Stu and I had the most delicious meal last night at Andiamo!, which is at the Grand Hyatt. All I can say is BELLISIMO (and I mean beautiful, and not how they mean it here)!
Author: Cat Russell
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safe, and legal
This morning I received a rather frantic sounding text message from an old friend back home wanting to know if we were ok as there had been some news on the TV about Dubai, and did we still have our jobs? I would like to reassure you that we are indeed ok, and the news that has been reported on CNN and elsewhere about the US Consulate is, according the Gulf News, not true. It was a fake report about someone who was intending to do something against the consulate, at least according to Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim the Dubai Police Chief, quoted in the story.
Apparently the officials at the US consulate do not trust Dubai Police’s abilities or do not believe us which led them to close the consulate.
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a big storm, and remember the shopping!
Wow, I never thought I would see lightning in Dubai, but last night we had a humdinger of a storm complete with rolling thunder and flashes of lightning. The really cool pic here is from the UAE community blog, taken by Stained; I tried to take a picture with my phone but it focused on the window and not the rain outside and it wasn’t so good.
Don’t forget that the Dubai Shopping Festival begins today, and runs for a full month. So forget about the credit crunch for a moment and treat yourself to something nice why don’t you? Maybe I will even see you there!!
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“year of the ox”, and an orphan
It has been a rather uneventful start to the year, in fact this year feels pretty much like more of last year so far. Work has been super busy already, so I am already rather nervous that its going to be a busy one, but then at least I won’t be bored right? Our old year’s eve was a quiet affair as predicted, we had a lovely prawn braai and I had plenty of champers; our guests left around 2am so we did see the new year in, but almost missed it as we weren’t watching the time! I haven’t done any new year’s resolutions this year, mainly because Stu and I did some outcomes in August for our stay in Dubai, so we will just keep on with those. And as I never seem to keep resolutions there doesn’t seem much point in setting them in the first place.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR from Dubai
I know it is technically not New Year until tomorrow, at least not according to the Gregorian calendar which we use, but as we already had Islamic new year on the 28th December I thought it would be safe to say it anyway. We planned a low key-ish celebration at home with a couple of friends; in fact the prawns are marinating in the fridge as we speak and the chocolate mousse is half made. And it seems it’s just as well we didn’t spend money on tickets to any of the many new year’s eve (or “NYE” as they call it here) parties, as they have just all been cancelled today by His Highness Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai. I apologise for the long title, but this is how he is always referred to so I had better follow suit. The cancellation of all celebrations is in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza who are under attack from Israel. So I guess this means no fire-works on the Palm, or hooting on the streets. We will still have our braai, and some champers, but we will be doing it very quietly!
Yes, we have replaced the turf in the garden. Even though we don’t own the villa we decided to spend the money as we are going to be here for at least another 6 months, and possibly longer, and also we were growing very tired of the increasingly patchy grass. It seems, according to the gardener anyway, that we had Gulf grass before, and this, combined with a merciless assault by some vicious fire-ants, left us with a very sad excuse for a lawn indeed. We are now the proud owners of Sharjah grass, which hopefully will survive a little better. Unfortunately we had to poison the ants in the process, and whilst I am not proud of this I am very happy with the results so far.
I hope you all have a lovely celebration tonight whatever you might be doing. If you are going out, please travel safely. May 2009 (or 1430 AH if you prefer) be your best year EVER!