Blonder than Blond!

I am in Zurich. As I am typing up this post, I have no choice but putting up with my quite dry contact lenses for a bit longer, because I lost my prescription glasses, that and a few more things. (Yes, Troy, even the guts and smarts wear out sometimes. :)

So the story. After spending the past two nights in Salzburg, this morning I woke up at 5:30 A.M. to catch a train to Innsbruck, my last Austrian city for this trip. At 8:30 A.M, I arrived at Innsbruck train station. I quickly stored away my big backpack in one of the very modern and secure-looking luggage lockers and started exploring the city. Later in the afternoon I got back to the train statio to pick up my luggage before hopping on the next train continuing to Zurich. When I put the printed ticket in the machine, the locker popped open right away - except it was completely *empty*! Immediately I was thinking high-tech theft! I called the train station security, I went to the police station, I insisted on checking video survillience tape to find the thief, and did I mention I could't understand any of the converstations because they spoke German? Basically I was in pretty $hitty situation.

Mind you, I did have all the essentials like passport and credit cards with me, but boy, did I feel like a mother lost her child - for those of you who know, I am very attached to my bag and wool socks and a few other things. Anyway, long story short, about 1.5 hour searching later, finally the security officer got a callback from the video team. You should've seen my reaction when he told me that apparently I put my bag in one locker, and closed a different (and empty!) one!!! GOSH, did I feel stupid. No offence to anyone, but I was blonder than blonde!

Just as I was about to give up hope after we went through almost all the lockers, it dawned on me that we should check the lost-and-found department. A few minutes later, we received a call and very lucky for me a cleaner picked up my bag from some corner, but apparently the camera tape showed a young man discovered my bag, went through it quickly and took away some items on the outside pockets including my glasses, spare cell phone, flash light (that's "torch" for you Europeans), and some chargers for electronics - but I didn't care. I was just *so* happy to get my bag back. Anyway, here is a photo to prove the episode:
Thinking back, in retrospective, I would still manage if I did lose my bag, the more important thing like Q said "as long as you are safe."

I must also mention my CS stay in Salzburg was excellent! My host Michael led me transpassing private property to see an original movie location for The Sound of Music! That and a few other very Salzburg things like watching kayaks and outdoor opera screening. Here is a photo of my sleep corner, dedicated to the Toronto lunch crew. :)

Check out my new wheels!

No, the bike's not blocking the view of my new ride, the bike is my new ride!

It's a Pakistani bike! Not as sturdy as the Dutch counterparts, but then again, this was quite a bit cheaper!
So now I can bike to locations which I don't want to drive to (parking can be horrible) and are too far to walk to! And of course it gives me much needed exercise...

And it'll carry Shu on the back :)

(by the by, everyone I've seen biking on these Paki bikes leaves the bubble-wrap and cardboard wrapping on, so I do too! It might be the most vital part holding this thing together!)

Couchsurfing (Mis)adventures

Greetings from Vienna! Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer! As you know, I have been on the couchsurfing quest for the past couple weeks while travelling through Europe, and thought you might enjoy some of my (mis)adventure stories.

So it all started with Rosario in Lausanne, and I have blogged about the experience in my last post. This is her showing where I slept, basically a mattress on the floor next to her dorm bed.

Then it was with Karine in Geneva. She took me in even when she already had another CS guest! Very sweet of her to do a picnic in the park with me - great outdoor music venue btw. I slept in the living room foldable couch-bed. Karine was very considerate to keep Socrates, her dog, in her room overnight to keep him away from sniffing me. :)

During my stay in the Netherlands, I was very well taken care of at Hotel Wijnberg, a.k.a. Wads and Bart´s (N.B. Q´s parents) house, and later on at Anne´s fabulous apartment in Amsterdam centrum. (Sorry, no photos avail here.)

Ivan met me outside Namesti Miru (Miru Square) church when I arrived in Prague a week ago. At his (and his three housemates) apartment, I stayed four nights. It was one of the classic communist-era apartment with high ceiling and huge gates - definitely a unique experience. Ivan was very nice to offer his own room, which I politely declined and opted for the kitchen/hallway/dining room where there was a futon-like bed. I had a great time getting to know two other CS hosts, Mats and Brano. Funny thing was all three of them were Slovak, not Czech! Here is a photo of Ivan on the train ride leaving Prague just before we said goodbye and I went on to Cesky Krumlov.
Cesky Krumlov is a beautiful small town in south Czech. Unfortunately there weren´t any CS hosts. Thanks to Jane, an Aussie girl´s referral, I stayed in Hostel Postel for one night - that was my first commercial accomodation on this trip, not bad, I say. At the same time, I also met Martijn and Quintus, a pair of father and son from the Netherlands. After seeing how beautiful C. Krumlov was, I decided to stay one night longer. Just as I was scratching my head about where to stay, it just happened Martijn´s hotel room had an attic with an extra bed. As he semi-joked about `you girls could´ve stay in the extra bed´, I happily took the offer, so the second night I was sleeping in a hotel room attic. How cool was that! Here is a photo ofo Martijn when we were rafting down River Vltara.
After the attic surf, I made my way to another city called Ceske Budejovice (the hometown to the original Budweiser), where I had the most trouble finding a place. Since the CS host I contacted didn´t respond to my txtmsgs when I arrived, I decided to look around bus station for a place to stay overnight since I had an early bus to catch the following day. The first hotel I saw was junk, then the second one looked better, but asked for a lot more money, so while I was trying to bargain the price down, a guy from the restaurant came up and asked if he could help, so I explained my situation, and it turned out Petri was a fellow traveller from Finland, and he recommended his hotel. Since my map of the area wasn't good, and I was also hungry, so I decided to join him for dinner and waited till afterwards so he can take me to the hotel. (N.B. I know how fishy this story sounds, but it gets better! :) After dinner and a pleasant conversation, we headed to Petri´s hotel, and surprise surprise, the hotel reception was closed!! Even though according to the sign, it was supposed to open till 10 pm! So I was stuck yet again, and it was already getting dark. At that point, I was debating going back to the second hotel and just bite the bullet, when Petri suggested (out of his guilty conscious for ´misleading´ me, but really wasn´t his fault), so he suggested that his room had two single beds and I could take the second one. Now, in a strange city, with a complete stranger, even I had to think about it, only if you could see how fast my head was spinning! :) So after a second´s thought, I responded, "That is really generous offer, but I have two conditions: one is for me to share half of the hotel room cost, and the other is to exchange passport info." And that is what we agreed! I txtmsged Petri´s info back to Q for safety sake. As luck would have it, a few minutes after we settled down in the hotel room, I got a txtmsg from the CS host, apparently the cell phone number she gave me earlier was off by one digit. GOSH! I still met up with the CS host very quickly and explained the situation but still went ahead with Petri´s room. In the end, everything worked out great, and I managed to get up at 4:30 am to catch my bus. All is well. (Sorry, no photo here either.)

After leaving Czech, I made my way to Moritz and Angela´s apartment in downtown Vienna. It is a very nice location and space, and I have my own futon bed - nice setup! The first night after I arrived, we went dinner with a few other CS hosts - apparently the Vienna CS group is very active, and there are regular and frequent meetings. Here is a photo from the dinner, from left to right: Pawel, Moritz, Angela and Stefan.

So thanks to everyone I met on the way, couchsurfing has been a great experience. Oh, and I must give a special thanks to my support team back home for helping with my CS search. Till next time!

p.s. After a few stops in Austria, I am heading back to Geneva next Tuesday, hoping to catch an earlier flight back to Abu Dhabi. *Fingers crossed!*

You know it's getting humid when...

...every time you step outside your (sun)glasses fog up...

It used to happen every now and again, but now it happens every time, day or night, stepping out of any building or your car. And the temperature is up as well, we've seen 46 degrees Celsius so far!

The good news... I'm still ok with it! Then again, it's still not at its worst, rumour has it... ;)

26 hours in The Emirates

July 8, 11.00PM a KLM-plane dropped a bold headed, unprepared globetrotter in the heat of Dhubai. At the airport, the welcome committee was there to assure a soft landing. Although there were no welcome boards, the welcome committee was not to be missed; between
some Arab Princes a Philipino guy could easily be recognized and in the women-line a Chinese lady on flipflops looks still rather different than the burka-women out of the Emirates. Q's Knight Intelligent Two Thousand (KITT) brought us in 1.5 hours to the residential scene of Abu Dhabi. In one of the fine looking high-story buildings, I got introduced to the more familiar gadget household of King Q III. Probably it will change a bit the coming weeks when his lady is fully installed as well. Another soft landing was the cold beer from the fridge, the good-old "haringmaatjes" taken along from Schiphol and the small birthday songs for Q and Shu.

Next day sightseeing in the heat of AbuDhabi................... And there is far more to see than just white sand!!!!!! Everything is under construction and the most astronomous projects are rolled-out (all with very good taste!!). It turned out that Q's KITT is one of the least expensive cars driving around. And apart from that you will also notice that the Westerners are 2nd rank citizens here; beautiful houses, shops, cars, palaces and mosks show that there is some money to spend. The Emirates is a way of living which this globetrotter has not experienced yet and unfortunatelly my stop-over lasted only 26 hours, but I can assure you Q and Shu you'll be having an excellent experience the coming years! Q it was good to see you after such a long time and I bet it's not the last time that you'll see me in The Emirates. Thanks for everything,
Pieter

Sailing was great!

Shu and I paid a quick visit to The Netherlands -the first time since I left in May- to attend a wedding (congratulations N&F!) and go sailing with some friends.
It was a very hectic few days (would you expect anything else from us?), but definitely a lot of fun.
I'm already back in UAE, back to work, Shu's in Amsterdam staying with a friend and leaving for Prague tomorrow.

We were very lucky with the weather. Predictions told us to basically expect anything, from rain, showers, occasional lightning, the works... But thanks to the ever-reliable Ferdinandt Goed Weer Garantie (Ferdinandt Good Weather Guarantee), we stayed dry the whole time and even enjoyed a very welcome 4-5 beaufort wind, which made for excellent sailing!
At night, around 10 of the 30 people were very busily preparing dinner, which resulted in a very delicious (if I may say so myself) barbecue! Yes, there was saté-sauce made by yours truly! ;)

Let the Travelling Begin!

Greetings from the beautiful Lake Geneva in Switzerland! :)

Nobody saw it coming, but it did happen. Under the spell of "inshallah", I was able to get my UAE residence visa (and therefore my Canadian passport back) last Thursday, which allowed me to travel again. Since my cousin Fang from China is on a business trip in Switzerland, I decided to meet up with her - with Q's wonderful support of course. So the next thing I know, I was on a plane to Geneva.

I love the fact that I get to meet some really interesting people when travelling. The guy sitting next to me on the plane was a Lebanese who grew up in Saudi and UAE, studied in Switzerland, and now work in Boston. My couchsurf host last night is a Mexican, studied in Montreal and now study Ph.D. in Switzerland. There were so much stories shared - it's truly amazing.

So yes, I managed to couchsurf again - yipee! My CS host Rosario was totally cool, and I was apparently very lucky to find her because she is not busy with work at this point and between travelling herself. We had an amazing time biked down along the lake and bought freshly-made baguette, prosciutto, cheese, tomatos and spinach from grocery store, borrowed cutlery from some restaurant, and asked for some salad dressing from another picnic party - bueno, a nice picnic on the beach! C'est la vie. :)

In five days, I will be flying from Geneva to Amsterdam, reuniting with Q for the weekend to attend a friend's wedding and also some motorcycling and sailing! After that, Q will go back to Abu Dhabi, and I'll take my travelling on to Prague. My current return ticket from Geneva to Abu Dhabi is booked for early September due to over-sold flights, but I hope to return earlier and will try to do standby in late August. The rest will be inshallah. :)

p.s. Did zou know the Swiss kezboard has letter 'y' and 'z' switched? Now zou know. ö

Everything is Inshallah

Q on the phone with mobile support:"So when can I hear from you about the problem we just talked about?" Support staff:"Soon, sir, inshallah." Q again with another question, and support staff again, "Inshallah, sir".

"Inshallah" means "if God's willing" in Arabic. I heard of it long before I arrived. It's really the universal law that things are based on here - from food delivery to visa application, from test drive reservation to newspaper subscription - everything is inshallah, and people use it in daily conversations, all the time.

So it's been a week since I've arrived in the sand pit. What's changed? Well, the weather for an important one. Except for the first day, I haven't found the hot weather to be a problem! I try to avoid going out at noon hours, but more active in the evening and night like other locals. Most of the local businesses close btwn 1-4 pm and stay open till 10 pm. The city becomes a lot more lively at night when it's cooler.

Another thing I've been getting more used to is the address system here. All the major roads are numbered, like 3rd or 6th street, and they are also given a proper name, like "Sheikh Zayed the First Rd" or "Hamdan bin Mohammod Rd", but neither is used in reality, instead their nicknames are used, like "Najdah Rd" or "Passport Rd" - and you don't find these nicks anywhere in the map, Q taught me most of the ones I've managed to memorize so far. :) And when people describes their addresses, it's never number + road name, they are referenced by the major building landmark nearby, like hotels, malls or banks. For example, when I ordered my first food delivery, I gave my address like "the Emirates Bank building next to the Nissan showroom on Najdah Rd (N.B. nickname for the 6th Street), Rm ####" and 20 min later, I had hot food knocking on the apartment door! And it's not just the delivery service, taxi and other locals do the same thing. Of course it gets even more complicated when within each major blocks there are local numbered streets like 3rd or 6th street, but the trick is that they are in green signs, whereas the major roads are in blue! :D The system is so confusing and tricky - we both love it. :)

(P.S. Mailing addresses are different though as apartments don't deliver mail - no, I'm not making this up! Everyone uses PO Box here. Q and I have decided to go with the PO Box from his work for now.)

A couple days ago I made my first official shopping visit to the Abu Dhabi Mall - 15 min easy walk from the apartment. And to my pleasant surprise, I met a fellow Canadian woman in a sweet shop (where else?!?). We only had a quick 5 min conversation, but managed to exchange contact info for a possible future meetup (I hope!). When I tried to describe to her our apartment location - take this - she actually cut me short and asked me which building it was nearby! The moment I mentioned the Nissan showroom on Najdah Rd, she gave me the got-it look. :) Gotta love the system.

Anyway, my first week went by very fast, and everything has been great - even when Q and I had to learn how to share a thing or two around the apartment, like the laptop. ;) We shall manage though, inshallah. :)

N.B. Next time I (or we) should talk about the foods here - just had yummy and cheap filipino dinner in a ghetto neighbourhood joint - LOVE it! :)

My First Day in Abu Dhabi

After 13 hrs flight, I arrived in Abu Dhabi with one purse, one carry-on bag, four bottles of duty-free single malt whiskey and two check-in luggages - which I must mention were packed using computer monitor boxes for maximum weight-volume capacity. *Insert nerdy smile.*

My first surprise came when I walked through the arrival gate, and there was no Q! Apparently because the flight arrived early and a malfunction in Q's cell phone, he was still at home and I had to spend the first half an hour in AD alone at the airport! I didn't mind it though - it turned out to be quite an interesting experience, as I barely fit in my cart in the tiny elevator in order to get to the washroom a level up - it's hard to believe that there is an airport that is more inconvenient than Toronto Pearson! Anyway, at 8 am local time Sunday morning, Q managed to get to the airport and we finally reunited - yay! And we managed to fit all my luggages in his Ford Focus rental car - double yay!

SO my second surprise came during our drive back home. As we were getting back to the city and just going with the traffic flow, there was a car sticking out from the left-turning lane next to us at the intersection. And just as we were driving through the intersection, there were car tire squealing, a loud bang and next thing you know, car parts flying everywhere - we were at such a close range to witness a quite serious car accident! It looked pretty much like what you see in Hollywood action movies, except too real to be entertained about. Our guess is that the car was trying to make a left turn and didn't see the incoming traffic, oh well, bad situation, good traffic lesson for me. Wowie!

As for the weather, two-thumbs-up to Q for not even complaining about it once in the past two months. I have to admit that I was quite surprised how hot it felt to me. At ~7 am in the morning, it was 30 degrees celcius - ok, still managable. But about an hour later when I stepped out of the car after arriving at the apartment building, oh boy, it felt like my leg was getting steamed when I put it out - I almost pulled it right back in the car! Definitely much hotter than I expected. Later on as the day progressed, I got a lot more comfortable with the heat level. It's funny that when we stepped from air-conditioned indoor shopping mall out to the parking lot, my glasses fogged up instantly - like how they do when we step back indoor in very cold Canadian winter weather! :)

The apartment. Yes, I'm finally here, and typing this posting to you from the living room of *our* apartment. Q did a wonderful job with picking it out and setting it up. And the aparment itself is actually more spacious than I thought. We (yes, "we", not just Q! :) even cooked our first meal in the afternoon - both of us very happy!

My first day in Abu Dhabi ended with a drive with Q to Dubai airport - that's right, two airports in one day - to pick up Q's friend Pim who's visiting in transit between Amsterdam and Shanghai. It's only a one-day short stay, but hey, Pim's our first official visitor!

I'm signing off now - it's 4 am local time. So all in all, a very busy and interesting day, and everyone's happy! Ahh, never a dull moment, huh? ;)

Shu: Welcome to Abu Dhabi!

Welcome, sweetie, to Abu Dhabi and the start of us living together! :)
(that was the personal part of this blog ;)

As I'm writing this, Shu's airplane should be leaving the Canadian airspace on it's way to Abu Dhabi!
After having spent two months 'setting up camp' here in Abu Dhabi, I am very much ready for Shu to arrive and enjoy this new experience together with me.
To sum things up: everything's going good so far! I'm really enjoying myself, although I very much want Shu to be a part of it. Work has been great, I will blog about this topic soon, I know you all want to know how I'm fairing. Basically, I've done two months training and I need only one more month before I checkout.
I've made new friends, mostly through work. I really like our apartment, it's a nice size, centrally located, I get to work in under 20 mins, walk almost everything in the downtown area.

The next thing I'm looking forward to is Traveling! As most of you know, both Shu and I are avid travelers, and I (we!) can't wait to explore the Middle East, Africa and Asia region, which all are very close! When that happens, this'll be the first place you'll read about it!

(photo taken by my friend 'Mr. G.', it's the Sheik Zayed Grande Mosque, still under construction. It's gigantic! They actually had to scale it down because the original size would've made it bigger than the mosque in Mecca, and that's a big no-no of course!)