Falling off the wagon

Oh no, yesterday I messed up almost a week of uninterrrupted posting. I’m so ashamed, and feel like I’ve let myself down so much 😉

So today you get two posts just to make it up.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to complain more about the heat here in AD. Not the outside heat mind you, that is totally expected and understandable, we are in the Middle East after all. No my issue is with the inside heat.

Last year we had a problem with the air con all through the year, we were sharing with our neighbours and it was a constant case of them turning it off, us turning it on, turning it higher, turning it lower, and it not working at all. Summer was hell, I spent a lot of time in our local mall. Finally the ‘thing’ died completely in October and we had individual aircons install, and instantly felt like we had gone to heaven, I actually used to sit with blankets on me during the day, and we both had to use quilts at night.

Then a few months back it started getting warmer, no matter how low we put it the flat never seemed to cool down. Now the heat inside the flat is like the outside in the evenings, slightly warmer in the day time but not as bad as the actuall outside temperature. Today for example I was cleaning the fridge, not a particularly arduous task, just spray and wipe really. Within 5 minutes the sweat was pouring off me, I’m pretty sure my pathetic attempts at exercise don’t even come close to making me that sweaty. The only reason cross stitching doesn’t have the same effect must be because I sit right in front of the floor fan when I do it, I’d rather be annoyed by charts flapping in the breeze than soaking my stitching.

We are trying out a few theories as to why it’s so hot, but if none of them pan out in the next week we’ll have to call our landlord (who doesn’t speak any English) and get him to send someone. I’m so glad hubby is the one talking to the landlord, I give up communicating when people don’t know English at all. Quite bad really when I’m not a native speaker myself, oh well.

What do I want NOW? Ice Cream

First post of June NaBloPoMo, and a hellish evening

I decided to try the (inter)National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) thing again. I made an attempt last July, and think I stuck with it for two days or something, do let’s hope I stick with it the whole month this time 🙂

The theme for the month is ‘NOW’, and I’ll see if I can’t include it in my posts every now and again (see what I did there). Actually my plan is to end all posts by saying what I want right at that moment.

You catch me on a pretty crappy day actually. As you might know Abu Dhabi is getting mighty hot, the easy way around that of course is to spend your days inside as much as possible. So that’s what I do, all errands are left for the evening, the humidity might be high but I can live with that.
So back to today’s crappiness. I had to go get the laundry and sone shopping done, left the house at 6 pm, sun was still up but so much cooler. Got to the road to get a taxi and what did I see? Endless line if cars. I waited for 40 minutes before I got a taxi, at even then I had to walk to the other side of the road. Well fast forward 20 minutes, laundry handed in, groceries bought, clean laundry collected, and 20 people standing before me in the queue. So I decided to walked up to the main road, it was a quick walk, 5 minutes maybe. Then I proceeded to wait for 35 minutes for a taxi!! And some abaya clad lady who had just got to the bus stop tried to steal my taxi in front of me. Well I was having none of it, told her there were about 7 others in front of her in the queue, got past her and jumped in the back. Another 20 minutes and I was home.

But this was not the end of my taxi woe, oh no. Hubby was working late (it’s been that kinda week) so I said I’d come into town and keep him company. I only stopped at home long enough to hang up the clothes and put away the groceries before I went out again. Well this time I only had to wait 20 minutes for a taxi, jumped on and said “Abu Dhabi mall”. I swear the driver laughed at me, mockingly even! Long story short (or is it already too late for that), he refused to go due to the bad traffic, and I walked home calling hubby to let him know he was on his own for the evening.

And they all agreed it had been a great day…

Soo, what I want right NOW is:
MORE taxis in AD (because I’d rather be stuck in a traffic jam sitting in a nicely airconditioned taxi, than standing by the side of the road waiting for one)

Pictures from my new camera

For our 1 year anniversery my DH got me a camera, I’ve been wanting one ever since we got here as we left hubby’s camera back in England. Not been able to take many pictures yet though, haven’t really done much since I got it on the 6th.
Earlier this week i did go for a little walk down Airport road and ended up in Lake Park by the Corniche, where I took a couple of pics.

More Pictures soon I promise, after all we have the Yasalam festival from next week with lots of fun (hopefully)

Things You Do In Dhabi When It’s Hot

Maybe that should be things I do. And for the most part the answer would be sweet FA. I do my best to stay out of the sun during the day and only step out into the über-humid evening if absolutely necessary. But within the four walls (and we seriously only have 4 walls) of our apartment there is not much to keep occupied with, and to avoid dying of boredom (or taking other drastic measures) I needed to find things to do.

A month or so down the line, and I now have two addictions, erm hobbies. One is absolutely terrible, a devil made made thing, which sucks your life and soul right out of you- I call it The Sims 3.

It’s so freakin addictive it’s not even funny, once I start I just can’t stop and to top it off I discovered the Sims3 online community, seriously not good. Luckily (in some ways) we don’t have internet at home, so since our house/cat sitting gig ended the time I’ve spent on thesims3.com has been minimal. Mostly I just pop by and read a few stories or check the boards if I have any issues. Then of course I got sucked into the whole Legacy business. For those not in the know, the legacy challenge is creating one sim, man woman of child bearing/rearing age, you then have to buy the most expensive lot (not house) which leaves you with about 1000 simolions for house building etc. Clearly you can’t build a house with so little money and most sims spend the first while of their existence sleeping on park benches, showering at the gym, crashing other people’s picnics etc. There are many more rules to the legacy but the main thing is you have to get through 10 generations of sims without using any cheats. Maybe that’s easy for most people, well not for me, finding the money cheats is always the first thing I do when playing the sims.  But more on that later. So yeah, my first Summer hobby, The Sims 3.

The second addiction is a far more conventional hobby, I’m cross stitching. It’s something I haven’t done since secondary school, but instantly loved it again and slowly but surely getting more confident with it. My first project was a kit i bought from Magrudy’s, a ‘Me to You’ bear wedding picture. The plan is to find a nice, plain wedding album where I can frame and mount the picture at the front. I’m about 2/3 of the way through, and not quite sure what to start after it. There is a crafts shop here called ‘Green Branch’ and I think I’ll have a gander in there for future stitchings.

More on both hobbies later, for now I’ll have to sign off.

My First UAE Gig

Well Saturday was the day for my first gig in Abu Dhabi. I went to see Coldplay, and can I just say: They were amazing!! It was held in the grounds of the Emirates Palace hotel, half on the beach half on grass. As we trekked there ( and believe me it was a trek) the sky was lit several times by amazing lightening. The sky did not open up and drench us until we were in the concert area and waiting in the beer queue. It was over quickly though, and it did keep my pint filled up if slightly watered down. We only heard the last song from support band Mercury Rev, but I’m sure they were good. Finally though Coldplay were on the stage and the heavens opened once again, heavier and wetter than before, the lightening seemed to flash in time with the music and made it just that bit greater, after all it NEVER rains in Abu Dhabi 😉
The band took the torrential downpour in their stride and supplied a few rain themed song (I’m singing in the rain tra-la-la-la and Rain drops are fall hum-hum). They played all their old hits and the audience sang and shouted back, though there were only a disappointing few songs from the VIVA album, which is actually my favorite of all of the.
In the end though it really did not matter, Coldplay were in excellent form and the gig was truly AWESOME!
Now co’mon KILLERS, give us a date!

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It’s been a while

My beloved blog, I have missed thee so much. Living without Internet is a real pain and not something I’d recommend. However it is a self-inflicted problem as ordering the Internet is something I could do instead of lazying about everyday.
Well enough of the self pity and loathing. This is just a quick update to say Hola, and to confirm that I am still among the living and enjoying Abu Dhabi and UAE VERY much.
The weather is great, quite cool at the moment, but summer is fast approaching. Apparently once we hit June leaving the air-conditioned comforts of your house is not an option, so we’ll have to enjoy it while it lasts.
Well that’s all for now, busy getting A210 stuff in order not to mention A215 so have enough to do but once internet is install I’ll be back with a vengence.

The Waiting Game

It’s been a month now since I last saw my hubbie, and at the moment I’m eagerly waiting for my visa to come through so I can join him in Abu Dhabi. How ridiculous is it to be married for 5 days before your brand new husband leaves the country? I’m just really fed up with it now.
At least my writing course keeps me busy, I’m really enjoying it despite the near disaster of not being able to submit the first eTMA. Luckily my tutor was very helpful, and I was able to submit it a few days later instead, crisis averted. I just hope it was worth reading, I’m so nervous about getting it back, what if I don’t have what it takes to be a writer? Apparently it’s due back on Friday, until then I will have to continue my fretting and sleepless nights. I have this heavy lump in my chest thinking she is going to hate it.
In other news Nanowrimo is going really well, yesterday I hit the 50,000 mark which means I’m more than half way to my target of 100,000 nifty spiffing words 😉 I love writing this story, it’s like 3 years of thinking coming together making it all fit nicely with each other.
Tomorrow is the last day of the working week in Abu Dhabi so if I have no visa news then it will be Sunday at the earliest that I will know. Fingers crossed everyone

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I am not a happy bunny!!!!!

(wonder why people started saying that?) I am currently in the Siberia of OU study. The forums won’t let me in, not through the FC client and not through StudentHome, in fact it would even allow me to go to http://www.open.ac.uk/ . Mr Line has been joking about my OU forum addiction for a few months now, but today it’s really shown it self. I feel I might as well go to bed, as I have nothing better to do. Which, ok, is quite silly coz I have a whole lot of things to do. I have now abandoned my darling Mac mini to Mr Line, and have stolen his green Alien to play around with. It’s huge compared to the very small mac, but I love the color. It also runs Vista which I’m not very used to so it’s nice using it every now and again.
Anyway Mr Line called OU tech support who were very helpful, but it was only as he mentioned our broadband provider in passing that we got to the route of the mystery. It appears Virgin now has a connectivity issue with the OU, which has only just been reported and this should hopefully be fixed by tomorrow, saturday at the latest (personally I have no faith in Virgin sorting anything out so will not place any bets on how quickly the issue is solved). We (Mr Line) also called Virgin, who were the most unhelpful b*****ds imaginable. Glad we’ll be rid of them in Abu Dhabi!!

IN OTHER NEWS, the A215 materials have landed and the course website/forums have opened (fat load of good that does me at the moment). The amount of messages pasted in just 2 days though is amazing, I’ve been keeping up through work pc and iPhone (very trusty iPhone), but people post so quickly it’s hard to keep up. No tutor news yet, though I’m sure that will come up in the next week or so, hope my tutorgroup buddies from A103 will be in the same tutor group, at least we won’t all be total strangers. And I’m also crossing my fingers that the first day school will be before I head to UAE (and it’s not on my wedding day).
Talking of wedding days we will actually decide this tomorrow, we’re heading into town early and going to the registry office to give notice of marriage. Once I know the exact date the stress can begin, not too bothered before then Wedding dress is decided, going to buy it next friday, I have a hairstyle in mind, got an appointment at hairdressers to see how realistic it is to get my hair that way. So just need shoes, a wrap, flowers and rings, oh and clothes for Mr Line (he refused the Mr Darcy look, oh well thinking cap back on). I’m thinking a morning suit for him though, will have to go and source prices on the weekend.

Right, think it’s think for some more drabble postage, don’t forget to tell me what you think