Sabine, 11 January 2011
United Arab Emirates , Abu Dhabi 23°

Happy 2011!

I hope you all enjoyed the holidays and had a good start of 2011!

Holiday season was as busy as ever at Ferrari World Abu Dhabi. I worked on Christmas day and also closing shift on New Year’s Eve and opening shift on the first day of the New Year But I do not want to complain too much about it, since I also got some great news right before Christmas. Like I told you in my last entry, I have a lot of overtime accrued and my boss decided that it was time to give us Assistant Mangers some of that time back and I will be the first one to take some time off. I will be going home for 10 days from the 17th to the 27th Can’t wait until I can finally board that plane in a couple of days. I can really use a break right now doing absolutely nothing. My other two colleagues go away for a whole month. After I get back, Darryn goes back to South Africa in February and then George will be gone most of March. The only reason why I couldn’t go that long is that I’m in charge of the timekeeping system for our department, which basically means that I can never be gone at the end or the beginning of the month, because that’s the time when you have to complete all the documents that are required to ensure that all the colleagues get paid. Right now I’m the only person in Merchandise who knows how the system works, but by the time I go on my annual leave in April somebody else needs to “replace” me But I’m fine with those 10 days for now, after George gets back at the end of March it’s almost time for me to leave again and this time for 45 days

Since the beginning of the month we finally got an administrative Assistant (Arlene) for our department who might be able to take over a lot of the admin work I’m doing right now. But let’s wait and see how much she can really help me, since my Colleague Pradeep, who is our Planning Manager also desperately needs help to catch up with his work load. Arlene was already working for us, but as a Sales Associate in the store. We were understaffed from the beginning, but it gets actually worse from month to month, due to resignation, disappearing from Colleagues overnight, transfer to other departments etc. The disappearing from Colleagues overnight right after pay day, is not uncommon in the company. And actually I cannot blame them for absconding. The housing conditions and what the frontlines get paid are preposterous. I also did not come for the money but if I would have to live with 300 € a month and sharing a tiny room, who knows how long I would last

I added some pictures from Christmas Eve. Eva and I spent it at Wayne’s and Joan’s house. The other pictures are from our New Year BBQ. I was only there for maybe an hour, because the merchandise department had their monthly stock take. So we were busy counting every single piece for over 10 hours. Fun as always

Our neighbor also gave us an early Christmas present. He went to the States for three weeks and offered us his nice big car (Ford Explorer) until he got back three weeks later. Of course you cannot say no to such an attractive offer. It was really convenient to have a second car around, since Eva and I most of the time work different shift and have different off days. But unfortunately a few days ago it was time to say goodbye and now the one who is working late has to drop the one that is working early off again. We could rent another car, but we both don’t feel like spending half of our paycheck on another car. It worked before as well, so we should be fine.

That’s it for now, I will update you again after I’m back from my trip to Germany.

Hope you are all doing well. Take care!

Bye x Sabine