1-1-11 New Year Dawn

 Mamzar beach

After an uneventful (kind-off dull, stuck in traffic, no where on time) New Years eve, I managed to wake up early and chase the sunrise. Warmed the old Alfa and started off at almost 5:45 AM and rushed towards the nearby Mamzar beach. I know that this is not the most exciting thing to do and it was so much boring than getting drunk on New Years eve, howling at the stroke of 12, dancing on the street, being chased home by the cops and waking up on the next day after noon with a terrible headache. Been there, done that. But to my surprise, I was not the only nut head at the beach. Another Indian couple had turned up in their Pajero. At least, they turned up with a big SLR camera while I strolled around with my Nokia camera phone.

 After a while we realized that the sunrise cannot be viewed from Mamzar. Apparently, after observing the night sky and comparing with the solar blumglum, I understood that the balcony at our home could give a better view. The other couple rushed towards the next suitable location and I drove towards home, when I caught a slight glimpse of sunlight. I realized that I could get a fine view of sunrise from the Pond park near our home. These are the pics I took.

glimpse of sunlight from the car

sunrise at pond park

1/1/11

Qusais Solstice

beautiful, quite and nice part of flamboyant Dubai

a nearby building illuminated by the sunlight

The Boat Ride...

...the worrisome calls in the morning had got me home by noon to find little Isaiah, running around, all of joy... he seemed relieved from the pain and discomfort… 

Wifey continued with her work while I played with lil Isaiah... Though an active advisor of feminism and women’s liberation, enduring an idle afternoon while my wife was/ and acts ever so busy at work were uncomfortable for my male hormones… After some groaning ‘n moaning and nagging, I managed to make her pack-up as she went to make some tea, much to the relief of my male ego…

The excitement of the tea was amalgamated to a distinctively blurry boredom by a sad, painful and somewhat slow movie, “Tall Guy”… not a bad movie, but a slow and boring one… satire and dark British humor were in abundance but the exemplary cast of Rowan Atkinson, Jeff Goldblum and Ema Thompson failed to impress me this evening… The long and almost uneasy to watch sex scene seemed more memorable than the sum of the movie….

The dull evening was saved when little Isaiah, seemingly understood the dullness of the situation, and being too young to endure such boredom decided to jump to the rescue. His bright, witty, cutey cries of “ta ta” brought some joy to our face, especially to mine as I was trying hard to laugh at all the silly movie jokes, almost trying to convince my wife that it was a good movie…

If my wife is the devil… patience is the “cross”… and they never get along well… In just five minutes of “Tall Guy” she was giving me the ‘not so good movie’ look and glum face… 


Issus cries for a ‘ta ta’now meant that we had to take him out…Isaiah started pulling us out of our seats to get dressed… 

Our journey started without a destination… but after some thoughts, we decided to drive to the creek, Dubai Creek, where once I used to go walking with my Dad… Once at the creek, we decided to take a boat to the other side, have done this before but that was before we had a car… we both had NOL cards (bus pass) and we took a ride on a water bus!!! from Al Seef to some place on the other side… 

Little Issu seemed excited… the drone from the engine and the darkness outside did not seem to lessen his excitement… he was amused by the waves made by our boat… and the water beneath, which he understood to be the ‘boat’, since he was pointing to the water below and I was pointing to a passing boat while introducing him to this new sight of the world…

On reaching the other side, we once again made our pilgrimage to taste the worst ‘shawarma’ available… After the deed we thanked him with Dirhams and with the usual thought of “why… we should not have” we took an Abra to the next shore, another place on the same shore from where we started.

Abra has a lot of history and charm but very little in the way of safety… just two Lifebuoy’s… so in the case of the worst scenario, they expect two people to fall off board… that was optimism… 

On the next shore were plenty of cheap shops were we undertook some cheap shopping followed by some more cheap gift shopping… but we soon realized that it was not so cheap or we were so cheap that the goods there did not seem so cheap… 

Bargaining was tolerated and I bought a nice looking knife…

The whole place bustles with activity and if you try and imagine the place some fifty years back, it would still be a busy trade place, the Abra would still be there and even some of the shops… if the thoughts are in black and white, just give some color and you can easily see a certain crowded, charming, busy sea side port…

On our way back, we decided to take the RTA waterbus… rather, we decided not to take the Abra… 

Back at home, I continued watching ‘Tall Guy’ and... it was still not a great movie… finally… it ended and on the credits, I saw ‘Richard Curtis’ I had seen many of his movies and had liked most of them; Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bean, Notting Hill Bridget Jones's Diary, Love Actually, Mr. Bean's Holiday. Richard Curtis wrote the Black Adder, one of the most entertaining and finest act I have seen on tele.

And then to bed… 

It feels so much better to cuddle little Issu and go off to sleep… careful not to squeeze him too tight and wake him up… which will be a test of mammas patience….