Just a little aside for 5 minutes. The other night I was being industrious and decided to clean off the top or our ceramic hob. In the process of wiping this down with a cloth and some water I somehow managed to childlock the hob. Since, at that time, we did not have an instruction manual for the hob it proved completely impossible for us to un-childproof the hob, meaning that we could not cook ANYTHING! at all. After trying for two consecutive nights to unlock the hob, I finally lost the plot last night and stormed down to the reception [View Full Entry]

---

---

We have had out first visitors. Glenn and Diana McCready paid us a visit from NZ (family relations) and we managed to show them a little bit of the town. After they arrived first thing on Thursday morning we convinced them to come out with us on a Dhow Cruise on the Dubai Creek. This was an evening dinner cruise with a buffet meal. We were seated outside and it was SO HOT!!!! Too hot to be comfortable actually. I had worn jeans in the expectation of sitting inside and I nearly died. The food however was lovely, and the cruise [View Full Entry]

---

---

We finally went out and celebrated Jeremy getting a job on Thursday night. It has only taken us 3 weeks! Therefore a drink at a lovely bar was well overdue. So off we tripped to the emirates towers where we met up with another lovely kiwi couple to celebrate. Rod and Jess are newbies to Dubai as well and we have a couple of lovely drinks on the 51st floor of the Emirates towers over looking Dubai at night. The drinks were not all that cheap but the menu was enormous! We could hardly lift the drinks menu. Jess had a [View Full Entry]

---

---

We decided to try a new and different beach park on Friday on the recommendation of somebody at the office. And I have to say it was completly rubbish. LITERALLY. The place was just covered in rubbish. All the sand was complelty covered in cigarette butts and when you went swimming in the ocean you could feel the rubbish rubbing up against your legs. It was nothing like the Jumeirah Beach Resort which is complelty spotless most of the time. We were more than a little disappointed. However the weekend was saved when we went car shopping and I fell in [View Full Entry]

---

---

I have today had my first ever car crash. Luckily I was not driving. We were in a large, black (not sure what the color has to do with it but I am a girl and the only thing we really notice on cars is the color) Mercedes 4x4. We were being driven by a Iraqi/German guy who is one of the senior project managers on my project. He also happens to be one of the worst drivers I have ever met. This guy doesn't stay in his lane, hardly ever watches the road, drives rather fast and today drove right [View Full Entry]

---

---

As most of you know from my last entry I am working on a pretty cool project. Well we have just held a design workshop over the last three days and as part of that workshop we were taken on a tour of the Jumeirah Madinat Resort. This resort consists of 2 hotel, a souk and a conference centre. In particular we saw the inside of the Al Qasr......and it was amazing! I just wish that I had the funds to stay in hotels like this. The view of the Burj is from the Royal suite which is an entire level [View Full Entry]

---

---

For those of you who have been wondering exactly what it is that I am working on over here I have a bit of a surprise for you. This morning I had a meeting out at the Dubailand main HQ and I took along my little old camera phone and managed to get some snaps of some of the models of what Dubailand is going to look like when it is finished as well as a snap of the model of my project - Aqua Dunya. And the biggest surprise that I had when we arrived is the LIVE tigers that [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well life continues on nicely. We took a little drive on the weekend and went up to Sharjah and Ajman for a look around. It was pretty interesting in Sharjah. Some of it looks exactly like Dubai, nice and green and all pretty, and other parts are really really rough around the edges. However thinking about it those parts look a lot like some areas around the gold souk etc. Ajman was lovely. It has very pretty beaches and is nowhere as developed. One thing we did notice is that there is a complete absence of road signs in Sharjah pointing [View Full Entry]

---

---

Thankfully a couple of weeks ago the time came to leave the joys of the Golden Sands No 5. This being the delightful place that TTI had put us up in whilst we looked for somewhere to stay. The fact that this was only a studio apartment, and that Jeremy was stuck in it almost 24/7 was enough to drive him nearly completly mad (the curtains in the corner of the room were looking a little frayed at the end of the stay, and if there had been carpet available I am sure that he would have been chewing that as [View Full Entry]

---

---

We finally managed to catch up with James in Dubai. It took us a little while to get it together ( which is really stupid when you consider that he is only about 20kms away in Sharajah). However we finally managed to catch up and had a fantastic time in the desert. The safari was amazing. Our driver Mohammed was insane. We would be driving at nearly 100kms across the sand and then we suddenly we'd be flying down a dune and then up another dune, and then sand would be flying all over the windscreen and the car would be [View Full Entry]

---

---