A couple of 3-day weekends later...

The news this week is that there was no news - no New Year's party, no ringing it in all night long or wild stories involving jail and philipino boys in skirts. HH Sheikh Mohammed cancelled all New Year's festivities in Dubai to mark, with a solemn note, the on-going tragedy in Gaza and to demonstrate our solidarity with our suffering brethren. Then today the ruler of Umm al Quwain (another emirate) died in London, leaving us with yet another reason to be somber. Despite the somberness and indeed the attention we are paying to what a cruel f*d up world it is out there, we managed to find some time this week to enjoy life's simple pleasures.

For starters, while one of us was slaving away at work for 3 days this week, another one of us was enjoying his leisurely Christmas holiday break at the beach. Said someone went to Hamriya beach (about 30 minutes drive north of town) three days in a row, and relaxed in the gulf and read books on the sand and made the other one of us a bit jealous. On that note though, I am getting quite attached to our little car, which, although a crappy piece of tin, successfully takes us everywhere without protest.

Then we went down to the Creek park in Dubai after sundown last night to see the sights. It's a pretty sweet park with a nice corniche so one can walk along the water and enjoy the view while small children of various nationalities trace figure eights across one's walking path on those nifty little roller-shoes.

The reason we went to the creek in the first place though, was to absolve ourselves (ok MYself) of the humiliation that comes with pulling in a pathetic 92 when your bowling partner is enjoying one of the best bowling nights of his life with a 192. The Dubai International Bowling Center is not far from our house, luckily, so I'll be back. Just you wait. 

And life goes on.