Weird & Wonderful UAE: Man in hot water in Dubai over parody video

   US man imprisoned in UAE for posting a video intended to be funny. Ouch.

U.S. man in hot water in Dubai over parody video - CNN.com

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Expo 2020

Those of you not in the UAE may have missed the fact that this evening Dubai has been selected to host the World Expo in 2020. The vote took place this evening in Paris and Dubai romped home against three competitors. The results of the vote were eagerly awaited throughout the UAE, it reminded me of waiting to hear if London had won the right to host the Olympics. And the outpouring of job seems to be the same too, fireworks on the Burj Khalifa and celebrations on the streets of Dubai apparently.

More importantly we are all now sat waiting to find out whether - as the rumors suggest - tomorrow is going to be declared a public holiday, with schools and offices shut. It's already 9:30pm but we still don't know! Hopefully it will be a holiday because then the whole population of the UAE can head to their nearest Baskin Robbins shop as they are giving free ice cream away all afternoon to celebrate the news!

 

 

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Flossie's School Trip

Flossie has been on her school trip today, to the Heritage Village. She seems to have had a good day, being very pleased to have seen "a donkey, a horse and a camel", and telling a story about some ducks and geese escaping. It's National Day tomorrow so she and Archie are dressing up in the colors of the flag, and there seem to be all sorts of festivities planned. More about that in the next proper blog entry.

 

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Flooding of the Nile (aka Al Yasmina)

Archie's year has been doing a project on Ancient Egypt this term, and it culminated today with the whole year dressing as Ancient Egyptians and enjoying a range of activities. Jo was very creative and made Archie a fantastic costume out of pillow cases and various other bits and pieces. She also volunteered to help out for the day, which was very brave, especially as she made a dressing up outfit for herself as well!

As it turned out the weather decided to get involved as well. The annual flooding of the Nile has been an important natural cycle in Egypt since ancient times, and today the school played the part of the Nile, as the weather broke in Abu Dhabi and we witnessed the flooding of Al Yasmina (hopefully it's not going to be an annual event!).
It has felt as though a storm has been brewing for a few days, with grey skies, gusty winds blowing sand about, and increasing humidity. Finally it broke this morning, firstly in the city centre as I arrived for work, and then at Khalifa A as school started.

To be fair there was thunder and lightning, and the rain was torrential for a while. It wasn't long before the water was pouring into the school hall, and it only took a few hours before the school was closing for the day, as were many other schools in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other Emirates. Overkill? Quite possibly.
Archie and his classmates did manage to do most of their planned activities, other than their procession round the playground. He seems to have particularly enjoyed mummifying a banana; he described the process to me earlier and it certainly sounded quite complicated.
The impact of the rain has been a little comical. It is definitely the UAE equivalent of how the UK grinds to a halt when there are a few flakes of snow. I even had Dubai based members of my team asking if they could leave early due to the adverse weather. It has been the headline on most news reports I have heard, and has played havoc with events such as the Dubai Air Show.
Things seem to have settled down this evening, so it looks as though we can tick off one of the ten days of rain we can expect in our first year here. I'm sure it will be back to 30 degrees tomorrow, joy!
As per usual, thanks for reading.

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Weekend in Dubai: Part 3

Just realized that I didn't finish my blog entries about our weekend in Dubai. I'm sure you have all been waiting anxiously to hear about what else we got up to (not).

After tea on Friday we headed to the World Trade Centre where we had tickets for the regional final of the Red Bull Car Park Drift competition. Except we didn't have tickets, we had a receipt that needed to be swapped for tickets before we entered the arena, or should I say car park. The problem was that no one seemed to be able to tell me where to collect our tickets from. The first counter I went to directed me to the metro station some distance away. The man there looked at me blankly, then sent me back the way I had come to another ticket desk, and so on, until I had been to five different desks.

By this time the start of the competition was only ten minutes away, so Jo had taken the kids to wait by the entrance we were supposed to use. Whilst she was waiting she got talking to someone, who informed her that we could get our tickets from a counter right next to the entrance. Irritating? Not at all!

We finally got our tickets five minutes after the competition had started, and joined the throng at the gate. There was a mass of people waiting, and no queuing system in place (where are the numbered ticket dispensers when you need them!). The security guards were taking a very relaxed approach to checking tickets carefully, then checking bags, then putting a wristband on.

The throng of people trying to get in

Finally we got in, found some seats, and settled back to enjoy the action. For the uninitiated car park drifting is exactly what it sounds like, competitors driving round a course set up in a car park, skidding as much as possible, and generally making as much noise and generating as much smoke as they can (very much like driving on the roads here). The winner seems to be (I think, I never quite worked it out) the person who can complete the course quickest and with as much skidding as possible.

My iPhone camera didn't cope well with the conditions

The event seemed to consist of a lot of sitting around listening to an excitable (the only drink on sale was of course Red Bull, and he seemed to have had more than his fair share) commentator gabbling away in Arabic, punctuated by 20 second bursts of action. Whilst the bursts of action were exciting, they were few and far between, and the competition seemed to fall further and further behind the timetable, not helped by the local favourite managing to get his car stuck in the crash barrier, and nobody being able to shift it.When it became obvious that the competition was likely to go on until the early hours we decided to call it a day, especially as Archie and Flossie were getting tired.

All in all it was a surreal experience, but one which we enjoyed in a strange way. Who would have thought a year ago that we would be sat in a car park next to the busiest road in Dubai, in view of the Burj Khalifa, watching cars doing their best to destroy themselves!?

Saturday was less surreal, but we had a great day at the motor show. Archie in particular was in his element looking at all the super cars, and both he and Flossie (and Henry) enjoyed getting as many freebies as they could (although Jo did best of all as demonstrated by the photo below). We didn't manage to get round the whole exhibition before it was time to make tracks back to Abu Dhabi.

Jo weighed down by all her goodies

All in all a great weekend, and I'm sure we'll be back in Dubai soon.

Thanks for reading as always.

 

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