Quizzical looks

Just a quick update to say that whilst we certianly did not come first at the Dhow and Anchor quiz last night, nor did we come last whch given recent performances (and the fact that R, G and A were late cancellations), has to be seen as a good result (we came around 7th in fact). This strong (ish) showing may or not have been due to my own tardy arrival due to work committments after most of the questions had been done. In any evnt, we will be looking to build on this performance next week!

Let's get quizzical

As mentioned in an earlier post, we have over the last few year participated in a number of pub quizzes in Dubai. Although we have on occasion won various prizes at the Fibber McGhee quiz ("Easy Tiger")this has mainly been as a consequence of pure luck (on the play your cards right competition at the end of each competition) and on being able to come up with a reasonably humourous team name which the Judges would award prizes for ("Arnie's Lovechildren" being a topical favourite from a while back).

In terms of interest (and prospects of winning anything) the Fibber's Easy Tiger quiz is a particualr favourite although the best we have managed is 2nd - generally we have performed best when we have sufficient numbers (and range of abilities) in the team ie those who specialise in the "famous faces" round and that do well at the observation round (requiring a review of a video and answering various questions) and those who are good at the "Creative" round (usually moulding plasticine into something interesting or colouring designs on a T Shirt). Generally if we have our friends R and V and occassionally A. and G with me and E (and sometimes Dad if he is out in Duabi) we do OK. If we had anybody who could do the music round (almost always intros from the last 2/3 years whch tends to rule all of us out) we woud proably win it!

The disadvantage of the Fibber's quiz is that it usually finishes at around 10:45 - 11pm which for a school night is quite late so we have started to experiment with the Dhow and Anchor quiz at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. This is a lot more user frinedly in terms of time(starts at 7 and finishes at 8.45pm) but is a great deal harder - we are normally in the bottom half of the list of teams at final results time and on the last two occasions have been in the bottom two. We are planning on going tonight so hopefully with a full team, we will improve on this position!

Holidays in the Sun (reprise)

One of the advantages of living in Dubai is the opportunity to explore the beaches and resorts around the various Emirates and over the last couple of years we have been lucky enough to visit RAK (staying at the Cove Rotana, Hilton resort), Abu Dhabi (Al Raha Beach, the Hyatt Gate as well as the Hilton at Al Ain), Fujairah (Le Meridien - probably my favourite Hotel), Um al Quaine and Dubai itself (Sheraton JBR and Habtoor Grand). As Dad is in town we thought we would try the new St Regius resort in Abu Dhabi. Of course no sooner had I booked it then various colleagues were suggesting that it has not yet been finished! (I thought that is seemed rather cheap considering it apparantly includes Butler Service...). In any event, we are keeping our fingers crossed that at least the roof is on when we arrive on Friday. Wish us luck.

Super Sunday (or, in memorium for the Red Lion)

As with Hong Kong, watching live sport is very easy in the Desert. Generally speaking the pubs and bars (and indeed some of the restuarants) will have the English premiership on during Saturday and Sunday afternoons and on Monday night. Due to the time differences, European Cup footbal is less easy to see on a "school night"(although I was of course able to watch Chelsea's triumph in Munich in May!).

When I first arrived here, the closest bar to our villa where the footy was shown regulaly was the Red Lion (5 minutes by Taxi) in the Metropolitan Hotel. It was a fairly rough and ready place (although not as rough and ready as the Rattlesnake night club next door...) and was in fact one of the oldest pubs in Dubai around which the Metropolitan had apparantly been built in the late 70s/early 80s. The Hotel also had a garden where there were large screens showing the sport. When the weather cooled down in the winter, watching the footy outside was a very pleasant way of getting some fresh (ish) air and catching up on the premiership (or the 6 Nations or indeed any major sporting event including the World Cup). I also met R. here for the first time when dad and I watched the F A Cup final in 2010 (missing the first half due to a mix up over the time differences).

After R. moved down to JBR we used to alternate between the Hilton on JBR and the Red Lion during the football season although for the big matches we generally ended up at the Red Lion.

The pub itself was very much in the mould of a traditional English boozer with a bar in the centre, and very dark and smoky, with a dart board in one corner (which was usually dominated by enthusiastic locals). There was also a pub quiz on the Tuesday evening (which included a killer "flags" round which generally ended with us getting nil points so we eventually started going to the Fibber McGhee quiz - a post all of its own).

Apart from the garden (which also had a number of bars), there was also a very good (albeit rather expensive) Indian restaurant (which Dad took my Uncle Kevin to with some success during his visit a year or so ago) and "Al Capone's" Italian Restauarnt which E and I went to a couple of times. There was also a cinema next door (although we never actually went to it), so all in all a very good facility to have pretty much on our door step. However, all good things must come to an end and earlier this year a wrecking ball was taken to the Metropolitan Hotel and the Red Lion as the owners decided to raze it to the ground and build three new hotels in its place.

As a consequence, it has been necessary to find a new "local" and after experimenting with various local hostlry's we have more or less settled on the Dhow and Anchor (scene of Chelsea's European triumph) at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel (the "Wave")which, apart from being more or less equidistance between me and R., also has a great outdoor seating area and a (tough) pub quiz which starts at a more user-friendly time than Fibbers. Hopefully this one will not be knocked down in the near future.....

Twice in one day!

As promised, hereith the second post of the day. Having recently described A's progress over the last year, I thought that I would say something about V. She is still the force of nature described in much earlier blogs but is now much more focussed on what she wants to achieve. V still does her ballet but has also been joining in with A's cricket at Al Safa park on Saturday mornings for the last 6 months or so and seems to be enjoying it even though she is the only girl. She has a terrific throw and can certainly put bat to ball. The coach has praised her for her diligence and this is a real feauture of V's approach to cricket, schoolwork, in fact life generally. When she sets her mind to something, she generally achieves it whether it be the series of "books" she has been writing (a story about a Unicorn, and a summary of her cricketing being the most recent), her drawings/pictures, learning the piano (she has just started lessons)and pretty much any competitive sport that she gets involved with (she is very diffiult to beat at Ispy). She seems to be doing very well at school. Last year, she took a real shine to her Grade 1 teacher (a very glamourous Pole) and won the class prize for diligence at the end of that year (probably the first prize any of us have won for a long while...). Whereas her Brother is very sociable, V. is much more reserved and seems to be quite happy doing her own thing. She invents her own little world (with, it appears, its own langauge - a "tinch" we understand is something very small ("Just a tinch") and a "nip" is when you steal something. "He nipped it away".). She loves her fairy stories and, like A. seems to spend a lot of her spare time on the PC or Ipad playing Minecraft. She is still very tall for her age whch comes in handy for her sporting endeavours. Her writing is very good and her reading is coming along well having really cracked it earlier this year. She is not as eloquent as her brother but nobody is left in any doubt what she means when she has an important opnion to express!

Sunday, Sunday (or Friday, Friday to be more accurate....)

Well, that did not last long! So much for one post per day. As is the way with these things, there is not enough hours in the day and Friday was no exception. I will therefore try and do 3 posts today in order to make up for it! Going back to Friday, Dad is in town and we all when to Church. There are two r/c churches in this part of the desert and we go to the one that is literally in the desert along with all the other non-local churches which are all in the same place. The car park is essentially a huge sandy parking lot where there is very little brotherly love when it comes to parking and exiting. Access is basically a single road in (unless you are pepared to go off-road past the labour camps) and whilst there may be some buses, realistically the only way of getting there is by car. As a result, there are few more hectic sights in this neck of the woods (with the possible exception of the Sheik Zayad road during the Thursday evening ruch hour) than everyone piling into Jebel Ali on a Friday morning (which is the equivalant of Sunday here)and then fighting to get out again once the services are over. At the height of Summer (when the temperatures are generally South of 40oC)an innocent bystanders would never suspect thst the car occupants had just been to Church with all the overtaking/undertaking, beeping of horns and general chaos!

(Nearly) another year has passed and it is once again time for me to see if I can publish one post per day for the month of November. Even to me it seems a little odd that I do not spread my posts a little more evenly through the year. Whilst it has crossed my mind since my last post in November 2011 to blog more often, the moment generally passes with my usual excuse (to myself) being that when November comes the creative juices will start flowing and blogging gold dust will be dispensed (!). In fact, very little has changed over the last year. We are still based in the Desert, work is still vey hectic and the kids continue to get older at an astonishing rate - I cannot believe that A. has just reached double figures! This year however his birthday was more muted mainly because the poor chap was obliged to have an operation on a very sensitive part of his anatomy. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth (including from his parents) but we now seem to be moving along the road to recovery and he is almost back to his lively, somewhat scatty, good-natured self. It is however unlikely he will be very keen to go anywhere near a Doctor (or a Hospital) for some considerable time. He is still very much into his footbal and cricket although his leisure hours are also filled with visits to Minecraft and similar games on the PC. He still enjoys reading although it is increasingly diffult to find books that avoid any kind of mild peril which he still avoids like the plague. He is enjoing and doing well at school particulaly in Maths and Science. We are still working on the literacy and writing but he is coming along. He will still chat to anyone and is a very sociable chap. He had a table football game for his birthday and whilst he might be able to give me a run for my money in real life football, I still have the edge (for the moment) in respect of the table variety!