Bills, Bills, Bills

Despite my recent regression to adolescent pastimes, I managed to do one adult thing over the weekend: pay the rent.

Wait, what? You don’t live in a country where you have to pay your rent in cash? How… civilized!

(I should be clear that not everyone here has to pay their rent in cash. But certain details of my living circumstances - which you can probably surmise if you are a regular reader of this blog and know how things work in the Middle East - make it more sensible for me to do so.)

Due to a persistent procedural hangover from the days when Dubai’s real estate market was hot! hot! hot! (currently it is not! not! not!) and landlords had renters up shit creek without a paddle, many places - including my current abode - still require you to pay your annual rent in two installments, i.e. half a year up front. This is down from the boom days when you had to shell out for the whole year in advance, but still necessitates a pretty nerve-wracking, palm-sweat-inducing, I-swear-I-didn’t-just-rob-a-bank-sized wad of cash.

So if you ever wondered what six months of rent looks like in the flesh…