Good bye to May and hello to June

Well, another month has flown by and it was a somewhat uneventful month.  But with living here that's a good thing!  We got our visas renewed for another three years and it was a surprisingly quick and painless affair.  I even got reimbursed 100% for the processing fee. 
We will have been in Abu Dhabi for 3 years on June 2.  The time has gone by fairly quickly and we've now reached the minimum amount of time that we initially committed to staying here.  So we'll now take it one year at a time as to what to do next.   We leave for Edmonton in 1 month!

Temperatures soar past 50 celcius  

Villas show their (not so old) age

Search starts for the UAE's first female mufti

Majlis is a key feature of civilization in the UAE Al Hosn: A Pocket of Peace - Darcy's former supervisor is quoted in this article. We live on the northern edge of Al Hosn and we love it too. Although the construction is getting bad.

thinking about more vacations

Darcy and I had a wonderful time at the new hotel on Sir Bani Yas Island for her birthday two weeks ago.  It will rank as one of our special places along with Jasper and the Everglades.  The weather could have been better but it was interesting to experience tremendous lightning storms.  It rained a lot but apparently not as much as in the northern emirates.  We still managed to do four outdoor activities: archery; wadi walk; game drive; kayaking.  The hotel opened only six months ago so they are still hiring staff and developing the island's infrastructure.  The conservation efforts are impressive since the island is really just a big area of salt and minerals.  A majority of the plants need watering from miles and miles of connecting hoses.  There are many gazelles and other animals that have been brought from Africa (ostrich, cheeta, peacock, oryx). 

Other news is that the Formula One race to be held here on November 1 has been selling tickets briskly.  They went on sale a week ago.  Construction noise in our neighborhood and Darcy's work is bad.  We hosted a baby shower for a friend on Friday and Darcy did a great job.  There was a lot to eat!  Finally, I'm in an unusual dilemma of having to use up 45 days day of vacation by the end of the year or risk losing all of it.  That's excluding time off that I've booked for our summer vacation and 15 days that I can carry over into 2010.  Guess I've been working too hard and not taking enough time off!  Darcy doesn't have as much time off and I don't want to have to take vacations by myself.  Hmmm.....maybe I can work four day work weeks the rest of the year!

Can Abu Dhabi be a pedestrian city?
 
City retains essence of centuries-old culture
 
Women-only bus service for Dubai
 
Expats gloomy on property value
 
Identity concerns over marriage rate
 
Jewellery sale evokes romance of Umm Kulthum
 
When pavement turns to jungle
 
Abu Dhabi motorists face paid parking 

Our 200th blog post

Welcome to our 200th blog entry!  I don't know if many people have been following our blog since we started it almost five years ago but we've had some exciting times.  Darcy posted our first story way back on June 4, 2004 by announcing our engagement.   I wonder what the next 200 blog posts will be like.  Hopefully this global repression won't be around but the deepening crisis is worrisome.  It's affecting the UAE but we are fortunate to still have our jobs.  Below is the usual assortment of newspaper articles that highlight some of the things that have happened here recently.

Kurri on lookout for fresh talent  One of my all time favorite Oilers players!

The treasure trove of the QE2 I've seen the Queen Mary and it would be neat to see the QE2 if the refurbishment is done correctly.

 Frustrated in Abu Dhabi, renters flock into Dubai - the situation was reversed only three years ago!

Sandstorm engulfs Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - the storm had weakened considerably when it hi Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

How the super-wealthy stay afloat in stormy weather

Red tide threatens sport-diving clubs

Police chief says YouTube spreads hatred, but regulator will not block it

Robots no hindrance to camel racing’s appeal

Death toll confirms the risk of walking

1,000 new hotel rooms for Abu Dhabi

'Second downtown' closer to reality

Capital begins to take shape

Marching forth to a long weekend

It's only been a little over two months since our last long winter break but it has seemed longer than that. The birthday of Islam's Prophet Mohammed is on Monday but Sunday has been declared a holiday for most people to make it a long weekend. We're going to go back to the public beach on the Corniche. It's been about four months since we were last there! I guess the weather was too cool. I'm also taking this Monday off as I've stockpiled a lot of time or leave as they call it here.

The excitement over the iPhone finally being sold in the UAE with a warranty (but still unlocked) quickly abated. Etisalat's outrageous pricing schemes and bungled customer service will likely result in few being sold. Many people will probably continue to buy unlocked phone and simply use pre-paid cards. Poor Darcy's hopes were dashed as she really wanted an iPhone. Maybe she'll like thethird generation iPod Touch. You can currently download apps to make calls in WiFi zones on the device.

One of the podcasts that I listen to on my iPod Touch is about business. The story about What a difference a year makes is from this podcast. Anyway a new term that I heard is called Repression. It's supposed to mean an economic downturn that's worse than a recession but not as bad as The Great Depression. I think that it's a pretty accurate description of what's happened world wide in the last six months. Maybe the media and politicians should start using this word rather than the innocuous phrase economic downturn. Perhaps my reading of the book The Long Emergency has impacted my take on current world events too.

The last bit of news is that we've booked our flights to Canada for our four week summer vacation. The overseas airfare prices have dropped from last year by a few thousand dirhams. Unfortunately flying domestic in Canada remains unchanged from last year. We've booked three nights to stay at our favorite place in Jasper along with three nights on the Pacific Ocean side of Vancouver Island.

Capital’s parks draw the crowd

Dust off the United Arab Emirates

Etisalat puts conditions on iPhone sales

US clears AMD and Mubadala capital deal

New car speeds to lofty launch

Prophet’s birthday a time for reflection

Relics prove snakes had ancient charms

The difference a year makes This story comes from an NPR affiliate but it's still interesting about the change in Dubai

Emaar may cancel projects the repression deepens here....

Capital’s roadside recycling bins will light up the city

Why Arabic must be brought to book

Shakespeare studied in Arabic

Translating Mozart’s musical moods

It’s colourful, tasty, tempting – and mostly unhealthy - the UAE, like North America, has a mall culture that's packed with fast food joints.

Houbara conservation plan takes flight

Developers back affordable housing - this is long overdue!

Agency blames two sectors for majority of air pollution

City motorists drive towards access fee

Dubai on the rise

enjoying the holidays

Christmas Day got off to a slow start as Darcy's workplace did not allow their staff to go home until 2 pm.  So I spent the day at home waiting for her to come home.  But I had fun tracking Santa Claus's night journey online.  We had a delicious turkey dinner that did not take nearly as long to cook as last year.  Darcy and a friend baked cookies earlier in the week and we've pacing ourselves with eating them.

We got more books and dvds for Christmas which was great. I'm making progress with reading books that I've received as gifts over the last few years.  But we've yet to make much of a dent with our watching tv shows and movies from our huge dvd collection.  We've had a few foggy mornings over the Christmas break too which was a bit unusual for this time of year. 

Today (Dec. 28 is Islamic New Year) is our last day off before heading back to work.  It will be a short three day work week as Thursday is New Year's Day.  After that it will be sparse for holidays until the summer.  It will feel like working in North America!  I guess we have become accustomed to working few days with living here.  But we have carried over a lot of vacation days from last year so we we'd like to take a few short trips in the spring.  Below is an assortment of interesting newspaper articles.



Firms race to restore service

Internet cut a ‘rare’ occurrence

Abu Dhabi airport gets busier

Traffic chaos as major road closed - luckily we live on the other side of the Abu Dhabi!

Wealth fund may be Madoff victim - we live just to the left side of that big blue building in the photo

 ‘Living on a boat makes sense’

The good life at risk - this is disturbing

 UAE Folk Tales/ Narratives/ Legends

No sleigh bells, plenty of cheer

Jebel Ali's secret cavern is lost forever

Plans afoot to make Abu Dhabi souq permanent

Enjoying our long break..

It's been almost a week since our 12 day vacation began.  This year the UAE's National Day and Muslim EID break come almost right after each other.  So many people get an extra long break this year.  The fireworks were okay but they did not come close to rivaling Dubai's.  The media/gov't (they essentially are one and the same here) reported that Abu Dhabi's fireworks would be the biggest ever. 

We've put up our Christmas tree and Darcy baked a wonderful gingerbread cake last night.  We'll try and do some Christmas baking this week.  The weather has FINALLY cooled off enough where we can open our windows for hours.  There have been thunder and lightning storms too - how exciting!  It's nice to see clouds and rain for a change.  The northern emirates even had hail.

Last Monday Darcy and I registered for our national ID cards at a place reserved for ADNOC employees.  My workplace is run by ADNOC so I was lucky enough to use their facility rather than going to the few horribly disorganized EIDA (Emirates ID Authority) offices.  Hopefully we'll get our cards in the mail before the end of December and put that messy chapter behind us.

I've been busily pimping out (using Darcy's words) my iPod Touch.  There must be hundreds or even thousands of applications that you can easily download.  I've only paid for one app while the rest are free.  Some are Facebook, New York Times, Maclean's and Instant Messaging that syncs with Yahoo and Google.  I've also been trying some free games like Chess, Connect Four along with some arcade style ones.  Some really neat games are Nintendo like WII ones like iBowl and iGolf.  The graphics are improving and the technology, in my view, puts traditional hand held games like the PSP to shame. 

Abu Dhabi unveils interactive website for residents and businesses - ummm.....so what's the website's URL?  Current gov't website doesn't have the content that is mentioned in this article.

Shaikh Khalifa's full speech on National Day

Thousands yet to register for ID cards

Roads to receive new attention

Low paid applicants denied driving licences

Telephone is a ringer for royalty - my first observation was that it looked like mold growing on the phone

Global crisis forces Dubailand review - the global recession has hit the UAE!

Tourism growth to slow to 5%

Last pearl of history in danger

Socked in by dust and sand from Saudi Arabia

It's the end of another hectic work week.  Darcy has been unwell for most of the week by a stomach bug.  I've not been 100% either but hopefully she will be well enough to relax for two nights at the Bab Al Shams Desert Resort Hotel this weekend.  We leave on Friday and the dust and sand storms are supposed to subside by then.  I've been able to work slightly shorter hours during Ramadan and Darcy has been working six hour days.  She'll get one week off for Eid while my work hasn't posted its schedule yet.  Hopefully we'll get time off from work to take a two week trip to Morocco during the first two weeks in December!

Below are stories from what's been going on in our neck of the woods.....

Police to enforce key-cutting permits Just what we need - more bureaucracy!  I've gone to the store that's mentioned in this article.  There is a tiny key cutting store in a run down walk apartment that is across our street.  I wonder how this law will affect them.

New logo for 2030 plan

Gulf real estate a stable investment unless crisis hits, says official - hmmm....there's no real estate market bubble in the GCC?

Isolated students enjoy free flights

Ramadan violators penalised Dh1,000 - I'm tired of tourists complaining about not knowing what the basic laws are here.  Reading a Lonely Planet book will explain the important dos and donts when visiting or living in the UAE.  A no brainer is don't eat, drink or smoke in public during the day during Ramadan whether you're Muslim or not!

Love of homeland grew overseas
More tremors felt in Emirates

Keeping it oud school

FYI ...

It NEVER Goes above 50 degrees in Abu Dhabi

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

What happened to June?

I don't know why time seems to pass so quickly here. Work is hectic and both of us seem like either circus clowns juggling several ongoing projects or fire fighters trying to put out blazes at work. Then the weekends come and we collapse in a heap on the couch and catch up on our various RSS feeds, blogs and emails. Then there are the usual weekend chores and errands and then it's back to work on Sunday. I also managed to watch some George Carlin clips on You Tube this weekend.
The city feels a little emptier with many Western expats having departed for summer vacation. Darcy and I will have to wait another three weeks and change before we fly off to the cool confines of Western Canada.
The outside humidity continues to rise and the last weekend our apartment windows were crying. The cold a/c inside and the hot, humid weather outside cause the glass outside to form heavy condensation. We could hardly see out so we curled up on the couch and watched movies. No point in venturing out to face the harsh elements.
Below is the usual weekend wrap-up of exciting news from our area: I knew that this was going to happen and I doubt that the entire 2 km stretch of beach will be fully operational either. That's a common occurrence here. Delay hits opening of Corniche beach. But the beach sounds nice and it's about a 20 minute walk for us.
UAE sheikh in belt beating case. This story was not reported in any local newspapers here.
'Jewish settler attack' on film.
UAE's eco footprint highest in the world.
Arabic newspapers lash out at US, UK terror alerts.
US luring more students from UAE.
Afghan men make a name in the UAE as expert bakers. There's an old four story walk up building across the street from us. It has a bakery that looks just like the one in this story. We've always wanted to take a photo but we've been too reluctant to ask.
New buses on streets of Abu Dhabi
First Abu Dhabi F1 grand prix in autumn 2009Naturally this will have some negative spinoffs like hotels jacking their prices for the race.
Road signs to assist new drivers in capital
Where there’s a will...
It's late here now so we're off to bed. I'm getting my first medical check up in over two years Monday morning so hopefully everything will go well.

hazy but not lazy days

Summer is almost upon us and yet it doesn't quite feel like it. The skies have been very hazy for over one week and the humidity has been very low. But that's resulted in a lot of dust and sand in the air. So I've been battling a cold for ten days but I should be able to resume exercising on Sunday. Luckily Darcy's strong immune system has kept her from getting sick like me.
Many faculty at my work have left town for summer vacation so the library will be a bit quieter. Most of our friends have left town too. But I still have a lot of projects to work on including creating a Facebook profile for the library. Two new librarians start work on Sunday so that will ease everyone's workload a bit.
Darcy and I went to the Emirates Palace on Friday to see the Picasso Exhibit. It is the second exhibit that has been sponsored by Arts Abu Dhabi. The venue is terrific, world class exhibits and (for the moment) they're free of charge. I don't think this could be duplicated in many places around the world. We spent about 2.54 hours looking at the interesting art. Some of his workds were obviously pretty far out. The bronze goat statue had a bit too much detail from a certain are for my taste! We bought the official exhibit catalogue to add to our home library.
Below is the weekend update of what's going on in our neck of the woods. As always some stories underline the lack of infrastructure and regulations here. Shamal will be replaced by summer
UAE residents say system needed to locate places in emirates
This is a fun story.Emirati superhero goes globalThe superhero's website is here.
Rats nibble at UAE history
District cooling strains supply
Waste water to provide workers’ comfort at home
Rural and suburban census begins
Chat between drunk men sparked terror warning
The Captain's Cafe that is mentioned in this article is very close to us.The shisha brotherhood
We enjoyed reading this story about how people end up living where they do. Our careers have taken us to far away places!Why 'Where' Is More Important than 'Who' or 'What'
Our weekend routine continues with going to Marina Mall to relax at Caribou Coffee and then grocery shop at Carrefour. Ila aliqa!

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...

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".

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.

Projects for sandstorm weekends

Well, once again it's been a long time since I've posted. Day to day life is pretty boring when you're working...not much to write about when all you do is work, eat, sleep, do chores, and then start all over again.

One of the nice things about my job is that working on the department website and library OPAC is allowing me to expand my web site authoring and graphics skills. I have been a steep CSS learning curve lately, and thanks to a new coworker who has a background in graphic design I finally have enough of an idea of how Photoshop works that I can open it and understand enough about the layout to start learning by trial and error. Besides the web presence revamps at work, which should be online soon, I've used a couple of little side projects as platforms for experimentation. I helped a friend redesign her website for her freelance editing business, and this weekend, I have been working on developing an HCT Library Catalogue Google Gadget:

It probably isn't as good as I think it is, but I am inordinately proud of it all the same :) It can be added to iGoogle pages and embedded in outside web pages, too. Haven't really had a chance to test it in Explorer (I use Firefox at home), so if something looks seriously out of whack to you let me know so I can fix it!

The big news here this week was, of course, the accidentally-severed undersea cable that knocked out Internet access for much of the Middle East. We were not affected; our connection did seem slow that night but thanks to our ISP slow connections are not unusual for us even on good days. The fact that this story is such big news, though, is a testament to how much we now rely on the Internet for work and for recreation. Though some might find it hard to believe, I can live without being logged on in my spare time; all of my work is dependent on online/networked tools, though, and I'd be hard-pressed to find anything to do in the case of a network outage! I suppose I could write out catalogue records for inputting later, but that's about it.

Edmonton has been struggling under extremely low temperatures this week. We have nothing that dramatic here, but we are in the middle of a pretty impressive sandstorm. The howling wind woke both of us up quite early this morning, and visibility is very low. The intire sky is a dull beige-grey...it's like fog, but created by sand instead of moisture! Even the Corniche waters are being whipped up into little baby whitecaps, which is VERY unusual.

Out on the highways, driving in sandstorms is much like driving in a snowstorm: sands blow across the roads and you can get whiteout conditions very easily. So I'm glad we don't have to go anywhere and can stay in today. I am going to attempt a roast beef for dinner (believe it or not I've never actually cooked this myself before) and we have apple cider supplies left over from Christmas. This is the closest we're going to get to a "winter day" in Abu Dhabi so I feel like we should make the most of it!

Brrrr......

It's been refreshingly cool here for the last couple of days. Last night (for the first time ever) we turned off all the air conditioners in our place! This story talks about the bone chilling weather. Another story mentions near freezing temperatures. It would be cold for many people here because, like in Florida, houses here have poor insulation. Many buildings have tiles for floors which make it really cool.

The Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council recently published a book called Plan Abu Dhabi 2030: Urban Structure Framework Plan. It talks about about how our fair city will be transformed within 25 years. It's an interesting document to read and it rivals Duabi in terms of wholescale change for an entire city. It's available online but the contents have been split into several downloadable sections.

January 10 is the Islamic New Year so we're enjoying another holiday! But there will be no more breaks until the Prophet's Birthday in late March. We will start planning our April vacation to Istanbul this weekend. And we'll also try and book tentative flights to Canada this summer. We've asked to have July 27 to August 18th off. It won't be as long a break as last summer because we'd like to plan other trips. We'd like to go somewhere this fall and maybe winter too.

Cyclone Gonu

One of the main reasons that we left Florida was because of the increasing number of destructive hurricanes. But guess what? The biggest cyclone to hit the Arabian peninsula (since records began being kept in 1945) will narrowilly miss hitting Abu Dhabi. There's only a couple of news stories about the category 4 Cyclone Gonu due to tightly controlled media in the region.

NASA's Aqua satellite took a photo of Gonu. The front page of today's Gulf News brought back memories of the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in Florida! The weather is calm in Abu Dhabi but the skies are hazy. The storm is likely a culprit of climate change but I hope that no more will hit near here. Although the same can't be said for other parts of the world.

I'm very sick and should not have gone to work today. But there's only one more day until the weekend. Darcy's also been very sick in the midst of rehearsing for her play. Tomorrow (Thursday) is my workplace's annual free dinner. It's supposed to be an extravagant affair with many prizes to give away. But it's also a dry event. The countdown to beginning our summer vacation now stands at 24 days...

It's raining!

We got quite a surprise today. It rained at about 1:30 this afternoon! I noticed the sky getting dark...then the rumble of thunder...I grabbed my camera and got outside just as conditions went from a sprinkle to a full-on downpour. The clouds were very low, and moving incredibly fast--I could see them being pierced by a tall building across Khaled bin al Waleed street. Winds were gusting very high; high enough that a chair at the side of our building flew out into the parking lot and hit a car! Trees were whipping around and I could see fierce gusts of rain and wind whipping down the street. The gutters and streets were flooded. I felt right at home, back in the middle of a typical Florida afternoon storm!

Apparently the UAE gets about 6 to 10 cm of rainfall yearly. After today we should be at least halfway there...