Getting ready to visit Fujarah

Darcy and I are going on a PI sponsored weekend getaway to Fujairah. We're getting a discount to stay one night at the Fujairah Rotana Hotel. We're driving our car and taking two people from work so it should be fun. We've not been there before. Work, as usual has been busy for both of us. I've finished teaching library classes for the semester. I taught 67 sessions to 928 male and female students - whew! I've also been working on a powerpoint presentation with a librarian in Al Ain. We'll be co-presenting at an Information Literacy conference in Dubai in two weeks. The weather continues to dry out and we've got three windows in our living room open right now. All our windows have been cleaned for the first time in about ten month. The sand and grime in the air quickly dirties windows here and you can't clean them yourself. Some interesting newspaper articles are about Abu Dhabi's soaring oil revenues. Another factoid is that the UAE apparently has one of, if not THE most, highest mobile/cell phone subscribers per capita in the world. There are 7.3 million subscribers out of an estimated population of 4.3 million. This is craziness! But another soaring statistics, albeit negative, is the severe housing shortage in Abu Dhabi.

catalogued!

tee hee....

Michael and I are going to the camel racetrack tomorrow with some friends. It will be the first time we've seen camel races, and we are really looking forward to it. Pictures to follow...

Travel plans

A few days ago I signed us up to go on a work sponsored weekend getaway to Fujarah on the Indian Ocean side of the UAE. The hotel price is heavily discounted so hopefully we'll make the cut.

We've seen the new taxis but we've yet to take one. Despite the subpar service that you get with taking the old gold and white taxis they are definitely part of the city's culture. It's an experience all visitors should have in Abu Dhabi.

Here are some staggering numbers about the amount of money being spent on airport construction projects here. Staying on the topic of flying, Ethihad Airways (UAE's national airline that's headquartered in Abu Dhabi) has grown quickly. But it's not as large as Dubai based Emirates Airways and its profits haven't skyrocketed as high as Sharjah, UAE based Air Arabia. Here's an article about being able to listen to our local newspaper articles online. Amazingly the new Ferrari theme park here will open in two years in time for the first Formula 1 race.

Friday night we went out for one of the few times this fall. We just haven't had the energy to do much beyond collapsing on the couch at home and surfing the web and watching dvds. Many of my co-workers have said that their workloads have been heavier this year compared to last year. So we're looking forward to our upcoming Oman trip and possibly Fujarah. We've also got to start planning our spring and summer trips soon...

Welcome to November!

Where the heck did October go? I guess I was busy teaching classes, revising my library's website, working out at the gym and sleeping on weekends. Darcy was only working three jobs and squeezing in her weekly yoga class. The weather continues to dry out and I took my first evening walk outside in six months. It's so nice to be outside! It's major news here when its overcast and rainy. It was refreshingly cloudy today because of the tropical depression that's heading towards southern Oman.

I just read a disturing article about the Canadian Government's lack of transparency in reporting arms exports. I guess I was naive to think that this could not happen to a nice country like Canada!

I just discovered that our Gulf News newspaper has a neat PDF version that includes what they call a Smart ePaper edition. You can read the paper in a PDF like format or listen to articles that have VOIP (voice over internet protocol). Simply choose an article in the box on the right and then click on the interactive radio button on the left. Pretty neat and it's free! So we'll let our newspaper subscription run out and then listen to the news online.