Hello!

Since I wasn't on Facebook for the last week (I was communicating face to face - which is much better!) I will put all the status updates I might have made if I was one of those iPhone toting - always online - technological kind of people.

It's RAINING! Yay! .... OK I'm getting wet now...

So wonderful to see Mum and Dad!

Walking in the woods and watching wood carving and turning at the tree festival. There just aren't really any woods in the Emirates!

Back at Highfields! Got to teach my kids, lots of hugs from people, picnic in the park, board games at Jenny's place, holiday club afternoon tea, evening service, food with Sarah and Sarah, coffee with a whole bunch of people - really enjoying being back!

Loving Holiday Club - I'm in the Droids Team (Our team chant - Droids Droids won't be destroyed, victory will be enjoyed), and we were so much better than the Cyborgs (although I did love Dave in the Cyborg outfit!).

Managed to see my work colleagues, a UAE colleague, my 20s group (yeah I know I'm not in my 20s but I'm honorary), the usual board gaming friends, my lodger (who has introduced fish into the household which I love!) and overlapped with Hannah coming back from Oz - we were both in Cardiff for one night only! So many people I didn't get to see this time!

I MOVE with less luggage than some people go on holiday with...

Flight delayed 2 hours followed by my car refusing to start, waiting for a hour for the car to be replaced - a driver who didn't speak English and we had to go to the main road and wave! Got home at 1am and up again at 7am - in work by 8.30am (that's 5.30am UK time!) missing everyone at Highfields who were having way more fun than me in the Holiday club special - at least I already saw the ending of the drama during the practise on Friday - funnily enough one of the characters ended up being the son of the always off stage most powerful character and sacrificed himself to save the world, came back from the dead and saved all the good guys and a couple of the bad guys just for good measure - wonder why that sounds familiar... but included Brummy Vikings, Cowboys and Robots (Naturally).

Back in Abu Dhabi (or AD as we call it) looking forward to catching up with my AD friends and orchestra starting up again this week!

Culture
I've been thinking about culture recently. As many of you know we were always told on the Doulos:
"Culture - it's not right, it's not wrong, it's just different"
and I agree with the idea it expresses that when you go to a new culture don't judge it and don't assume your culture is right and theirs is wrong just because it's different to yours. As the visitor you should adapt to the host culture and you shouldn't expect them to adapt to you.
But then some things are wrong. The selfish individualism in the UK is part of the culture but it's also wrong. The crazy driving in the UAE is part of their culture but it's wrong too! So living in another country can help you to leave behind bad parts of your own culture but you can also pick up bad things from the new culture!
I think the key is:
"Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking."
Or in my words:
Become adjusted to any culture as much as you can so long as you've thought about it.
So I'm doing the thinking part now:
Dressing modestly - good idea - OK I'll do it.
Spending obscene amounts of money on designer clothes - bad idea - I won't do it.
Driving without indicating or taking any notice of any other drivers - bad idea.
Living with more interaction with other people, depending on other people, being involved in each others lives - good idea.
(anyone remember those Doulos program room videos?!)
I do find I have less control over my life here which results in me controlling random little things to feel like I'm in control. I did this on the Doulos by only eating Strawberry Jam.

(I mean I ate plenty of other food but the only flavour of jam I would eat is the strawberry one) despite the fact that in blind taste tests no-one could actually tell the difference between strawberry, cherry, rasberry, mixed fruits or even the apricot one. So once the marmite and peanut butter had run out (about half way between each food delivery) I would wander around the whole dining room looking for the strawberry jam.
Here I refuse to drive on Airport road (especially if the journey involves turning left) because it freaks me out - just too many lanes and having to change lanes and yuck so I drive over to Khaleej al Arabi and drive down the island and back over to avoid it even though it's longer because the road is less scary. I can handle it if I turn right onto it and right off of it e.g. to get to church. It's like solving a little puzzle to get places by only turning right!
I have also decided I don't like Al Rawabi milk I think it tastes weird so from now on I'm only going to buy Al Ain or Almarai milk.

These little things really make me feel better!

Toilet Twinning
I've spent the whole week trying to explain what toilet twinning is and why I did it after mentioning it on Facebook and discovering that most people had no idea what it meant - was I installing a new toilet in my bathroom? Was I decorating my toilet somehow? No.

Firstly the name - twinning is something we do in the UK between cities and towns - for example my city of Cardiff is twinned with Luhansk - Ukraine, Stuttgart - Germany, Nantes - France, Hordaland - Norway and Xiamen - China. There will be a committee in each city who will arrange visits between the two cities, exchange programmes, choir/orchestra tours, sports tours etc.

Toilet twinning means you twin or link your toilet with a toilet in a place which had no toilet until you paid for one to be built. TWO AND A HALF BILLION people don't have access to a toilet so they go when and where they can and can't wash their hands afterwards. This is really bad for their health as you can imagine it's also unsafe particularly for women who wait until it's dark and go outside the village and squat at risk of snake bites, being attacked and even raped.

Having a toilet along with education about hygiene and handwashing makes people healthier, children miss less school due to being sick, parents can work better and have more energy when they are healthier in fact for each £1 spent on health and sanitation £8 is returned through saved time, increased productivity and reduced health costs.

Some people have a stereotypical view that Africans are lazy, in fact for the poorest often they're just sick, they pick up all kinds of bugs and viruses, a bit of Malaria once or twice a year, they are just what we might call 'under the weather' ALL the time but they don't know any different.

So what happens is a couple of charities in the UK (google toilet twinning) have started to build toilets in various communities mostly in Burundi at the moment. The measure of the 'extreme poor' is those earning less than a dollar a day - in Burundi the average income (average - so lots of people earn less than this) is $0.50US, 30p UK, 2Dh UAE. I can't even imagine that - I don't think you can live on that however cheap things are to buy you just can't. I don't think I could live on 2 Dh for 5 minutes if you include my rent, water etc.

I'm really thankful that I have 1 toilet in my flat in Cardiff, 2 in my aparment in AD, there are 3 at work - all of them have locks on the doors, sinks with clean water on tap - the ones at work even have flowers in - I'm so blessed!
So I wanted to twin my toilet to give people in Burundi a chance for toilet happiness too.

Do you want to twin your toilet?
It costs £60 UK or 370 Dh UAE to twin your toilet - you can do it online http://www.toilettwinning.org/ with a visa card or if you're in UAE and don't have a UK bank account you can give me the money and I'll happily do it for you to save the commission charges.

Things I am thankful for

• For the sunshine.


• For Kurt being able to fix my sunglasses.


• For my hotel room - I have somewhere to live and it's more than many people have


• Anke being able to follow my terrible driving to crossroads - the road works change each week and I get confused about where to go.


• Tony and Brell going on a trip to Cameroon today - preach it brothers!


• For the food at work - there's lots of salad and today I had a chocolate dessert!


• That we figured out what mistake it was I was making at work which was messing everything up. I'm so glad because now I know - I won't do it again! I felt so bad because I didn't only mess up my diagrams, I messed up Emmanuel's as well. :-(


• The girls at work, they are really supportive when I mess up - see previous point!


• That I get to see camels on the way to work most days.


• That my practising the orchestra music on the viola actually paid off and I could play a lot more notes at the last rehearsal.


• Hugs from the folks at church - makes me feel like I really belong!

An account of my concert in Atlantis (The Palm - Dubai) followed by some musings on the subject of Luxury and Poverty
It started as all great adventures do - by getting lost, there were roadworks and suddenly the junction was there and I'd missed it. I know I know the palm is visible from space but you know it's actually not visible from Sheikh Zayed road (That's the main road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai).
But anyway I got there and got to the right place and had the valet park my car all without any problem.



The place is amazing - the carpets are full of designs of sea shells, fish, water etc, the ceilings are painted too - it's stunning!

The event was the Jebel Ali Racecourse end of season gala dinner. They had Jebel Ali Racecourse spelt out in ice letters - each letter was about 1 foot by 2 foot by 3 foot, also some horses head like chess knights the same size. Amazing!

The ballroom was laid out with tables, candles, so many glasses the whole place twinkled! There was quite a big stage with twinkly lights on a black fabric - the whole effect was magical!

Then reality set in - we had a quartet rehearsal then a full orchestra sound check - then we were still practising and some guests had arrived early and they wanted the quartet playing NOW - we weren't even changed! So anyway we rushed out and got ready and started playing, we'd barely finished that when we were led off to get ready to go onstage - we must have been waiting behind the stage 20 minutes! I think the speeches went on a bit! Anyway we played our pieces, Die Fledermaus, 3 songs with a lovely singer then Radetsky March (they all clapped along in the right places!) and off we went. Getting my car back one of the staff muddled up our valet tickets so I nearly could have left with a rather more expensive car than I arrived with but anyway got my car back and had to by a coke and listen to Bon Jovi on the way home (singing along) to keep me awake!

So whilst enjoying the luxury and opulence of the whole thing (seriously who hires a whole orchestra for their end of term party!) I couldn't forget about the people of Libya, about the people of Japan, about the 2.6 Billion people who don't have access to a toilet, over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day, do these things make this kind of event wholly wrong?
In fact the problem as I see it is injustice and inequality - which we need to do something about and yet the beautiful things, the creativity, the care taken over each desert, the enjoyment of food - these are all things given to us by God, he wants us to enjoy them - he wants us to be creative and make beautiful things. One day in the new heaven on earth when poverty is consigned history we shall be able to make ice sculptures and paint ceilings and use all the gifts he has given us, to hold lavish banquets and huge parties with orchestras to entertain us and we can truely enjoy it because the injustice of it just won't be there!

A typical day in work for me here in my new job.

I work right out in the desert. I was so excited to get an ID badge but actually they never ask for it or look at it because they know me now! Then I drive to our little compound and
the security guy at the gate lets me in. I park around the back and walk to the front
door - I have to sign in and write the time on a piece of paper with all our names on
at around 9am. I go upstairs. Now that's just a little sentence but they are
grand sweeping stairs in a large hallway and the banisters have ironwork pattern
things and everything. I get to my desk say good morning to anyone already there
(though some of them I see in the hotel at breakfast anyway - even my boss stays
there!).

In the mornings I do lots of working with my lines and boxes, flow charts and
all this nice complicated stuff. I review them with the operational advisor. I also have to update some documents, write some guidance documents about how to use the software. I often end up proof reading documents because I'm the native English speaker - even though I have terrible
English but they don't realise that! All external meetings are generally in the
mornings but I don't get involved in those.

Lunch time! We have a buffet provided (for free!) so we queue up and have soup,
salad, bread (3 or 4 types), hot dishes (there is generally rice, 2 kinds of
meat, one kind of pasta, one of vegetables) , fruit, desserts, cans of drink
etc.
The food is really nice! We have a ladies table - since we have recruited some
more ladies we had to steal one of the men's tables to add it to ours! We have
great chats in a mixture of English and Arabic, we have British, Austrian,
Dutch, Lebanese and Emiratis on our table! In fact we might need to steal
another table soon since if everyone is there we don't have enough space
already!


Afternoons - sometimes we have internal meetings, I'm the only woman in the
engineering department which I guess is usual but another one is coming soon. We
have locals, French, German, Polish and Brits in the team so meetings do end up
with conversations in various languages but we try to stick to English because
that's the common language. The team is pretty good - we are all going in the
same direction (which is unusual at this stage of a project!) and everyone is
willing to help everyone out. Often some of the men will arrive back in the
afternoon after spending the mornings doing site surveys - they are visiting
sites all over the UAE. They have these white polystyrene (styrofoam) pieces
which are the same size as the box they will need to put in each vehicle so they
take it with them to try to see where they could fit it rather than take the
real one which is rather heavy!

We finish around 5.30, if the sun has been shining on my car it can get pretty
hot but it has air conditioning so I turn that on for a couple of minutes, by
the time I leave the site it's quite comfortable. The guys on the gate wave as I
leave and another day is done!

The next episode will include tales of my debut with the UAE Philharmonic
Orchestra (in the Atlantis Hotel which is the big one on the
Dubai Palm!)

Remember how I asked you to say a prayer for my safety on the roads?

Today I somehow ended up in the wrong lane on my way home from work and ended up on the slip road to Marif (I have no idea where Marif is), I turned off that road New Shahama which I do know where it is, whilst driving around randomly I found a supermarket (not a western one - an Indian type one) where I found rambutans (I just ate one which was very exciting they taste so good!) but anyway back to the point, after that I couldn't find may way back to the right road except for going in the wrong direction so in then end I did that, went back to Old Shahama (near where I work) then went up the slip road, round the roundabout, and down onto the road the correct direct, managed to change lane to avoid going to Marif. A while after that I passed an accident where a car's tyre had blown and the car had hit another car.
So maybe all this being lost had a purpose (or infact two purposes): I avoided being in an accident and I got to eat rambutans. God is Great!

My train of thought during a typical journey in the UAE
Where did I leave my rather non descript white car? (more than half the cars are white to reflect the heat)


I'll just walk around a bit in the likely area and click the button and look for the car that flashes...
There it is!
Doh, I'm just going to but my bag on the (driver) passenger seat and then walk nonchalantly round to the (passenger) driver's side and get in.
Thankfully this car is automatic because I can change gears OR drive on the wrong side of the road but NOT BOTH.
Put the car into DRIVE.
We drive on the right here.
Turn on Abu Dhabi ClassicFM.
We go round roundabouts the wrong way.
Remember to drive on the right.
5 lane motorways yay!
1st lane is lorries (trucks) and work vehicles
5th lane is Emiratis in ridiculously big and fast cars. Some of the 4x4s are so big they remind me of being a child and playing with toy cars from different places and some of them being ridiculously out of proportion. Nissan does this huge 4x4 which looks like a Nissan Micra but out of proportion to all the other cars - they make me laugh!



2nd 3rd and 4th lanes are for normal driving.
Whoa looks like a nasty crash (most weeks I see some kind of crash on the side of the road) hopefully it's only the crazy drivers who crash into each other in the fast lane, I stay out of their way but say a prayer for my safety please!
Hmmm sign all in Arabic, hope there's an English one later....
When the roads change they tend to add more signs rather than change or remove any existing ones so it's quite interesting trying to find the most efficient route somewhere - although doing something the most efficient way isn't the most important thing for most people here!
Find wherever I'm going - not too easy as some places seem move...
Park the car (or let a valet park it depending where it is).
Lock the car.
Look around for land marks to help me find it again (last night - in front of the Carrefore English sign (where I bought marmite!), to the right of the palm trees).
Repeat from the top.

Cool things and not cool things about the UAE
Cool
Eating hummus and arabic bread every day
Cool
The Emirati ladies at work are so lovely
Cool
Getting to see the Logos Hope and a few friends in Dubai
Not Cool
Driving on the WRONG side of the road
Cool
No one cares too much when you're in the wrong lane or no lane at all or cutting people up or whatever - you just drive how you like.
Cool
Valet parking at the hotel - it's so lazy! And I hate parking - though actually the spaces are so big here it's not too bad!
Not Cool
Being woken up at 2.30am by the alarm in the hotel - being evacuated and not getting back to my room until 5am - you know I'm sure this stuff happens to me an above average number of times. Don't know what it was this time - last time it was smouldering loo rolls on the Logos Hope. So sleepy today!
Not Cool
It rained all day Friday - what is that about?!
Cool
Sunshine!
Cool
Having lunch with some girls from the church
Cool
Being invited to someones home for a lovely dinner and discussion group

Neither Cool nor Uncool but seriously confusing

The days of the week

Cool
Facebook is not blocked - in fact nothing is blocked by work
Not Cool
Skype is blocked by the government
Cool
Thought I should end on a positive. It's nice here!

Start spreading the neeeeeeeews, I'm leaving todaaaaaaay...
Though not to New York.
Bring on the shwarmas!

Slight update with a few more countries - still only 17% of the world, but I'm still young!
create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Got a couple of these at the weekend in readiness...

And a really ugly passport photo!!

Looks like I'm heading off on adventures (again) if you want to hear more about them then please sign up to get my newsletter. It's a yahoo group so you can change your address or leave the list whenever you like.

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