To Turkey and Back

It took us a lot longer than we had planned to make the online video of our trip to Turkey. You can also watch it on a bigger screen at our video blog (http://darcyandmichael.blip.tv). Images from the video doesn't do justice but hopefully it captures a bit of what we saw. We bought a few things with the more expensive items being a carpet (of course), drum, ceramic plates, and silk. We didn't know that apple tea was so popular in Turkey. More so than Turkish coffee, to Darcy's surprise. ;) Trip highlights for me were the Hagia Sophia and the Green Mosque. But we saw many wonderful places.

The big drawback during the trip was that poor Darcy got very sick with the flu the night we departed Abu Dhabi. She had no appetite and was very weak and tired for most of the trip. It was also frustrating for her as she wanted to do a lot of exploring but she didn't feel well. But we did see the important things that we had wanted. We do want to go back and see more. Ideally we'd like to take a trip every spring, summer and fall/winter.

The weather has heated up here daytime highs are approaching the mid 40s centigrade. I got into our car last weekend and took off the windshield visor and the car's temp inside read 51 celcius or about 130 farenheit. The humidity is still quite low - like being in Arizona. But it will get miserable here when the humidity comes. The windows will start crying as the high humidity causes condensation to stream down the windows outside and obscure your view. A small price to pay I guess for living in this part of the world.

We let our Gulf News newspaper subscription lapse a couple of months ago but Darcy signed up on a couple of its news feeds. One municipal story is about our fair city improving its infrastructure. Abu Dhabi will apparently open its newest public beach on Canada Day (July 1). But things that open here seldom mean that they are even partially operational. We've been tracking progress on this beach from our apartment bedroom window and there is a lot of work to be done! Work began in earnst last October with several bulldozers digging up the sand one night. But work soon slowed to a crawl. The photos in the article are showing the most developed beach areas. They show the flatest stretches of "beach" with several unwrapped palm trees. I don't see how it can pass health and safety regulations in seven weeks.

The housing prices continue to escalate in Abu Dhabi. It looks like we arrived here on the cusp of the escalation. A table in this article suggests that we should be paying upwards of 100,000 AED per year for our three bedroom place. The situation seems desperate for many people with lower incomes. There is a sad story about the living conditions for bachelors. Check out photo number 4 from these shots that we submitted by the public. Not much rain fell in Abu Dhabi but it was cloudy last week. We learned that this was the result of cloud seeding!

I'm still taking the Arabic language classes at work. The class has dwindled in size but it is interesting. I hope that I can retain some of what I've learned as the class ends in a month. Ma'Salamaa...

Air Show and other uplifting stories

Our weekend got off to a different but exciting start. On Thursday Darcy's employer (Higher Colleges of Technology) hosted an event for all its staff and family members. It was called Desert Evening and it took place in an HCT owned camp about 70 km west of Abu Dhabi. The day became very blustery and it was not fun being in the desert and experiencing shamal-like winds! (ed. by Darcy--he's wrong. It was fun. Wouldn't want to do it every day, but it was neat to experience.) There was a water truck that was spraying the sand in the camp courtyard. But it was neat to see the sand being blown off the tops of dunes. Plus it was a nice change to be out of the city. The music and food were good and there was a short fireworks show at the end. (ed. by Darcy--because it is not HCT if you don't have fireworks. Preferably indoors. You think I'm making this up, but I'm not.) People could have gone dune bashing or taken rides on ATVs up the dunes but that was too much excitement for us.

On Friday we walked across Corniche Road and watched the finale of the RedBull Airshow. It takes place in ten cities around the world. Watch the videos from Abu Dhabi at the bottom of their website. We were far away from the planes zipping around the pylons at speeds of over 200 mph. But we could see some of the incredible acrobatics!

Below are some interesting stories about goings on in our city:

This article says that it's getting more difficult to find taxis in Abu Dhabi. We agree and we live across the street from a bus/taxi depot.

The demographics of the UAE's workforce are unlike those of other countries in the world. This article discusses the problem.

Dubai Media Inc. just finished filming the Arab world's largest drama production. The title is Sera'a Ala Al Remal or Wars on Sand and we hope that it will have English subtitles.

Here's a story about another mammoth construction project that is long overdue in Abu Dhabi.

This article will likely promote much discussion about drinking among Muslims living in moderate GCC countries like the UAE.

A three day annual conference was recently held in Abu Dhabi's Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research. It was about political reform in GCC (Gulf Cooperative Commonwealth) countries. A variety of speakers had interesting comments about the speed in which the national governments are changing or not changing.

Wrapped in Fog

The above photo is a reader-submitted picture published in the Gulf News showing current UAE foggy conditions, which are expected to last a few more days at least. I could hardly see more than a block ahead of me on parts of my drive to work this morning, and when I got out of the car I could feel the fog like rain on my face! I think it's lovely, although I'm sure many people are now grumbling about the "cold".

Planning our vacations

We've just about settled our summer vacation in Canada. It's still hard to fathom that it costs $100 US dollars more round trip per person to fly 1000 km from Vancouver, BC to Edmonton than from Abu Dhabi to Istanbul. Air Canada and Westjet are ripping people off! Anyway we'll stay at the same hostel in downtown Vancouver as last year.

We're also planning our April trip to Istanbul and we may end up staying at the Empress Zoe Hotel. It's at the top end of the mid range hotels in the Lonely Planet book for Turkey. It's not cheap at nearly 140 Euros a night for the top level room but it looks very nice! We've got ten days to spend so we may travel to the Asian part and spend a few days there.

Yesterday I participated in the annual Terry Fox run. It was fun and my back held up. Actually I feel much better since seeing a chiropractor for the past month. The run this year was bigger than last year. It was for a great cause and in my view Terry Fox was one of the greatest Canadians who ever lived.

On the weekend we received in our newspaper a nifty magazine full of photos taken of Abu Dhabi from the air. Now I know why there was a helicopter that flew around for a few days in December. The online article shows some of the photos and our apartment building is one building away from the big blue one (tallest in the city) in many of the pictures. It's the headquarters for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which is apparently has the world's richest sovereign wealth fund.

Last bit of news is that apparently negotiations were, or still are, going about awarding contracts for the city's new souq. They're either digging a heck of a deep hole and/or they're taking their sweet time with the construction. It looks like nothing has happened with that massive site since we moved here.

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.

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.