We went skiing. Yes that is correct - we have just been skiing in the desert. And it was fanastic. I took Jeremy on a date to Ski Dubai, which is in mall of the emirates. We had dinner at a little 'apres' ski restaurant and then hit the slopes. I haven't skied in over 10 years ( after my knee reconstruction I switched to snow boarding instead) but I now think that I may switch back to skiing. It was awfully fun! There were a few hairy moments, like the moment I tried to do my first turn on skis, but after my third dun down the hill I really had the hang of it. The only downside to the event was the fact that it was so amazingly cold in there that we had ... read more

Below is an excerpt from this weeks Time Out We all know the problems with Dubai's traffic - speeding hummers flasing their dazzling lights at you, snarling Sheik Zayed traffic jams and a lack of decent commuter options. But a new problem has surfaced, and it's one that's giving the Dubai Traffic Police a bit of a headache. Caught on security footage groups of cars are travelling around Dubai in the early hours of the morning. So far, so ordinary. But it seems that when the vehicles stop at traffic lights, the people in the cars pile out onto the road and start dancing widly to music blasting out of the speakers. As soon as the lights go green, they all scramble back into their vehicles and speed off to the next junction. While some of ... read more

Our first big trip out of Dubai!! It was very exciting for us, although we had to take the yaris as we hadn't bought a car yet. The yaris was a little scary on the open road, especially with Jeremy hoofing it at speeds of around 130km. Even at that speed we still had other cars barrelling past us at great speed. Our trip for the day was to another emirate to go canoeing in Khor Kalba. We met the guide at about 10:30am and then went canoeing for 2 hours through the mangrove lagoons. It was really lovely. The most astounding thing were the numbers of sea turtles that we saw. There we literally hundreds of them. We could see a turtle head pop up for air every minute of so. They were just gorgeous. ... read more

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 desk, in my fluffy pink slippers (which the guy in the elevator commented on) and demanded that someone tell us how to unlock the hob. After approximately 1 hour explaining to various people, with differing ... read more

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 88 dirham drink (which translates to roughly $40 dollars). In Dubai that is really quite expensive. The car shopping saga continued on the weekend as well. We test drove a hummer, and actually ended up ... read more