I can laugh now....

Only because I sit here now on the 42^nd floor of Sky Tower looking at an amazing sunset can I chuckle about it. It’s still too early to give it a full laugh just yet…maybe in a few weeks after the nightmares fully stop. What I am about to describe is probably one of the craziest days that I have had here and one of the more stressful issues I have had to undergo…HOUSING. Now some teachers may read this and think to themselves, I won’t have to go through this, but I assure you that it may not be housing, but you may very well find yourself running around like a chicken with its head cut off at some point about something. I assure you that you are not immune!

My crazy day, which was a Monday actually started on the previous Thursday.  After being denied my first housing preference and having to go back and look at more places, I finally found one that I loved. I finally got the offer letter, which is simply a letter from the landlord outlining the terms of the rental. FYI…you do not want to spend your maximum on housing because there is no law about how much a landlord can raise the rent from year to year. In the past it was capped at 5%. Typically, as you are negotiating you will want to have your landlord agree to not raise the rent for two years. I have some tips that you can use that will possibly get you more items such as appliances and such. However, you will need to email me and we can talk more about some negotiating tactics you can use. I was able to have my landlord buy all of my appliances brand new and I picked them out as well. #PROOF

Anyway, back to the story…So I rush down to “the place” on Thursday afternoon to submit all of my documents. See previous posts about what ALL my documents really mean. I upload them into the ERP system. Oh did I forget to mention that during this process, we were told that we had to be out of the hotel on the following Monday, but our ERP numbers only started to work that Thursday and we were told initially that housing approval could take up to 7 days. Yeah, my other colleagues and I were a little panicked. However, housing and general services got on the same page and gave us extensions…and more extensions….and more extensions. After uploading all of the required documents, I along with a friend (Renee), were told to come back on Sunday and pick up the official contracts……or so we thought.

I arrive Sunday and the person that I was told to meet acted as if he did not remember me from the previous Thursday. He “shooed” me away and told me to wait for another person to assist me. I had no idea who this person was. I was only given a name and pointed in a general direction. After waiting about 30 minutes, I realized whom I was waiting on. Let’s just say, the entire time this person had been causally talking to another person and even though I don’t know Arabic, I could tell it wasn’t all that important. As she stood up with her pocketbook, I became alarmed and rushed over to speak with her. Clearly, she was ready to go. I would tell you what happened over the next 15 minutes if I didn’t think it would raise my blood pressure again, but needless to say, the contract would not be ready on Sunday. I was told to submit another document and to come back the next day. GREAT…NO PROBLEM!!! Or so I thought…….

The next day, my friend Renee who has been one of my ACES so far though this hilarious, yet stressful journey decided that she would go to “the place” the next morning @ 7:00 a.m. and get both of our contracts….or so we thoughtJ I went to work and spent the next few hours texting Renee as she sat and waited for our contracts to be done. At 12:00, I decided to go to “the place” myself and wait because surely the contracts would be ready shortly. After all, Renee had been there since 7. So we waited….and we waited….and waited…and waited…Poor Renee had been there all day long. At about 2:30, we were told that the person needing to sign off on the contracts had gone to a meeting and would not be back. SAY WHAT!!!!! (insert whatever curse word you want here) We clearly were being punked! This was not happening for real….but it really was!!

I decided that the next morning (which was now Tuesday) I would go and wait…it was my turn right??J After about an hour and a half, I finally had the contract! I felt like I had the golden ticket all over again. I left jubilated and went to the school and my realtor, Tom, met me to pick up the contract. A few hours later, I got a call from Tom telling me that the information in the contract was WRONG! REALLY!!!! I jumped back in a taxi and went back to “the place” to make them aware of the situation. After being scolded for not having Tom come, I must have pulled at someone’s heart strings because I was told that there was an apartment in the same building that I wanted (and thought I had a contract on) and that I could move in right away with no deposits or realtor fees. The only thing I had to do was to go and look at it. So off to Reem Island (in a taxi) I went…..the whole time conflicted that I might pull the carpet from under my potential landlord and Tom, both whom I had really come to like. Meanwhile, Renee had come back to “the place”, and begun to work her magic with compliments and candy in getting our contracts fixed. Oh yeah, hers was wrong as wellJ PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUCEMENT: I cannot tell you how important it is to keep your cool when things do not go your way. It’s all about relationships here. If you piss off the person that is the gatekeeper between you and any type of normalcy you are used to, then you will spend a longer amount of time waiting (and I do mean longer) for whatever it is and it maybe something as small as a signature. DO NOT PISS WHERE YOU EAT!!! 

So of course I did not like the apartment as much as the one that I had chosen. It was about 400 square feet smaller. Might not sound like a big deal, but it was. About the time I was realizing that this had been a wasted trip, Renee called me letting me know that she had our contracts and they were all done correctly! However, I needed to come back to “the place” because Tom wanted to get the contracts and have them signed as soon as possible. So off in yet another taxi I went. Are you keeping track? We met at a restaurant and waited, commiserated, laughed, almost cried, and talked about how good GOD had been and how good he was/is even through this ordeal. Tom came and took the contracts and we hopped into a taxi (yet again) and headed back to the hotel. So let me recap my day that day!

1.     Taxi to “the place” (25 aed)

2.     Taxi  to school (25 aed)

3.     Taxi back to “the place” (25 aed)

4.     Taxi to Reem Island (40 aed)

5.     Taxi back to “the place” (40 aed)

6.     Taxi back to the hotel (15 aed/split with Renee)

Like I said, a chicken with my head cut off! And that’s where the fun really begins…..between furniture shopping, appliance shopping, waiting on deliveries, internet, gas, running around getting the AC cut on, electricity, and “chilled water”. That’s right I said “chilled” (In the states you pay for hot water…over here you pay for it to be cold)..the fun is just beginning!

So you say you want to work in Abu Dhabi huh??? Well come on! It is an adventure all to itself…and mind you…I haven’t even given you the real on work yet:) LOL…(in my sinister laugh)