The start of our vacation....

It's Thursday night here and our vacation officially has started. Seems a bit surreal that we won't be working for six weeks. But that's one of the perks of living here. We've not packed anything yet.

The weight restrictions are quite limited for checked and carry on baggage so we won't be taking many personal things with us. Besides we still have many clothes in storage that we can use when we arrive in Edmonton. Much of what we'll be bringing will be gifts for people. So we'll have room to bring back things with us too.

Last week we drove back to Sharjah's Blue Souk and bought more carpets and gifts. We went with two friends who are leaving the country. We also went to an interesting historial themed mall called Ibn Battuta on the outskirts of Dubai. The mall is ostensibly the largest themed mall in the Middle East. But it didn't seem overly ostentatious as it had many educational exhibits.

I was impressed with the exhibits of historical figures including the 14th century Arabic explorer Ibn Battuta. I'd never heard of him despite being a History major in university. The explorer travelled far more than his contemporary Marco Polo. The Chinese section of the mall featured famed explorer Zheng He whom I'd also never heard of before. His fleet's ships dwarfed those of later European ships and were modern marvels. A replica (not to scale) of one of his ships instantly reminded me of the Santa Maria vessel at West Edmonton Mall. There were many other famous Oriental and Asian scientists whom I'd never heard of. Sadly this is due to a lack of exposure or interest in the West combined with a lack of Arabia promoting their heritage and history to the West. I hope that their works have been translated into English so that I can buy them for our library.

There was an interesting article this week in the Gulf News about the political and economic stability of the UAE vis-a-vis the Middle East. I suppose that I am biased since I'm living in the UAE but I agree with the author. The country does have its faults such as deplorable working and living conditions for tens of thousands of poor laborers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The humidity has been unusually low of late which has been refreshing. There's a building close to us that is about to be torn down. We're hoping the demolition will occur when we're gone! Below are photos of the PI dinner party from a couple of weeks ago and a recent photo of me wearing my new Pierre Cardin shirt. I'll be sure to wear it on St. Patrick's Day next year! So this may be our last posting for a while. But we'll bring our laptop so we may have time to post an entry or two with some photos. Au revoir...