Just a quick note to say that I won’t be updating this blog now that I have left Dubai. Rather than delete it I have parked it in a sub-directory, so please update your bookmarks. I will keep writing on the main URL so hopefully see you there.
p.s. if you have subscribed to the RSS feed for this blog (thank you) then you will need subscribe to the new feed if you wish to keep receiving updates, as future posts will be on a new subject I thought that called for a separate feed.
Thank you for reading my blog all these years!
Dubai exit – part one
Well dear readers I haven’t told you officially yet so here goes → we are leaving Dubai. Gulp. Yes. Stu and I have decided to return to our homeland, South Africa, and try our hand at our own venture. After 6 years in the sand we feel ready for a new challenge. We won’t be going back to Jozi (Johannesburg) but instead will make a new home somewhere along the Garden Route. A lovely part of the world indeed. We won’t get into the nitty gritty of why we had to make this call – suffice it to say that our circumstances changed on the employment front (as they can so quickly here) which forced us to evaluate if we wanted to spend a large chunk of our hard-earned savings renewing our lease at the end of June. What with the challenges of losing our sponsorship and potentially going it alone with our own business here we felt the prudent thing was to change direction.
a few firsts
So as I mentioned 2 weeks ago we celebrated UAE National Day here in Dubai on the 2nd of December. One of the things they do here on National Day is hold a Mass Wedding at St Mary’s Catholic Church. I had no idea this went on to be honest, I know they do mass weddings in China and other places, but that is about my only knowledge of them. So I was pretty excited to attend one when I was invited by a Filipino lady I have met here in Dubai.
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min dae* Dubai
We have had an interesting couple of days. We had so much rain overnight last Wednesday that the schools were closed early on Thursday due to the water standing everywhere, and the resulting traffic chaos and leaking roofs no doubt. I went down to Sharjah on Friday and the place was a mess, great big ponds of water standing on the highway – it took me over 2 hours to get home again as traffic was at a standstill, not helped by dumb drivers going too fast and changing lanes at the last second as they do here – not really the recommended way to drive on wet roads but there you go. We have a had a cool and overcast weekend which I am loving I must say although poor Stu had to get up at 1am this morning to head off again on another business trip, the last for the year Insha’Allah.
 makes parking tricky |
 A very wet highway… |
camp ka champ
This year I watched the TV show “American Idol” all the way through – from the amusing first rounds (complete with horrendous singing and blindness inducing outfits) to the somewhat disappointing finale (my favourite was out of the running so I wasn’t that interested by then). Despite the fact that the show has now had it’s TWELFTH season it is the first time I have persisted with watching it (no judgements please!) I think I mostly enjoyed Keith Urban’s presence as eye-candy, and the continual bitchiness between Maria Carey and Nicki Minaj. I can’t imagine what it must be like to go from nobody to a household name over a period of a few months. Scary, and exciting, I would imagine.
Camp Ka Champ 2013 kicks off