This afternoon's sandstorm

Above is the view from the office window taken last week.

There's a sandstorm blown in within the last 30 minutes and this is the same view. Even the Burj is disappearing:

Olympic opening commentary in Dubai

Like half the world, I watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics last night. I don't know if the Olympics are being shown on free-to-air tv here in Dubai but we are getting it loud and clear through the South African satellite network MNET. Incredible ceremony with fantastic fireworks. I have to ask though: What was with Sarah Brightman's hair? It looked liked a cheap rental wig from a mermaid costume.

It was a total surprise when I heard the opening ceremony commentators: Keith Quinn and John McBeth. I last heard KQ commentating sailing or something like that on TVNZ and John McBeth has commentated rugby in NZ since the Dark Ages (and done it well too.) The commentators for the weightlifting this morning were Kiwis too. Yaaaah -flat vowels rule!

Satwa demolition: Update 8 Aug 08

The pile of rubble in the second photo is all that remains of the mansion I wrote about previously and shown in the first photo. I've updated the gallery with photos taken earlier this morning of the ongoing demolition of Satwa. There is now only one family remaining in the Masafi villas, the demolition crews have removed the satellite dishes from the roofs and simply throwing them over the side of the houses onto the ground, all the doors of the villas are open and the floors are inches thick with dust, a real ghost town. The strangest thing is that there are no cats anywhere.

Shortsighted destruction for financial gain, supposedly in the name of progress.

NZ elections

The NZ elections must be getting close as the polly jokes are circulating already:

Prime Ministerial candidates Helen Clark, John Key, and Winston Peters were flying to a debate. Helen looked at John, and said, "You know I could throw a $1,000 bill out of the window right now and make somebody very happy." John shrugged his shoulders and replied, "I could throw ten $100 bills out of the window and make ten people very happy." Winston added, " I could throw one hundred $10 bills out of the window and make a hundred people very happy."

Hearing their exchange, the pilot rolled his eyes and said to his co-pilot, "Such big-shots back there. I could throw all three of them out of the window and make 4.3 million people very happy."

We can see the sea!

A clear day is a rare thing in Dubai but today we could see right out to sea. This was taken from our new office looking past Defence roundabout. Out to sea is The World.

It's getting hot in here

This is what happens when there's no air-con in a Dubai office.
The temperature showing on the gauge is 30.3 degree Celsius = 86.54 degree Fahrenheit!

It's alive!

I've finally seen the train that will run on the Dubai Metro line. This afternoon as we were on Sheikh Zayed Road out near Jebel Ali the train came zipping along on the track that runs parallel to SZR.

From what I've seen of the track construction so far, the track is such an up and down corkscrew ride, that I reckon they'll have to hand out a sick bag with every ticket.