Welcome to May!

The month of May began with a really hot day so summer is just around the corner.  When we get into our car the temperature gauge reads in the high 40s celcius or about 100 farenheit.  My walks on the Corniche may be over until the fall.  Darcy and I start our summer vacation in exactly two months on July 2.  I've been enjoying my three day work weeks to use up excess vacation time. The construction noise around us seems to be getting worse plus Darcy has to deal with it at work. 
Meanwhile we're still investigating making a will.  It's more complicated with living overseas but there is a company in the city who acts as a go between with a major provider.  We're just getting clarification about fees.  What's more complicated is getting life insurance.  We're getting quotes from two different companies but we want to think this through carefully. 
We're going to have to bite the bullet and get our plane tickets for our Edmonton to Vancouver return trip.  The fares are awful and have actually gone up by about 200 CDN for WestJet!  So we'll pay just over 600 CDN for both of us which is the same as what we paid last year.  Luckily the airfare from Abu Dhabi to Edmonton is cheaper this year.
Work in somewhat uneventful for us.  Although I'd like to start making some online screen casting tutorials for some of our databases and library catalog.  Below is an assortment of regional stories.

UAE bars pork imports - the WHO has confirmed that the swine flu is spread by human to human contact and not from eating pork!

Conference centre soars with falcons

National anorexia levels astonishing - ironic considering that the UAE also has terribly high levels of obesity too. 

A rower's tearful tribute to Zayed

Labour day may become a permanent UAE holiday

Rights body reviews abuse video claim

Sheikh unveils his replica ark

Access to universities to be widened

US university to launch DIFC campus


Abu Dhabi room rates highest in world

Expats urged to embrace culture

How well do you know the emirates?

So, could you pass the emirates patriotic test?

One week to Go!

We'll be Canada in one week from today.  The temperature and humidity have started to climb so we're lucky that it was temperate for this long.  We moved into our apartment two years ago today - sure doesn't seem like it.  I just realized that this is my last full weekend of being in my thirties - yikes! Poor Darcy is struggling at work with doing original cataloging of Arabic material.  I'm trying to finish some projects before my last work day on the 23rd.

Below is the weekend wrap up of stories from our part of the world:

GCC Cruises into New Naval Age


Swirling Standstorms Blind Pride of Fleet

Small Emirate Shares Giant Plans

Abu Dhabi Grows

Pricey Oil Helps Abu Dhabi This is interesting but one sided video news story of our fair city.   A majority of the unskilled laborers are from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and heir living and working conditions are atrocious.

Temperature Shoots Up to 52 Degrees Celcius


Registering for New National UAE ID Cards

Etihad Boosts Emirate's Future with 41 billion dollar deal
that's a big gamble to take!

I am fed up with this congestion!

Dubai vows to eradicate lewd beach behavior

Face scan system launched at Abu Dhabi airport 
Another historic first for the UAE...


Ninety years ago the Arabs gave their opinion and were ignored

The Last Supper
We've not visited this restaurant yet despite it being not too far from us.

40 Arrested in Malls for Cross Dressing


Fast Rate of Construction and Increasing Vehicles Add to Heat in UAE

Date are More Important than Oil

Using Ancient Skills to Craft Modern Designs

North Braces for Labour Surge

a week of surprises

My workplace held its annual end of year dinner party for its employees. They had a multitude of prizes to give away and last year I won an espresso coffee maker. Guess what? They pulled my name again and I won a Sony Ericsson mobile phone/walkman! It's a beautiful phone and it's loaded with bells and whistles but I decided to give it to Darcy. Her phone was getting close to 3.5 years old and I liked my Motorola.
We agreed that if the Apple's iPhone ever goes on sale in the UAE then she can buy one and give me the Sony. Plus I'd like to get Apple's 32 GB iPod Touch. But the price has to come down as it's now more expensive than the new generation 3G iPhone. I'd also like it have bluetooth and a few other options so I'll wait for the next version t oome out.
My Arabic class at work wrapped up and it was fun. The class began with 25 people and finished with about 6. Naturally I didn't practice speaking, writing and reading. I'd like to take classes in the fall, if they're offered. But I know that work will be extremely busy. Speaking of work, I've got the first draft of my library's online video tour. It took a while to do and I'm now working on a video for the women's library.
The weather has been surprisingly less humid compared to past years. I actually went for a walk outside after dinner tonight! My glasses have only fogged up twice this spring. But the humidity peaks in early fall so the weather will eventually deteriorate. Below is the local news roundup... Architecture in Abu Dhabi
UAE ID card coming soon for expats
Abu Dhabi is a city to watch
New luxury Ras Al Khaimah Island planned
Proposed UAE VAT would be unpopular
SUV sales booming in the UAE
Abu Dhabi's Parking Woes
Killer Whales Spotted near Abu Dhabi
And lastly there's this article: Middle East Media Coverage criticized. I'm currently reading Fisk's book titled The Great War For Civilisation.
So that's all for now. We're going to bed now and enjoy the beginning of the weekend...Ila aliqa

Your Life Work: Librarian

Another weekend goes by too quickly....

It's Saturday night now and the weekend, as usual flew by. This past weekend was typical of sleeping in both days, reading the newspaper, browsing our favorite websites, watching some dvds from our numerous boxed sets, doing household chores and grocery shopping.

There are many things that we need to do and would like to do. We still have to plan our trip to Istanbul in late April. We're finalizing our plans for flying to Canada in late July for three weeks. Speaking of traveling, here is an article about the booming air traffic in the Middle East. I guess one reason for that is so that people can visit all the theme parks that are opening now and in the future.

I joined an online usergroup called the Emirates Natural History Group. I get alerts when there are free activities at the city's Cultural Foundation. The building is withing walking distance of our place. The sandstorm yesterday blew in sand from the beaches onto the Cornich road and also knocked over some signs. The temperatures have dropped but unfortunately we have to keep the windows closes. Otherwise sand will blow inside.

Emirate Palace in Abu Dhabi is hosting another vanity license plate auction and this story discusses it. Where else could an outrageous event like this happen - besides Dubai?! I came across a blog about events in Abu Dhabi. It's new and it's not clear who the author is but it looks promising. Many blogs and sites about the UAE usually focus on Dubai.

Our trip to Oman's Musandam Peninsula

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In mid December 2007 we stayed four days and three nights at the Golden Tulip Hotel just outside the town of Khasab, Oman. It was a very picturesque and secluded place to relax for a few days.

more construction news in our fair city

Ironically after mentioning not too long ago about Abu Dhabi's pace of construction not being in step with Duabi's, there appeared several stories about the capital gearing up for massive growth. The Gulf News had a story yesterday about Abu Dhabi's Vision 2030. There were more articles about the booming economy but for some reason they aren't available online. There's one article today about development in an area very close to where I work. I used to go biking around that area last year but all the construction has closed off roads for the public. So I bike inside now using the indoor bike trainer.

Here's a video that someone took of driving on Corniche road. At about the 1:10 minute mark in the video they drive past a large blue office building which is beside our apartment. I think I'm over my terrible chest cold from last week. One drawback to living here has been coping with battling many viruses. One reason may be because of so many people from all over Asia living in close quarters here. There may be more flu strains here too. I may also be more prone to chest colds from having allergies and mild asthma and breathing in the sandy air. Lucikly Darcy seems to have had a stronger constitution.

A big story in Canada is that the Loonie reached parity with the U.S. dollar for the first time in almost 31 years! The last interesting article that I saw was about the commercialization of Ramadan. It's sad but true and the phenomenon is following the pattern with the commodification of Christmas in the West.

Edmonton Grand Prix 2007

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This was fun to watch during my vacation in Edmonton.

Trip to Liwa Oasis

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A montage of clips and photos from our trip to the Liwa Oasis and Liwa Hotel in March 2007.

ParticipACTION

After almost one year of relative inactivity I'm finally back to having a somewhat regular work out schedule. A week ago a friend convinced me to use my work place's new gym. It opened in December but the university has not promoted it too much. I had known about the new building since December but procrastinated with walking to it after work. For some reason I had thought that it was much farther than it was. I went twice with a friend who had his car and today I walked over after work and caught the late bus home.

I'm done work at 3:30 and can be in the gym warming up within 15 minutes. My work out lasted just over one hour before I walked back to the library to catch the 5:30 bus home. It makes for a long day but I already feel better and have more energy after just three work outs. The place is practically deserted so there is no waiting to use machines. Unfortunately there is no pool but that may come in phase two of the expansion project.

Darcy and I were watching episodes from season three of the Canadian sitcom Corner Gas and one show featured a parody of the old 1980s ParticipACTION Do It tv ads. I hadn't heard the catchy theme music in about twenty years so naturally I had to check online for the ads. The University of Saskatchewan has a great archive of them.

Yesterday I got up at 7am and drove to Dubai to the country's only decent bike store to buy an indoor bike trainer. The mark up is about $50 USD more but it's worth it with not having to worry about having it shipped overseas. It's getting pretty warm outside now so my days of walking on the corniche are coming to an end. But now I can cycle inside in my exercise sanctuary room.

I paid for the last of our plane tickets for our summer vacation in Canada. It's not cheap flying domestically in Canada and the money that we had left over from our travel allowance with flying home from Abu Dhabi is used up. We leave in two months!

Adventures in the Arabian Desert

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We travelled to the second highest mountain in the UAE and then took a half day safari to the desert.

2007 Abu Dhabi Terry Fox Run

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Annual Terry Fox Run in Abu Dhabi on February 16, 2007. It's approximately 7 kilometres that follows part of the Corniche. This year had about 8,000 participants and a majority were not Canadian expats.

Friday Muslim Call To Prayer

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A twelve minute recording of the Friday Call To Prayer taken from our apartment bedroom window.

Catching Up

I see that Michael has not been posting on the blog...well...guess I will have to take on the burden of bringing everyone up to speed.

We spent the weekend of American Thanksgiving having a traditional turkey dinner with friends. Much good food was eaten, much wine was drunk, and much fun was had playing cards. I do have some incriminating video from the night in question, but I will be nice and not post it online for the world to see :)

Believe it or not, we have had MORE rain!!!! Last weekend it absolutely POURED all day Saturday. There have also been a few other scattered showers in the past week or 2. I think we have now had the equivalent of over a year's worth of rain...and all in about 10 days! Michael and I always seem to bring atypical weather with us wherever we go.

The rain put a bit of a damper on the National Day celebrations here, which took place from the 1st to the 3rd. National Day is the anniversary of the UAE becoming its own country independent from the British--previous to 1971 it was a protectorate. It's strange to think that the country is only about as old as I am, and that all this urban development has taken place in so short a time. Wind the clock back two decades and there was not much more than sand, small fishing villages, and beduin tribes living off dates and camel milk. It's amazing how much this area has accomplished in so little time.

Michael got a long weekend for National Day, which was nice. There were fireworks on Friday night...we could see them from our apartment building's front door, but sadly I forgot to bring my camera down with me when we went to investigate what "that loud banging noise" was. Both Friday night and Saturday night the Corniche road was packed to a standstill with people out celebrating. Cars full of people all hanging out the windows cheering; people standing up through the sunroofs and riding on the roofs and hoods of the vehicles; loud music playing, and lots of noise as people spun their tires or gunned their engines until they backfired. Some people were dressed up, and some people had decorated their cars with hearts in UAE colours, flags, and pictures of the late Sheik Zayed and his two oldest sons, the current ruler of the UAE and the crown prince and ruler of Dubai. There was dancing in the streets--even some women who uncovered their hair and tossed it around Khaleeji style!--and much fun. We captured some of the chaos with my camera, and posted a rough video of the night on our video site at darcyandmichael.blip.tv. Blip.tv does allow you to imbed your video on blogs or other sites now, but I haven't been able to get it to link up to this blog properly yet, so for now you will have to click off Inshallah to see it.

The rehearsals for the Christmas Pantomime continue, though I am starting to be afraid that we will NOT be ready for our opening on Wednesday! Michael has been recruited to work backstage, so he will be back there with me during the shows, which is nice even if it will impede our ability to get photos of video of the show in progress. I have all my costume bits finally, and with the waistcoat, ruffled shirt, four inch stilletto boots, and tricorn hat with feather I look more piratical than Lord Chamberlainish, but my costume is less embarassing than some so I am DEFINITELY not complaining. Just this week, we finally managed to find a song for me to sing...Woman in Love from the movie version of Guys and Dolls. Cutting it close much? whew! I am also a little worried about the fact that I have to spend much of the first act hopping in high heeled boots that don't seem to fit very well. BUT, the show goes up on the 13th, and three days later it will all be over, so I am trying not to worry about the incidentals too much.

Last night we attened a wine tasting hosted by one of the local liquor shops, which was fun. It was in the same hotel we were staying at when we first got here. They provided grazing food and desserts, which were quite lovely, and there were 10 tables of wines from different countries to be tasted and compared. Nice to be able to sample some expensive wines, chat with the experts, and compare all the different varieties. I know, what a decadent life we lead :)

Apart from that we are just trying to get ready for Christmas. We have finally mailed our cards, and we are putting up our tree this weekend. We do have a couple of parties to go to already, and after the play is over I will have to seriously start cookie baking and planning our Christmas dinner. Michael is being his usual UNHELPFUL self as far as Christmas wish lists goes...he always asks for boring things like socks or shirts or other things he "needs." I keep on trying to tell him that presents are not for things you NEED but things you would LIKE--fun rather than necessity--but he seems to remain unconvinced. Well, at least he can't ask for a cheque this year! Any money I gave him would be his already!

Enough for now...hopefully Michael will provide the update next time!

Celebrating Thanksgiving and a new addition to our family

Happy Thanksgiving to our friends and family in Canada! Darcy cooked a delicious dinner and we had nice Chilean wine. Big news is that I drove home our new car on Saturday. Darcy had a name picked out for it - Galahad. The car is really nice and it seems really strange to be driving a brand new vehicle! I have to pay the interest free loan back over four years. The price was about $28,000 USD which is pretty good. We took some photos of the car and we're in the process of making a video of our new addition to the family. Stay tuned...

Play and Video News

So, my play went up last week. I think things went really well, all things considered. There was only one night where I forgot any of my lines--the one night almost everyone I knew was there, of course!--and people who saw the shows seemed to enjoy them. I was lucky in that I think I managed to get into the best cast of all four plays. The women I performed with were all really nice and I'm glad I got a chance to know them! Our director gave us a parting gift of a bottle of champagne, so we are having a party in the next couple weeks to get together and drink it.

Michael took a couple of tiny video clips with his digital camera, which I've edited and put up on our new...video blog! Yes, we finally found a site to host all of the videos we end up making. If you'd like to see a bit of the play in action you can surf to http://darcyandmichael.blip.tv.

So next up is the Christmas Pantomime. I auditioned on the weekend, and I have managed to snag a role--Lord Dan, King's Chamberlain. Yes, you read that right, I am playing a man--and a womanizing, terror-of-the-maids-quarters man to boot! Apparently, along with the tradition of the cross dressing "dame" character, it is common for Pantos to have "Principal Boys", which are men's roles played by women. Not my typical casting to be sure, but I'm sure it will be a lot of fun!