seriously hot, really, seriously
We attended South Africa Day here in Dubai on Friday last week, the 1st of May, which was to celebrate Freedom Day in South Africa, which was on the 27th April. Last year the location of this was the Mina Seyahi Yacht Club which must have been lovely. In fact it was a very popular event last year, we even read about it in the local paper in Johannesburg at the time. The food and drink were also fully sponsored last year I believe which may account for the crowds, a great deal of whom, I have subsequently learned, were not even South African. But I digress.
[drumming at SA Day]
waffles and WTF?
Our weekend started off with a charity evening, namely the Feline Friends annual ball, which was held at the Crowne Plaza hotel in SZR* on Thursday. It had originally been planned for November last year, but due to some legal issues around animal charities, like they don’t exist here officially, it had to be postponed until the correct license was obtained. This was duly resolved this month, probably only after a large fee was paid no doubt, but one of the conditions of allowing the ball to go ahead was that a) it could not be advertised and b) no-one could be charged for it, any contribution had to be strictly a donation. Sadly it seems that the delays meant that the momentum was lost, and this, combined with not being able to advertise, meant that the attendance was rather dismal. The hall could have easily have seated 3 times the amount of people who showed up, in fact tables were set for at least double the number, and I found it heart-breaking to see all the empty places. I really hope it wasn’t a case of people just not pitching up on the night, but I think maybe there was some of this going on as well. Of course we managed to enjoy ourselves nevertheless, and were collected by our saferdriver bang on time.. what a great idea!
[the view of the Creek from the restaurant]
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!!
“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.
flat-pack fiasco
I honestly can’t believe that another weekend is ending. For some reason the fact that friday is a day off here doesn’t seem to compute, mostly it just feels like a day you have bunked off work and so it passes in a flash and before you know it, its Saturday and you finally feel like its weekend, but then Saturday evening you realise that you have now had your weekend and it’s work tomorrow. I have been here now just short of a month and it’s really flown by. And this weekend of course was no exception.
To begin with Friday was a BIG day – the day we had decided to let the cats out for the first time. Having collared and tagged them the night before we were all prepared for the event. If your cat gets lost here and doesn’t have a municipal tag it gets destroyed, however if it is tagged then you will (should?) get it back. Seems the microchip doesn’t really feature at all. Happily the pet relocation service included this registration. The cats were rather hesitant at first at the idea of all this space and the great outdoors, but eventually they all ventured outside and spent about an hour exploring the garden. William finally headed up the tree and then onto the wall. This was our cue to bring them in, we felt rather nervous that he was going to head over the wall.