Our Fabulous Dubai Life, Take 2

(Take 1 was posted in 2010).


Dusk at the Dubai World Trade Centre, during the Big 5 Exhibition 2013, an annual construction exhibition, with the Emirates Towers and Burj Khalifa in the background

A brief update. Just completed some major tender works. A couple more due in 2 weeks’ time. That’s life. Tenders, tenders, tenders. Do the paperwork, get the job and pass it onto others. What a drag! I’d rather be in the team executing the works. At least I get to see the result of my hard work. But, …that’s not for me to decide. So I just sit quietly in my little corner, do my work, and …do what I’m doing now (ahem, in my free time, that is).

Dubai is a nice city. It is also a boring city. After all, what’s new to see after 4.5 years?! There’re still a lot of tower cranes all over the place, but not as many as in 2008 when we first arrived. Many of the old tower cranes are gone. Some old ones are still standing proudly gathering dust (the building developer must’ve decided to make this a permanent feature). Some new tower cranes are springing up (which is a good sign for people like me). Construction is still happening all over the place (luckily – definitely a good thing for me!)


Dubai is especially nice when it rains, …like once in a year. …Now if I can bloody figure out how to get to the car without getting my shoes wet… – International City, Russia Cluster, Dubai

Dubai’s defining feature (apart from the malls, and the fantastic architecture, and the miles and miles of man-made shoreline), i.e. the endless amount of fabulous desert sand, is still all over the place. It’s still nicely decorated with lovely (read, ugly) electrical pylons (how can we live without them). There’re no new fantastic parks yet (they’re under construction …excited!) We’re expanding the roads even wider (…even more excited). 6 or 8 lanes are for small fries, we need 12 lanes at least on our roads (heck, 18 lanes would be even better). The car and truck population is still increasing (that’s why we need 18 lanes), never mind that most of these cars travel to and from neighbouring Sharjah and the roads there have miraculously remained the same (almost). Traffic jams are a daily affair (probably due to unchanging Sharjah), so that we have time to catch up on some daily news on radio when driving, and on important topics such as which coffee is the best for health, what pet to keep at home, what benefits an olden time vinyl record has over a CD or an MP3, who bloody won the Rugbies 7, etc. (No, I have no idea what Rugbies 7 is?)


Here’re some sand and pylons to brighten up your day


And some sand on the highway, …I mean road (there’re no highways or expressways in the UAE, all of them are called roads, or streets. I guess it’ll only qualify to be a highway if it’s 24 lanes and above?)


More sand – seen from my office building, during and after a sandstorm. Taken on the same day


Some fabulous desert sand. Oh, this is not Dubai, by the way. This should be somewhere in Umm Al Quwain, near to the road leading to the Barracuda Beach Resort

The nicest thing about now, is spending time with the missus and the 2 kids. Yeah, nothing better than being a family man. No more working inside jungles, or high in the mountains. No more drinking nights out with the boys, ...or the girls?! No more non-PG rated movies or fine dining with the missus. No more sleeping till noon on your off-days, unless you’re trained in sleeping on a trampoline (yeah, the little ones can really jump).

Now it’s Justin’s homework and shopping for groceries. It’s about where to bring them kids on the weekend. It’s about how to save money from the miserable amount of salary I get versus the exorbitant costs of living here, especially to send the kids to school. On the plus side, now I don’t need excuses to play with Lego or plasticine, And I can watch whole cartoons without the missus nagging (if I’m lucky). I get free arm and back workouts for carrying little Jayden (that little fellow’s a parasite when I’m around).

All these fun family activities should keep me young and fit. And it is, to some extent. My weight’s maintaining at 69+kg, the waistline is still at 32”, and my body shape is as it was before, …if I remember to suck in my belly, that is. People say I’m looking thinner, on the face and on the upper body. Well, what can you expect when you have to sit in the office for 9 friggin hours every day in front of a friggin computer? Gravity naturally causes things to go downwards, right? …towards the belly?

My eyes are still good, …for seeing things far away. The problem starts when I wanna read things on the laptop (darn it, it’s the computer again), or the bloody text on my smartphone. My blasted hands are just too bloody short to hold the phone far enough for me to read. Darn hands! But these eyes do help me get some exercise when I’m eating. The reason why I’m standing up more frequently now while I’m eating is because I wanna see clearer what I eat.

Back to my face, besides being less chubby, I have two stubborn sun-burn spots, one on each cheek, that doesn’t seem to go away. My wife calls them brown spots. (And my mom calls them freckles! …How on earth does a Chinaman get freckles?!? Beats me!) The loving wife’s spent hundreds of bucks (maybe thousands now) on dark spot correctors, serums, scrubs, you-name-it, for me. I think it’s working. It’s now changed from brown to khaki.

Enough of me. Think I’ll stop here for now, it’s getting too long. To be continued…

Meanwhile, here’re some more photos of life in Dubai.


My office, in DIP (Dubai Investment Park) …after everyone has gone home


Inside the Pyramid Centre Building, where niece Karishma works


Trying out some Lebanese Food, …didn’t impress much, …friggin dunno how to order


And some Mexican food, …don’t really remember the food, only the sombreros, and that Anu can make an Asian version of the guacamole with more kick (i.e. chillies) than the one we had at the restaurant


Justin, with Bumblebee of the Transformers, at the Gitex Fair, an annual IT exhibition in Dubai


Another pic at the Gitex Fair, 2013

Lightning Sometimes Strikes Twice

Lightning Never Strikes Twice? Yeah, you bet! Just look at what happened in Mecca recently. And what about the two Malaysia Airlines plane crashes last year?

Nature (aka God) sure has a way of letting us know who’s boss. Must be a lesson for us, especially the bloody terrorists amongst us, who plant bombs to kill people, that go off one after another (i.e. to cause greater damage, the second bomb usually goes off when the rescue team comes, and when people are in a daze). "So, you’re making the lightning strike twice? Well, two can play at the game".

Sad to see the stampede happen at the Haj this year. Together with the crane crash, it’ll bring the death toll to nearly a thousand dead! In one month! And this is a place where people come together, regardless of colour or creed, to do only one thing, a religious ritual that the Prophet taught his disciples to do, a re-enactment of an act of obedience to God. As little as I know about the Haj, I know it’s a place where there is no distinction between black or white or any of the colours in between (skin colour I mean), and no distinction between boss, or driver, or toilet-cleaner (as long as they have enough moolah to pay for the pilgrimage). After all, God doesn’t discriminate, except on whether you’re a believer or a non-believer, and on whether you’re good or a good …for nothing crook. Everyone will have to shed all and wear the pieces of white cloth. All will have to walk the walk, and stay at the camps (…or is there a VIP camp and a labour camp for different categories of people?? Dunno, I’m not Muslim!)

God, bless those who lost their lives there, and the loved ones they leave behind. May you accept them into your arms, and grant them eternal peace.

A Year of Short Eids

Dubai Creek – Abra Station at the Old Souq, in Deira

It’s Raya again! Yippee, 3 days off. But it’s nothing to shout about compared to previous years. I remember I got a 5 day break in 2013 on Eid al-Adha! This year’s holidays are pathetic – 2 days off for Eid al-Fitr and 3 days off for Eid al-Adha (and that is including friggin weekends!) And this is a Muslim country!

Anyway, 3 days is better than none, so here’s to a Selamat Hari Raya Haji to my Malay friends, and a Eid Mubarak to all the Muslims out there!

I’m staying put in Dubai this Eid. (…Which wasn’t my original plan. I suggested flying to Moscow to the missus, but it was thrown out the window, without so much as a blink! …“You think money grows on trees?? We just came back from Europe!…” etc, etc, etc. OK honey, you’re right. And she is.)

Decided to put some photos of the more traditional parts of Dubai, to reflect the mood… (a trick I'm still using to keep the blog updated ahem)


A mosque at Deira, between the Gold Souq and the Spice Souq


Boarding an abra (water taxi), at the Bur Dubai Old Souq Abra Station






Crossing the Dubai Creek on a water taxi (abra) – we ride it for fun, after all it costs only 1 dirham per adult, one way, and it’s free for Justin!


See, Justin loves it. But only recommended for winter, unless your idea of fun is to sweat like a pig, and to breathe in the odours of a boatload full of sweating workers and diesel fumes.


The Old Souq in Bur Dubai


Grand Mosque, Bur Dubai


A newly completed mosque in Al Barsha, Dubai – one of the more unique looking mosques around in Dubai

Meet Up in Munich

At the Augustiner Keller, Munich, Germany

We finally met! Kim’s family and us. And of all places, it was in Munich, Germany! This will be the first time we meet Daniel and baby Jared, and it’ll be their first time meeting us, plus Kim’s first time seeing little Jayden. It didn’t go very smoothly at first, …thanks in part to me, …no, actually it’s all me haha. We invited Kim & family to meet us in Munich on the 20th of August, because we would be in Munich then. What I didn’t mention was that we’d be staying in Lienz, East Tirol, Austria on the night before. No, it’s not too far, only about 300km away. But that 300km included a mountain pass named the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, which passes through the highest mountain in Austria (Grossglockner) and its glacier. The estimated journey time calculated using Google Maps is err… 4 hours 30 mins (not too much, right). But that doesn’t take into account our frequent stops, for photos, washroom, diesel, snacks, etc… and the way I drive nowadays (i.e. slow, hey, my family’s in the car OK, and I’m not too familiar with Austrian and German road regulations! Besides… I’m not as young as I used to be, ahem). We tried our best to start early, but with 2 kids around, sometimes things don’t just go as planned. Nevertheless we started early (at least an hour earlier that on the other days of our trip, anyway). And by 5pm we reached our destination, or what I thought was our destination, but …it’s chock-a-block filled with residential flats, where’s the friggin hotel?

The friggin hotel, i.e. the Holiday Inn Express, Munich Airport, turned out to be another 45km+ away, in a godforsaken place named Öberding. (No one told me that the airport hotel address is NOT inside Munich! So the smartass GPS, …or more like the smartass who keyed the address into the GPS, i.e. yours truly, led us right smack into the city). Now, it’s evening rush hour time, and we’re right in the middle of it. But we finally made it to the hotel, at friggin 7pm. By then, Kim was brooding mad, having to wait for us for an entire day (their train reached Munich in the morning, and it’s another 2.5 hours by public transport from Munich to Öberding), and they’ve been stuck in the hotel, with nowhere to go (unless you wanna go to the airport, told ya it’s in a godforsaken place), till the time we arrived.

But all was forgiven when we met. And we had dinner, …umm, a not very 'halal' dinner (after all this is Germany, sorry dad, not a place for you), in Munich. It was raining dogs and cats, and we didn’t have time to do any last minute shopping in the city before we flew off the next day, :(. (I’ll make up for it honey, in one way or another, OK?)


Augustiner Keller (a beer cellar, crowded to the brim with patrons, even though it was a weekday and was raining heavily outside).




Justin with his uncle, planning out how to tackle the food – pork, duck, potato and cabbages – nothing much for you here, Dad, not the most ‘halal’ of places, I’d say. Oh yeah, you can have the beer hehe




Kimmikimkim, with baby Jared




The 2 babies, Jayden and Jared, at the Holiday Inn Express, Munich Airport


The Müllers, dad’s German, mom’s Malaysian and baby holds a NZ passport. They’re in Germany for a one month visit before returning to New Zealand


Finally, a family picture with Anu in it. The others were all taken by her, …I dunno what’s wrong with my photos, …must be the camera, yeah, blame it on the camera. At Munich Airport before we fly off

Then There Are Our Friends

How can I miss out our friends here in Dubai? Here’re some of them. Of course, there’re more, but …sometimes we just forget to snap photos. Moreover, these are photos from a year (or 2) back … photos which I have had the time to sift thru when free. The newer photos… there’re so many of ‘em I dunno where to start. Maybe next year, hehehe.

(Ahem, we’ve just returned from a hectic trip to Central Europe, and I’m all drained, and have a whole load of work to catch up… So, posts like this will have to do till, I recharge… Plus, I’m sick, down with the flu I think. Have been coughing for the past 1 month, …including during the holidays. Got worse since we came back. Delayed seeing a doctor coz I friggin lost the Health Insurance Card! Finally saw the doc last Thursday, and he said bronchitis. Now I’m most of the time drowsy from that killer cough syrup he gave me… 3 times a day he said, and what? No friggin leave? Note: In Dubai you have to pay AED 60 to get a sick leave certificate. So it’s pay up, or suck up and work. Hard luck!) Meanwhile… Enjoy the photos!


Friends from church, from left Pastor Alan, the pastor’s wife Estrella, Rose, Erwin


Pastor Alan and Estrella (he’s Indian and she’s Filipina, and the assistant pastor is Sri Lankan, this more or less sums up the demographics of the church). Pastor Alan is the cousin brother of my Malaysian ex-colleague, Joseph George

Church gathering at the Creek Park –

The Boys


The Girls


A ceremony celebrating the renewal of marriage vows of a Sri Lankan couple, Trivona & Maddock at our church


Justin with a church friend from the Philippines


Justin with another church friend… Trivona’s daughter. His friends seem to mostly be girls for some unknown reason…


Justin, in Pre-K, with his school mates, Reuben (left), Salama and Abdullah


Celebrating Justin’s Pre-K classmate Amira’s (the little girl in pink on the left) birthday


Amira’s Dubai house compound! Comes with tennis court, swimming pool, farm, horse stables, … Amira is half-Emirati and half-American


Another birthday party – Reuben’s, at a park in Mirdif, Dubai


At Uptown School’s International Day event, with Sri Lankan classmate Senan, and his sister


My work colleague Dong Weihong’s daughter Amy’s 5th birthday, at their home in International City. Dong Weihong & Li Lei, the girl’s parents, are on the immediate right and left respectively, of the shoe rack at the back. Another colleague, Jia Weimin is lighting the candles. The girl behind Jia is Zhang Xue (who works in the QAQC Dept in our office), and the bespectacled lady standing on the right is Li Jinsui, accountant, all from the office I’m working in.


Justin & his Foundation 2 classmates at a school concert in the Royal Dubai School

10 Years of Blogging

Yay! Looks like I’ve blogged for 10 straight years now! Not bad, a milestone of sorts for me. Longest time I’ve ever maintained a diary. Must thank the digital age for it. I’d never have gone far doing one on a traditional diary (tried many times, never succeeded).

For a celebration, I think I’ll put some photos of family gatherings here in Dubai. …Not that there’s much of it, since Dubai is seldom in any of our family’s list of places to visit… sigh!


We, at Creek Park, Dubai - 2013


With Hazel at Creek Park


Justin, with his granddad


Cactus at Creek Park, …just about the most exciting thing in Creek Park, in my opinion

OK, I’ll also take the opportunity to explain a few things about some common names I call myself or use in the digital world, for example, the title of the blog.

Cows, Pigs and Human Dung – the title is an extract from an earlier email to family and friends, on my initial shock of seeing the amazing variety of animals roaming freely on the streets and a humongous amount of umm …shit! in my daily site visits when I first started working in India. (“What animal made this?” I remember asking my Indian colleague. He looked down and said, “…animals like you and I”.) Like I always say, Incredible India! Love it and hate it. See my first picture post of India here.

Furient – no, it doesn’t mean friends. It’s a name I coined for my ship, in a computer game about the age of discovery (by Koei if I’m not mistaken) in the 80’s or 90’s, …ya, it’s that long ago. Yeah, I was a seafaring explorer and badass colonial overlord! Furient comes from Fury, which I tried to make to sound powerful. Its sister ship was Rageance, from Rage.

Prahnago – is the name of my country, if I ever become king, heheheh. It’s a corruption of the word Peranakan, straits-born Chinese (i.e. Chinese born in Malaya and Singapore who had more or less adopted Malay customs, in food, clothes and language to some extent).

More photos: -


Justin with his granny and aunt, near the Meydan Racecourse, Dubai


Cousin sis Emily, and her husband Martin, near the Burj Khalifa, on their one night stop in Dubai, en route to Sydney from London


Our niece Karishma, posing with the Burj Khalifa


Justin & Karishma at the Souq Madinat Jumeirah, with the Burj Al Arab in the background


Justin with his other aunt, Kim, at the Ibn Battuta Mall, Dubai

And I think it’s about time I improve my outdated blog, …as lazy as I am, ahem. But don’t expect much. I’ll have to do this by stealing a bit of office time (shhhh…) and my IT skills suck, so if nothing happens, it’s just because I don’t have the friggin time to do it, or I have no clue on how to go about doing it.

Till then, here’re some photos of places outside Dubai…


Justin & Hazel, at the Abu Dhabi Corniche


Justin & his granddad, Abu Dhabi Corniche Beach – it sez photography not allowed for some reason, but why make a beautiful beach and not allow photography?


Anu & Kim at the Abu Dhabi Heritage Village


Finally, how can we have family photos, without a photo of our newest addition? Little Jayden, at the Khor Fakkan Beach, Eastern UAE