India vs Pakistan or Justin Bieber?

The community we live in has a very active facebook group, last night someone asked this question

Quick question.....I'm on street 5 and all I can hear this evening is what sounds like groups of girls screaming? Is Justin Bieber in town? Starting to get a bit annoying now!


answer?
 
Nope its the labour camp and apparently Indian has been playing Pakistan in the cricket and won! Great to hear them have some fun as their lives must be very lonely and not too many laughs or fun

Ooops

Sorry friends and family, Ive been AWOL.  Actually I've been to Australia and back and as I write this Bert is on his way to Winnipeg Canada for his Uncle Alberts memorial service. 

But the biggest reason I have not updated my blog is this العربية فارسی हिन्दी اردو

For some strange reason google keeps changing to Arabic and its very hard to log in and navigate my way around in Arabic.

We had a great time in Australia, I was there for three weeks, Bert two.  Unfortunately it was too short as we ran out of time to visit everyone we hoped to catch up with. We stayed with my sister Jan and her husband Allan and really enjoyed their hospitality.  It has been a long time since Ive had time to just sit and chat with my sister, so that was a huge bonus.

While we were home Paul entered the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade.  He has been in their application process for just on two years and his was considered a very fast tracked application.  He loves it and we are incredibly proud of him. 

Other than that, there really is not much news. It felt strange to come "home" to Abu Dhabi and feel like we were heading home rather than Melbourne.

Unfortunately we were not able to get to Perth to see Jenni and Phil and the grandgirls but here is a new photo of them.  Ella, Heidi, Philipp and Amelie.

Grocery shopping

Today the thing we all fear at the checkout happened.  My card didn't work. I have a spare, that didn't work either.  The network was done. 

The checkout guy said "you don't have cash M'am?" No I don't have cash, why don't you have a machine that works? "So you don't have cash?"

The security guard had packed my groceries for me and he said do you live here M'am?  I was at Choithrams in Green Community Dubai where I used to live.  I said no, we used to live here but now we live in Abu Dhabi.  Oh he said looking sad, I was going to suggest you take the groceries home and come back later to pay.  Where else on earth would a supermarket suggest that.

I went to the bank next door and withdrew cash with the assistance of the bank guy who stands in the foyer, they have no idea of privacy with banking here,  he was wanting to push the buttons on the ATM for me. 

So I got my money, paid for my groceries and lived to tell the tale.

Bert had a similar experience one day he got fuel.  The guy pumps the fuel into your car and Bert thought he could pay in the shop with a card, as he had no cash.  He couldn't.  They said oh its ok, just bring the cash in tomorrow on your way past.  

It's things like this that make the frustrating days more tolerable.

Sand storms

We have been hit by two very bad sand storms in the past few days. They are impossible to photograph, as it just looks like fog. This however is the aftermath of one. This coffee table sits on our patio and was cleaned about 7 hours before this photo was taken.

Pretzels

In Australia we used to drive a ridiculously long way to buy pretzels. We used to buy them in bulk and freeze them. We can now buy really good quality ones at our local supermarket.

A hitchhiker.

See this guy, he must have been four foot tall on a tall day and somehow without us understanding a word he was saying we agreed to drive him to the mosque. One minute Bert was using the handful of Arabic words he knows, next thing we know he's in the backseat of the car giving us directions. So we drove him quite a few kms to the mosque. Goodness knows hows he was going to get there without us.

Australian floods

As I type this North Eastern Queensland is underwater. I read that an area 7 times the size of Texas is flooded. Many people are lost many, many more are under threat. When I was last home it had barely rained for ten years. It all seems so unbelievable. Australia is most certainly a land of droughts and flooding rains.

My cousin had this photo on her facebook from the floods. Its a green frog hitching a ride on the back of a snake. Amazing!