Nightmare journey

Caz was actually allowed to finish an hour early tonight, so thought she would be home in good time. But alas, no. It took her two and a half hours instead of 40 mins. The problem being 30th Street (one of the main roads off the island) was closed off for the installation of a new bridge across by the National Exhibition Centre. This was well publicized that it was going to happen.....last Thursday. It never happened. But it did tonight with no warning. So every route off was chock-a-block. Some motorists apparently weren't keen to wait in the queues and made there own routes, including this guy Caz pictured deciding to drive up and over the pavement.

UAE Censorship

While at the mall yesterday, thought I'd buy a magazine to show the censorship you find over here. This example is taken from "More" magazine from the UK. Now, given that you wouldn't want your young teenage kids to be reading this publication, even in the UK, what you see below is a little pathetic and also somewhat confusing. As you will see below the offending parts of the page are painstakingly covered over with marker pen. Each magazine is scrutinized for "unacceptable" bits and then each by hand is drawn over. So here we go......


This is banned....





This is banned....

This is banned!!

....but apparently this must be ok?!!!!......

Dubai Mall

We were both actually off work yesterday, so we went to Dubai to see if we could find some bargains in the Dubai Shopping Festival. We decided to give the new Dubai Mall a try. It is a really nice Mall, very spacious and good selection of shops which they have tried to group together in some kind of order - which really helped me find all the gadget shops in one place much to Caroline's dismay! I did actually buy a gadget, I needed a new bluetooth car kit. The main complaint I have with most of the malls here is that the floors are too shiny! Nice that they are very clean, that's good, but if you are wearing normal shoes you are constantly slipping on the surface. It is actually easier to "skate" down the pathways than to walk! So, note to self; must wear trainers next time we go shopping.

The mall has an aquarium in it. It is really quite a huge tank with loads of fish in. You can pay to go into it ans there is a glass tunnel you can walk through. We, being skinflints, didn't and just looked from the outside - but you get a pretty good view anyway.

TGI Friday!

It's been a busy week and the weekend couldn't come soon enough. I have just about got used to Friday being the start of the weekend but occasionally I slip up and forget when I am planning. Caz was working again today so I had to amuse myself. Went to the Corniche beach. So here's a few pictures with comments.....

This is the ticket booth for the beach. As I blogged before this was installed because of the pervy Indians! I have to go on the "Persons" side if I am on my own.

The view down the beach. The tallest building left-most is the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority which basically invests the surplus oil profits and buys football clubs! The building going up next to it is called The Landmark and will dwarf the ADIA building. It will be 88 stories high. The blue one in the middle was the tallest building at one time. It's a Hilton apartment hotel. Caz and I stayed there for 3 weeks when we first arrived in Abu Dhabi.

There seemed to be some powerboat racing going on today.

















Covering up extends to the beach. I believe the water parks can look quite amusing!

It's a bit chilly

The weather in the last week has been decidedly nippy! Especially in the morning and evening it's been about 9 or 10 degrees and we had a very cloudy, rainy day yesterday. Through the rest of the year you'd hardly believe you could get any rain or feel cold, but I actually put a warm jumper on yesterday evening!

I've been a bit manic with work this week so not been blogging as much. Some days I go from one meeting to the next, no stopping for lunch and then when I get home I have to do all the follow ups. So it's not unusual (ooh err sounded like Tom Jones then!) to end up doing 12-14 hour days. Tonight I finished around 8.30pm. Still, managed to get a $2M bid out the door today, so fingers crossed on that one.

I tried to take a picture of a company sign from across the road in the city today, but it didn't come out, it just amused me - it was called "Gulf Erections Ltd".

So today Obama gets inaugurated. May have to put the TV on and have a look, although I shall be well asleep by the time it all kicks off. All in all I think it is a good thing and he will be a better bet than the gun-toting muppet and his piggy-lipstick-sidekick-bird alternative. So here's to some world change - goodness knows we need it!