House Hunting

If you want to buy gold in Dubai, you go to the gold souk. Here, all of the gold shops are helpfully grouped together in one place. If you want to buy a car you drive out to the car lots where plot after plot after plot is lined with rows of second hand cars. There is a Media City for every radio station, newspaper and magazine to nestle snugly together. There would be no point applying to open a furniture shop in the tropical fish district. It is all highly regulated, and quite useful. Even the malls are zoned so that like shops are near each other.

We needed to rent a 2-bedroom villa with a small garden. There was no stress of wondering where to live - we needed the 2-bedroom-villa-with-small-garden district, or The Springs, as it is known. The Springs is made up of 15 numbered plots. Each plot is bisected by streets numbered 1 - 8. On each street there are up to 100 or so identical 2-bedroomed villas, each with a small walled garden. There are man made lakes, grassy parks, lots of palm trees and a couple of swimming pools on each plot. It's a bit Stepford.

I phoned an agent on Wednesday and arranged to meet at a villa to have a look around. It didn't take long. Did I like the villa? No problem! We can show you another! We set off to look at an identical villa. After 3 days and 19 viewings if identical villas on identical streets in identical plots I put in an offer and we move in on Wednesday. I can't really remember which one we're moving in to, but I have the address written down.