Kidzania

I've just spent the day at Kidzania, one of the latest attractions to open at The Dubai Mall. It is essentially a scaled down replica of a real city where kids get to have a go at various jobs through role play.

We were there for several hours and didn't manage to get around and do everything (although this was largely due to the queues). Event though it was a little bit manic with excited kids running around, fire engines and ambulances wailing, I thought it was nicely done and the kids had a great time.

The Dubai Shopping Festival is also on for the next month. I have been waiting patiently for it to start for 3 weeks after the salesman in the Canon shop advised me to wait before buying my new camera, a rather snazzy Canon 7D. He certainly did me a favour as the camera was reduced by over 1,000Dhs (£150 or so) in the sale. I'm still working my way through the 270 page instruction book, and have barely got out of automatic mode yet, but already I'm loving the feel of it and the performance is streets ahead of my old Canon 400D.


First portrait with the new camera - Lucy watching TV by the window



Theatre school



The theatre itself was impressive



Lucy on the radio



Making pizza



Anyone for extra mozzarella?

Max the pilot (talked him out of being cabin crew!)


That's more like it - surgery was great fun



Max was a policeman clearing the way for the ambulance - suspect they regretted putting him in charge of the whistle!

New year's resolutions

Well, you start off with the best of intentions but generally they seem to be a bad idea in the end. Right now I'm feeling guilty about the wine I just drank and the chocolate I ate today. However, another of my resolutions was to sort out my photo collection from a rag bag collection of badly labelled CDs and back up disks into something useful in Lightroom.

I haven't finished yet, but lots of the old photos (especially of the children) have made me smile and brought back good memories as I shuffle them around. I thought I'd share this one that amused me when I saw it. We were out in Haworth, Bronte country, five years ago satisfying our friend Paul's annual need to take our children on steam trains in the midst of a freezing cold winter. The other picture of Paul, dragging us round some old train museum, will give a hint as to just how cold it was.

4th January

An auspicious day indeed. My wife shares her birthday with Isaac Newton, the accession of Sheikh Mohammed to being Ruler of Dubai and the official opening of the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai.

Well, until today it was called the Burj Dubai. Apparently it has been renamed the Burj Khalifa after the President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi. I don't suppose this is in any way related to the recent loan to Dubai from Abu Dhabi of a large amount of money to get them out of the financial mire.

Never mind. Whatever your views on Dubai, this building is an amazing feat of engineering. At 828m tall (3.5 x higher than Canary Wharf tower!) it absolutely dwarves anything else in the world. The next tallest occupied building is the CN Tower in Ontario at a mere 553m.

You can see the Burj from almost anywhere in Dubai and the view from our villa isn't bad. We did toy with going but there were 6,000 invited guests and we had learnt from our abortive efforts to see fireworks on National Day that getting there wouldn't be easy.

The reported 10,000 fireworks at the opening ceremony were very impressive, but by the time I'd scuttled up to the roof with my camera they had finished. The picture below was my best effort. Not as good as the one below that (from Getty Images by a better prepared photographer than me) which gives a bit more of an idea of what a spectacular event it was as the whole building erupted with fireworks.

Happy New Decade

Well, happy new year to the few of you still following our continuing adventures in The Sand Lands.

It was a very quiet Christmas for us here in Dubai. Unfortunately Janet had tonsillitis on Christmas Day, and only made a brief appearance out of her bed, so the whole day was rather muted. It was just as well we had ordered lunch as a take away from the Jumeirah Beach Hotel or it would have been beans on toast for lunch.



New years eve was rather more fun at a superheroes themed party at a friend's house. I was Superman (minus the muscles as Lucy astutely observed) and Janet was Catwoman. I'm not quite sure how Catwoman counts as a superhero but Penelope Pitstop and Duff Man seemed to think it was ok.