What's New....

We've been busy digitizing our music CD collection since we bought a 500 GB hard drive. It cost about $300 USD and is more space than we need at the moment. But over time I'm sure that we'll take advantage of the storage capacity. The first bit of news is that there will be a Formula I race here on February 3. It's not an official F1 event but is organized by the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority. However, the cars will be barreling down the Corniche so we'll have front row seats. So we'll try and take some video of it.

A friend lent us his dvds of the Canadian television sitcom called Corner Gas. It's pretty funny and the character of Hank seems like a younger Joe Pecsi. The latest new Canadian sitcom is the CBC produced Little Mosque on the Prairie. At the moment it's blocked in the UAE due to it's "controversial" content. The first episode is at Google Video. It's generated a lot of news in the U.S. as it's the first television comedy about Muslims.

A couple of weeks ago we bought a sofa bed for the spare room. I also put one of our carpets from the Caucuses in there so the room looks a bit more comfortable.

Darcy cooked a delicious picnic dinner that we had on living floor. This was before we moved our two carpets to our guest rooms. We turned out the lights and burned a bunch of candles so it really felt like being in a Bedouin tent in the Arabian desert. Below are some photos of the dinner.

I found an interesting article published in the New Statesman...a special report on the world's top ten dictators. I was a little surprised to find that Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum was on the list! You can read their analysis of the "Ceo of Dubai, Inc" on this page

Now that Darcy is working we decided to split doing chores. I now sweep and wash the floors and will also try and cook dinner sometimes. We bought our plane tickets last week. We depart on June 29 and return here August 12. We also booked three nights at Alpine Village in Jasper (our secluded honeymoon site). Unbelievably they only had the one room cabins left for that date. The site just began accepting reservations at the beginning of the month so it's good that we reserved now! That's all for now.....