TGIW!!

It's Wednesday afternoon and the end of another work week. The UAE decided to alter the work week to go from Sunday through Thursday to be more in step with the West. This is to start Sept. 1. Anyway I finally got the housing/furniture allowance cheque! It came yesterday so we have some spending money. So we dashed off to the 2XL furniture store and bought a 10 seat dining room table and pots and pans. Then we took a taxi to another furniture store, Homes R Us and bought a couch. It has a 3 and 1 seater so we'll need to buy another chair down the road. All items will be delivered by Saturday. We will check out of the hotel on July 16 after an extended six week stay. The hotel has been comfortable but we've been anxious to move.

I also got my 50% July salary advance so we actually have more than enough cash. But we needed to pay the 5% commission for our real estate agent for finding our apartment. Since we still don't have our residence visas we can't make cash withdraws from our bank account. I discovered that after the bank teller inadvertently deposited my salary cheque and I couldn't make a withdrawal from the ATM! After waiting an hour the branch manager gave me some money. I set up direct deposit for my paycheques so I hope that I get my visa by the end of the month. I'm not sure what will happen if we don't get our residence visas before our 60 day tourist visas expire on August 2.

I'm suffering from another cold although it may also be allergies. It's been very windy with smog, sand and grit in the air. Apparently this has blown in from Saudi Arabia. Last night we went out with friends for dinner and afterwards saw a live band. It was comprised of a keyboarder and two young lady singers. They were Polish and performed Western pop songs. The sound was quite good although the keyboarder played to loudly and drowned out the vocals. The singers were a bit cheesy with dance moves but it was fun to watch and listen. We have a bunch of photos to finally post. Also took some video using our digital camera. But the latter's 30 second clip seems to be too large to email or post anywhere. We'll see what we can do. I Better go soon and catch the shuttle back to the hotel...