All Stories from the Village

The Warrior brings Healthy Eating to your Door !

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Pompeii Warrior is a great new service for anyone trying to count their calories and manage their weight. Prepared and packaged just next door in Jumeirah Village Circle, you can expect truly fresh produce delivered right to your door.

When I heard about this new service, I decided that I had to check it out for you!

Just back from a visit to the Pompeii restaurant, I got a behind the scenes look at the food preparation. I also had the chance to chat with the restaurant manager to understand the service better.

It is straightforward and hassle-free. Simply log onto their website and select the monthly meal plan to suit your needs. You start with an easy-to-do calculation which will indicate your recommended daily calorie intake. Then you have only one choice to make: should they deliver meals for 5, 6 or 7 days out of the week !

The meal plan provides the number of calories you selected over breakfast, lunch, dinner, two snacks and even the occasional dessert. Simply select ‘order’ and leave all the meal planning to the Warrior. No more lists, shopping trips or counting calories. This is all done for you whether you require 1,200 calories per day or up to 3,000 for the really active among us.

Fresh cooked meals will be delivered to your home on a daily basis. The well-balanced, meal combinations were designed for Pompeii by a nutritionist from South Africa. “Fresh ingredients are key to locking in all the important vitamins and nutrients. Nothing is frozen in our monthly meal plan,” Katrina assured me. If you are health conscious but don’t have time to plan and shop for all the right ingredients or feel overwhelmed by calculating the amount of food you need to consume to maintain or lose weight, the Warrior is for you!

I was curious about the Body Building menu plan. This offer includes only high-protein lunch and dinner but, alas, no snacks and clearly no desserts! As the Body Building plan is aimed at trainers, I am told it is the perfect choice for someone looking for healthy meals and the option to use their own hi-energy shakes for example.  “We have selected and developed very yummy dishes that satisfy your cravings while keeping you in shape,” says Katrina. It’s worth mentioning that the Monthly Meal Plans can be adjusted for special dietary concerns. The price may vary but don’t hesitate to ask if there is a particular food on the plan that you can’t eat.

If you don’t want to subscribe to their monthly meal plan, you can also order ‘a la carte’ off their healthy menu for a one-off delivery. With healthy options, such as the beetroot and feta salad or the hammour fish fillet with vegetables, this seems like a great option when you just arrive home from a long trip and have nothing in the fridge.

This service could certainly be a life saver for the busy professional who doesn’t have the inclination or energy to cook after a long day at work. Why not give this a try one week when you have no time for shopping! And do tell your friends as their deliver all around new Dubai.

Visit their website

To order, call: 800POMPEII OR 04-3697746

And if you just want a pizza, they make some good ones at the Pompeii restaurant.

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New signs in JVT in the news!

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Pretty incredible, but yes, our new signage has made the local news.

A sample of the new house numbers in JVT.

A sample of the new house numbers in JVT.

Read today’s Gulf News article in which one of our neighbors is anonymously quoted as wondering why Nakheel has changed the villa numbers without informing us. That is a very good question indeed and has spurred me to email our Nakheel Community Officer for an explanation.

It is true that the recently affixed numbers reflect the original plot numbering system. New numbers were designated for our villas upon handover and it is unclear why a decision was taken to revert to the old numbering system.

I will certainly share the reasons when I hear more from Nakheel.

In the meantime, I suppose change keeps us on our toes 🙂

Have you seen the signs?

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With ‘Makani’ and the new street signs just announced this week, JVT residents fear no more! Being lost in JVT will soon be a thing of the past. No more waiting hours for your food delivery. Visiting friends should find you without circling hours around the neighborhood!

Have you seen these? The promise that it will be possible to navigate around JVT with ease…

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Coming soon to a villa near you!

Nakheel has even designed a new community map. It’s color-coded by district. With three shades of blue and two shades of green, it is not clear that the color system will help much, but at least every villa and townhouse will display the district number. You’ll note that each house now has an alpha-numeric code.

Overall, this represents a clear improvement. Looking forward to seeing if there will be any other directional or way finding signs in the future. Personally, I don’t care for the road-side advertising that recently sprung up along Tulip Street and wonder if the fees will at least be re-invested in community  development projects. Let’s ask Nakheel.

Jumeirah Village Triangle Color-Coded Map 2016

Buying or Selling online made EZ

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Are you looking to buy or sell something? Our neighbor Adham can certainly help through his new online venture EZ Heights.

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The company tagline is ‘Making it EZ for you to Browse, Click, Buy.’ As a social market place, EZ Heights is a classifieds website with a difference.  The site aims to make it easier to post your ads and communicate with potential buyers across all types of social media. The team is also keen to ensure the ads are authentic. All new advertisements are manually approved for quality control of the ads on the website. With over 200,000 listing on the site, this makes for a lot of work.

Among the useful features is the website ‘chat’ to help buyers and sellers communicate more efficiently without any phone calls. Another nifty add-on is the Whatsapp integration were you can share ads via Whatsapp as well as chat to buyers and sellers directly. As part of the EZ Heights community, you can review ads as well as update your status (looking for, need help with, etc).  See things you like from a regular poster? It is possible to ‘follow’ users so that you stay updated with their latest posts and products or services. “We integrated these social elements to make communication more efficient and more fun,” Adham explained. I think that EZ Heights should be a good alternative to posting about furniture, cars and villas for sale on the various JVT Facebook groups!

“I started this business because I saw a lack of quality classifieds websites in the UAE. The existing portals usually concentrate on quantity rather than quality,” says Adham. “We concentrate on both but mainly quality which is why we manually approve our ads.” He tells me that the actually the idea stems from his childhood when he would accompany his father to the Deira fish market. Seeing the exchange between people buying, selling and negotiating inspired him to “take the traditional market experience and modernize it online.”

Born and raised in Dubai, Adham moved to our community over this summer. “JVT is such a beautiful and quiet community, and since I started socializing a little with the people living here I found out that this is a nice and supportive community,” he remarks. “They even helped me find my lost cat (his name is cat) recently!” It is free to post an ad, but Adham will offer JVT residents with their own businesses up to 20% discount to purchase site banners. Just mention the JVT Community Blog when asking for this special privilege!

Get selling or buying by visiting: www.ezheights.com

Get all the kids in school from nursery through secondary without leaving JVT !

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The Sunmarke school recently held an Open Day at Milestone in JVT. I stopped by to get you the full story on one of two new schools set to open within the JVT neighborhood. Starting in September 2016, Sunmarke will provide quality primary and secondary education as well as a nursery school catering to the youngest infants. There is even an option to avail of the afternoon nursery program hours for non-working Moms that just need a bit of a break!

The school will accommodate up to 3,000 learners at total capacity. In the opening year, we can expect 1,000 pupils as the school plans to gradually expand the staff and classrooms. Secondary school students from their sister school, Regent International, will be moving in for this coming Fall semester. With a long-standing experience in this region, the parent company Fortes Education certainly can ensure that this facility will integrate well with the community and provide outstanding learning experiences.

For example, we all know that traffic woes are a common sight in front of most Dubai schools. I’ve been assured that Sunmarke has taken this on board in the planning process and will have a multi-storey car park to avoid the usual traffic tailbacks at drop off and pick up times.

With a 600 seat auditorium, 2 swimming pools, football pitch and a multi-purpose auditorium, the community can also expect to benefit from these superb facilities. I am told that many after-school activities will be scheduled with external organizers that will welcome children from the neighborhood as well. Hopefully, this can also provide a great space for community clubs to meet or sports groups to practice.

For those enrolling their children, it can be expected that your children will greatly benefit from the human values program and the multi-smart learning platform which incorporates the arts, music, drama, dance, self-development, logic, language and people skills with all the core subjects. Importantly for parents, the school is offering a significant Founder’s discount on the first three years for those enrolling in the opening year. Get more information on their website: http://www.sunmarkedubai.com

We look forward to a fruitful relationship between Sunmarke and the community for mutual enrichment.

Don’t miss Q&A session with JVT’s Sunmarke secondary school

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Sunmarke school is holding a “Meet n’ Greet” session at the Milestone Cafe in JVT on Wednesday 16th December 2015 from 9am – 11am.

Mr. Harvey Trump, Head of Secondary – Fortes Education will be available to answer all your queries.

Please RSVP your attendance to the school by filling out this short form:

https://www.cognitoforms.com/FortesHoldings/SunmarkeMeetNGreetAtMilestoneCafeJVT

Interview with Executive from Arcadia Prep School, coming soon to JVT

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As the JVT Blogger, I wanted to find out more about the new Arcadia Preparatory School set to open in September 2016. I’m sure that many parents of young children are very curious to know their plans. I caught up recently with Kephren Sherry, Head of Infants and part of the Executive team setting up the school. Here is what I learned.

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The school will be offering the English National Curriculum and caters for pupils from 3-11 years in age. In the first year, the school will open with Foundation Stage 1 through Year 4 building up to a number of four classes in each year. They will add Year 5 and 6 classes progressively and I noted on their website that Arcadia is planning a secondary school by September 2019 (subject to KHDA approval). It’s expected that this will be located in close proximity to the primary school.

Kephren tells me that the school will offer top class learning facilities including state of the art ICT facilities, purpose built rooms for specialism teachers and unique programmes such as English as an Additional Language classes. They are currently recruiting highly qualified staff in teaching roles and are promising a student classroom size of 25 learners with the overall school pupil/teacher ration being set for around 1:10. Purpose built staff accommodation is also planned near the school, which will mean that teachers can live within the community and be an active part of everyday life. “Our intention really is to create a community school in the heart of JVT,” Kephren says. “Teachers will also feel the benefits of having such a short distance to travel to school!”

Work in progress

Work in progress

When I asked how the school intends to manage the drop-off and pick-up traffic around the area, I learned that plans are being discussed to minimise the impact on neighbours and to keep the children safe from passing cars at these critical times.

Their website already contains a wealth of information about class timings, uniform requirements, admissions process and importantly fees! Visit: http://www.arcadia.sch.ae

The school will be planning a community event later this month. We’ll be sure to inform you when we learn the date and venue.

Getting ready for September opening!

Getting ready for September opening!