ADIHEX Update

In my last post, I told the story of meeting one of the Saluki contest winners, who was tired and very sweet and came over to lean on me. Karima caught a picture of that moment, and gave me permission to post it here, so here it is:

Abu Dhabi Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition

Today we went to the Abu Dhabi Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition with our friends Rob and Karima. Not sure if we posted last year, but we went then too. The show combines heritage displays, camel and horse auctions, Saluki beauty contests, falcon sales, weaponry, and hunting and camping supplies. It takes up the entire exhibition hall, and only runs for one weekend.

Visiting the weaponry section can be disconcerting. Especially when, like this year, you have a seven-year-old child in the exhibit with you who wants to touch an try out everything. Guns, guns and more guns...all out on display and available for you to inspect and purchase. Funny, I have no qualms about archery or fencing as sports, but when it comes to shooting--even target shooting--I get very uneasy. There were video-arcade-style target ranges for people to try their luck at this year. Rob and his son Ocean tried it out, and didn't do too badly.

There were many more falcons on sale this year, and we got to watch some Emirati men doing some serious shopping. Don't know exactly how much a falcon would put you back, but they were paying in thousand-dirham bills! We also went back to the horse stables to see the horses that hadn't yet been auctioned off. The handlers were happy to show us around, and encouraged Ocean to try riding some of them (!), but we declined...

Below are some photos from the show, to give you a taste of what it was like:

Lots of serious dune-bashing vehicles on show. Here's my favorite--black with MAJOR flames:

A close up of one of the falcons on display. I would LOVE to learn falconry; I think working with and training them would be fascinating. We saw a booth from the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital, and found out they do educational tours. We're thinking of going some day for a visit:

One of the horses at the auction:

A Saluki, which is a breed of hound/hunting dog highly prized in the UAE. This one was wearing a ribbon saying he'd won best in show in the annual Saluki Beauty Contest that takes place at the exhibition. He was visibly tired after a long day and this was the best photo i could get. I kneeled down to say hello and he came right over to me a leaned on me trustingly...so sweet:

Finally, here's a cute picture of Rob and Karima's son Ocean dressed up as a desert warrior in traditional Emirati clothing. Posted with parental permission, of course! I believe they let him keep the belt and headscarf:

Our First Trip to Abu Dhabi's New Beach

Yesterday the weather was finally clement enough for us to venture out to Abu Dhabi's new public beach on the Corniche.  The opening of this beach has not been without controversy.  First it was free and open to all.  Then it was segregated into "bachelor" and "family" sections to prevent harassment.  Finally an entrance fee was instituted...with men being charged double if they were not in a group that contained women (a "family").  I'm sure some of these things can be attributed to the Michelle Palmer sex-on-the-beach-in-Dubai scandal, but authorities have also been quite open about the fact that a major motivation is to keep the labourers off the beach by making it unaffordable for them.  So now they are relegated to walking the corniche and staring over the wall until a guard comes and shoos them off. The UAE always seems to come up with some way of making even the simplest pleasures complicated.

All these reservations aside, the new beach is very nice and we had an excellent day. We packed a picnic lunch and were there from mid-afternoon to early evening. The weather is still quite hot, and the water is quite warm, but there was enough of a breeze to make you comfortable with the temperatures if you stayed in the shade. The Heritage Village is right across the water, so the calls to prayer from the mosque and the music from the Eid celebrations floated across the water off and on the whole time.

The beach is open until 10 at night, and it's beautiful after sunset. The paths are all lit up with ground lights, and the beach umbrellas and shaded benches (permanent structures on the sand) have built-in lights so you have enough light to have a picnic by. I would love to pack up and come for dinner one night. It's less than 10 minutes to drive there for us...and it's also right across the corniche from my work, so we are well situated for frequent visits!

Here are some cell phone pics of our day:

I did some henna for Eid a couple days prior...so I took a picture of it with the beach as background.

Me on the sand:

A shot of both of us.

Meditation pool

Lamp by our door

Arrival

Kiran peacocks!

Old henna/new henna

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".

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.....

Post holiday

Sorry it's taken so long for me to upload our Christmas photos and post them...they are on my flickr account now so you can take a look at what our Christmas was like by clicking here!

We are slowly getting back to normal after the holiday season. We ended up quite busy through the holidays with Christmas and New Year parties, so after all the eating and drinking and socializing it's time to get back to a more moderate routine! We are going to take our Christmas tree down this weekend. Late to have it up still, I know, but with few of the regular "holiday season" markers--weather, street decorations, and so forth--we feel like we just put it up!

I have spent a lot of the post-Christmas time taking care of pets and plants for people who are currently on vacation. Some better behaved than others! My friend Rachel's tomcat is a real hellion and is even learning how to open doors himself, so that one has been quite a "challenge". My Arabic conversation class has also started up again, so I am in the middle of learning how to say "hello, how are you" and count to 20. I have also started doing the exercises in the Henna Page's Index of henna pattern elements in an attempt to improve both my skills and my atttempts at creating original patterns. It would be nice to get proficient enough that I could do henna as a part time independent business someday.

I have also had a few developments on the job front. I met some people at the Higher Colleges of Technology Library this week, and actually ended up in an impromptu interview due to their critical need for new staff. The job is in Acquisitions, Cataloguing, and Technical Services. I really have little to no practical experience in those areas but it sounds like they are looking for a willingness to jump in and learn the job as much as prior experience, so I think my chances there are good if our previously planned vacations for this year don't get in the way (the contract is a temporary one for six months, so I'm not sure what the vacation rules are like). I also met the Dean at the Zayed University library this week, and while they don't have a specific opening right now, she encouraged me to send in a resume for their files in case of future vacancies. I would really ideally prefer something part time, but if I don't start working soon I will have a lot of difficulty getting back into the field, so I am starting to feel like in the short term at least I should take what I can get. Especially if, as in the case of the HCT job, it will provide me with a lot of new skills and experience I would be unlikely to acquire elsewhere!

more photos

Here I am at work helping a student. It was actually posed as I needed photos for library signs and brochures. I'm not used to wearing a tie! Here's a photo of two quirky lamps that we recently bought. Guess who bought which!

First wedding anniversary photos

Here are two photos of Darcy with her dozen roses from our first wedding anniversary and the the setting for our dinner at home on our first anniversary on August 6.