Another relaxing weekend

This past week I revised my work hours to be more flexible with helping students later in the day. I think that it will work and working later two days a week allows me to sleep in a bit too. I noticed that my energy levels were much higher during the day. I'm still able to work out at the gym on Sundays and Wednesdays. I'll try and book my massage and acupuncture appointments on Thursdays. But my periformis and psoas muscles have been causing me much grief lately. It may be from working out twice a week so I'll try exercising once a week to see if there is an improvement.

My library's blog went live last week and over 100 people viewed it in the first two days. That's promising and I've since made two more postings. I have ideas about stories and library events to post but hopefully students, staff and faculty will remember to read the blog.

The weather has dried out in the past week so fall is definitely here. But it's still a bit too humid to shut off the a/c and open the windows in our apartment.

We booked three nights in mid December at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Khasab, Oman. It's in the very scenic Musandam Peninsula which forms the bottle neck of the Arabian (Persian) Gulf. They had no vacancy the following weekend for Eid Al Hada. The price is high but it should be worth it. We need to decide soon when and where to go for our spring vacation. Darcy's work needs confirmation from staff very soon.

Today we visited Abu Dhabi's fifth annual ADIHEX (Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition). I enjoyed the human exhibits of men and women doing handicrafts. It seemed a bit strange to view them as living exhibitions but you don't really see them in the city doing this. The camel racing season gets underway this weekend too so we'll want to see one before it ends next spring.

I'll end this post with yet another article about the booming construction market in the GCC region (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman). Over $1 TRILLION (USD)has been invested in real estate construction! The UAE has 390 projects valued at about $430 billion USD.

Music From The Middle of Nowhere

BCC world service played a series called Music from the Middle of Nowhere a couple of weeks ago. It's hosted by k. d. lang, and it is much more than the "discussion of her musical influences" the online description suggests, delving into the history and music of the Canadian Prairies. I caught most of the first segment, which covered Alberta, on the way to the grocery store, and found it so fascinating I had to sit in the hot car in the parking lot until it was over. The BBC has finally posted more than a brief description of the series on its website; I hope you can listen to the episode and enjoy it as much as I did

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We also found an interesting site called Meebo, which allows you to aggregate all your chat/instant messenger accounts into one place. No more logging into multiple IM programs at once--this is all in one place AND it's webbased so you don't need to download yet more software! Michael and I have signed up and are trying it out.

We had our Eid holiday from Thursday to Monday, which was a relief. We are both feeling more than a little burned out right now. We didn't do much more than go on a picnic on the Corniche and hang out at home working our way through Michael's newly-completed collection of Director's Edition Star Trek movies. It was certainly nice to relax and not have to go anywhere, or even change out of our pajamas if we didn't feel like it!

Life continues to be challenging on the job front for both of us. I have been seconded from my secondment, if that is even possible, and am now answering phones and handling VIP event RSVPs for the Festival of Thinkers that starts next week. Feeling a little squished as I try to essentially do three jobs in the space of one. I keep on telling myself that it won't be much longer, but every time i do that something else comes up! Hopefully things will settle down relatively soon...

Eid al Fitr

The 30 days of Ramadan came to an end yesterday and the Eid al Fitr holiday has begun. Muslims celebrate the ocassion when the angel Gabriel revealed Allah's words to the prophet Mohammed where they were in turn written in the Koran. Early yesterday morning (5 am or so) we heard singing coming from the Mosque's loudspeakers. This signaled the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid. It was quite interesting to listen as we did not hear the joyful singing last year when we were in Sharjah.

Darcy and I have a five day break that began last Thursday. We've spent the first couple of days sleeping in and watching dvds. It's been a busy semester with a lot of uncounted overtime. So we needed time to decompress. We haves many dvds to watch including a ton of Star Treks. I've ordered the 49 disc 20th anniversary of The Next Generation tv series. I've also ordered the complete series of Deep Space Nine. The first season of the origional series has been re-issued (again) but this time it includes a completetly remastered version. But I'll wait until the price comes down a bit.

Darcy and I will venture outside today and do some grocery shopping at Abu Dhabi's newest mall (Al Wahda). We will start planning a trip to Musandam Peninsula. It's the northern tip of the Arabian Peninsula but it's Omani territory. It has many fiords like in northern Scandinavia and the area is drivable from Abu Dhabi.

As usual I'll mention some interesting articles from the Gulf News. There are more new building projects in our city. Construction on the the Louvre Abu Dhabi will officially get underway soon. Then there is the 2.7 billion USD commercial and residential project. Our city's old airport is getting a new facility too. Of course we can't forget Dubai. That emirate just announced a staggering project to build a 75 km canal. They're also helping to plan a 350 km cross country railway.

Finally there was an interesting article about 138 prominent Muslim scholars writing an open letter to heads of all Christian churches. I don't know if this made major headlines in the West.