Friday 9 January 2015

5 weeks into an expat move and we're still living in a hotel.

The house is ready to move into. Only 1 month after the contract was signed and has involved lots of phone calls, shouting, crying, walking away, almost throwing the towel in, being ignored, listening to the relocation people, land lady and agent pass the buck and even accuse me of time wasting yesterday. It is cleaned (not 'Suzanne' clean though) and now the battle begins to get the visa's, until they are ready we cannot get our air freight sent from South Africa or our container released from customs. Nor can we get wifi, phone line, tv or postal delivery sorted.
Visa application is as follows:
After 3 weeks in the UK, preceded by applying for documents, having them signed by a solicitor, sent off to the Foreign Office then having them attested at the UAE Embassy in London, they were submitted for application in Dubai on November 29th.

HR did not inform us that this was for pre approval for permission to apply for a work visa.
It was only on Christmas eve we were informed of that, assuming that it would be ready when we arrived and we could've applied for the residency, sent for the air freight and cleared customs and moved into the house NOW.
It will be another week before the work visa is in place then 3-8 days for the residency visa to be done. I will need to leave Dubai as my 30 day visa will have expired (watch out I may come back to the UK or SA, but probably just fly to Oman and back in a day), then we can apply for my visa and move into the house around the same time.

We are now in our 5th week of living in a hotel, our allowance only covers 30 days accommodation. Packing air freight was a waste of time and our container is in storage.

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