Chuck another prawn on the barbie

Kids are now back at school and I'm back at work. We had a really good holiday last week, the highlight being the trip to the water park, but I also enjoyed our trip to the Hajar mountains at Hatta. This was my first experience of off-road driving and the Dodge was great. Lucy, Max and I also had our first camel ride.

At the risk of sounding like I'm gloating, the weather has now cooled down enough so that we can eat in the garden every night. This will continue for the next 7 or 8 months until it starts to get a bit too hot again. We had a couple of barbeques last week and the kids are enjoying being able to get out into the garden more.

Blood money

In Islamic Law, if you kill someone then their family is entitled to blood money, or diya. The most likely way here is to knock down a pedestrian - 23 already this year on the road outside my office and 23 last year. The payment is 200,000 Dirhams, around £30,000. This is normally covered by insurance unless you have been drinking, and there is zero tolerance. There are Europeans still in jail here because they can't raise the money.

Disconcertingly, there are reports that desperate people here are committing suicide on the roads simply to send the money back to their family. I wince ever ytime I see someone about to run across the motorway in front of me (an extremely common occurrence).

Anyway, a new law is to be introduced in an attempt to stop this. I just hope they manage to tell the people who might be affected. It's unlikely that they read the local papers.

Eid Mubarak

Happy Eid. The month of Ramadan has finished and the 3 day festival of Eid Al Fitr (Christmas is the nearest comparison I can think of) began on Monday. The actual date depends on when the moon is sighted by the 'Moon Spotting Committee' and this year has resulted in a 4 day holiday for public workers thanks to the seasonal generosity of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Plenty of people don't get any time off though and the water for the water cooler was delivered by Nestle as usual this morning.

Yesterday we celebrated by going to Dreamland in the northern Emirate of Umm Al Quwain. We went with Scott and Val who have 3 kids of similar age (Mhairi is in Lucy's class and they are inseparable - I barely saw them all day).

Dreamland is great. It must have been their busiest day of the year but there were still sun loungers to be had and the queues for food weren't too bad. It's not as chic as Wild Wadi, the water park at the Burj-al-Arab, but it was a fraction of the price and very friendly.

Afterwards, we went to the adjacent Barracuda hotel for an excellent Eid buffet. The hotel has a duty free booze warehouse (no liquor licence required) attached and it was absolutely heaving. There were lots of dishdashs and Indians stocking up on their duty free Johnny Walker at a fiver a bottle.

We returned to Dubai, weary but happy, at 10pm with kids content and hard fast asleep. I'm sure this would have been a far cry from most people's pre-conceived ideas of the Middle East - it could have been a day out at any good waterpark on the Med.

In other news, it looks like Janet has landed a part time job teaching at the kid's school. It couldn't be more convenient. I've had heat exhaustion (for the second time since arriving!) due to an excess of gardening, barbeque building and a couple of glasses of Merlot ('you must wear your hat when you go outside you pale skinned pansy!'). Oh, and I've entered the Dubai Marathon. OK, only the 10k part of it, but it's a start.

All that glitters ...

There are some amazing developments in Dubai, each one trying to outdo the next, as the Emirate tries to replace oil revenues with other sources of income. These mega-projects include the world's largest shopping mall, world's tallest building, world's first underwater hotel, world's largest hotel, world's largest theme park - you get the idea. The link on the right has some excellent pictures of Dubai and these projects.

Dubai is the fastest growing city in the world after Shanghai and is presently home to an amazing 24% of the world's construction cranes. With this comes an army of contractors and labourers, most of whom are bused in every day from labour camps and Sharjah. I came across a good article yesterday which highlights the desperate plight of many of these people, although I'm not sure I like being described as a 'pampered mercenary'. The poverty divide is certainly striking - from expats on fat-cat packages to labourers (on the Palm for example) earning less than £100 per month.





I've said enough about driving here already (still no licence in case you were curious), but I did enjoy this picture I came across the other day.

On the domestic front there have been yet more trips to IKEA, but to compensate we did have a good afternoon on a lovely quiet beach at the Marina. The water is still like a warm bath and a good breeze made for a pleasant time.

We had a good shopping trip without the kids to Dubai's bargain basement souk in Karama. Janet picked up a 'Mulberry' and 'Tods' handbag and I got a 'Mont Blanc' watch (which stopped soon after). The good stuff tended to be hidden away in little attics above the shops which we were ushered in to. It's all completely counterfeit of course but some of it was very good quality and you'd be hard pushed to tell it wasn't the real deal. This was followed by sushi in the very smart Emirates Towers where we were the scruffiest people by some distance. Tomorrow night we're going to the Ritz for their Iftaar buffet. It's a hard life ...

8 weeks in

We've now been here for 8 weeks. Long enough to get an idea of what life's going to be like, but not long enough to really know the place yet.

The weather is cooling off, but very slowly. It still never gets any lower than about 26 degrees even in the dead of night. People keep saying 'hang in there. It'll be lovely in a few weeks time'. Other than Lucy, none of us has more than the slightest hint of a tan since we haven't been able to get out much.

Dubai is a modern city but many of the attitudes remind me of how things were in my childhood. There is little concern for the environment here, hardly any recycling and the amount of water used in a desert country is scandalous. Very few people use child seats or seatbelts. Although this was the norm when I was a child, I now find it shocking that any parent could treat their children's safety so casually. Nobody here can pretend they haven't seen the effects of car crashes and the newspapers are full of stories and graphic images. Just this week there was a huge crash in the next street to our villa (a pretty quiet area). Two 4x4s and a big pickup all smashed up and probably write-offs. I've gone on enough about driving here, but it is a big issue - just check out the local paper in the links.

Lucy went to a classmate's birthday party at Ski Dubai (the world's largest indoor ski centre) at the weekend. When we arrived they also invited Ben to stay for the party. They both had a great time playing in the snow, then there was a magician and food. I think we've got quite a bit to live up to when it's Lucy's birthday in a months time.

Had my last offshore trip for a while yesterday. A sombre mood on the rig as an Indian man had been killed the night before doing some routine maintenance work. Details were sketchy, but he'd been struck on the head by a large lump of metal and killed instantly. Nowhere is the need for safety felt more acutely - this is a dangerous place to work. Needless to say, my meetings were cancelled and I was fortunate to get back on the chopper as some people were held back for the investigation and police interviews.

Ramadan kareem

Or have a blessed Ramadan (I think). Ramadan, as you may (or most probably not) be aware in the UK, is now well underway. The most noticeable effect is that you can't eat, drink, smoke or have sex during daylight hours. I can't say I've noticed any real difference apart from the coffee.

Working hours are shorter for Muslims, although there are still plenty of people working long hours in the baking heat without water. Schools also work shorter hours so the kids get a bit of a lie-in. The fast is broken with a meal (Iftar) and all the restaurants jump on the bandwagon with an 'Iftar Buffet'. We went to one at the swanky Shangri La hotel (but made sure that booze was included!).

In a typical case of cart before horse, after umpteen helicopter rides, I finally completed my helicopter and sea survival training this week. The worst part is definitely when they strap you into a tin can, sink it and then turn it through 180 degrees. To make it worse, as water pours into your nose and you haven't got a clue where you are, you have to count to 10 before you are allowed to escape (otherwise you might congratulate yourself on escaping and lose your head on the still spinning rotor blades). In real life things are complicated by having to push the windows out, get past 12 big roughnecks and not breathe in aviation fuel or drown. Mind you, it's still much, much safer than driving here.



Janet (who has got a driving licence) finally got her new car yesterday, the Dodge Durango 5.7 litre 'Magnum', which gets a very creditable 12mpg. It's good to join the rest of the UAE in doing our bit to hasten global warming. You'll thank us next summer.

Finally, I called my mother yesterday to wish her a happy birthday (only a week late). "I've been reading your web pages" she said. Echoing Janet's sentiments, she went on "it's very boring. Are you writing your life story?" And they say that children say the cruellest things...