WARNING...Do Not try This At Home!!

Above - The 'men' of the house, attending to some 'manly' stuff involving a ladder. All these sons, i really am a good Arab.

Above - Meanwhile the lady of the house relaxes in a Bedawin styled room, waiting for Nick to finish the house work, child minding, make her a traditional coffee and then give her a massage.

Above - Site seeing at the Palace Museum. This was the actual palace where Sh. Zayed grew up as a boy before going on to shape his nation years later. Unfortunatly Sh, Zayed passed away a couple of years ago, but his sons now preside over the country.

Above - B1 hurtling down the slopes of Ski Dubai.

Above - B1, B2, B3 required helmets to complete the teams event of the downhill tobogan at ski Dubai, otherwise known as 'the skeleton'.

Above - Experiment - take one fry pan.

Above - Experiment - place on the searing hot sands in your back yard.

Above - Experiment - take one fresh egg.

Above - Experiment - Crack the egg into solar heated pan, ensure you do not splat any egg onto your dish dash or sandels.

Above - Experiment - See if the pan and outside tempretures are hot enough to fry an egg.

Above - Results - the critics decide this egg was not good enough to eat!!

Above - Dates after harvesting are dried for 7 to 10 days before being bagged and sold.

Above - A wedding, singing, dancing, chanting, a lot of blokes...but where is the bride?

Above - the 'lady of the house' enjoying her cooked breakfast includng bacon!!

The hot sun, long days and let's be honest, monoteny of the desert has been known to drive a few people batty and lead them to strange mumblings and doings. Not us though, we're completely sad, i mean sane. Take our desire to see if it was hot enough outside to heat a frying pan in the back yard sand, crack and egg and cook it successfully enough to eat it.

Before we get into the werid world of science though, lets have a look at what's been going on over the last couple of weeks.

Most recently, we went to Ski Dubai, the indoor ski feild perched high above the Emirates Mall. Essentially this place is the worlds largets refrigerator, but credit to the genius's responsible for this wonderland, it really is good fun and has catered to most of the family. The drive to Dubai was spent by the boys recounting all of their worldly skiing expeirances and how knarly they are. The first glimpse of the outside of ski dubai and the slope reaching skywards, heard the bragging drop to low whispers of "oh my god...well we were only 5 last time we went so i'm not that good really".

Somehow, we were able to convinece all that B4 was infact a 3 year old, "he just has a growth and speech impediment"; with the ski slopes being seperated from the snow park, we would have to split the team. All in all, we had a great time with B1 having a good comand of the skis, whilst B2-4, led the charge on the half pipe for tubing, tobogans and sleigh racing. The ski run is about 450metres, and two hours allows plenty of runs as there was absolutly no queues. It won't beat the real thing, but it 's a very good substitue.

A few weeks ago i was fortunate enough to have been invited to the wedding of a one of my clients. A young Palastinian guy, he has lived in Al Ain his whole life and we have had many discussions about his upcoming nuptials and the best place to Honeymoon, of course i did my bit for the Australian tourism commission. The invite was more a verbal kind, and i had no details as to the dress code, gifts, was the family invited? etc. With details being a bit sketchy, FS decided she would pass, so off i went for a 7pm wedding. Upon arrival i was met at the function room by about 250 other blokes, no women... good decsion FS, i thought. Anyhows we sat around for about 3 hours, drinking coffee and chewing on the occasional date. I was the only westerner there, the only one wearing a tie (most others were in their Dish Dash(emirates only) or less formally attired), and probably the only one who wasn't smoking either. All the time i'm looking for the Groom, but of course after 3 hours the chanting and singing began, hearlding the arrival of the guest of honour and his family (dad and brothers). We danced and chanted (the beauty of chantng is that even an outsider like myself can join in because someone leads every chant start), for about 20 minutes, before forming a single line to say hello, kiss the groom(left, right, left, right), and then everyone sat at the tables outside. A traditional feast of whole lamb, rice, and assortments and desserts, eaten by grabbing handfuls from the centre setting, rolling into a ball and down the hatch. This was an exerise of eating as much as humanly possible in 20 minutes. no talking, no speeches, no bride, just eat. When your finsh, stand-up and leave. The Groom had already gone, the evening's celebrations were over, thankyou.

Intrigued by the events of the previous night, i did a little reserch the next day. Arab weddings are all slightly different depending on region, culture etc. The Palastinian wedding is usually broken into 4 stages; 1. al zaffeh, where we all chant at how lucky and great this guy is. This is usually broken into 4 stanzas, the second of which i found was my favourite, 'Areesna Antar Abs, Antar Abs Areenssa', meaning, 'Antar abs is the tribal hero of the Arab folklore love story, who falls madly in love with his maiden Lala and saves her from the brink of disaster when she is kipnapped from her desert tent palace by a raiding enemy party'.

stage 2. of the wedding is the Mansaf or feast, again, the sexes are kept seperate. stage 3. is the Coming of the bride on horse back adored in gold coins and stage 4. is the Dabrek, or Arab dance.

Now speaking of feasts, we chanced upon a store in Al Ain, that sells the 'P' product. Being a Muslim nation, pork is not readily sold or avaliable, but upon finding some bacon, it was hot breakfast galore at our villa the next morning. Snags, bacon, toast, eggs, tomato, and fresh coffee. B3 came downstairs for breakfast annoucing, "MMmmm, smells like Stralia (he drops the A). It's been over 6 months without any bacon, so yes, it tasted good.

Now back to our myth-buster experiment. Take a fry pan, place it on the searing sands in your back yard, let it sit in the hot sun (try to wait for a >48C day for best results), crack a fresh egg into the pan, and allow enough time to cook. Yes..Taubans paints have been doing this for years, i hear you! Unfortunately my critics didn't give me much of a chance and were calling the results before a four burner BBQ could have had time to cook an egg. My assessment; if you like runny eggs a little on the clear side, then this was a pearla. Next week's experiment, if NS angles his head correctly, can the reflection be as annoying as someone reflecting a watch into your eyes? Stay tuned.

It's Gettin Hot Here...so take off all your clothes...

Above - F, B3, N and B2 take respite from the heat in the lounge of the Presidential Palace, Abu Dhabi.

Above - Hot days and searing rays means that 'playing toy army's in the garden' is a nocturnal activity.

Above - Our summer house in Abu Dhabi...the Presidential Palace.

Above - Local UAE song and dance, essentially lots of repetitive drumming and humming.

Above - With a cappuccino going for 54dhs in the palace bar, i was happy to order a round of waters for the troupes.

Above - B4 loves watering his own little garden.

Another month has passed, and i have been even slacker than usual in keeping the world posted about our little adventure in the middle East. My sincere apologies, just don't let the local police here know i have committed such an offence. The local paper published a story about an English fella who gave another driver the 'bird'. He was sighted by a passing police car, arrested, given 60 lashings (not tongue lashings) and will be deported after serving another 30 days in jail. To put this into perspective, it certainly reduces any incidents of road-rage, but the way these people drive is just unbelievably dangerous, and although i don't give people the bird, if they could hear what i am yelling at them, I'd be buried up to my head and stoned to death and left for the ants to clean up the mess. (that's too graphic isn't it?, sorry...again)

All going well here though. Fran and the boys are 2 and half weeks into the 12 week school holiday period and all are still on speaking terms despite being inside together most of the time. Fran is doing an hour or so of home schooling each day which includes some reading, writing exercises, projects on the local area or any other topic the boys choose, music and games of scrabble. B3 and B4 pretend to be doing their work also, with B4 now able to fit 2 pens in each nostril.

By 9am or so, they normally go swimming and hang out in the games room for a couple of hours or until it is just too hot. The days are getting up to about 46-49C each day now, and even though Al Ain is meant to be very dry, the humidity of late has been about 60%, and very muggy.

The hotter weather is making my work a little more difficult also, so i am trying to spend about 5 hours each morning on the sites doing lots of training and benchmarking etc, and then seeking respite in the office thereafter putting together reports etc. The labour obviously get slowed down and with a recent introduction of decree meaning labourers are not to be on site during the hours of 12.30 to 4pm, the starting hours are now 4.30am, although thankfully i have handed over the project management roles now, so i can start at a more reasonable hour.

Last week we went to Abu Dhabi (capital of UAE) for the day. Being a coastal area, the temperatures are lower (40C), but the humidity is really high. We stumbled across the Presidential Palace, a truly magnificent building and grounds of mammoth proportions. It was originally built to hold a conference of all the sheiks, and is today used to house any visiting rulers and parliamentary sessions are also held there. One of the wings is now a well disguised, highly exclusive hotel to the absurdly rich and famous. So when the 6 of us rocked up in our boardies and thongs, we coped a few strange stares, but were warmly welcomed none the less. Fran found a lovely part of the hotel serving high tea and is now excited about taking any visiting friends / family to 'high tea' at the Presidential Palace.

We also went ten pin bowling recently. You've probably heard of disco bowling or being bowling while they play music loudly to raise the atmosphere level....right? Well, the UAE is no different, we got some great video footage of the boys bowling alongside all these fellas in their long traditional dresses, with colourful polished bowling shoes instead of their usual sandal, and the loudest Arabic music in town. Again, we were the odd ones out, but had a great time and the local guys really enjoyed watching B3 and B4 try to bowl. FS was a real standout...not for a great bowling ability but as the only female in the whole place. For the record the winners list read B1 first then NS, B3 and B2, with B4 and FS failing to register.

With every single one of our neighbours having gone away for the summer months (July and August), we are doing alot of plant and pet minding. but the greatest things is my Sth African neighbour has left us his key and said we could use his TV if we wanted. the guys is a 'sports nut', and so has every possible cable Chanel and sports channel available. He has a wide screen plasma the size of a trampoline, so the recent Wallabies games, WQS and PGA events etc have been awesome to watch live.

Cheers for now, as usual we look forward to receiving your emails and letters and hero faxes.