So the jolly old guy with his white beard and red suit has been and gone for another year. Luckily for me my change of address memo must have reached the north pole in time as I received this very intriguing looking book from my boss, a lovely pair of sunglasses (see pic below) and our secret santa at lunch yesterday brought me some scrapbooking goodies. I am a very lucky girl indeed (this said without any sarcasm whatsoever). Honest.
It may not be Oxford Street, London or Times Square, NY, but here and there you will find festive touches around Dubai that will remind you that we are now days away from Christmas. Being from the Southern hemisphere the fact that it isn’t snowing hasn’t made it feel less festive, we are used to summer Christmases spent swimming and braai-ing so the blue and cloud-less sky hasn’t felt any different for us, although there is a slight chill in the air now dusk and dawn which is most unexpected. Yes, temperatures have been as low as 15 some mornings on our way to the gym, which doesn’t sound that bad until you remember that a few months back we were hitting highs of 50+. Yes, I have even decided to buy some slippers as my toes are cold. But I digress. Due to the sizeable number of Christian expats living here, estimated to be 316,000* people over 19 denominations out of a total population of 4.3m**, 3.7m of which are foreigners, stores are carrying a good range of yuletide rubbish, from your traditional (Christmas trees and stockings) to the absurd (blow-up snowmen), which should help with getting you into the xmas mood. Christmas day itself is not a holiday here, although my company does give us the day off, whilst Stu’s doesn’t.
I do apologise for the rather sporadic posts this month so far, but we have had a very busy fortnight indeed. We started our leave with a 4 night trip to London, leaving Dubai on the 27th November from the new Emirates terminal, terminal 3, at Dubai International. And I must say what a vast improvement over the other, older terminals. We were off to the UK for three very special and important reasons; first, my little brother’s wedding; second, my nephew’s Christening, and last but not least I was going to see my family again after some long months apart.
This is what happens here when it rains, big puddles everywhere as drainage non-existent. Nightmare for drivers but its so awesome to see storm clouds again.
I have returned from my short trip to Bahrain, safe and sound. Despite the fact that I was going on business and not pleasure, I really enjoyed the visit. Sadly one night is not long enough to get a true sense of a place but I liked it nonetheless. Bahrain, or to be very correct, the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island in the Persian Gulf, joined via a 25km bridge to Saudi Arabia in the west, and a planned fixed-link (which will be the longest in the world) will link it to Qatar in the south. It’s a a mere 55mins by air from Dubai, not counting all the unavoidable “hurry up and wait” time at the airport of course. I was warmly welcomed by my airport transfer guy, which was gracious of him considering that the flight had been delayed by an hour and he had been waiting for me a good while by the time I arrived. The first thing I noticed on leaving the airport was the weather, definitely cooler and more temperate than Dubai. Happily the trip to the hotel took all of 15 minutes, there is certainly less traffic in Bahrain, and nothing seems very far away. The chaps in the local office told me they even pop home at lunch time, it is that quiet and that close. The hotel I was booked into was on the beach once but as they have reclaimed some land in front of it now you get to look into a construction site. You can still see the sea in the distance but that part wasn’t great. We had a good meeting with our customer, well I think we did, and then we went to the mall for lunch. I stumbled across a local fast food spot called the Yum Yum Tree. Almost like a deli concept, large dishes of ready made meals on display and they serve you a portion of what is displayed. I didn’t know what was what so pointed at something that looked good and seemed popular with the locals. From the receipt I can now tell you that the dish is called goozi. Yes sounds weird but its very nice, rice with lamb, raw peppers and raisins. I had mine with a Greek salad. Very yummy.
