Thumb tacks in my toffee apples

I continue to be astonished by my embarrassing inability to deal with spicy food. I had lunch today at a restaurant in Deira called La Palma, which is Arabic for 'buffet lunch'. The buffet lunch was really good, and good value at three courses for 60 bucks. What follows is an actual conversation I didn't have with one of the waiters:

Waiter: Are you enjoying your food?
Me: Sweet Jehoshaphat! Are you trying to kill me? Seriously, how often do people's heads just explode on the first mouthful?
Waiter: Not very often.
Me: What is the flavouring on this beef? Super mega chili? I can't feel my tongue. Or my eyelids!
Waiter: It's barbecue, sir.

Where Kurt Vonnegut and Janet Jackson see eye to eye

So, here's an update. As if you care, you glib sods.

I found a place! To stay! And then paid a crazy sum of money to rent it. In SA I could almost buy it for the price. But it is nice. I'm living in the shadow of the Burj Dubai, soon to be the tallest building in the world. Outside my window, I can see the nascent Dubai Mall, soon to be the largest mall in the world.

My kitchen is pretty and fully fitted, such that if I had any pots or crockery I could fashion a crude meal for myself. I have a walk-in cupboard.

What I don't have is furniture. I lounge nightly (in surprising comfort) on a bed of air. Which sounds cooler than a blow up mattress.

Yesterday (after two consecutive days of no bathing and no going to the bathroom) my water was connected. However, for some reason the geyser didn't heat up, and I ended up with a cold shower this morning. Which would have been great if I hadn't set the airconditioner to icicle mode.

I have yet to test the badminton and squash courts in the building, mainly because I don't have my racquets here yet. Where are the table tennis tables?

I do go for a swim in the mornings, which is quite nice. The water is warmer than what currently comes out of my tap. There's a lifeguard at the pool from 7:30 to 22:30 every day. I spoke to him yesterday. His name is Edgar. He's from the Philippines. Back home he worked as a casting technician (setting bones and stuff) in a hospital for fifteen years. He came here to find his El Dorado, and instead ends up staring at his toes all day. That's the way it goes.

I ate camel at the company function the other night. It tasted like overspiced boerewors.

Fish oil for a whingey hinge

So my team of scientists, working night and day over the last week, have determined that moving to a new country is stressful. Perhaps I should publish a paper. But that would only add to the stress. Now usually I am a stress resistent super hero. I am cool and collected and happy, no matter what. But I have found my nemesis. I am taking strain the way people my whole life have done just before I laughed at them. Payback is sweet, mother-bitches.

I am stressed because of the following reasons:

1. I have nowhere to live. Life on the street is hard, and I am crap at blowjobs.
2. I am haemorrhaging cash. After tax SA cash. It's like I came to a construction site with a baseball cap and a plastic spade.
3. People who make me feel better are 6000km away.
4. People who make me feel worse (bureaucrats and daft call center monkeys who can't deviate from script) flock here like the swallows of Capistrano

Actually I'm not sure if any of that matters. I think the thing that matters the most is that where my sense of humour usually saves me, it now bounces off stoney faces like an echo that says quack!

But it's not all bad. The other day I went to the fish market. It smells of fish. One of the guys who works there took me to see some of his wares. He's from Pakistan. He listened to my iPod and then gave it back. He asked me to take a photograph of him and his friends. When I get a computer of my own, I'll post it. He was very friendly. He seemed happy, and he made me happy too. He doesn't let anything get to him. Hooray for the bulletproof!

Why Emaar call center operators remind me of stinky fruit

So here I sit in the hotel lobby of the Al Khaleej in Deira, Dubai. It is 1:10am, and the temperature is a chilly 29 degrees Celsius on this mild Winter's day. The space bar works intermittently, but I keep going back to fix it. I do this for you, my beloved reader.

I have been in Dubai almost exactly a week. In this time I have managed to do exactly nothing to further the cause of the bureaucrat. I have not got my residence. I have not got my health card. I do not have a place to stay. I have not even got an access card to the building I'm working in. I have bought two new ties, and tried on a pair of pants.

Yesterday I called a company called Emaar. Emaar build big blocks of apartments and then sell them. Also they rent them out to the poor or risk averse. I asked them to rent me a place. This is not the first time that I have called them, nor the first time that I asked them for a number or a clue as to how to rent from them. The phone call went like this:

Me: Hello. I phoned two days ago to rent an apartment. You gave me this reference number.
Them: According to my records, you called at 11:30 this morning.
Me: It is 11:30 this morning.
Them: It will take 48 hours for them to get back to you.
Me: That's what you told me 48 hours ago.
Them: According to my records, you phoned at 11:30 this morning.
Me: Also,I phoned you two days ago, and the day before that.
Them: According to my records, etc.
Me: Well, can you giveme their number, so I can phone them?
Them: Sure. (Gives wrong number)

I was unaware that Emaar call center uses the same method to get rid of men as a pretty blonde in a room full of balding fourty somethings, but it was pretty effective.

I like the supermarkets here. They have lots of cool food imported from all over. I swear I saw a durian the other day. Hmmm, that's some good garlic custard flavoured eating.

And so, to bed. Like sands through the hourglass...