Well it's been a while since I last posted on the goings-on out here in the desert, so here's a bit of an update from the last few months...
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| Downtown Dubai interchange and Sheikh Zayed Road |
April: highlight of the month was definitely seeing the Eagles play at the Sevens stadium out in the desert. The crowd for the gig was huge, far bigger than that for Kasabian back in February, and the band did not disappoint. Their on-stage banter did seem somewhat, well, staged, but they all seemed to get on fairly well with each other, despite all the rumours of them not speaking to each other after spending more than 40 years together as a band.
May: while not really being a highlight any more, my birthday (my actual, real birthday...) rolled around again at the start of the month. This gave myself, Tasker and Sturge, who also had birthdays within the week, the excuse of booking the Atlantis Saffron brunch. After the William and Kate masks last year, this time Rankin kitted us out in masks of those celebrating - plus one of serial Wimbledon semi-finalist Tim Henman for you know who.
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| Me, me, me, me, me, me, me and Tim Henman |
After the brunch we headed to the beach for the last Sandance of the season at Nasimi. Morcheeba, Travis (what have they been doing since the 1990's?) and Zane Lowe kept us entertained well into the night, although if you asked me anything about what happened after Morcheeba I would struggle to tell you. Was a great night by all accounts although it took it's toll on me the next day - I'm convinced some of that sushi at Saffron was off...
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| Party time |
June: a trip back to the UK for Laura and Justin's wedding (congrats!) and the Stone Roses gig at Manchester's Heaton Park (awesome) was preceded by Rankin's birthday boat party which was an amusing day out. The boat took us and the fully loaded bar through the marina and out to sea, weighing anchor (is that the right phrase?) near one of the tips of the crescent of the Palm. Some people danced, some people drank, some people started helping themselves from behind the bar (Kat). After docking a few hours later we made our way to Barasti for the opening matches of Euro 2012, although again from this point on things are somewhat a blur.
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| Bev orders another 'double vodka and whatever' from Kat |
July: with summer kicking in properly (40C+ every day and extreme humidity), and with Ramadan starting on the 20th, things started to quieten down for the summer months. I spent an epic weekend in Poland for Oli's stag do - to be documented another time - but apart from that things have been pretty relaxed with most people taking holidays at some point. Ramadan was an interesting experience as it was last year - deserted shopping malls and restaurants and cafe's closed until after sunset. Earlier this month we went to an Iftar - the breaking of the fast - at the Atlantis: the buffet was amazing, absolutely loads of food, very much like a brunch but with no alcohol and lots of hungry Muslims!
August: the weather continues to be relentlessly hot and I think everyone is looking forward to next month when it'll start to cool a bit and normal social activities will resume. We've just had the Eid holiday to celebrate the end of Ramadan (three days off, thank you very much) and I'm about to head back to the UK for, yep you guessed it - yet more weddings. This has been the first week I've not travelled to Qatar for work for sometime, but it's looking increasingly likely that that may become a more permanent arrangement soon - more on that later...
