First Fortnight

We have been in Abu Dhabi for more than two weeks now. Settling down has not been too difficult, as most if not all modern conveniences are in town (in fact more luxurious than we expected, it is the emirates after all), but as we are still waiting for our Etihad Towers home to be ready, which is in around 3 weeks' time, we are still in effect living out of our suitcases at the Dusit Thani serviced apartment.

It has been a busy couple of weeks (yes.. I might not be working yet but still found myself quite busy) and soon our backlog of things to write about will overflow! To quickly summarize where we have been over the past two weeks we have:

• Chosen and seen our future home, here's the view from the window:

The Arabian Sea & the Emirates Palace

• Been to a couple of car showrooms, but haven't quite settled on our set of wheels yet, though we already have something in mind ;)
• Been to more malls + souks than we can count with a hand now, which Abu Dhabi has a lot of - yet I'm still hankering to visit another one of them which we still have yet to go just because Pottery Barn is there haha
• Been shopping, already, at the American institution of cheap fashion Forever 21, no less, and getting to know the supermarkets and hypermarkets here which we will rely on for every.thing.
• Lounged twice at where our future home will be at the Pool Bar and the Level 62 Ray's Bar 
• Spent a lazy weekend afternoon consuming sugary drinks and desserts at charming Cafe Arabia; they run a neat honor system bookcrossing here, which allows users to borrow books with practically no due dates and they can return the same or another book of their choice.

We have been trying to be more active and healthy, as Abu Dhabi actually has a lot to offer in this department, having been Go-Karting at the Al Forsan sports complex and Kyle went on to join his company's basketball team in a game yesterday. Not to mention lots of gym sessions. Gotta get rid of all that pasta and pizzas we ate in Italy yo.

Top Gear for go-karting. By the way, I sucked, but it was still fun nonetheless.

And we have probably managed to undo it all by having:

• Succumbed to Chinese (already!) at Michelin-starred Hakkasan. Proof that it is possible to make delicious Chinese food without pork, the primary protein of Chinese cuisine.
• Succumbed to Italian food (also a little too soon perhaps) with the now-famous transparent white coffee at Azzuro Restaurant:

"White Coffee" here is a Lebanese drink, a splash of rosewater into boiling water, plus the drinker's sweet poison of choice. To the uninitiated, as we were, it did have the Emperor's New Clothes feel about it. The staff were lovely about it when we expressed our confusion, and offered to change, but we decided to forge ahead anyway.

• Been to two very fantastic Japanese restaurants, the lovely Zuma and Tori No Su
• ... and not to mention a not-so-proud moment when we submitted to some Popeye's - fast food takes up the bulk of the stalls of the food courts here.

Yes we visited some rather amazing restaurants and so no wonder we think that dining out is expensive here, so we cooked a fair bit of meals at the kitchenette in our current place, and, can we say it?..not a bad effort considering how poorly kitchens in such accommodation are usually kit out, at least we haven't burned down anything yet...

Weather is also absolutely scorching with midday temps more than 40 Celsius and ever climbing as we reach peak summer in the next two months. We use copious of SPF protection - sunscreen did after all, take up more than its fair share of space in our precious 80 kg luggage.

Do we miss home? We suppose homesickness hasn't really hit us yet because of the items from home we have lugged over, and we are still in touch with whatsapp, facebook and the like. We did miss out on all of the Dragon Boat Festival ba zhang though which was a real shame.. perhaps time to make an inspired dish out of the ingredients in the fridge today..