jebel-ali lake

Last night whilst I was watching some nasty reality show on TV, actually "the spa of embarrassing illness" I am ashamed to admit, and waiting for Stu to get back from his business trip, I suddenly noticed that I could no longer hear the TV over a strange roaring / dripping sound. My first thought was that the geyser had burst. After dashing around the downstairs of the villa for a few panicked moments I realised that the noise was coming from outside. I opened the front door a crack to be confronted by what can only be called bucketing rain! It didn't last long as per normal, but my goodness did it come down hard. I am not sure if it rained during the night as well, but it started up again this morning at around 7am, thunder and lightening and all as well.

[nasty deep puddles due to no drainage]

prohibited public behaviour

I have blogged about elements of this before, but today I received an email from a colleague, supposedly issued by the Dubai Authority, that contains an list of prohibited public behaviour for the Emirate. I am not sure how recent this is, I think it was probably originally written after the sex-on-the-beach Britons scandal, but its still relevant, quite interesting, and rather hectic, take a look..

it's a crime wave

We returned from our 10 day holiday on Monday (yes it was lovely thank you) to discover that we had been victims of crime! And this after we had been feeling a) very smug about the fact that there is little to no crime here in Dubai and b) rather relieved to have escaped Johannesburg relatively unscathed in the first place. We had left our garden gate unlocked whilst we were away so that our gardener could water our lawn, which was vital given that we spent a small fortune on replacing said lawn a few months ago, and it was going to be rather warm and dry whilst we were away (well what's new right?). Anyway, we got home to find that our sprinkler had vanished, along with the connection for the garden hose along with it.

dusty and hot

Stu had planned a small braai for friday. His rationale was twofold, firstly we wanted to invite a new couple, who had only been in Dubai for a few weeks, to give them a break from apartment living, and secondly we figured we would make the most of the last of the "cooler" spring weather. So of course as luck, or murphy probably, would have it Friday was particularly hot and humid. In fact when Stu went to the supermarket in the morning it was already about 35 degrees celsius. We were feeling rather depressed that it meant that summer was about to begin and that we had several long months of hot weather, followed by indescribable heat in July and August, to look forward to, at least if last year was anything to go by. Happily, according to the Gulf News website today, this weather is in fact unseasonal and not the start of summer.

Dubai: Though the temperature will shoot up this Saturday to 31 degrees Celsius, the pleasant weather will continue through March and the blistering heat of summer is still far away, according to weathermen.