#FirstWorldProblems

Ok blogosphere, I'm going to go on a little rant about our apartment. I recognize that all of my complaints are first world complaints.  G and I generally enjoy living in Abu Dhabi - in terms of places to expatriate to, its relatively easy.  People speak English, they drive on the right side of the road, you can buy almost everything that you would in the USA.  From a cost perspective, since G resigned from his job and my company has a tax equalization policy, we break even.  We gain this priceless experience abroad and he is able to work on his degree. We're not really "making bank" like a lot of expats do.  There are a lot of little things that irritate us, most of them are tolerable - things like driving with the locals takes a lot more energy and patience, you can't weigh your own produce at the grocery store - no big deal.

Except our apartment.

Our apartment drives us bonkers.

Because our mobilization to Abu Dhabi was very quick and it was classified as a short-term assignment of less than 12 months, we didn't have a choice about where we were going to live.  The company chose a fully furnished, serviced apartment for us, negotiated and signed a one-year lease, and paid for it all upfront while we were in transit from Houston to Abu Dhabi.  I remember exchanging emails with my company relocation services about whether it would be a one bedroom or two bedroom apartment literally the morning we were supposed to depart for the airport. THANKFULLY we ended up in a two-bedroom.  It affords me another bedroom to go to when I'm having bouts of pregnancy-induced insomnia...which is often nowadays.

Don't get me wrong, it is a BEAUTIFUL apartment.  It has floor to ceiling windows, frameless glass showers with rainfall shower heads, sparkly black waterfall granite counter tops.  The furniture and artwork is all very tasteful and neutral and it looks like it came out of a magazine.

Our main living space - you can see part of our kitchen counter, the living room, G's office in the back corner, and our dining room.

I'll start in the kitchen since this is our biggest source of disappointment.  The kitchen has everything you would need in a kitchen, except there is very limited storage space, and no pantry. We purchased a utility shelf to serve as our pantry because we just didn't have anywhere to store food.  Our refrigerator/freezer doesn't have auto-defrost, and the freezer door doesn't close easily, so we have woken up to a freezer full of frost buildup more than once. The sinks are a tiny pair of round basins which means whenever we move the faucet from one basin to the other, water gets all over the counter top.  And the thing that G hates the most about our kitchen is the combination washer/dryer. Laundry takes forever because rather than moving wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, he has to both wash and dry them in the same machine.  He'll line dry as much as he can, but again the limited space in our apartment means there is limited clothesline for line drying.

Who designs a kitchen sink like this?!?

Since there is no built-in shelving or closet space anywhere in the apartment, we've resorted to using the window mullions as shelving.  The lack of storage space is really a frustration throughout the entire apartment. There is no coat closet, no linen closet, nowhere to store any "non-essential" items, so we are thankful that we only used half our shipping allowance coming here. We're constantly trying to maximize our space so that we can find homes for all the baby items that will be shipped to us next month!

We have two very large bathrooms with shiny white tile finishes.  We often lament that we wish the guest bathroom had a linen closet instead of a bathtub. The only thing we really use that dead space for is line drying clothes.  Both of the showers in the master and the guest room have these lovely frameless glass enclosures.  The doors to the glass enclosures are flush to the floor with no lip to hold water in, and no slope on the shower floor to help water move towards the drain, so water tends to spill out of the shower when we're done.  This would easily be solved with a bath mat, except that the bath mat gets pushed out of the way by the shower door because...you got it, it is flush to the floor!

Guest bathroom - we wish the tub were a linen closet

Shower doors that you can't open without pushing the bathmats out of the way = water everywhere

Finally, the bedrooms.  We love the big blackout curtains, and the view of the Marina from our bedroom. We do not love the size of the closets in the bedroom - they're  definitely too small for two people!  G is using the closet in the guest room, which is even smaller than my closet.  Management has also recently decided that the bed linens no longer include a flat sheet between the duvet and the fitted sheet on the bed.  It's over 100 degrees every day here, and we'd like to sleep covered by something other than the duvet!  Fortunately, the day-to-day housekeeping staff are great, so they sneak us an extra sheet on our bed.

My master bedroom closet.  The left door is actually shelves and drawers, so I only have the two right doors as "hanging" space.  This is about 25% of the closet space that G and I have back in Houston. :-(

Last complaint that G suggested was that the internet in the complex is bad.  Since internet is provided by the apartment management, and it's "corporate" internet, the cost to upgrade to a guaranteed higher speed was almost $300/month.  No, thank you, we will suffer.  Sorry to all the family who has put up with our crappy skype calls.

I've been telling myself for months that I shouldn't complain because it really is a beautiful space with stunning views (when they actually clean the windows, which is not very often).  Having day-to-day housekeeping is also super nice - we have fresh linens and towels 3 times per week. The staff remembered G's birthday, and brought him a delicious slice of chocolate cake. The big windows let in some really nice natural light.

Trick to getting the pregnant lady to stop complaining about the apartment...deliver chocolate cake!

It's a really, really nice apartment -- if you're staying for a few weeks or maybe a month. It's a bit awkward and non-functional for long-term living.  I would gladly give up some of the flash of fancy finishes for storage space and functionality.  With the the move to Dubai, we're super excited to be able to choose the space that we live in, which will undoubtedly have more storage solutions than our current situation.  We'll post more details on our new home hunt as it gets closer!!