Foggy morning

Thursday morning was a beautiful, cool foggy morning. I like the fog a lot. However, in the UAE, many people just turn on their hazard lights and drive as fast as they normally do. I prefer not to be on the road when it is foggy.

Hockey Night in Dubai

I went down to my favorite mall this morning for a good western-style breakfast at the Dome. When I walked into the mall at 8:30am, there was a hockey championship game going on complete with an announcer. I watched the game while I had breakfast, and I was surprised at how well the skaters played. I'm not sure about the age of the kids but I think they were middle school aged. The teams had well-dressed coaches and well-behaved parents.

Of the hundreds of malls in Dubai, the Dubai Mall is my favorite. There's always something going on. It's bright and airy. It has a bookstore that I could quite happily live in. The Caribou Coffee Shop is my favorite in Dubai, and the Noodle Factory makes the best noodles in town. It also has a beautiful aquarium.

Testosterone spill in Aisle 5

I was over at the Rotten Tomatoes website looking for a movie review when I felt a major shift in cosmic energy. Way down at the bottom was a reference to a movie in production that brings pretty much all of Hollywood's manly men together in what promises to be a major smack down.

Imagine Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture (of MMA fame), Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Steve Austin (of WWF fame) all in one film (OK, so this movie's been done before - who cares.). Woo hoo!!! I'm thinking a lot of punching, kicking, shooting, and blowin stuff up. (Okay, my nonviolent Taoist side is troubled, but I'm sure that there won't be any gratuitous violence. I'm sure that everyone who get smacked will deserve it.)

How do they even get all those manly men to work together in one place at one time? I'm going to be waiting with baited breath for this movie to hit the big screen at the end of August.

About the only notables missing are Jean-Claude Van Damme (who reportedly turned down the role because there was no substance to the character - and we all know that substance is a must for all his roles) and Steven Seagal (who reportedly doesn't get along with the producer. How could he let petty personal differences rob us of his acting?).

The Urbanization of Dubai

This page from NASA's Earth Observatory is very cool. If you go to the "The Ubanization of Dubai" you can click through the dates at the bottom of the picture and see how Dubai has changed. It's worth clicking on the 'play', 'show all', and 'view large' buttons at the lower right corner of the picture.

Purple Sunbird

In the last week and a half, I've noticed hundreds of butterflies and beetles. The temperatures have risen to about 30C and, if I remember correctly, as the seasons change, a lot of migratory birds and insects pass through in the spring and fall.

Although the purple sunbird is not migratory, I had not seen one although a number of colleagues have. Then, last Friday, I was looking at all the butterflies and I saw two purple sunbirds. They are a little shy and I will need to go out looking for them again this week in the morning. Their color is beautiful.

Burj Khalifa

This is a really awesome building. I try not to be too impressed by these ostentatious displays, but the Petrona Towers in Kuala Lumpur were breathtaking, and the Burj Khalifa is even more so. I can't wait until they open up the public viewing platform again. I know that it's an optical illusion, but when you stand close to it and look straight up, it seems to extend right over top of you. It really truly is big. And, when you think of all the steel and glass and other stuff that went into building it, it is amazing.

Bird life

I was driving from Sharjah to Dubai and saw a large open space that is usually an impromptu cricket pitch but it was flooded and had become a bit of a bird sanctuary. There are a couple of Grey Herons and a number of other birds that I think are Armenian Gulls, Yellow-Legged Gulls, Great Black-headed Gulls, and a few Black-winged Stilts. They are all wintering here because the weather is just so great - about 30C during the day.














I took these with my new camera, and only later realized that I had a digital zoom that would have been incredibly useful but not so much when I was sitting in Dubai Mall having a cup of coffee and reading the camera manual.

Tony Parsons

I just finished My Favorite Wife by Tony Parsons, and I highly recommend it. I've liked his previous work (Man and Boy, Man and Wife). His characters are always basically good people who screw up (usually by screwing someone that they shouldn't have) and end up hurting themselves and their loved ones. They often manage to stumble through to a somewhat uplifting ending. I generally read his books with alternating feelings of anger and sadness. I almost always get a little teary (although no tears actually fell). I think the fact that I feel strong emotions when I read his books says a lot about how realistic and well-written his books are.

I was checking out his other books at Amazon and found out that he has written a book with an English teacher as the main character. I'll have to pick that one up for my next read.

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day...

Actually, I like the rain and I wish it would rain during the day so I could enjoy it rather than all night when I'm trying to sleep.
There are some interesting pictures at The National, The Gulf News, the Khaleej Times.

We've had a couple of days of heavy rain, lightning, and thunder - always a strange pleasure in the desert.

It's very strange. Rain days here are like snow days in Vancouver. Nobody knows how to drive. Some drivers, mostly in big SUVs with dark tinted window (read 'local') drive as though nothing has changed. They will drive at 100km per hour through knee-deep water, sending up a 'bow wave' that washes like a tsunami over slower cars or pedestrians, swerving in and out of traffic with total oblivion. Others drive with trepidation through a thin skiff of water that no Vancouverite would even slow down for. Overall, a somewhat unnerving experience.

Today it was beautiful and sunny and about 25C. I went for a drive to Ras Al Khaimah and there were no large puddles anywhere. The traffic was light and the drive pleasant. It was a beautiful day - and getting out of the office on a 'road trip' was excellent.