[custard apples]I am not going to start this post with an(other) apology for my lack of input in the last few days (ok weeks then). All I will say is that the highlight of my week this week was buying a new exotic fruit from the supermarket today, namely a custard apple, all the way from Latin America (or maybe Australia, who can say). Supposedly you let it ripen like an avocado, then cut it in half and spoon out the flesh. No idea what it will taste like, certainly I hope it will taste better than it looks, but I will be sure to let you know.
Unbelievably, in 5 sleeps time, I will have been in Dubai for a year, and have been blogging about it only slightly longer than that! Honestly I cannot believe it. In some ways I feel like I arrived just yesterday, in other ways it feels like I have been here 25 years. For me feeling settled has a lot to do with making new friends, and we have been extremely lucky to have cultivated some wonderful friendships with some amazing people here. Of course this doesn’t stop me missing my “older” friends back home, not to mention my family. Whilst I think that good friends aren’t necessarily always the people you have known the longest, I do occasionally notice that there is something to be said for knowing people a long time. You can’t go out with new friends and do the “remember when” conversations like you might with old school friends or people that you have a long history with. Maybe that’s not a bad thing either actually, sometimes that can be all you have left in common with certain people. Anyway I digress, the point is that thanks to some great people, I am feeling content here in Dubai. The other thing that certainly helps is knowing where you are going, literally, everyday. I am not getting lost any-more, the street and place names on signs on the highway are no longer baffling and terrifying. This is a major relief let me tell you.
This weekend was nice but also rather tiring, or maybe I am just getting old (any comments agreeing with that statement will be deleted, you have been warned). On Thursday evening we started with dinner at the Rivington Grill (Souk al Bahar). I decided on this restaurant purely because of it’s location, it has a good view of the new Dubai Fountain. And, as it seemed to get a good review overall on Timeout, it seemed like a safe choice. We were taking a visiting friend there with us as well as two of Stu’s American colleagues who were in town. As we walked into the Souk we could already see (and hear) the water display through the large window at the end of the passage. It looked amazing!
I saw this in the Xpress newspaper today and I could not resist sharing it.
[mammoth task indeed]
Tomorrow, at Global Village in Dubai, an attempt will be made to break a world record for feeding the most people from the world’s biggest bowl of biryani. The bowl will contain 2.5 tonnes of chicken biryani and will be enough for around 300,000 people. The bowl itself is made from pure stainless steel (5mm thick) and weighs more than 700kg.
