pea soup

Winter, it seems, is officially over. Last week my car told me it was 35°C which was rather depressing indeed. The side effect of the increase in heat is the corresponding increase in humidity. This leads, some mornings, to a rather thick fog that persists until about 9am. It is not the best time to be on the roads as not only is visibility virtually non-existent but people don't slow down either.

The view from the bedroom normally:

The same view this morning:

The only up-side is that it gives you a chance to have another cup of coffee before leaving the house whilst you wait for it to clear.  Because lets face it the stuff in the office pretending to be coffee is not worth the milk and sugar!

as if, and why?

There has been an email doing the rounds in the last few days containing pictures of a Mercedes that has a white gold body, which were apparently taken outside the Mall of the Emirates. These can be seen here.  Of course its completely over the top, but somehow that is something I have come to expect living here, and whilst it is rather extreme its probably not that unthinkable that someone does own such a vehicle here.  No,  my real issue is why would you bother?  Not in terms of the cost and effort, but in terms of the fact you could never really practically use that kind of vehicle here.

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]

sand and roses

Dubai is a dust-bowl today. Driving to work this morning was more hair-raising than normal; not only did I have to contend with the usual aggressive, impatient or just plain bad driving (by other people of course) but the wind was also trying to blow my car straight off the road at the same time. The cherry on the top today was all the sand thrown up by the gale also made visibility extremely bad, this is always a recipe for disaster especially when you have idiot truck drivers doing mad-dash u-turns across a busy road unexpectedly.  Anyway I managed to make it to the office in one piece. I did try to take a picture of the dusty conditions on my way in but for some reason my phone was on video mode and took a movie clip instead. It doesn't really give you a good idea of the situation so I won't bother to upload it here.

I have been battling to get rid of a head cold since last friday, and as a result have been at home sick almost as much as I have been at work this week. I wondered why Stu was so interested in whether I would be in the office today or not, but all was revealed about an hour ago when this lovely arrangement was delivered for me! An early Valentine's day present. It has really made me feel a whole lot better all of a sudden!

I hope your Valentine's day is equally as special!

record breaking biryani

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.

another sign of the times?

After a few warmer days earlier this week the weather has turned chilly again, chilly and windy in fact. This might be the reason that I have suddenly developed a nasty head cold and am feeling rather grim. It could also be that Stu has just had a cold and I didn't fight the germs off effectively. Either way the result is the same, and I stayed home today.

[taxis waiting for business]

However I did have to venture out this morning to the shopping centre up the road, primarily to visit the chemist but also for some groceries, and that is when I took the photo shown above. It seems that a combination of Dubai Taxi's poor customer service and generally fewer people in town, both expats and tourists, has left the taxi drivers with nowhere to go and nothing to do. So they have turned the parking lot into a rather haphazard and disorderly taxi rank. In fact whilst I was parking the car I watched one fellow reverse into another, complete chaos really.

In a way I feel almost sorry for the drivers, no passengers means no income, but on the other hand I feel they only have RTA, and themselves, to blame.