Getting things done in Abu Dhabi, UAE

We, like many expats, had to make the decision as to whether we would:

A: Ship all our furniture over.

B: Use the money allocated to us for relocation to simply buy all the stuff we needed here, and fill our home with exotic things from the middle east.

We chose option b.

And went to Ikea.

The Ikea in Abu Dhabi is located at the Marina Mall, and has a reasonable range of your usual Ikea stuff. We had finally got hold of the keys to our place (see the On housing entry) and measured up.

So, armed with our measurements and a bit of an idea gleaned from previous visits to the great blue and yellow shop, we walked confidently into the store.

We dutifully listed the things down that we wanted. Selected the style of the bed.. tested the mattresses, within the boundaries of decency of course, and strode happily up to one of the staff to organise delivery and payment.

Our helper smiled and said that all of the things that we had selected for delivery (there were some small stuff we figured we could stuff into the car) were available, and that delivery would take place in about 2 weeks.

We were briefly dumbstruck. I had to leave in less than a week. We had no furniture. Not even a bed.
This wasn't going to work out at all.

I asked, with a slight tremble in my voice, whether there was any possibility that it could be delivered any sooner as I was leaving soon, my wife would be on her own... etc.

With an unfailing smile the helper simply said "No, it will take 2 weeks"

Then it occurred to me, something that would be "off script" for the staff, something that caused immediate concern for our helper.
"I'll hire a van then, and come back tomorrow morning" I said triumphantly.
"No no, Sir... it will take 2 weeks" she replied, looking a little uncomfortable.
"No it won't" I said, knowing that we had already made a contact with a reputable car hire place, whom I knew had a van for rent.
"I can get one today, and be here tomorrow morning - you already said all the things are in sto... hang on...the stuff isn't actually in stock here is it?"
2 Epiphanies in less than 2 minutes - I was on a roll.
"Yes sir.. I mean .. no.. I mean..."
"The stuff we want is at the Dubai store, isn't it?"
She was defeated.
"Yes sir, but you would have to drive a van to Dubai" she stated with a look that suggested that I was, actually, NUTS.

The same look I would later get from the guy who was handing me the key to the van at Eurostar car rentals. (see related post on renting a car) It was as if no-one had ever thought up this crazy scheme before. Who would have thought you could hire a van, no bigger and no harder to drive than most 4wds that are punted around all over the place, and actually DRIVE a it to a shop and put things in it, then drive it home and take the things out again. Without help.

Not many it would seem.

The road trip.

Don't ask me how we found our way to Dubai Ikea. I still don't know. You could give me a pencil, a piece of paper and 1000dhs as payment for me to sketch a rough guide, and I'd simply stare blankly at you until you gave up and left with your money. (I will, however, include a map of sorts at the end of this post).

I do remember travelling along at 120kph in the mighty Toyota Hiace van, radio and airconditioning on, my best girl in the passenger seat, and being past by a Bentley that was moving so fast it was creating little swirling tornadoes of sand in it's wake. I jokingly decided to catch up, but after a minute the speed warning buzzer was annoying us too much - so I dropped back to 120. If it wasn't for the buzzer, and Karma punching me in the arm I think I could have taken him. Karma thinks otherwise.

All was fine until an hour and a bit after leaving Abu Dhabi, we hit the spaghetti like road system that is Dubai. I know that Abu Dhabi can be confusing (see later post on Navigation) because of the naming system, but Dubai has a confusing naming system AND a road network that defies any kind of logic. It makes those old cartoons about 4 leaf clover style express ways (the one that either Porky Pig or Daffy Duck would inevitably get lost trying to get off of) look like a documentary rather than light hearted entertainment.

A wrong turn can mean adding 25 minutes to your trip - and that's just getting back to the spot you made the error from.

So with all this stacked against us, and with some 'tension' in the van's 3 seated cabin, we ploughed ahead - at times just guessing that we were headed in the right direction.
After a very short time - even for Dubai - we miraculously we saw the Ikea sign just off to the right of the road we were on.

Angels sang. The clouds parted.

All became clear for a moment - then we were lost again.

We could SEE the object of our desire, but had no idea how to get to it. There were roads to the left , right and directly above us. Turn offs that looked okay, then after a few seconds turned back the way you had come. Turn offs that took you simply into another lane of the road. Turn offs that started out leading toward the coast, but actually put you on a road to the desert. All the while the Ikea sign stood grinning at us in both English and Arabic.

This is why I can't tell you, dear reader, how we got there. It was pure chance that we made it to the car park, even luckier that my wife was still talking to me.

None the less, we made it.

In pretty short order we found another helpful Ikea member who took our list of stuff and processed it, gave us an invoice to be paid at the checkout and asked where we would like the stuff delivered to.
"No need for delivery - we'll take it with us" I replied cheerily.
"How Sir? There are alot of things..." He looked puzzled.
"I hired a van"
"Where do you live sir?"
"Abu Dhabi.. I will be leaving soon, so we needed to..." I was cut off
"You drove a VAN from Abu Dhabi?"
"Yes."
"A Van, a VAN van?" The now familiar 'you're CRAZY' look had appeared on his face.
"Yes, we needed the stuff, you guys couldn't deliver the stuff... so I hired a van to come and get the stuff myself!"
"But Sir... it's a VAN?!"

I knew this wasn't going to go anywhere except maybe an Ikea tearoom conversation later in the day.

"Yes, a van... how long do you think it will take to have it all ready to put in my VAN"

"Well" he said "You can pick up most of the things yourself, but these things" he pointed out a couple of really bulky items "...these things you will have to get from the Bulk goods desk.. past the cashiers to your left"

He handed us the invoice, and we were on our way.

We acquired the various bits and pieces and pushed our 3 trolleys out to the cashier, paid the bill, and went to the bulk goods waiting area. AGAIN we went through the disbelief and the ensuing conversation with the guy there regarding the whole VAN thing, then sat down to wait for the rest of our gear.

I was pretty confident that our plan would succeed, and that soon we would be scooting down the highway with a van full of joy and merriment. Pretty confident, until Karma saw our extra stuff being wheeled toward us and quietly uttered the fateful words: "Are you sure that we are going to get all this stuff in the van?"

The next surprise was that there was no loading bay as such, and that in order to get our stuff in the much talked about van we had to cobble together a caravan of our five overstuffed trolleys by enlisting 4 guys who were there to help during such a predicament it seems.

We then had to push these things along the mezzanine level of the shopping center - into a lift, then further though the centre and out into the carpark. It was at this point that I realised that I couldn't have parked the van any further away had I tried.

When I say these trolleys were full I mean it. An entire bed - including queen sized mattress - our lounge-sofa-bed-thing, extra benches for our little kitchen, a wardrobe set, and matching dresser, pretty much an entire house-load of stuff. Stacked 6 feet high. On 5 trolleys. PLUS a basket trolley of smaller stuff (being wheeled by Karma).

The closer we got to the van, the more stuff there seemed to be... and the smaller the van looked.

On arrival at the mighty soon to be stuffed full, Toyota our helpers assured us that this is their job, and that we need have no concern, they will sort it out. I offered to help but it was politely refused.
I opened the doors and stepped back with Karma.

What ensued was like something I had never seen before.

Now, let me say here that I am by no means putting myself up as an expert in van packing. I mean I have helped friends move, I've moved the odd fridge, and I do like the look of 1970's VW Kombi vans, but that's about where my experience stops. Box trailers on the other hand..

Anyway..

I liked their theory - well I would have liked it a whole lot more if it wasn't my stuff being thrown into the back of the van. These guys had supreme faith in the packaging that was surrounding our new furniture.. a faith that I didn't share, but still, we went with it...

... right up to the point that they tried to put the mattress (the last thing to go on - I had suggested that it should go in first.. but I was not an "expert" it would seem) in through the side door, while trying to bend it completely in half. In fact, I think if left to their own devices AND to prove that they could get all the items in the van, they would have been happy to run the mattress through a shredder and then tuck the pulp wherever it would fit. End usability was NOT a priority.

When it became apparent that they weren't going to succeed it their quest to fit the mattress in to the now groaning rental van, OR their sub-quest of rending a brand new mattress completely useless, I decided (with a firm push in the back from my long suffering bride) that I would step into the fray, using the only arabic word I could, at that point, employ with any certainty.

"Laa, laa laa laa laa LAA"

No I wasn't sticking my fingers in my ears and having a tantrum.. "laa" is arabic for "No", but my protesting seemed to work.

"Sir, we do this all the time" the spokesperson of the working group reassured me, although not as confidently as he had before.
"We need to start again, the mattress needs to go in first, then we need to work around it."

I moved the van to a slightly more accessible place, a procedure that meant that all of the cargo doors of the Toyota were left open to allow one of the "team" to make sure that anything hanging out of it wasn't going to hit anything. Like a carpark pylon... or the car that had seen that there was a possibility that we were going to move in the near future and had been waiting throughout the entire first attempt at loading.

Then everything was taken out and the process was started again.

I'd like to say that I had all the answers, and that because of my superior knowledge of packing Ikea stuff in rental vans it all went smoothly after I had taken charge.

It didn't.

There was a point, thankfully brief though it was, that I actually though that we weren't going to get it all in. The "team" had decided that if I were to take over the loading procedure.. then they were only going to offer assistance in the form of labour, and their "font" of knowledge, such as it was, was now no longer available. We had a large bedhead box to go, I wasn't hopeful.

"I don't think this will work, Sir"

It did, but with no small amount of force I hasten to add, the bedhead went in and we all cheered.

Even more miraculous was that all the doors closed.

The "Team" had all departed, and we leaped in to the now groaning HiAce and found our way back to Abu Dhabi, where, 2 hours later we unloaded everything into the common area of our little apartment building.

In the rain. POURING rain.

In light of all that could have gone wrong - over-zealous packers, 2 hours of transport shifting the boxes around in the back, pouring rain, everything ended up fine, not a scratch.

Of course - we always new it would (?!?)

We looked and we searched and found that everything, price and model wise, were much of a muchness at least in the bigger commercial stores.

So for expediency we ended up getting everything from the same shop, which in this case was Plugins in Marina mall. They stock pretty much everything, Sony Bravia TV's, home theatre stuff (they love cranking up the volume in the "high end" theatre section), Toshiba, Whirlpool, Westinghouse, Playstations, Wii.. High-mid range stuff to cheapy land.

Seriously, we got stacks of gear there, the laptop I am typing this into, the refrigerator, the washing machine (more on the installation of the washing machine later)
TV and DVD player.. the shop isn't huge, but don't let that put you off.

Now - all the staff are particularly helpful, and seem pretty honest. Right down to being upfront about their delivery schedule, (which for our area was Monday and Wednesday), and were really knowledgeable about the products. This was refreshing as we had heard horror stories about months of waiting, no-shows, and incorrectly delivered items along with that feeling you get when you ask someone about a product and they answer in a manner that suggests "If you say this TV is a pumpkin sir, then it's a pumpkin... did you want a pumpkin? let me show you another pumpkin in black".

Nope, the staff were great, but I would suggest that if you don't like being swarmed on by bored sales assistants (I know it's their job but really, do they have to follow so closely?) maybe consider going when it's busier, like in the evening. Same amount of staff, but they are usually busy with other folk... all you need for them to focus their attention on your good self is to quietly say to one of them "I would like to buy "insert product here" can you help me?" if that doesn't work try "I have too much money and not enough television/washing machine". Just don't try nudity.

You can try your chances with them if you have your haggling shoes on - but in this situation, they do have the upper hand - particularly if you went in looking like we did.
I can't say for sure, but if you were to look up "How to look like the newest and freshest ex-pat within the entire emirate of Abu Dhabi" you may find a photo of myself and the good lady, taken on that day, staring back at you, looking like deer in a headlight.

I say that they had the upper hand, because while the competition for the expat market is fierce, they know that many times the companies pay for relocation/setup, AND that for the most part time is of the essence - we just want to get things bought and delivered. I am not saying you won't get a discount or an upgrade, just don't expect to halve the ticket price of an item is all.

Delivery.

It wasn't until everything was signed and paid for that we found out that there would be "Some deliveries" rather than "a delivery". Apparently Plugins is a kind of multi brand market stall, and each item is delivered from a different warehouse, OR a whole other retailer in some cases. Don't let this concern you, it seems that that is quite a regular thing, just keep in mind that no matter where it comes from it will still be the product you bought and will still carry with it all warranties etc.

The other good thing about Abu Dhabi, is that while sometimes the practices make you wonder a bit, there is little to no chance that the items are ever ..ummm dodgy... if you get my meaning. Crime here is almost nil. I know it may seem a little like organised chaos, but just accept that it works.. don't concern yourself with how.

Cheat Sheet
We used Plugins at Marina Mall, again there are other stores, but that is who we ended up using.
Take a look at their website:
www.pluginselectronix.com which will give you a feel for some of the prices... but I recommend you make the trip in to the hop itself.
Marina Mall's website is kinda typical. 5th biggest mall in the UAE an no working site LOL
www.marinamall.ae

It's near the breakwater, any bus with 'Breakwater' as a destination will get you there.
All cab drivers - even the crap ones - know where and what it is. If yours doesn't, get out and find another cab - that guy is a danger to himself and others. (not really... but still...)

Or if you are driving, I've jammed a map below to show you where Marina mall is.

View Larger Map

You wouldn't think it would be too hard would you?

Well in essence it's not, it just may be very different to the way you've ever had anything delivered before.

See, the thing is...

There's no street addresses. Or at least no one has any clue what a street address is, or indeed what reference it has to you and where you live.
Please don't panic. The good news is that that has been the way for so long that, while a little weird, the method used to get stuff delivered works.
Again, don't worry yourself with how it works... just accept that it does.

Most deliveries revolve around liberal use of the telephone, but to get the ball rolling, make sure you know your area name (or suburb for want of a better term)

All our stuff has been delivered by a third party with the exception of the Ikea furniture - that has it's own story (check the adventures section)

We found that the best way is to get on to a mapping site like maps.google.com zoom in to your area, and print it out (or a few copies if you are going to a few stores). While using a map is still in it's conceptual stage here in AD, we figured that at least it's another reference.

We wrote our local mobile number down, (local mobiles are best - many shops won't accept international numbers for mobiles, see section on "getting a mobile"), agreed on an approximate time for the deliveries, accepted that while we bought all the stuff from the same shop.. it was actually coming from different warehouses, and toddled off to the food court with not a care in the world...

Delivery day arrived, and at the allotted time for the TV delivery, my wife's phone rang, they were to be in our area within the hour, wanted a rough idea on where we were (we are close to a couple of well known Embassies - great landmarks), they seemed pleased with this information and said that they would call when they were closer for exact directions.

Sure enough, in 45 minutes the phone ran again - and Karma gave them what I thought were pretty vague directions - but they seemed happy enough with them. 5 minutes later the phone went off again - it was our guys, they were out front.

2 guys, 15 minutes, some box unpacking, a power drill and 10dhs tip later, we had a telly/DVD on a stand. We were happy.

The process went the same way for the fridge - although in this instance Karma was doing the directing from work then texting me the results on my Australian mobile... again no problems, and this time I sat on the front step with a cup of tea talking to the maintenance guy, which was fun as neither of us know a language that the other does. We were laughing together at our attempts to be understood, not getting anywhere, then just grinning inanely at the people passing us in the street.

The fridge arrived and the maintenance guy (I mean no disrespect to him, but our ability to communicate is so low I couldn't quite grasp his name - in fact, for ease and readability and until I find out otherwise, let's call him Barry.) went into action.. speaking very quickly and sternly to the deliverers.. I just stood and vacillated between nodding sagely and offering directions as to where it was to go. While they weren't overjoyed with the prospect of the thing going up 2 flights of stairs, they got the job done - I foisted a few dirhams at them for their trouble and they went on their way.

"Barry" and I were left to marvel at the new fridge, I then moved to remove the packing case and associated plastic wrapping, but my mate Baz beat me to it.

With a grin a handshake and a wave he was gone, with the fridge packaging and a bag he had rightly guessed was rubbish...

Now, the washing machine delivery.

Slight change of methodology here - in that we were phoned, then had to drive to meet the van behind a well known and, thankfully, close-by petrol station.
We met the van - not hard to work out which van it would be as we were the only two vehicles in the street, jumped into our car and moved slowly of and up the road toward the apartment. I figured that the slow pace would allow the heavily loaded truck to keep up, I needn't have worried - these guys had a few deliveries to get through before the night was through.

SO after a short but fast trip, with a delivery truck right on the tail of Karma's mighty VW golf - so close at times that to anyone looking on it would have looked like we were towing the truck with the volksy, we were home.

We got out of the car, FIVE guys got out of the cab of the delivery truck - it was like watching a clown car empty it's occupants onto the show ring (well, without the clown suits, red noses.. rainbow braces... big sho... you get the idea). These guys had this delivery/installation thing down to almost military precision. They also all managed to be working in our little bathroom at the same time - but then after the "5 guys in a van" party trick, I guess we shouldn't have been surprised.

I know that one was the electrician, one looked like he was sorting out the plumbing, another 2 were involving themselves with shifting and unpacking the device, and the last guy was the supervisor. All things that require any amount of technical intervention seem to have a supervisor.

Again no more than 15 minutes passed and the job was done, including having an optional water filter fitted. We highly recommend the filter - the water is safe.. but has things floating in it, things best not sucked into a washing machine's pump.

A quick run down of the controls, a list of numbers we could call should anything go wrong - and pop - they were gone.

We, having done nothing really, were exhausted by the pace of it all... but happy as 2 people with new white goods could be.

Depending on the economic climate you find yourself in, housing can be expensive OR extortionate. It's just the way it is, no-one likes it (except maybe the landlords), but really, that's renting.

Generally speaking, most employment packages list your housing allowance as a separate thing, and it is this part of a package that is really worth negotiating on.

In many cases what may be enough cash to rent a multi-story, swimming-pooled, gymnasium-equipped, metro palace in one country may not get you a 2 bed apartment in a crappy building in down-town Abu Dhabi.

The trick is to NOT convert the amount to your local currency and then use that as a reference point for housing.

It's one of those things you just have to suck up and get on with I am afraid, but the sting diminishes after a while, so that's a good thing.

Another bright piece of information is that rent is paid a year in advance here. Yes. That's right... a YEAR, up front, in full. Thankfully though this is 99% of the time ponied up by your company, so you never really have to see it, apart from carting the cheque from your Company to the real estate folk. Oh... and you will usually have to place a 5000dhs "Bond" (don't actually know if we get it back or not) AND there is often a 5% commission to be paid to the Real Estate Broker. Power water andair-conditioning bills are often included in the rent - but make sure you ASK and make sure that this is the case.

Occasionally you might see properties advertised with payment being available by more than one cheque. While that sounds all nice, and infers that you just have to show up at periodic intervals with the next payment cheque and a smile - it's not actually the case. It simply means that at the time the lease is signed and keys are handed over you hand over a stack of post-dated cheques, these cheques are then presented to the bank and cleared as their dates come up. So there's not that much benefit, other than the ability to stop payment (maybe) on outstanding cheques if, god forbid, situations go pear shaped.

Don't be all gloomy! It just is what it is, and I figured that in the pursuit of fair play and full disclosure, that I'd just get all the potential costs out there!

Lastly if you are not yet in the country, do all the online looking you like - but most agents won't be able to help you until you are here. They have enough on their plates it seems with house hunters who are actually IN the country, without the added stresses of those who may or may not be coming as well.

How we rented a place.

We had 3 weeks to get everything done here in AD before I had to head back to Australia to wind up things there... The plan was that I was to leave my wife to get on with getting used to the new job, while I started the preliminary searches for housing etc.

There are some really good people here and I will list the 2 companies that we had great (if short) relationships with later on, but there are also some others that maybe are not so scrupulous. We arrived when the property market was very strong, and there was simply more demand than supply - so we were kinda looking at settling on just about anything at the time.

We were put on to a real estate broker, Judy, who was really nice and helpful, listened to what we were after, gently let me me know that I may need to adjust my expectations, and proceeded to show me a place that would suit our situation.

It was perfect.

And we didn't get to live in it.

Something went wrong, and we (wife and I, and our broker friend) couldn't work out what it was - but in the end even the broker said that the deal was smelling bad, and that we should move on to something else. We suspect that what had happened was that the person Judy was liaising with turned out to be someone trying to sublet the house (an illegal practice, unless certificates of no objection are produced on the owners behalf), as a result silence ensued when I asked, through the broker, whether this was the case. This is no slight on Judy - our girl on the ground in this deal - it was all about the "landlord"

If something feels a bit off - it might just be acclimatisation, if something feels decidedly WRONG, and there's no money down or contracts signed - my feeling is to back out, find something else.

Which we did, but we also are honest about the situation; we are not particularly hard to please AND know that we won't be here forever - a few years maybe, but accommodation we end up in is not likely the house our pension cheques are going to be sent to (if there was actually a postal system - more on that later) No, we didn't need perfect.. just suitable.

We had similar issues with another property, not through Judy this time - again, as soon as it became clear that we weren't going to produce a cheque without correct paperwork CLEARLY stating who the landlord was - the phone went silent.

So, time was ticking away. We had moved to a cheaper hotel. We were still homeless.

My Wife, on a whim, phoned the first real-estate agent in a local newspaper that had anything close to what we were hoping to live in.

We were in luck... the guys at Transworld were really helpful, and in no time at all we were standing in what is now our little home.

We had a couple of kinks that we had to stumble over, one being the need (due to the cheque being made to my wife and not the landlord) to take our year cheque to a bank and have it cashed... then walk said mound of cash through the city to the real estate office - I wasn't scared of it being stolen, but I am very much aware of my own ineptitude as a result I was very nervous about it falling out of my bag, or me simply leaving my bag (and therefore our entire year's rent) at an internet cafe.

I managed to get the cash to whom it was intended - a very unusual situation, but it worked. I would have preferred NOT to have had to pay in cash but it was just thesituation we found ourselves in. But in the end all were happy - they got their money and we got our keys.

Cheat Sheet.
Relax.
Be certain about what you want, and then adjust if need be to what you need.
Be open to things as they present themselves.
Look at the web sites but the best thing to do is pick up the phone.
Pick up the phone when you are actually here or no more that a couple of weeks before to introduce yourself - don't expect too much to be done until you are here.

Sites of interest
www.2rentuae.com we dealt with Judy - call her direct if you like +971501314492. She's ace.
www.transworldsite.com initially dealt with Jamal, but then Shanish - both great guys.