o-Kabab chain. We get takeaways from their branch in Time Square Center quite often. Fabulous kebabs, oh, so juicy and tender, and the rice and stews that go with it are brilliant.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 13 February 2012 - 10:52
Do you drive? We consume oil products every single day so it would be fairly hypocritical to refuse to work for the O&G industry and still take advantage of its offerings. It isn't like working for the tobacco industry.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 12 February 2012 - 15:19
This is when I can legitimately claim a blond moment. Can someone do the math for me? To keep things simple let's say you are paying 50,000 AED in rent but the actual market value as determined by RERA is 100,000 AED. Exactly how much can the landlord raise the rent? It looks like it would be 15%, thus 15% of 50,000, and therefore a rent increase of 7,500 AED? But if your rent is 80,000 and the market value is 100,000. According to the articles, since the rent is within the "25% below the average similar rent," then the landlord is not entitled to any rent increase, not even the once-standard 5%? If this is true it does seem a bit unfair to the landlord that he can't raise the rent at all. If the tenant wants to stay in the property the landlord has no choice but to retain the same rent as in previous years even into the third/fourth/fifth year of the tenancy? <em>edited by Tallybalt on 12/02/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 12 February 2012 - 13:42
Just to clarify a point: if you are going into your, say, third year in the property with no rent increase between years 1 and 2 as per the RERA regulations, is the landlord still capped to raising your rent by only 5%? That's the one thing I can't figure out as as people have said rental raises are capped at only 5% per year and yet other people have paid more than a 5% increase.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 12 February 2012 - 11:33
I can't get the calculator to work for me. Each time I try to use it it always says "rental index for the selected date is under the updating process...blah blah" Is it because of the server I'm using?
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EW GURU
Latest post on 08 February 2012 - 17:12
I was a Mitch Daniels supporter thick and through and his disappointment not to run has saddened me. Since then I really haven't paid much attention to the primaries but given the see-saw nature of the various polls and who's winning what state tells me that this election is going to be a wash out for the Republicans. Voters simply aren't uniting behind any specific candidate and it looks as if people are casting votes not because they really want Santorum or Gingrich or Romney but because they are sending a message by not voting for the other person. Who knows what will happen by the time the convention rolls around. I'm secretly hoping for a brokered convention and Daniels is persuaded to accept the nomination. A gal can only hope... (DH, as an Obama supporter, is laughing all the way).
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EW GURU
Latest post on 08 February 2012 - 12:31
American family and we have a full-time live-in. She's been with us for a few years now and it's worked out wonderfully. It helps that the maid's room and bathroom is off the kitchen to the rear of our villa and with the laundry room forms almost a separate wing of its own and which has its own entry, which means she's a bit removed from us and she never interrupts us or comes into the front of the villa once her working hours are over. Having a full time means the villa is always spotlessly clean despite 5 and 3 year old boys, the laundry is always done and ironed and the bathrooms and kitchen always freshly scrubbed. While she's not primarily a child minder I trust her enough to leave the boys with her for a hour or so while I run out on errands. Yes, there's some truth to that you won't have 100% privacy but that was a decision we were willing to make. She was very well trained by a German family before she came to us and she knows not to get involved with our issues and we don't get involved with hers. I've also had valuable advice from my mother and grandmother who were both raised with "help."
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EW GURU
Latest post on 07 February 2012 - 11:21
Let's not forget that poor woman in Bahrain whose son was ripped from her and taken to his deceased father's parents in Qatar because it was in accordance with Sharia law... As messed up as some of the laws are here, surely they don't extend to ripping a child from his mother's hands and giving him to the grandparents? No they wouldn't. This is some sort of urban myth. Granted, sometimes you wonder whether or not something like this could happen, but no when it comes to family situations the courts seem to be rational. Shari'a is nothing if not on the right side of family. I dont think so. Sharia is one thing and what is practised in the "name of Sharia" is sometimes another thing.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 04 February 2012 - 21:26
I imagine Magrudy is also a victim of their locations. Jumeira 1 isn't the epicenter of expat Dubai the way it was ten or even five years ago. Even though we live in Umm Suqeim we never go down there anymore. Festival City must be suffering from competition from Mirdiff City Center and the Dubai Mall. But it's still probably Kinokinuya that's blwoing them out of the water. Not hard to see at all.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 04 February 2012 - 20:01
The annual rug show is at the airport expo convention hall at the moment. It will run till February 20th. A large selection of rugs from many of the local dealers. We were there yesterday and almost bought a rug from Tanweel. But we never buy a rug the first time we see it and we'll be debating it over the next two or so weeks. The important thing in buying rugs is to never think of them as investments. They aren't, despite what the dealers will claim. This applies to just about anywhere but especially here when too many shops are asking for second and third rate persian rugs what you would pay for a first rate rug in the US or the UK at a specialist shop or the periodic rug auctions at Christies or Bonhams. If you are just looking for a pretty Oriental style rug, Pakistani rugs are very good value. Most of the persian rugs for sale here are Qum rugs as the Arabs prefer these. Westerners tend to go for the more tribal Persians or the Heriz rugs, but most of what I've seen in Dubai and Sharjah are average quality at best. But if you like something you see and don't mind the price, by all means go ahead and make both your and the salesman's day happy. If you're willing to spend serious money on rugs, there's a fabulous shop on the ground floor of the Dubai Mall called, I think, Miri. Absolutely lovely new rugs woven in the style and techniques of the older Persian rugs. <em>edited by Tallybalt on 04/02/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 02 February 2012 - 17:06
If DH has the day off, the maid gets the day off. Seems fair enough.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 02 February 2012 - 08:43
DH and I frequently talk about the extent to which we can provide for our sons. We're fortunate enough to be in a position where our boys will have a very comfortable lifestyle but it's important to us that the boys never take anything for granted, other than our love, and that they learn to work for what they want out of life. The issue we disagree over is where to draw the line between the necessary and the unnecessary when it comes to material goods, which is a result of how we were raised. My parents were very frugal people and while they provided their three daughters with a good life (a lovely house, expensive private schools, vacations), there were limits and we rarely dined out, my sisters and I never had fancy clothes and had to wear a lot of hand me downs and share clothes and toys, we never had our own cars. It's embarrassing for me to look back and remember the episodes when I threw a fit because a good friend got given an expensive clothing item and my mother firmly said no when I wanted one. But in the long run I benefited from my parents' frugality and their constant lessons on what was important such as education and I certainly learned the value of working for something I wanted. DH, on the other hand, was an only child and the only grandchild and he was royally treated. He had all the fancy toys and he was given an expensive car when he turned 16. A classic scenario for becoming a spoiled brat. But on the other hand his parents also had high standards for him and he's always worked very hard, first as an academic scholar and later in his profession. To him it's not a problem buying expensive toys for our sons as long as we also teach the boys to work hard in school and hold them to consistently high expectations. I counter by arguing that he's lucky he turned out the way he did and there's still more risk in too much immediate gratification. At the same time I do remember classmates who were raised in very strict households, and who went completely over the top wild when they got to high school and college. So far the boys are still too young to care about the differences between types of toys and gadgets and status symbols but that will change, for unlike in my childhood when we had one TV and one computer for the house, they are being raised in an electronic age where everyone seems to expect to have their own mobile phones, computers, Ipads, game systems and what you have it.The next decade will be an interesting learning process for both DH and me and the boys as we learn how to balance between the necessary and unnecessary in an increasingly materialistic and electronic world.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 01 February 2012 - 14:27
I was disappointed in the second season. Too soap-opera for me with too much going on and those awful Hallmark hall of fame death scenes. And let's not even mention the Branson-Sybil relationship. Here's hoping the third season returns to the integrity of the first season. Shirley MacLaine is a terrific actress although she's known more for comedy than dramas so it'll be interesting to see how her role as Cora's mother is handled. <em>edited by Tallybalt on 01/02/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 31 January 2012 - 15:07
If they were married and the child was formally adopted by the new husband it would probably simplify things greatly. But that'd require them to get married and go through the legal adoption process. I'll be blunt. It's not worth it to play games or abuse Sharia law. If she won't legally marry him in the UK, it's not worth bringing him out here. OK thanks everyone, could be a bit difficult then. IF she had a partner who was wanting to move over... Could they get married under Sharia Law (I'm useless, I guess if you don't go through it, you don't know) Are they muslim? why would they get married under Sharia Law if they weren't? no not muslim, she just asked... i'm just asking her questions :) SO if they were married, do they need the childs birth cert for the child to go on to the husbands visa, and would this be a problem if the child wasn't biologically the husbands.. confused.com
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EW GURU
Latest post on 31 January 2012 - 14:28
First of all, how old is the child in question? A parent can't just move to Dubai and enroll the child into a school as you must have a residence visa, and you can't get the residence visa without a job. I've heard of single mothers in Dubai (Good lord, my life is so 1950s out here). They're rare but they exist and I gather the mother would need a no-objection letter from the father to sponsor a child's visa. Hello EW's I have been asked by my friend, if a single mum can move to Dubai, get a job and visa, then put her child on her Visa (no husband invloved) Is this do-able? or is this a... C'mon Carol2012... are you serious!! Dubai- there is no chance, what a stupid question. :) <em>edited by Tallybalt on 31/01/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 31 January 2012 - 14:24
A muffin is a muffin and not a small cake. Traditionally muffins were less sweet than a cake and sweeter than dinner rolls and I think they also differend in the leavening used. Muffins are now baked to have a crunchy/sweet top crust that seems to be the only reason many people eat muffins. A pound cake is a type of cake. A cupcake is a small version of a cake baked in small portion. What is the difference between a cupcake, a muffin and a pound cake put in small muffins portions? Boring...I know.... ;-) but if I can have the answer, I'll stop wondering......
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EW GURU
Latest post on 31 January 2012 - 11:52
It's odd that they won't declare a holiday but still announce a day off for the private sector - if they work on the day. If it's not a holiday then why give the private sector the day off? Just very peculiar reasoning. Hmm. No official holiday but "However, private sector employees will have one day off on Saturday." What does that mean? It's not a holiday....no, it's not really a holiday but we're still giving a day off only to the private sector even though it's not really a holiday..." DH's company gives people the Sunday off if Saturday is declared a holiday. Who knows how they'll interpret this. But don't a lot of ppl work on Saturdays ? My husband works alternate Saturdays... (bet it's his Saturday off !!! lolol).. <em>edited by Tallybalt on 31/01/2012</em>
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EW GURU
Latest post on 31 January 2012 - 09:35
Hmm. No official holiday but "However, private sector employees will have one day off on Saturday." What does that mean? It's not a holiday....no, it's not really a holiday but we're still giving a day off only to the private sector even though it's not really a holiday..." DH's company gives people the Sunday off if Saturday is declared a holiday. Who knows how they'll interpret this.
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EW GURU
Latest post on 30 January 2012 - 13:30
As opposed to the maid cleaning the bathrooms, including the toilets? Or taking out the trash? I have to say the thought that I'm a bad employer and a bad pet owner because the maid cleans out the litter box has never crossed my mind before. Especially as the maid automatically cleaned out the pet box on her first day with us over three years ago. has Thursday come early ??? lol in my opinion... expecting your maid to empty your cat's litter box does not make you a" bad pet owner" (the cat doesn't care who clears his poop away) but it speaks volumes about what kind of employer you are.....