These flowers look like gardenias, but I am always disappointed when I smell them, because they are not gardenias. I can’t detect much fragrance from them at all.
The red arrow is pointing to where my office is.
This fountain is a very popular spot with the minas in the afternoon. They love to have their bath in it.
The minas also congregate in the trees near the front gate. The noise of their chatter is astonishing.
This garden area near the front gate is usually full of birds in the afternoon also.
This is a white cheeked bulbul.
Can you find all the birds in the picture above? I see 5 white cheeked bulbuls. What do you see?
This is one of our campus cats. I usually see her near the front gate. She seems friendly and runs up to me, rubs against my legs and meows LOUDLY, but she does not like to be petted. Talk about mixed messages. Having her cheeks rubbed seems to be okay, but she’s not crazy about a simple pet down the back.
Archive for January 9th, 2009
Campus wildlife
January 9, 2009Dubai Mall miscellanea
January 9, 2009The Dubai Mall is the biggest and most recent mall. It is at the base of the Burj Dubai (tallest building). Many of the store spaces are still vacant with “store opening soon” signs. I kinda figure if it doesn’t say the name of a specific store, that nothing is opening there “soon.”
When we go into these massive and confusing shopping malls, I am very lucky to have my spacial genius husband to do the navigating. I would have to spend all my time looking at the maps to figure out where to go. Sometimes the maps don’t have the “you are here” indicator, so that increases my fruitless staring at the map time.
There are giant led boards displaying ads or national symbols on the sides of the walkways.
We were especially amused by the Ribs and Rumps restaurant. Doesn’t that sound appetizing?
Here is the one and only Taco Bell in Dubai. Yes, we ate here. The rule is that if we didn’t eat at an American fast food restaurant back home, we won’t eat at it here either. We did our fair share of Taco Bell back home. However, this TB does not have the burrito supreme, but it does have cheesy fries?!?!?!?!? We did not try the fries. There seems to be a rule that you can’t open a restaurant unless it has fries on the menu.
The mall has a giant ice skating ring.
And a large aquarium. We were too tired of foot to go through the aquarium, but it is on our list of things to do. I love the aquariums where you can walk through the tube and see the fish all around. After they had stocked the tanks they were having trouble with the fish eating each other, especially the big sharks eating the smaller sharks. Go figure! I’m not sure how they resolved this. They have regular feeding times (one of the things advertised on the reader boards), so maybe that keeps the predating down.
Living the Travel Channel 