30 June 2004

Wagamama!

Finally the day has arrived, Wagamama opened in Dubai.

Fiver's dream has come true: a Wagamama in walking distance. The latest addition to the chain just opened in Crowne Plaza, Sheik Zayed Rd, literally 10 minutes walk from our flat.

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29 June 2004

A Falcon

Nasuh, a colleague of Stuart's, took this shot of a falcon perching on the edge of the window sill at the Emirates Towers Hotel.

While falcons are bred for sport locally, we have never seen one in the wild. Maybe this one escaped from its cage?

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26 June 2004

Diving

After all the fun we had with the underwater camera we remembered that we had an unfinished diving course to complete. Where better than in the lukewarm waters of the Gulf?

When we left the UK we were all but done with a diving course run by SSI in Ipswich. We had done all the pool sessions, the theoretical exam and were just short of being officially allowed to dive by the fact that we couldn't face our outdoor dive, which would have meant going to a big cold lake in Peterborough. It was so completely alien to our visions of diving in the warm waters of the Med that we kept putting it off. Then we left.

When we arrived here we realised that diving was the ideal thing to do on hot summer weekends round here. A way to be outside without too much heat. Water temperatures are high enough not to need heavy diving suits (even when the water is quite warm, it cools down the body by extracting heat, so some sort of dive skin is a must). There is purportedly very good diving here, in Oman and on the East coast of the peninsula near Fujairah .

Unfortunately we haven't been able to transfer our obscure SSI semi-qualification to the local PADI training centre, so we will have to start again. We signed up for a course starting in September at Jumeirah Beach Hotel, so no diving in the Med again this summer.