wendy's wanderings: February 2006

Sword of Honour

On Thursday night we all went to the Country Club to celebrate Drydocks winning of the Sword of Honour, a national safety award. Drydocks tend to win every year as some companies don't really have extremely stringent safety policies. Anyway, it was a big buffet with free food and drink and all the Drydocks people were there so it was good fun.

Here is Chris and Nasser. Nasser is the only Emerati employed as a Ship Repair Manager at Drydocks. Possible the only Emarati employed at Drydocks full stop. People often ask about the Nationals but the strange thing about Dubai is you just don't come into contact with them that often!

Nasser entertained all the boys by sharing his head dress around.

Very Nice!

A bit of rain in Dubai

I have just had four days off school for half term, and would you believe, just about the whole time it RAINED. I have told many of you on the other occasions it has rained this season, because it is quite a novelty here. On all those other times it's just rained for a couple of hours and stopped. This time though, it just kept raining! Dubai has no drainage system. There are not really any gutters and they certainly don't run off anywhere. All the new areas have been built with little to no thought about where the water is going to go when it does come (which it seems to do once a year). As a result, after just 14.6mm of rain, this is what a lot of areas looked like!

There were also massive problems with many of the newly completed villas, one of my boy's families have been offered alternative accomodation as their villa is so wet inside!
And... On Thursday alone there were 513 road accidents in Dubai! Seems the drivers here think if they put their hazard and fog lights on they are practicing safe driving in the wet skills! Anyway, the rain has gone now and it looks like noone will have these problems again till early next year!
Have a look at 7days for more details.

Sharjah Wildlife Park

Today we went on a field trip to the Wildlife Park in Sharjah, our next-door Emirate. The park has the largest collection of Arabian Animals in the Middle East. There is quite an impressive range of animals there, mostly in quite good enclosures (unlike the Dubai Zoo.... But that is another story). Unfortunately I couldn't take photos in the Arabian section so you miss out on the Arabian Leopard, the Cheetah and the Baboon!
They also have a petting zoo which the children loved and I have photos from there.

The animals acted as though they had never been fed which I find hard to believe with all the schools going through! Goats are plentiful in the UAE, if you drive out of the city and into the hills surrounding you usually see them.

Camels are always a favourite! These 2 were very friendly, nuzzling the kids all over.

The perfect photo op! This little girl is one of my little gems (they are all gems of course). She is the cuddliest thing! There were also ducks, donkies, cows and horses.