Happy Birthday Zadok!

Oops! Bit late with this one. It was Zadok's birthday last Saturday, he turned 26 the ancient old thing. We had a good meal out the Thursday night with lots of laughs and probably slightly too much wine/beer...

Mel always makes personal cards for people's birthdays and i had wondered what she was going to come up with for Zadok this year, very appropriate I think!

This weekend gone we were really busy with Muriel and Al over, next weekend we slip into pre wedding mode, our good friends Kat and Iain are finally getting hitched... Hehe. Photos of all the to come I promise!

Sharjah Equestrian Show

Anyone who knows Zadok's Mum, Lesa, will know that she is a bit crazy about horses. She has a number of her own and has started breeding. Before she came over she got wind of this Equestrian show held in Sharjah (they arrived just after the Dubai one had finished.) So Zadok called up and got us an official invitation an off we went to Sharjah.

First of all we were treated to some Arabic dancing, not the most vigorous of dances....

Then we got to see the Arabians, parading...

And on show.... (quite similar to going to Mall of the Emirates on a Friday evening really)

The most entertaining/amusing/disturbing thing about the whole performance was that all around the edge of the arena people were standing with plastic bags tied to the end of sticks, shaking them like crazy to get the horses razzed up, caring them so they were bucking, prancing and leaping all over the place.

Lesa was suitably horrified by all this.... The other thing was the securtiy, there were police everywhere! I guess there was a lot of pricey horseflesh around!

Mamzar in a different light

Of course I dragged our visitors off to my fave spot, Mamzar Beach Park. I wouldn't bore you with more photos of this lovely location but when we got there we witnessed what we figured was the filming of an ad for some sort of soft drink.

There were lots of skinny girls prancing round in their bikinis (that is not one of them in the foreground....)

None of the buildings in the background are usually there, just clean white beach... The huts were just all part of the set. In the right photo you can see what must have been the star striding down the beach under the cover of an umbrella. We are watching out for the ad to come on TV!

At the end of the afternon even beach-despises Zadok and Lesa had to admit they had had a very pleasant afternoon... I knew I'd bring them around!

More Visitors

Zadok's parents Jack and Lesa made the long trek from Tasmania to Dubai to visit us in the first few weeks of April, got a few nice pics so I'll blog them.

Typical first day photo!!! April weather in Dubai is beautiful, the week before we had a storm but this week was perfect holiday weather... Maybe a little hot!

This photo is taken on the new side of Dubai Marina. The Marina is a major development area of Dubai (I say this but the whole of Dubai is currently under construction).

A few years ago there was absolutely nothing here, now there are about 200 high rise buildings completed, under construction or about to come out of the ground.

Jumeirah Beach Residence runs along the waterfront, it is the largest development of it's kind in the world with 36 buildings, nearly all of which are residential.

I've not posted about Karama before, it's a souq (market) that sells 'Real fake Rolex' and pashminas and rip off t-shirts.... Anything dodgy really. Karama is mostly famous for it's handbags, when you wwalk through the central passage the guys from the shops all yell at you to try and get you interested, we all got a few good bargains, it's quite the experience!

And of course we sent them into Ski Dubai to experience snow in the desert, throw snowballs at each other and have a o on the taboggon... They didn't last long!

Got lots more... Might put them on we will see. I am back at school for term 3. 9 weeks til summer, 3 reports written!