Love Indian food..

One thing I have loved about Abu Dhabi is the diversity, quality and price of Indian food. Most expats don't try these tiny restaurants in the city, they prefer to eat at malls, and hotel restaurants, which are overpriced and are of very, very average quality.
I would easily pay AED60-80 for a meal at a cafe in a mall (that's about AUD20-30) and at least AED100-300 (AUD30-100) for a meal at a hotel restaurant.

The meal above is an Indian vegetarian meal in a popular restaurant in the city. Total cost - AED10 (or AUD3.50). And the quality is remarkable, the guy even asked me if I wanted to top up the gravy. Most of these restaurants even deliver for free, and some friends and I had a full meal last night for AED60, delivered straight to the flat. Some people have no idea what they're missing out on.

An oxymoron?

I don't get this...

This is the line to fill up my car with petrol. This is the USUAL line, no matter what time of the day it is. In fact, I think the only time that I did not have to wait 10 minutes to fill my car up was at 1pm on a Friday (aka prayer time). They really need to build more petrol stations.

UAE is also one of the few places I have been where you don't have to get out of the car to fill up your tank. You sit in air conditioned comfort while waiting for your turn, an attendant comes, you turn your engine off (well most people don't), and he fills it up. I have even seen people asking the attendant to run into the kiosk to buy them drinks / snacks while they wait in the car. I wonder what happens when the locals here have to drive overseas, and whether they manage to run these things by themselves if they had to.

Maccie's back!

So I have been super quiet the last few weeks, firstly because I have had a stream of non-stop visitors and secondly my poor little macbook's hard disk died. Thank goodness for time machine that has backed up all my data, and for apple's magnificent 3 year warranty, which allowed me to replace (and upgrade!) my hard disk free of charge yay! I was definitely lucky - the warranty is expiring in october this year, so good thing it died when it did!

It was great having friends over and showing them around town. Also had my beloved mum come over for 2 weeks to cook, clean and iron (i told her she did not have to lift a finger!) but being mum, she really enjoys doing these things. Plus it was 40 degrees outdoors and she couldn't head out anyway..

So overall it's been a really nice 2 months, with plenty of shopping trips to Dubai, the desert, lots of eating and of course the big credit card bill at the end of it. All worth it to add a bunch of colour to this really brown, hot and humid place!

p/s - when i say humid, it's humid ~90% and even close to 100% sometimes. I turn off the a/c when I head to work and when I get back, my apartment floor is damp and there are droplets of water all over my bathroom floor. Yucks.