Fly Girl

Aidan lost his sunnies in a mosque pit in Egypt 3 months ago and I am still forced to wear my emergency pair of sunnies. He has finally ordered some sunnies online and they should be here within the week... we shall see!

Not happy Jan!

HappyBirthday Aidan

Thanks everyone for your birthday wishes, emails, sms messages and what not. If you forgot, thanks now for remembering! The baby held tight on the 16th, refusing to share a birthday every year SHE grows. I had it all worked out though....I would have turned 50 when She turned 21. That would have been one hell of a bash! Not to be. I had a birthday lunch on Friday at Shang Palace at the Shangri-La hotel. Yum Cha was the order of the day - unlimited. Yee haa! Sam, Belinda, Vic and Andy rocked up with us for a nice cosy group. Had lots fun and laughs.

Global Village

We touched briefly on Global Village in an earlier blog with the fireworks site. Winny and I headed across to this year's event for the first time the other day and had a great time!!! There are 40 countries represented and each has food stalls with traditional cuisine as well as selling stuff from that country - carvings, statues, paintings, bags, herbs, spices, sweets. We had a great time! There are rides for the small and big kids and a whole bunch of other stuff to see and do. The only ride we could go on together was the ferris wheel - safe for pregnant women. Great view from up there, pics of the view didn't really turn out But you get the idea.

We covered all the pavillions - from Afghanistan to Vietnam, and the Saffron stands in India.

Fireworks ready to go

Winny and I have been entertained every Friday night since Dec 20 to a pretty cool display of fireworks - as part of 'Global Village'. The event is just around the corner from our place and we duck out onto the balcony every time to check out the show. We were hunting for the setup site and we found it! In the middle of the sand dunes, there they were, ready to go for last night's show!

Public Holidays

Just when we though all of our public holidays were over, another one was announced last week - this time for George W. Bush's visit to the UAE. That brings the holiday count since December 10th up to 8 days. OK, it's great that there are so many public holidays in this part of the world. George Day was announced at 4:30PM on Monday, to have the Tuesday off. No-one knew a thing until that point.... aarrgghh. Notice please, notice.

This week we are expecting to work the first full week since the first week of December. Then, wollah, the baby will come...i betcha!

Practice.....

We headed on down to our old neighbour's place in Al Barsha this weekend. Had a cracker of a time! They are an Egyption family and have been in Dubai for about 6 months. The little girl, Habiba (holding the teddy), celebrated her fourth birthday. There were sooooo many children... aargghh!! but, hey, we had a great time. Nice food and music. It was good practice and helped tune in our ears for the days to come.

The little boy in the picture is Yousuf - Habiba's little brother.

And the dude in the video played a bent looking guitar. - Egyption style... he was good!

Let me out!

We had a visit to the Doc yesterday and the baby is engaged.... and we're not talking about proposals or rings (boom, boom) Woo hoo! Not long now...

Clearly, the little one wants out and is fed up with the cramped space on offer in Quyen's belly. We captured a few moments of movement on video and thought we would share with you all since you are all so far away and can't see it for yourselves.

Oh, and please suggest some song alternatives for the next video. The soundtrack for the birth has been chosen by Quyen - 'Break on through to the otherside' - The Doors. Any other suggestions are welcome??