How will they get visas unless they are both working and sponsored by individual companies? There is no way for an unmarried friend of the opposite sex to be sponsored under one’s visa.
For rentals and jobs it is very common to ask religion, national origin (esp different provinces of India) etc.
I hope your friends do not get caught living together. They will do time in jail and be deported. It all depends on how they behave and who their neighbors are. Oh, and one is always near construction in Dubai.
The scariest thing to me is the “shared kitchen”. Huh?
I can see if someone wants a place to crash overnight-this is ideal. I can’t see living in it. In fact, I think they should rent it out on an as needed basis. The lack of shower is worrisome, as is the lack of storage space for any clothes at all.
But someone will rent it, I’m sure.
I don’t know much more about the specifics of their situation, I know that he was transferred to Dubai from Jakarta around 6 months ago and she went with him and all of the arrangements were taken care of by his company (natural gas exploration).
His girlfriend and my girlfriend are best friends, so I won’t get a clear enough picture of what’s really going on until I get to talk to him around X-mas, since if this is a sensitive matter I don’t want to do it via email or MySpace.
We have this shit in Australia, fer fuck’s sake. This is a country nearly the size of the lower 48 with a population roughly that of Texas. Now admittedly, a lot of the area is arid, but still we have sprawling US-style cities rather than crowded UK-style ones, yet we have some of the highest rents in the world.
Commercial space in the downtown area of Sydney is in the top five world cities for rent per square foot. Yes, little old Sydney! Consider cities like New York, Paris, Rome, London, etc… There are a lot of bigger, more fashionable places. So why is Sydney being thrust into this league? Somebody is laughing all the way to the bank, that’s all I know.
While visiting Manhattan last summer, I ended up at the apartment of a friend of a friend who lived in Soho. This was a 2-bedroom apartment with rather small bedrooms–maybe 8’ by 10’ each, and the whole thing was $3600 a month, I think. As luck would have it, this apartment also had high ceilings, and one of the bedrooms didn’t reach all the way up to the ceiling, leaving an 80-square-foot storage area above it, about 4 feet high, with a ladder up to it from the living room. FOAF was renting out that space, along with shared use of the kitchen and one of the bathrooms, for $800 a month.
We sat up there for part of the evening and it was the most surreal thing, especially with all the bedroom furniture crammed into it. Very Being John Malkovich. I imagine you’d bruise your head a few times while getting out of bed in the morning before you got used to it.