Chris Saul's Blog

Tuesday August 05, 2008

6 years - nearly

Friday 8 August marks six years of being in Dubai. This surely makes me a grizzled expat - or at least a semi-grizzled expat, as I do moisturise occasionally when reminded by Mrs Saul.

Lots has happened in six years - learnt a lot jobwise, been fortunate enough to have ended up in work that I really enjoy, got married, bought an apartment and moved into it, learnt to drive in the desert, had the opportunity to travel to all sorts of places I never dreamed I'd visit. The list goes on.

It was pure chance that saw me come to Dubai. The first six months were quite a culture shock, but I settled in and Dubai has been good to us. Whilst things are more expensive and crowded than they were six years ago, there are no plans to move on.

Drowning in Heriot-Watt spam

As if daily real estate offers via email and sms were not enough, today I have a message in my inbox from Heriot-Watt University, Dubai.

Poorly written, poorly formatted and totally irrelevant to me - an appalling advert from a supposedly reputable British University.

It doesn't surprise me when the Lucky Happy Star Royal Realty Estatings FZ LLC company send me semi-comprehensible adverts for warehouse space in Jebel Ali, annoying though it is. Quite why Heriot-Watt thinks this sort of thing is acceptable is beyond me.

How did my Sun address get given to every spam-artist in Dubai? My suspicions lie with my mortgage company...