sandCat in Dubai

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  • 4 shopping days…eeeek

    xmas camelSeason’s greetings from the UAE. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy and peaceful festive season, a wonderful holiday if you are taking one, and of course a prosperous new year. I am sure we are all hoping that this coming year will be better than the one just ending, certainly from a financial point of view.

    Whilst I am sure we won’t be having a white Christmas here, we may just have a wet and chilly one instead. I know that 18 degrees would not be considered cold anywhere else, but when the summer temperatures are often over 50, with high humidity, anything below 20 can feel a tad cool. We have had a few days of rain already, in fact on the 13th it rained most of the day, in places it even poured, and we had a month’s worth of rainfall in a single day in some places. The picture below I took whilst coming home, the off-ramp to our house was more like a river. It’s certainly nice staying-at-home weather (if your house is one of the one’s that doesn’t leak that is). Driving around in the rain is not fun, what with the poor drainage, and even worse wet-weather driving, you are sure to encounter.

    water ponds
    [ponds on the off-ramp]

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  • i in the sky

    “WOW, WOW, WOW!”, is all I can say!

    Stu and I took advantage of an amazing Eid BOGOF* offer from Seawings this past Sunday. And yes I do mean Sunday and not Friday. I was (still) not working, and he had a surprise day off due to Eid and Tecom being closed. So we called Seawings on Sunday morning (after trying all day Saturday with no answer but we won’t go there), and yes!, they had space for 2 on their 16h45 30 minute, or Pearl, flight. The 45 minute flight, which includes flying over the Creek, was just sliiiiightly out of our price-range (and not on special). But we were not unhappy as we still flew over and around many Dubai Landmarks, including the Marina, Burj al Arab, Burj tower, the Palm Jebel-Ali, the Palm Jumeirah and The World. Dubai is truly amazing from the air. Even though the sun was setting, and it was a little hazy, we had the best time. I have loaded a few photos here for you to see what I mean.

    [the Seawings Cessna Caravan]

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  • I heart DXB

    The great thing about having people visit you when you are living away from home, that is apart from just seeing them obviously, is getting to do all the touristy stuff you don’t bother with normally. Having to show people the sights of your new home really forces you to see stuff you would probably never get around to seeing, and doing things you haven’t yet gotten around to doing. This is exactly what happened to us this past weekend. Some of our friends’ family are visiting Dubai at the moment from the UK, and we were invited on (ahem gate-crashed) some of their outings. It’s been great actually.

    [the “Big Red” sand dune]


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  • 1st national UAE barista championship

    Organisers of the Specialty Coffee & Tea Convention 2009, the first international specialty coffee and tea event crafted for the Arab World, have announced that they have generated strong interest for the inaugural National UAE Barista Championship, which will be held on November 12, 2009, at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel Dubai.

    From ameninfo’s website

    UAE Baristas

    Preliminary rounds…are set on November 10 and 11…The top six will proceed to the highly anticipated final round on November 12, a major highlight of the Specialty Coffee and Tea Convention 2009.

    This event, like several things in the past, has not been very well advertised so I only learnt of it yesterday. Nevertheless it’s not too late to check it out if you are so inclined. I know Stu will be there 🙂
     
     

  • odds and sods

    There have been a few interesting and entertaining regional stories online and in the newspapers over the past few days, I thought I would share them with you today (probably because I have nothing else to tell you).

    Firstly the amusing story in the Telegraph about the Saudi woman who is seeking a divorce from her husband of 17 years after finding that he had stored her number under the nickname “Guantanamo” on his phone. One can only assume (like they do in the article) that he is likening his time in the detention centre to his experience of the marriage. Apparently she may settle for financial compensation instead.

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