Living the Travel Channel

Settling in

August 15, 2009

Oliver seems to be settling in. He was rather wild the first few nights, keeping us awake by pouncing on our heads, all teeth and claws. He’s discovered “under the covers” where it is nice and warm and has slept longer hours allowing us to sleep longer, too.

I bought him some plastic balls which he is very good at losing under the furniture. I’ll have to get a bigger size, I think.

It is the height of the summer heat and we won’t have a car until next month, so I doubt that I will be having too many adventures outside the walls of our apartment. So Oliver just may be the height of entertainment for a while.

I am riding the bus to work which is much, MUCH easier than this time last year. They put many new double decker buses on the line that I ride and they come fairly regularly, close to the schedule. Last year, I could wait for an hour or more and not see a 13A bus. They are nicely air conditioned, too. The taxi companies have added many new taxis also, which is evident now as I stand at the bus stop and there is long string of empty taxis driving by, looking and honking to see if anyone at the bus stop wants a taxi. This is the complete opposite of last year when the buses were running very badly and there was stiff competition for any empty taxi that might drive by, which was very rare.

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Oliver

August 13, 2009

I took this picture sneakily imagining it having one of those nature channel narratives about the Daddybird in his natural habitat. Little did he know what was in store for him within the hour.

We were joined by our friend Mali, with the intention of walking over to Al Muteena street for some chicken shwarma for dinner. However, on the way we encountered a stray kitten that changed all the plans. He was too friendly and too young for me to just put him down and walk away. So, we took him back to the apartment and Paul & Mali made an emergency run to the store for litter and food. We did eventually get our shwarma, too.

So, this is Oliver. Even though he’s white, he is a camoflage cat on our marble floors. I have managed to get one head on view. It is blurry, because he is always in motion. The video will take a little longer to put together.
As for Kazul’s question about losing hair with the seasons. That will stop now that he has become an indoor cat. With regular meals he should be filling out a little and putting on more hair. I am interested to see just how much hair.

He purrs a lot and Mali says he purrs like a Vespa scooter. He talks a lot too, as you will hear in the video later. He’s been good and took to using a litter box right away.

I can’t wait until he sleeps through the night. Ha!

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First box

August 11, 2009

Our first box shipped from the States arrived. As you can see it is mostly intact, but there is not a square corner on it. I swear that this was a brand new box when I packed it. Only two items were broken and only in small ways that don’t effect their function. This is the first internationally delivered box I’ve seen that wasn’t torn, so I think we got lucky. It was opened for inspection, I suspect only because I had a small metal tin with sewing supplies inside it and the xray couldn’t penetrate that.

So, now we have drapery hooks, YEAH!, and DVDs for entertainment, YEAH!

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Anniversary

August 10, 2009

One year ago today we arrived in Dubai. I don’t have anything profound to say and we don’t have any special celebration plans. I think we’ve been celebrating this for a year now on a daily basis.

How about a Metro construction comparison? This is last year:And this is the current view:
The gaping holes are gone. The metro line is scheduled to open in March 2010. I don’t know if the street will be repaved and opened before or after that. The construction noise is minimal now. Apparently, the majority of the activity is underground now.

Posted in Dubai, Dubai metro construction | 2 Comments »

New store

August 9, 2009

We were pleased to discover that a Carrefour Express grocery store opened just a block away from our apartment while we were gone. Yeah!

What was in the “ethnic foods” section?

Why tomato paste, of course.

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Idyllic view

August 9, 2009

This is in Feltham, the neighborhood near Heathrow where we stayed before leaving. It’s not as idyllic as it looks in this picture because you can’t see the rubbish floating in this pond. Sometimes illusion is a good thing.

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Heathrow

August 8, 2009

We had a unique experience at Heathrow. When we arrived at our gate, we found not a plane, but buses. We were all loaded onto buses and then driven a significant distance to the plane. This confused several of the young children in the crowd. I heard them saying to their parents, “I thought we were going on a plane.”

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Arrival

August 7, 2009

We arrived around 10:35 pm on Thursday night. It was 98F and, amazingly, not humid. It was quite mild in comparison to our arrival last year when we arrived about the same time and it was brutally hot and humid.

On our way from the gate to baggage claim, there is a place where you can take the elevator or escalator. Last year, there was a large crowd waiting for the elevators and our guide who had greeted us at the gate and was escorting us through the arrival process was rather put out that we did not aggressively push our way into the elevator. This year there were only a few people waiting for the elevator, a few women and a young family. When it came, I was standing closest to it, so I stepped in first. The father of the family was quite put out by this and said, “EXCUSE ME. We… these ladies were waiting the longest.” Clearly he is a newbie. He is still operating under the rules of politeness from whatever country he is from. Ha, he will learn. I held the door and everyone, but Daddybird was able to get into the elevator, so it all worked out. Daddybird took the escalator and met me at the bottom. We had a good chuckle about the newbie and his “EXCUSE ME!”

There was a long wait through Passport Control, but other than that, no difficulties. We took a taxi home. The smallest bill we had for paying the taxi was a 50 dirham. The fare came to 32.50 and the driver did not have the right bills to make change. The security guard in our building had seen us arrive and come out to help with our baggage, so the driver asked him if he had change. He did not, so the security guard went across the street to the store to get change. This proves, without a doubt, that we are back in Dubai.

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Traveling again

August 5, 2009

Wednesday morning we start back to Dubai. We will travel by bus and three trains back to London and stay in a hotel near the airport. Then, Thursday, we fly back to Dubai. So, comes to a close our sojourn. Our too, too long sojourn.

I’d start a list here of what I have learned, but I think I will need to do some ruminating on that subject to do it justice. Maybe after I’ve had a few nights of consistent sleep in one time zone.

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Banksy

August 4, 2009

[First let me say that these pictures may give you trouble and not load quickly or completely. Try refreshing your browser screen or click on the spot where the picture should be to get it to appear.]

So, we got up early (actually didn’t sleep much due to noise from the disco night club somewhere near the hotel and when that died down the seagulls began screaming), checked out of the hotel and walked down to the museum.

We got in line at about 8:40 am and we entered the museum about 10:15 am.

I’ll post just a few of the works we found the most poignant or amusing. The exhibit included original paintings:

Sculptures:

And animatronics:
One of Banksy’s main targets is McDonalds. These chicken McNuggets were animated and drinking out of the BBQ sauce cup. Kinda creepy.
We approached this from the back and it looked like a very realistic Jaguar twitching it’s tail. However, from the front…

It is actually a fur jacket.

Banksy also likes to take paintings or prints by other artists, usually of idyllic scenes and add his own touch to them. These were sprinkled throughout the normal museum displays, so it was like hunting for Easter eggs.

When we left, this was the line of people waiting to go in.

We exited the museum a little after noon. The last bus from Hereford to Hay-on-Wye was at about 4 pm. It was clear we weren’t going to make it, no matter how good the train connections were. Had we gotten any sleep in the Clifton Hotel, I might have suggested we stay another night, but it was noisy, shabby and overpriced. So, we headed for the train and Hereford. We did indeed miss the bus. There was another one listed on the bus stop sign, but further investigation showed that it only went to the edge of Hereford, not to Hay. So, we approached a taxi at the train station and inquired if he would take us to Hay and how much would it likely be. It was affordable, so we had a nice taxi ride home.