Watch this video to help you get the most from this site…
The rest of this page covers a lot of what is on the video above…
FIVE ways to get started quickly…
1. NEW!: Click on the NEW! button on the black Navigation Bar above – to see a list of the pages I’ve added recently.
2. Click on the Sitemap button on the right side of the black Navigation Bar above to see all the articles in categories.
3. Click on a word/phrase in the ‘Tag Cloud’ on the right: this is the area below the Subscribe area and above the TRIUMPH box, with the words and phrases in different sizes. Bigger words means more articles on that subject. When you see a list of results, click on the article’s title to see the full article. Many articles have 2-10 photos in them.
4. Type a word/phrase into the Search this website box on the right end of the black Navigation Bar at the top of the screen.
5. Explore the other tabs on the Navigation Bar like Fun and Appreciation.
This site has 48 52 67 91 111 129 150 articles, 152 163 211 313 335 454 520 639 photos and 4 18 21 videos SO FAR.
You can view this site on your smartphone, such as an iPhone or Android phone, so the text and images are reformatted, which means you can read the articles easily.
Fill in your email details in the box on the right, and you’ll get a link to the ebook (containing all the articles and photos on this site) and 2 maps as well.
About my other sites (featured in the sidebar on the right)… triumphoverchallenges.com is my main site, where I help people handle the adversity in their lives. The AppleMacEnthusiast.com and iPadEnthusiast.com sites speak for themselves!
Introduction…
Hi, my name is Christopher Payne and I moved to Al Ain from the UK with my wife and 2 sons, now aged 12 and 9, in August 2009. We had no idea what to expect, as you can imagine! Over a number of weeks we found our feet, with the help of various people here who gave us some sound advice. I began work on this site in July 2010 to help others learn more about Al Ain, what it has to offer, the challenges you may have living here or just visiting, and more.
So we’re now approaching the end of our third year here. We’re loving it. We think we’re truly blessed to live in this town.
Here’s another, much shorter, video which introduces this site which I filmed a few months ago when there were fewer articles on this site. It lasts 2 minutes…
The information on this site is currently a ‘download’ of some of what I have learned. There may be mistakes, for which I apologise. Also, there are many gaps in my knowledge: we have boys so there is nothing on this site (yet!) about sports/hobbies that appeal to girls, such as horse riding, as our boys are into football and tennis. We haven’t tried every form of entertainment in Al Ain – if anything, we’ve only scratched the surface of what this town has to offer – so there is more to Al Ain than you’ll find here.
As we are a British family, living overseas for the first time, the information on this site is likely to be most helpful to those who are in a similar position to us.
If you have a set of interests, subjects, etc that aren’t mentioned on this site, please ask me any question you want and I’ll do my best to put the information you need on this site: I have friends here who I can go to if I don’t have an answer myself.
If you are moving to Al Ain soon, I hope this site helps in some small way to enable you to feel reassured that you’ll soon settle here quickly and gracefully, and soon be making some close friends who will help you feel at home.
Contacting me
Email me anytime at chris payne lifetools at mac dot com (remove all spaces), or call me (see my Triumph site for contact details).
Commenting on this site
Do please comment on any entries here… but it would be great if your post included your photo. All you need to do is go to gravatar.com, sign up there, and upload a photo of yourself, or an image (such as a rainbow). Then, when you post a comment here, or on most blogs on the web, your picture will be included too.
Offering information and photos
If you’d like to contribute any photos or information to go on this site, just drop me a line.
Happy surfing!
PS: Click on the box top right to get a free copy of my Al Ain Enthusiast ebook within 2 minutes: it contains all the articles on this site, plus a series of useful maps and extra photos. It’s about 250 pages in all, it’s in the popular pdf format, and, being an ebook, means that you can read all the content of this site – and more – offline at your leisure. The ebook looks great on an Apple iPad too if you have one of those!
Here is what one of the maps looks like: 26 places on the maps have been marked with an orange circle and a number in the middle…
…and then I have a number of Legends pages with a photo of each place and a brief name…
You can then refer to the ebook or web site for more information. Once you subscribe to email updates I can let you know when new editions are published.
