Dubai part Deux

How's it going?
We're really glad we're not in NY right now with this weather; seems like you guys are not getting a break in the East Coast.
Well, we been getting hit with some storms out here too; Sandstorms.
You know is not a good sign when you're sitting outside on a nice restaurant over looking the Grand Mosque, and then it gets cloudy, and suddenly it seems like the Mosque is slowly disappearing in front of you and then the Waiter comes in and says "Excuse me, you need to go inside because there's a sandstorm coming in from Dubai and we need to close the outdoor area. You can stay here but there will be lots of sand on your food." Now there's something you don't hear often !!
That was last Friday and since then there's been a couple more, all-day ones ! Its not like in the movies where this huge wave of sand comes at you its more like imagine a rainy day when its cloudy and its drizzling all day, well its the same. Its cloudy and very windy and there's this constant fine-grain sand in the air and all over.




Now imagine the WHOLE day being like that ! I'll take a rainy day over this any day.

Last week we went back to Dubai. Made was attending this huge conference; by huge I mean a conference with 65,000 attendees ! and of course I tagged along.
While Made was doing work I was out there checking the city (which mainly means visiting Malls !).
I got to check out the Mall of the Emirates. Famous all over the world for its internal Ski Park which I got to check out.





I also got to check out the train.




The train by the way was somehow pricey considering they don't really need the money. They charged me like 2 US Dollars for like 5 stops. Of course this may not sound like a lot for New Yorkers but don't forget that in NYC with one fare you can go from Washington Heights to Far Rockaway !
Train was obviously SUPER CLEAN.


I also managed to find my favorite junk food spot in Dubai ! Thank God they dont have em' here in AD.


Some more pics :

new year and stuff..

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!
Damm, Im a little late. Sorry.

So, New Years in Rome; it was a blast. Cold, but a blast!
We had a great time; our great friend Nicola invited us to a friends house to spend New Years Eve and in a low key hangout with an amazing feast!
I barely made it to dessert which included Tiramisu AND ice cream, there was so much food that I had to "hang the gloves" at dessert. Now you might say "well, you made it to the end then?" Wrong, I did say that we were at an Italian home, right? It doesn't end at the dessert, at least not on New Year's Eve. We were supposed to also eat the traditional New Year's dishes like a cake from the South (Naples) and this delicious lentil soup from further South, I mean there was A LOT OF FOOD. After the New Years Hugs and Kisses I was (embarrassingly) passing out in a couch.
The next couple of days were filled with even more food and some shopping with our good friend (and blog reader) Erwin, who joined us in Rome from Chicago.
It was chilly in Rome, not that cold but when you go from Abu Dhabi, it feels very cold.
The city was PACKED with tourists, but it was still great, its Rome.

Since all three had been there before and both Erwin and Made had lived in Italy before we decided to skip most of the tourist spots and just turn the trip into a food, drinks, and shopping trip; and I can say that we succeeded.
I actually put up about 3 lbs, that's a little more than a Kilo !! but we had a great time.

We got back on a late flight with a stop-over in Doha (by the way NOT feeling Doha airport). When we got to Abu Dhabi it was about 3 am, and there was a fog like I have never seen fog.
I've heard about the fog here and I always thought that people were exaggerating, but they weren't. At times (I'm not exaggerating) you couldn't see 10 meters in front of you, or about 2 cars distance, so we were driving extremely slow on a highway ! Then our driver got lost and we could barely read the street signs (they're also in English) but eventually we got home safe, thank God.

This Monday we head to Dubai for a couple of days. Made has a conference there and I tagged along, so hopefully I'll get to see more of Dubai.

We're also planning a long weekend in Oman. Its only an hour flight and its suppose to be very cool.

Other than that everything is good and we hope is as good for you all.

I guess is not too late to wish you all a super awesome 2011 filled with happiness, health, love and all the good stuff that your heart desires !

peace !

Some Italy Pics at the link below
PICS !

On Jordan

One word, Jordan was AMAZING.
I got some pics on facebook, and here are some other ones:

PICS

So Jordan, we were only there for 5 days but we got to travel in the country since Petra, biggest tourist attraction in Jordan, is about a 3.5 hours from Amman.
We still didn't see everything, its actually a pretty big country.
I'm not going to give you a day-by-day, but I'll just give you some points on our trip.

- Jordan is safe ! In Amman we were walking around our hotel at night. Our driver suggested we take a walk and to not worry since its very safe, and he was right.
- People in Jordan are very nice. I don't remember the last time I walked into a pharmacy and was greeted with such a big smile.
- They LOVE their King and Queen. He's known for being a very down-to-earth King. In fact our driver showed us a Shwarma place in a market area that he loves and from time to time goes there to eat, and trust me its not a fancy place, just a regular spot.
- The food is good. Of course no pork, but plenty of Lamb and beef.
- You can drink...hehehe. 18% of Jordanians are Christian, so yeah, there's drinking. Plenty of liquor stores throughout the country.
- Petra is absolutely amazing, and its crazy that they are still doing research in the area because they believe that there is still about 70% of it to be discovered. 70 % !!!
- A cool thing about Petra is that once it became one of the Wonders of the World they asked all the Bedouins that had lived there to move out; but they didn't just kick 'em out, they built cement houses with all amenities (even TV) for them. They agreed to move as long as they would be the only ones working in Petra for the tourists. So if you go to Petra, all the tourist guides and pretty much everyone that works there is a Bedouin. This is good because for years they kept Petra a secret as a way to protect it. Historically they have been the guardians of Petra.
- Wadi Rum desert is amazing. It looks like a postcard. Wadi Rum is also run by Bedouins.
- A funny thing is that in the U.A.E it always takes us about 5 minutes to tell people what Dominican Republic is, and most don't even know what the Caribbean is, yet Bedouins (in the desert !!) know what D.R. is! And they weren't just lying, one of them actually said "oh that's near Jamaica right? Like Bob Marley" our guide in the desert said "oh yes, in the Caribbean, right?" so yes, they knew DR which I thought was funny.
- Bedouins LOVE the desert. Its funny being there and thinking "wow, what if we get stuck here?" while our guide is telling us how much he hates the city, and that the best way to live life is in the desert.
- While driving in the desert our Bedouin guide Mohamed looks up and says "oh look mountain climbers !" Both Made and I are like Huh? So he actually drives closer to the mountain and after 5 minutes "..look to the left, now you see in the shade, you see?" we finally spot 2 climbers that look so small that it took me a minute to even spot it again in the picture below
This man saw this while driving !! After I see it he goes "Robert you wear glasses because you sit in front of computer all day, but Mohamed lives in the desert and can see the climbers" He was right. Oh and by the way this man was in his mid 40s, no glasses, and spot it this WHILE DRIVING !!
You're not going to see it, but this is just to give you an idea.

- Its chilly in Jordan, you need a coat, but we lucked out and the second day we went to the Dead Sea and got to go in the water ! You do float like nowhere else on Earth. One thing they tell you is to stay on your back while you float, this way you wont get water on your eyes or mouth. Somehow I managed to get water on both my eyes and my mouth. Seriously, they jury is still out on which one is worst. When it hits your eyes it burns, burns a lot, but its something that you can relate too from going to the beach, it just burns more, but when it hits your mouth ?? oh Lord, its like what the Devils urine must taste like, I cant ever imagine something more disgusting.
You know its salty, you know is very salty, but this is how salty it is, as soon as you step out of the water and you dry out, you can rub out the salt from your body. I was brushing salt out my hair like it was a bad case of dandruff.
We were in a resort so we were to able to wash-off the salt.

Ok, post is getting long, I would highly recommend Jordan, the place is amazing and the people are very nice. By the way our travel agency was Jordan Select Tours if you go try to get Feras as a driver, super cool guy that lived in Cali for a couple of years. Our tour was just the two of us and Feras in a car, which was great because we could stop wherever we wanted, and Feras was very knowledgeable about Jordan, anything from the economy, religion, politics, etc, very smart guy and super laid back.

sorry but I had to do this, dont hate me NYC!! This was me while you guys were 20" in snow:
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Tomorrow we are off to ROMA !
see you in Rome Erwin !

Happy New Year to all !

Off to Jordan

..and we're off !

Merry Christmas ahead of time and Happy Holidays to all !

were have we been???

We're here.

Sorry for taking so long to post.

So where to being?

Well for starters, we are now official UAE RESIDENTS !!! (until 2013...not that we plan on staying here that long, but we are residents)

We had to go get a brief physical at the hospital for our visa. They have something here called "VIP Service" at the hospital which is great. Basically you pay more (a lot more) but worth every penny. You sit in this VIP lounge that's super nice, but the best part is they speed up the whole process so I was literally at the hospital for 15 mins !

We had to get Passport photos for the visa, and it turns out that when you get those pics here your fee also includes some "photoshop" work on the pic, of course this photoshop work is at the discretion of the local "photo guy." Basically his idea of "fixing" your picture.
See below:


Its not a great pic because its from the visa but...Is it me or did he put make-up on me??!! He also did a little "skin-lightening"? Trust me I've been enjoying the sun here, I was a LOT darker than that. You should see Made's ! he almost made her White, kinda like when Dave Chapelle would do his "White Caracters" with the big make up? yep, like that.
Funny, but odd.

2 weeks ago we went to a Caribbean party here.
Turns out there's a very active group of West Indians here and they organize a yearly Christmas party. We went to check it out and it was great. Kinda reminded me of the Caribbean Parties in the 90's at City College, some of you guys remember them.
We met some really cool people there and got invited to a music appreciation group.
Man, there was some goooooood Caribbean food. Found me some goat and just good ol' Caribbean food. Really good time.

I should tell you that Christmas here is a lot bigger than we thought. There are Christmas trees everywhere ! The Souq near us has a 3 level high tree. There's also lots of decorations throughout the city.
We got home last night and even heard and expat group singing "Feliz Navidad" yes, the Jose Feliciano one...lol. Christmas Carols in Abu Dhabi.

Speaking of Christmas, we're going away to Jordan ! Christmas Day we will be at Wadi Rum (not our pic)
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We are super excited ! We're going for about 5 days and going to travel the country to some of the main sites like Petra !


We come back to Abu Dhabi and then head back out to Rome for the New Years.

So my job is done : ( Yesterday was my last day, and I gotta say that I had a good time teaching music to all those kids. At times it was hard, cause you know, they're kids, but all in all it was fun.
This is funny, 2 of the 1st graders were misbehaving in my class, so they're homeroom teacher asked them to come back at the end of the day and apologize for misbehaving in class, and they drew these for me!



Today we got a BBQ at one of Made's Co-workers house, should be fun. The Flan is in the oven !

Just wanna wish you all happy, happy holidays !! and a very Happy New Year. I'll try to get another post in before the New Year.

bye !

Happy birthday MADE !!!

It was yesterday, but don't worry, I did remember.
We spent a laid back day FILLED with food and drinks.

some pics of Made's Bday:







We also got all our bookings done for our holiday travel.
Really looking forward to it, we will be spending Xmas in one place and New Years in another.
more to come !!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving !

So, we had a little Thanksgiving dinner; no turkey though, we actually went to this really, really good Lebanese Restaurant, and in the great Thanksgiving tradition ate WAY too much food.





For the Dominican peeps, yep, that's fried cheese. Its the same type of cheese that is fried in DR, tastes the same. I guess we got it from the Lebanese.

The evening after we went to YAS Island (Ferrari World) for a Nelly Furtado show. I know, I know I'm not exactly known as a Furtado fan, but it was live music, some friends invited us and we had a blast !
The arena was enormous !

We stayed close to the "all drinks" and probably drank back all the lbs I've lost at the gym, but oh well, back to the gym !!!

Even met some Dominican guys !


Lil clip of the performance:



I'm going to be alone for the next couple of days. Made leaves tonight to Bahrain for work which is good for her, but sucks for me. 1) I'll be alone here for a couple of days 2) and more importantly, I want to go to Bahrain also !!! : ( Maybe next time. I have to work, so cant go.
Forgot to put this pic up, this is from when we went to see the Berlin Philarmonic at the Emirates Palace. This is how crazy Abu Dhabi is, on your way to see the BERLIN PHILARMONIC you pass by an exhibit of Alberto Giacometti.


By the way we got these new friends that always come to our ledge.



A couple of weeks back me and Made went to the Corniche to check out some bands, and they had this huge campaign going on. Yep its people playing a sideways soccer game while hanging from ropes. Pretty cool. Think they're trying to get the World Cup? You bet !!



Have a great week everybody !!