Funky mosque

I saw this mosque as I was driving through Mohammed Bin Zayed City yesterday. Sorry about the quality, I took it with my BlackBerry. One day I will do an album just of mosques. I love the variety of architecture of mosques.

Another visit to the mosque!

Not with us this time!

This from The National today........

Night Photography

One night while we had the kids here, my eldest daughter wanted to take some night time photos. We both share an interest in photography. It was seeing some of her results with a digital SLR last year that prompted me to buy one. It was nice to spend a few hours with her doing something we both enjoy.

Here's a few of the results (I'll spare you the 98 pics I took!)

Abu Dhabi Night Shots

Mosque visit no. ???

As we have been half a dozen times before I thought on today’s visit I’d try and take a few different pictures…

Grand Mosque November 2009

Friday Prayers

The mosque nearest our apartment is is always heaving on a Friday. Worshippers spill out into the overflow area and onto the roads and surrounding shop doorways. Today seemed particularly busy. The whole road junction was packed with men praying.

New Mosque

I took this photo the other night on my way back from the F1 Fan Zone. It’s a new mosque that is soon to be opened. It’s of a modern design that has caused some stirrings amongst the traditionalists. There was an article about the subject recently in the paper together with some photos of some other new more radical mosque designs.

How should a mosque look? - The National Newspaper

Etisalat and the Mosque

The two subjects in the title aren't linked by the way - sounds a bit like an Enid Blyton story book. No, I called Etisalat on Monday evening to upgrade my broadband. We have fibre-to-the-home at our new apartment, so we can get 16mb broadband, so it has to be done, right? (question directed to males of course). Went through all the details and they said it should be activated in 48 hours and I can call back to check. Haven't bothered until today (Friday), but ran a speed test and seems no change so I called them. Surprise surprise, nothing has been done. No record of my conversation with them or any upgrade order. Fantastic. So went through the whole thing again and now I'm told it can take up to 4 days. I should expect a phone call. We'll see.........oh, and 16mb is going to cost Dh549, so that's like £100 a month! Fortunately my company will pay it. Seeing as I am their only employee in Abu Dhabi, it's cheaper than renting an office!



So, the mosque. We are now 2 tower blocks away from the nearest mosque. Great if you are Muslim, not so if not. Although, to be fair we have got used to it and even now sleep through the 4.15am prayer call! And you live in an Islamic state - just deal with it! On a Friday as well as the prayer calls - 6 in total (if you are lazy and can't get our of bed at 4.15 you can do the other 5!) - there is the Friday sermon piped out from the mosques. On Fridays, as this is the day 90% of the population are off work, the mosques are packed. The one next to us has an overflow area outside for praying and on Friday this too is packed. Therefore people get as near to the mosque as they can and pray there. So below is a picture showing them praying in a car park, under the shade of shop fronts and basically anywhere they can. You have to admire the commitment to their religion and the way it drives their whole way of life.

The mosque is behind the tower on the left, with it's outside area in the middle on the left.

New notebook

Updating this today on a new Toshiba notebook bought from Carrefour for AED1000 (c.180 quid). It's one of those dinky little things that you can carry with you. It's petty neat and I thought it would be handy for our travels. So if you are in Abu Dhabi and fancy one, get one while stocks last!



Had a friend of Caroline's over for the weekend (Alison), so was nice to have a visitor to the new place (actually nice to have a visitor at all!). We did some of the touristy stuff here and in Dubai, but made for quite a nice weekend.

Here's a few pics from Dubai Mall a link to some new Zayed Mosque photos...

Return Mosque Visit

Trip to Hatta

We have just had a lovely weekend in Hatta. We stayed at The Hatta Fort Hotel, which we can thoroughly recommend. The staff were really helpful and friendly, the room was lovely and the sightseeing we did was great.

It was interesting to see the scenery change as we left the outskirts of Dubai towards Oman. The sand became redder to start with and then there was more vegetation and trees more like you would expect in a savanna climate. Then we hit the hills and mountains.

We took a look at the Heritage Village on the early evening when we arrived. To be honest, once you have seen one, you have seen them all, but this was nice with the mountains surrounding Hatta. We were up at one of the battlements when the early evening prayer call started and was once of the most amazing things we had experienced here yet. To hear the mosque prayer callers (or Mu'adh-dhin) begin one after the other, while the calls echoed around the mountains was awesome!

We did some offroading into the mountains today, which I absolutely loved but which Caz may have loved more had she been driving and not me! The mountain road is actually over the Oman boarder, but at this point there is no boarder control. We paddled in one of the Wadis that had water flowing, which was nice and cooling.

All in all, a great trip and if we get chance we will go back and maybe drive further into Oman.

Here's a link to my photos and more comments....

Trip to Hatta