tennis anyone?

Guess where I will be tomorrow? No not lying in bed with a massive hangover, but in Abu Dhabi for some tennis! Nadal AND Federer - what a fab start to 2010. 

Source: Capitala World Tennis Championship website

a smashing season?

When I left the office last night an entire section of the parking lot was cordened off, even two sets of exit doors were blocked from inside the building (most annoying when one is trying to leave for the day). It seems they are changing some of the glass in some of the hotel windows, and after a first attempt which clearly went awry, they were making sure no one could park below the windows concerned. I took this picture on the morning of the 27th. Seems some people inadvertantly had a smashing Christmas indeed! I trust yours was good.

4 shopping days...eeeek

Season'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.

[ponds on the off-ramp]

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]