time to paper myself?

Traditionally the gift for reaching your first anniversary is paper. Well, that is for a wedding anniversary anyway. I wonder if the same thing applies for other kinds of anniversaries? I have been thinking about this all weekend, probably because I have now officially been in the UAE one year, as of the 30th July. I think I will have to buy myself a new notebook (the paper kind that is not a pc) to commemorate the day.

Last weekend we went to Frankies for the Feline Friends charity lunch, as I mentioned before. As always the food was excellent (OK, it was only our second visit), with the added bonus that 12,000 dirhams was raised for the cats, which doesn’t go a long way I believe, but is better than nothing. For the second time we won nothing on the raffle….drat, I am convinced it’s rigged :-). For starters we had a wild mushroom and puff pastry creation (pictured) which was delish, the main course I chose was a butternut risotto with smoked duck breast. Sadly in reality this meant only three slivers of duck breast, tasty but not enough for me. Dessert was a cute little carrot cake, complete with an icing carrot on top, accompanied by home-made ice-cream. The merlot, which was included in the price of the meal, flowed like water. Fantastic.


This weekend was a quiet one. We had dinner with friends on Thursday night at Bunkers at the Montgomerie, a mini impromptu celebration for my 1st anniversary. We bravely, OK foolishly, started off by sitting outside, but by the time we had finished our main courses we were all wilting severely. The boys had, by then, wrapped serviettes, soaked in cold water from the ice bucket, around their necks (very stylish sweetie dahling) not to mention also balancing cubes of ice on their heads, in an attempt to cool down. I think the problem here is that you end up spending so many hours inside air-conditioned malls or offices, which are in some cases only slightly warmer than freezing, that it does take a while for your core temperature to climb again, but once it does WATCH OUT! Certainly this time last year we wouldn’t have even been able to sit outside at all, so I guess it shows some kind of warped progress. Yesterday we happily watched the Springboks whip the Kiwis (hehe) again at another friend’s house. We also had the requisite braai (of course). And then the weekend was over, again. They really do go very fast here for some reason.

Today Stu and I started our 28 day Warp Speed fat loss program to get beach ready for our French holiday in September. I have to say the meals so far are nothing short of bizarre, time will tell if they are worth the sacrifice. Apart from no alcohol for 28 days the thing I will probably miss the most is my new favourite bread (pictured) that is topped with za’atar and cheese. Now za’atar is some kind of herbal mixture, the main ingredient is hyssop which is in the oregano family it seems. Whatever it is, it’s delicious.


Odd fact #10: the UAE has boosted its annual rainfall by 10% due to a process called “seeding clouds”, which involves releasing silver iodide pellets into water-laden clouds using specialised planes. The full story is here. This costs the UAE $1.5 million a year. This is interesting in light of the fact that the UAE conversely has one of the largest water footprints (per person), in the world (460 litres here vs 160 litres in Europe). Also no one seems sure if the silver iodine ends up being a problem in the environment in the long run. Seems one fix always leads to another problem..

Have a great week!