Widening Horizons : The Essential Debut

Yep! I know I'm way too late in joining the blogging party. But hey, as they say, "better late than later!" LOL

So welcome to my first ever blog post and hope you'd accompany me on my blogging journey to life...

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It has been almost three months when I decided to leave my almost exciting banker life in the Philippines to go and see a different world and chose the United Arab Emirates to be my new temporary home.

As a kid, my ultimate and uber simple dream is to work inside a tall building; yeah, so generic, I can be a lift operator or anything just to get into that amazing building.

So I no longer surprised myself (yep, I do that sometimes) when I finally packed my bags and decided that I want to see more skyscrapers with its larger than life and futuristic architectural designs in UAE.

I was able to snatch a good deal from Emirates Airlines which provided me one of the best airline service available with all the plethora of sumptuous food served throughout my 9-hour-travel and the ever friendly and accommodating, not to mention gorgeous stewardesses, the whole experience was nothing but superb.

It was my first international travel so everything from the first initial check- in , immigration, etc.,down to finally arriving and checking-out part ,was all new to me and luckily everything was a breeze (honestly, it was nerve wracking :D).

Upon stepping outside the airport grounds, I was literally welcomed warmly by the weather. Oh man!, it is definitely hot in here(temperature can get as high as 50 degrees celcius) which I can describe as something like the feeling of a person being cooked by witches in a kawa (big kettle) we usually see in horror movies, so it's a sweat party less the sticky-icky feeling.

On my first day, I was immediately introduced to the basics : taxi, RTA bus ( the double-decker ones) , state-of-the-art metro stations, Dubai mall , and of course the no. one on every tourist's bucket list, the Burj Khalifa- talk about culture shock overload!

I am staying in Sharjah (pro tip : accommodation is significantly cheaper here than in Dubai ) where you can experience the not-so-urbanized part of UAE with all the traditional old buildings, used furniture and car shops everywhere, and lots of open sandy spaces.

Initially, I was feeling so inferior-ish and out place like every one can tell that I'm the newbie in town so I was hesitant to go out and check the neighborhood, but eventually got used to the feeling and started having little walks around the place.

I am now on my second month and I can say that I'm getting the ropes of living in this foreign land , traveled to a different emirate (city) alone, used their local money to buy some stuffs at the grocery and the very popular "Brand for Less" shops, cross the street (rules and all; very strict especially jaywalking) and learn the basics like on addressing the cab drivers with "my friend" , "brother"( so many friends and brothers all of a sudden) , saying "shu hada" , "wallah" , "shukran" and more soon.

Check out my visual diary after the break.

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