Hi Dudes & Dudettes.

It's 8th July and the kids have gone to South Africa for 5 weeks or so to stay with the grannies and aunties and sundry friends. They went from a hot Dubai to a freezing SA. We dropped them at Abu Dhabi airport at midnight Wednesday night, where they caught an Etihad flight to SA. Flying them on Etihad from Abu Dhabi saved us around AED 2,000 (R4,000). Abu Dhabi is 1 1/2 hours from Dubai, so J and I checked into a hotel after the drop off. Good thing we did that because the flight was at 02h25 and th drive back to Dubai would have been difficult. As it is, we got horribly lost from the airport to the hotel - we arrived at 03h00.

So we are now kid free (missing them though) and able to do all sorts of stuff. We had a good weekend - quite relaxing. We saw Die Hard 4.0, went out for a couple of meals and went to a Russian restaurant for a friend's birthday on Friday night. I had Borscht to start (excellent) followed by "lamb in the pot" - supposedly stewed lamb with all sorts of goodies. It tasted a bit funny and only after I'd eaten a third of it did the waitress announce that she had got the orders mixed up. I was, to my horror, eating tongue in the pot. Now there are various places in which it is acceptable to find a tongue - for example in the cow's mouth, licking whatever cow's lick, shaping the timbre of a particular moo or in someone else's dinner. Not mine. Absolutely not. No way. Needless to say the tongue was returned and that ended my main meal. It wasn't so much the taste as the knowledge that I was eating part of a cow which, in most civilised countries, would be chucked away or, at least, turned into polony. (Did you know that polony is Italian for "includes everything from the cow that we can sell, even though modern man would consider its component parts vulgar"?) Somewhat later, I ventured to order a dessert of cranberries, walnuts and honey. What I got was a mound of cranberries so sour that on placing the initial spoonful in my mouth, my eyes watered, my facial hair retracted into my face, my tongue went all corrugated and my stomach threatened my oesophagus with unprintable things should it even consider transporting the vile cargo down below.

Suffice to say that I'm off Russian food for a while. The girls in the Russian dancing which ensued after the meal were another story altogether. I suspect the Russian mafia (clearly the proprietors fell into this category) had hit on an amazing scheme - serve them rubbish, charge them the earth and then send on some hot looking singers and dancers and they'll forget the aforegoing. Well - its seemed to work. Until now.

I started Friday by arising from my slumbers at 04h55, climbing into my heavily armoured motorcycle protective gear (J says I look like superman), leaping astride my trusty Dakar and hurtling off to meet some friends for a magical 2 hour ride through various desert landscapes in the relative cool of the morning. Had a great breakfast afterwards at a hotel managed by one of the guys. Good start to a nice day.

Our friend Jacqui from SA arrives shortly and we're looking forward to doing all sorts of good stuff with her - desert dune bashing, dhow cruise etc. We've been saving these things up so that we can do them with a friend and we're looking forward to it. It will also be good to have a friendly face around for a few days.

We're planning a couple of movies and a whole lot of eating out while the kids are away. In Dubai, contrary to advertising, there is very little to actually do and the only thing you can do regularly is go out for dinner at the veritable plethora of restaurants. We'll diet when the kids get back. Diet is die with a t.

Work is still unpleasant but I'm hoping the UK guys will help to sort things out. In the meantime I'm hanging in, although I have an interview on Wednesday with a local developer. Not sure if I want the job (director of FM) but I will go along and have a chat with them anyway.

Cheers and blessings