Kalamazoo to Dubai

First post from the new homeland. Internet time is 1 dirham a minute in the hotel business centre so here are some highlights:

• My university’s campus is beautiful. Really really beautiful, with all these tiled blue water pools everywhere, palm trees in the courtyard, etc.
• They have rat and snake traps by all the back doors. Apparently scorpions can be a problem too.
• The food here is great. If it’s not awesome middle eastern fare, it’s European. But they do have things like Outback Steakhouse and Krispy Kreme too. Of course that’s the stuff we wanted to get away from, so bring on the hummus and all the tasty salads.
• We are the first people to live in our apartment, which is in a building known as “White Apartments.” I don’t think this designates the breed of people who live in it. It looks like a boring office building but the layout inside is totally spacious and it seems quiet. We have a view of the pretty Emirates compound which is a block of townhouses built for the Emirates Air pilots. In the middle of that is a little grocery, book shop, cafe, etc. all in walkable distance.
• Jet lag sucks.
• We spent a big pile at IKEA last night, approximately 1/3 of the pile of cash they gave us for furnishing the apartment. We got a bed for us, a sofa with hide-a-bed, a table, a desk, chairs, and some other stuff. We also had to buy another dishwasher. This seems to be the trend for us any time we move. At least it was only about $300, and everything here comes with free delivery and installation.
• Getting the kitchen gas hooked up is turning into a problem. I called the main office, who told me to call the delivery agent because he didn’t know where our building is. The delivery agent couldn’t understand what I was saying and told me to call the main office. Lather, rinse, repeat. So, we will be picking up an electric toaster oven the day we move in so we can at least warm things up until this is sorted out.
• Didn’t unlock my iPhone before we left, which is a crucial thing to being able to get service on a local carrier. I can’t do this without connecting it the internet, I think, and since the home computer is still packed up, and we can’t get home internet service until my residence visa is done (2-3 weeks) we’re kind of in limbo with telephones.
• There are three nights left in our cozy hotel. Have I said the food is great here? The restaurant Zaytoun has a swell breakfast buffet. Maeve especially likes the tiny individual Bonne Maman jam jars so we’re building up a stockpile to take to the apartment.
• Today I’m shopping for work clothes. The mode here is definitely more professional than what I was used to before (or at least what I was willing to do, with a small kid who had a tendency to smear snot or cream cheese on me consistently). I am going to go to H&M in the Emirates Mall. My orientation group goes there together today, and then we also are going to ride around on the new Metro trains.
• If Dubai is to Chicago, then Silicon Oasis (our neighborhood/district/whatever) is to Schaumburg. Except the major stores are in the city and where we are includes mostly residences, a few offices, those few small shops, plus a ton of half-done construction.
• Silicon Oasis was apparently modeled after Silicon Valley (duh) but the tech firms have not exactly been lured out there yet.
• My new office is going to be in the Tech Services space, which is separate from the main library. I’m excited about sharing workspace with other people regularly. I haven’t seen it yet but I have a week of on-campus orientation coming up.
• There is a full-service hair salon and spa ON CAMPUS.

I think that’s all for now. I must run to meet my orientation group–two nice German women, a Moroccan-American, and a man from Quebec, all faculty, and all really nice.

Last night we wrapped up the last of the home emptying. It was a LOT of work made somewhat easier by the facts that family are still around to deal with anything (like selling it), and I have hired someone to thoroughly clean it for us.

For the last several days, my small camera has been missing in the heaps of pack/store/donate/give away that consumed practically every room. It was for the best, maybe, because everything was so torn up and it was not a very comfortable time. And one of the problems in that house all along has been the lack of natural light. Who really wants to see or remember this crazy final time in the house, especially with bad exposure in winter-gray light? Not me so much. I would rather think about how so many friends from a cross section of our lives made it to the “housecolding” weekend to sit around and talk, tell us they’ll miss us, and wish us well.

I am not too sentimental about the house, but I certainly am about the life that went with it.

For the next couple days we stay with my parents and re-sort all of the packed things for our move. I dread this–I am so over organizing things at the moment–but we have to get our bags under 50 lb unless we want to pay Delta a billion dollars.

Then a couple days in Detroit with Rodney’s parents, with a highlight being dinner at the Lord Fox for Beef Wellington and flaming desserts. Maybe a trip to the bookstore for some plane magazines and books, if we have room.

Friday, we are on the plane. FRIDAY!!!

Here is a direct quote from my new HR office, about our apartment:

The place where you have been assigned is a 3 bedrom apartment – Apt. 112. The building is a low rise building and it’s about 5 minutes to [employer] so short commute! There are about 7 [employer] families housed in the apts. so there is opportunity to carpool. I have met most of these families and three of them have girls about your daughter’s age – 2 of them go to Bradenton Academy for pre-school which is about a 15-20 minute drive but it is pricier than other schools.

Each bedroom has a bathroom plus there is a separate powder room. There is one room with space for family room and dining area. The kitchen has a little space for an eating area. All rooms have decent sized windows.

After you live in a place for a while, the tiny flaws you missed when deciding to live there in the first place become obvious. Our current house, for example, is very short on southern-facing windows. With all the dark wood and furniture there is never enough light for good photography. Pictures of Maeve opening gifts on a dark xmas morning always turn out like crap. It’s hard to get nice shots of craft items. When we moved in, I thought, the house has no A/C, it will be cooler in the summer, and that trumped my need for craft photography. But then a year later we put in central air. I have known for a while now that wherever we move next would need to have better natural light AND air conditioning. We will have that in Dubai.

However, I never thought more than 1-2 bathrooms would be necessary for us. I’m sure part of the reason for the excessive bathroomery is the gender division in the UAE. Rodney doesn’t tend to make a mess in the bathroom so I have never been bothered by sharing with him. Also, when it is common for middle class and up to have domestic help, I guess it makes sense to have a ton of toilets to clean. I wonder if that means three or four bidets too. Yay bidets!!

Today we got a tentative flight arrangement. Detroit-Atlanta-Dubai as expected, with the second leg being about 14 hours. And on Delta. We are hearty Midwesterners so we will find a way to survive it. This is the thing that for me makes our big plans ultimately true. After a failed attempt to work in the US Virgin Islands public library system a few years ago, I am not quite as ready to say I’m 100% sure about these things as some people might be. But my name on a plane ticket, that is something.

I have spent a lot of time in the last week figuring out how to get our 24″ iMac there in one piece, and barring a $600 hard case meant for trade show types, I’ve decided we will take it in a cheaper hard suitcase and cut the foam in the original Mac box to fit. I’ll add a few layers of thin plywood or cardboard on either side, and anything soft we can stuff in around it to protect things. There are no suitcases on the market that will fit the original box inside them, and it’s too much of a risk to just put it in that, I think. We bought that computer a few weeks before Rodney’s layoff when life was pretty good–had we known this all was coming it would have been laptop(s) for sure. We love it and don’t want to sell it. Plus it’s going to be our TV when we’re there too. It’s kind of pathetic how attached we are to our technology, but it is also going to be our main link back home. We’re on skype: stepintomythimble. PLEASE call sometimes.

Dubai got iPhones last year, so I’m going to take that too. It means buying my way out of my stupid AT&T plan, but over there the phones cost $650 to start (you do “own” it though, unlike here). I think I can just change my SIM card and get service with one of the two carriers, whoever we choose for all our telecommunications at the apartment too. No word yet on housing but it should be soon.

As we continue to get things ready, we have discovered that our kid fits neatly inside the hard suitcase we bought for the computer, one of those multidirectional roller types, so we are having fun zipping her in with a bunch of stuffed animals and rolling it around. We can do this when we get there too, before we make friends, yay! We get six pieces of checked luggage, plus two additional or the equivalent funds for shipping stuff. We’re going with option 2 so that my parents can mail us a few boxes of Maeve’s books and toys, a couple of our favorite cookbooks, and a few other things later on. None of this $12,000 car-shipping nonsense for me! Our other luggage is just going to be a few cheap duffle bags with rollers in them, an internal-frame hiking backpack, and a garment bag. That should be more than enough room.

Last week I wrote to my HR contact at my new employer, mostly to find out about our specific housing assignment. There is a lot of general information about moving to the UAE on the university’s web site, including things like what it might cost to buy a used car and insurance, the relative cost of foods, and even typical housing. But it’s like one month until we go! I wanted to know exactly what kind of apartment we’d get, and where in the city.

The answer was that they probably won’t be deciding until the middle of January.

We did learn that we’ll probably be put up in a hotel connected to Dubai Festival City for the first week we are there. Festival City is a gigantic mall with all sorts of familiar shops (IKEA, Toys-R-Us, Marks & Spencer) and things to do. I was surprised, since I’d read that there is a Holiday Inn Express right by the campus. I’m such a Midwesterner, assuming the cheapest option…

We will get opportunities on two or three of the orientation days to shop. Right now I’m planning on IKEA all the way–what else makes sense for a temporary housing situation than furniture that has a typically short lifespan but also a little style? For a long time I’ve surrounded myself with darker, earthy kinds of things, vintage odds and ends picked up here and there in life, 1920s apartments and what-have-you. I am excited by the possibility of a bright and modern living space, something completely different. It seems appropriate.

I also asked HR about shipping things to ourselves. I only meant a few boxes. The reply compiled opinions from several other Americans who had moved over recently, and they all talked about getting a big metal shipping container in the US (like the kind they kill people in on The Shield) and filling it with all their junk, even shipping their cars over. It just seems so American to do that. The money they spent on those shipping costs could easily have paid for a storage unit at home for many years–and when you get back how much of it would you want anyway? Is your 2003 Ford Explorer really THAT important? I don’t get it. We receive a generous “furnishing allowance” as part of our contract. Although some things I am planning to leave at home will probably be missed, I am 100% sure that I can occupy myself with other activities in the meantime.

I’ve also heard there will be five or six newcomers at the orientation in January–much less than usual because they ordinarily bring people in before the school year, in August. I am hoping to make a lasting friend or two in the group.

One thing that we still have to figure out is the tax situation. Income in the UAE is not subject to taxes, but as American expats we are liable after a certain amount. We are only allowed to come back to the US four or five weeks per year, and since we are not leaving until January 22 or 23 (no travel arrangements yet) that means we may not get to spend a month here in the summer as we’d hoped. The distance doesn’t make coming home for a week worth it. There’s always London.

I grew up with an English father. Although we were raised pretty typically in suburban Chicago and Detroit, the periodic visits to the UK to visit relatives helped a lot to broaden my perspective of the world outside of the US. When I got older, I tried to travel as much as I could. It was the 90′s, the world was mostly at peace, and the economy made it easy to make money to fund a variety of trips all over the world. Eventually, Heidi and I settled down, but there were always some places that were “on the list” so to speak.

I remember reading “The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom” by Sandra Mackey probably nine or ten years ago. Although it was written in 1987, the idea of a society that was so wealthy it could afford to hire people from all over the world to educate their children, tend their illnesses, build their roads, etc, etc fascinated me. The exotic nature of their culture, religion, history, language, was all something I had hoped to one day have the opportunity to explore for myself. I remember talking at length to an older guy in a youth hostel in Spain, an art teacher from Vermont, who had taught in Saudi Arabia in the seventies for the royal family. A great aunt of mine was a tutor in Africa, for potentates who wanted their children to be educated in the British manner. These are the sorts of past associations that help prop up the situation we find ourselves in today.

The world is not the same place as it was even ten years ago. The Persian Gulf is at the center of a cluster of countries that are riddled with radical elements hostile to me just by virtue of my nationality. Saudi Arabia (Osama’s homeland, lest we forget) shares a land boundary with the UAE. On the other side of that nation is Iraq. Iran is right on the other side of the Gulf. If you follow the shore you come to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a couple of nations that have been in the news a time or two recently. If you head west after exiting the Gulf you run smack dab into Somalia, the textbook failed state with a coastline filled with pirates. PIRATES!

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There is some concern, but mostly I’m excited to be where the action is. The UAE is an ally of the US, and hosts a lot of navy warships, and is in all probability a way station for American troops going to Iraq or Afghanistan. When was younger I wanted to be in the State Department. I studied Anthropology and hoped to go work with some group of people out “in the field”, in the hopes of discovering some valuable piece of information that would benefit…somebody. Now I and my family have that opportunity. We can live in a society, and in an informal way represent our nation in a city that is a truly cosmopolitan place where everyone from that end of the world mixes freely. When I think of countries, I associate them with friends I have made in those places. I don’t blame them for the decisions their leaders make, and I think it works that way to my, or any other American’s benefit. This is why it is necessary to shake yourself out of your comfortable life and try to make a connection with people who are different on some very deep levels. My daughter is going to be able make a wide variety of friends and be exposed to all kinds of languages and cultures. It may not be perfect, but its the kind of life I want to offer my child, and hope that it enriches her in ways Heidi and I have had to swim against the current of US culture to provide for ourselves.

Weirdly, I had applied for a new passport for myself and Maeve a few days before I even found the job posting in Dubai. My other one had been expired for a couple years, and early in the summer Maeve and I got passport pics thinking that maybe someday we’d go out of the country. Like to Windsor, Canada. Ha.

Yesterday we met with the realtor who helped us buy our house 4.5 years ago. He brought a pile of market research that was all kind of interesting, but no surprises. We had a conversation the night before about a reasonable listing price, and the realtor actually thought we could do a little better for starters. This was good news for us. I am hoping there are some people out there like us, a couple or family with one kiddo, who want to live in an affordable and stable older neighborhood surrounded by mostly liberal neighbors. Whenever we get the MLS info I will post a link.

It is a little hard to set up a house for sale at this time of year. We’ve got about 10 inches of snow on the ground right now.

Well, there are some, even for the most global-minded of people we know.

• One: A big one, maybe more for myself than anyone else. Moving to somewhere like Dubai will definitely reduce the sting of having to leave so many good friends, a good job, and of course our families behind. I anticipate being preoccupied enough with the adjustment to our new life that I won’t get to wallow. Of course, these kinds of adjustments often end up being protracted any way you slice it. Even after only two years teaching English in Japan, it probably took me at least another 18 months back in the US before I got my head around that experience. I made some big, dumb choices in the fog of repatriation. I learned to give myself more time.
• Two: We were slowly outgrowing the house in Kalamazoo. I am so sick of having the office be my bedroom. I want project space for crafts. Maybe I won’t exactly get that in Dubai, but if/when we return, I can add that to my list of priorities for the next living space.
• Three: It is a great character-building experience to find out what you can and can not live without from your previous life. The answer is usually that you can live without a LOT of it, but being a sort of typical American, I’m sure I’ll be filling the void with odds and ends we pick up there. Don’t ask about my giant tub of stationery I collected in Japan 12 years ago and still drag around.
• Four: The employee benefits alone make it worth it. They are what we should have in the US.
• Five: A simple one. Moving somewhere like Dubai should be FUN. Maybe not always, but for sure we will do some cool new things we couldn’t do here, like ride camels in the desert. Don’t talk to me about the crazy nightclubs, indoor skiing or refrigerated beaches–I don’t care about that ridiculous high-roller lifestyle over there.

For a situation like this, it’s really nice to resign at an employer where a global perspective, exchange students from the far corners, and international-themed activities are just daily features of the work. Many people had nice personal stories to share of their own travels, an aunt who taught abroad with the Department of Defense for over 40 years, the places they hoped to see in the Middle East eventually. They were really understanding and mostly excited for us. I am anticipating a lot of justifying and defense with certain other groups in my life.

I spent about an hour doing just that at the storage unit place the other day, talking to a woman who was “mortified” of the Middle East and never wanted to pick up and move so far away, etc. etc. Rodney pointed out that that may be why she manages a storage unit place.

I did not cry, except alone in my office a little bit when writing a mass email to the people I see less frequently. I’m really hoping they decide to take me out for lunch instead of having some farewell with speeches and whatnot. Or like in Chicago, cake and pop. Always cake and pop, never cake and tea/coffee, or even just water.

I’m currently vacillating between “Yes we can manage dealing with all of our possessions in the eight weeks before we leave” and “We will never get this stuff under control.” Like before I got the job offer, I continue to go to sleep decently at night and then wake up around 4am and obsess until Maeve crawls in the bed. I do good thinking then but never, ever get up to write any of it down and forget my brilliant plans by daybreak.

We meet with the realtor on Thursday morning. A will is in the works (should have done that ages ago). Tonight, maybe I organize Maeve’s old clothes.

Got a kind of grubby storage unit yesterday. We don’t want to burden our families with our junk. But some things we just have to keep. KitchenAid mixer, canning gear, homebrewing gear, bicycles, craft supplies that don’t get used much (hardwood needlepoint stand anyone? six-drawer, quarter-sawn oak card catalog from the 19th century, full of beads, rubber stamps, etc?), all of Rodney’s role-playing “archives.” There will be a major, major purge in the weeks to come though, probably 75% of what we own. We only have a tiny 2br house and not that much stuff, but it’s time. Maybe this will help down the line with taxes if we end up having to donate it all. December and January are probably the least desirable months for a garage sale in Michigan.

Tomorrow, I submit my resignation at work. In the past I cried. I hope I can hold it together with this one. I don’t like leaving good jobs. I’m also in the middle of a temp position elsewhere on campus that I am going to have to back out of. I hate bailing on things I have agreed to, but I think they’ll be OK. I still haven’t gotten all the way trained to do what I’m supposed to be doing and have been finishing up the work of their student employee each day.

I’m also calling a realtor tomorrow, the same one who helped us buy the house a little less than 4.5 years ago.

And, I made an appointment to have the last of my major dental overhaul completed. Two crowns, some replaced fillings, maybe a root canal. Things I would rather do in the US–no dental insurance in Dubai anyway.