(Note from DomestiKatie – my apologies for missing a few posts. It has been a super busy week between the move, getting packed up, and then set up and also trying to get a visa for my India trip. As a result there will be a couple of posts in a row before I get back to 2 posts per week. That is my goal and my pledge. Thanks again for reading!)
Our building from the water side
So, about our Move…..
As you may know (or would have read in a previous post if you are keeping up) our plan was not to be in an apartment at all. Our plan was (and still is) to be on a live aboard boat in one of the marinas. However, first I need to have a resident visa (that ‘housewife’ visa). In order to get that visa we had a few hoops to jump through. The frustrating part is that the target is a moving one, and the rules appear to change with each question asked. What started out as something that by all appearances would be an easy process (and frankly should be an easy process) really was not for us. However, we learned from the experience and will do things a bit differently should we have to do it again. Here is what we learned: 1) Rules are at the whim of the rule makers, and can change by the day. 2) What applies to us may or may not apply to others and vice versa. 3) Nobody seems to agree on the process. And 4) The chicken or the egg debate rages on.
Through it all – and there was a lot – we persevered and we made it. My husband and I now live in a 50-story building on the waterfront, that is less than a year old. Our apartment came fully furnished (including dishes, linens, etc) and the rent includes once per week housekeeping. Because it is new, mostly empty, and has a lot of building going on around it, they are struggling to get people in. We were able to get a pretty decent deal on it. The actual move made for some pretty great entertainment, and was by far the most interesting move either of us has made to date.
To understand how it all happened, you need to know that when we were first discussing moving to Abu Dhabi, my husband and I made a conscious decision not to purchase a car while living here. We asked around and found that about half of the expats we knew had made the same decision. Driving here is crazy! In fact, at one point I read that the number one cause of death here is by car accident. If that is correct (and I have not been able to confirm) I would not be surprised at all. It is nuts on the roads, which makes some sort of sense when you combine a very solid caste 
system with large vehicles. It can appear like bumper cars. Those who feel they should go first just do so, with no regard to surrounding vehicles. When you take all of that into consideration, and add in how close everything is, the shortage of parking spaces, and the super cheap cab fares, having a car really becomes a waste of time and money. Besides, should we decide to take a car trip, rentals are easy and inexpensive. That said, when it came for us to move (albeit less than ½ mile away) we started asking around to see if anybody owned a truck, because hey, that’s how you move, right? Uh, no. Not here. “Just call a cab” they said. Okay… Wait, what? Move in a cab? That just doesn’t sound right.
Now, both of us have moved multiple times in our lives. Between us we have moved great distances, and just around the corner. Usually the move involved multiple trips and multiple really large vehicle(s). By comparison, this move involved a LOT less stuff but still, more than a basic cab would hold. After speaking with a driver we learned that a cab move is common practice here. The cabbies do not even blink an eye. We gave it a lot of thought and consideration for the cab driver. We did not want to monopolize anybody’s morning with multiple back and forth trips, so we opted to request a “family” taxi. A family 
taxi is a van. I’m not talking about the full-sized Chevy or Ford that scared the parents of every teen girl in the 70s. I’m referring to a minivan. The kind where the seats fold up or down depending on how many people need to be accommodated OR, in this case, the number of large boxes and enormous suitcases need to fit in. We loaded up the boxes and bags, piled ourselves in to keep them from falling over en route, annnnddd… We almost made it in one trip. Which was really OK. The plan was to return to our hotel to make a sweep, grab the small things we had forgotten, and the laundry that was not yet dry, so it worked fine. Here’s the kicker… the cab driver was embarrassed that his back had been injured recently and he could not help us unload. He repeatedly apologized, and would not accep
t a tip. That made the total cost of the move 8 Dirhams – just over 2 bucks. Ok really, if we add the tip to the bellhop at the hotel we moved out of AND the additional cab, the grand total came to about 10 bucks. We got it all done in under an hour, and since we did not need to request help from anybody, the only beer and pizza we had to buy was for ourselves, at The Club, and very
shortly after arriving. All in all the actual move was a screaming deal, and a story we can tell forever, even though in our neck of the woods it would be hard to find anyone who would believe us. Now that we’re here and settling in, we can sit back and enjoy a glass of wine, or invite some friends over to enjoy one with us! That’s what we’re talkin about!
