Saturday 21st April. Roz and Frans last day. It has come round quick. PLAN…..we sat by the pool til lunch, totally lazy, sun worshipping again….CJD then cooked spag bol………with LOTS of spaghetti! Rather amusing that we were hungry but could have fed Dubai with the quantity of spaghetti we made!, then headed to the desert for some quad action! At one point we hit temperatures of 42 degrees but when we got to the quads it was 39 degrees. SO HOT! But still we put on our ski Dubai hats, shoved on a helmet and headed for the sand! The guy asked if I wanted to go out on a safari, but didn’t want to leave my mates. This was where it could have gone a bit Pete Tong! I raced across the sand to find CJD to see if she wanted to head out too……..only this ridge I saw…..i thought it was gentle on the other side…..but it disappeared…….all I remember is thinking OH S^%T. I was committed! Stood up, pulled back on the bars, and hoped I could make it…….now quads are not like motocross bikes……not overly maneuverable and are front heavy…..therefore my futile attempt at landing my unintentional air on the back wheels wasn’t going to happen! I landed rather ungracefully almost over the bars, but relived I made it, I opened it fully to join my mates…..
Only Roz and I went out and we were out for a good hr driving round the dunes, up and down the steepest sand hills. It was extremely hot and roz proved that with a big wet patch on her jeans from sitting on the placcy seat! Thankfully I spent a lot of the time stood up!

We had to chill after such a high energy activity and decided to sit in our ski Dubai hats for a while, watching the other people coming and going on the quads. whilst occasionally posing for GANGSTA shots!

I ended up with two masshoosive blisters on my hands....should have worn gloves!

We headed back to Dubai and the Gold Souk. I had to pick up my pressie to my mum, Roz and Fran wanted to browse and CJD met a mate that was over from the UK. Then the girls packed ready for their flight early the next morning.

Friday 20th April….We headed for Al Mamzar beach, Stupidly we thought that we could sit in open sun and get a nice tan…….Hmmm a quick refreshing swim and a 10 minute pew on the sand and we had to retreat to the trees! The shade was welcome…..it was just too much in the open. When I say refreshing swim, it was refreshing when you had managed to dodge the large number of jellyfish that were being washed up on the beach. A crowd of NGS guys turned up and we all sat comparing our degrees of headache. Kath Roz and I grabbed a lilo and headed for the water where we got involved in a game of ball throwing…….well most of the time it was the ball, occasionally it would be fragments of jelly fish that Stu and Paul had ripped apart…….if we were really lucky, we would have a whole blue jelly fish lobbed at us………particularly funny when all three of us were chilling on the lilo and scattered as the jellyfish bomb descended in our vicinity! I could have stayed in the water for the rest of the day, it was really nice, but at 4 o clock we had to leave to get ready for another new experience…..just because the secondment is coming to an end, it doesn’t stop us getting out and about trying new activities…..Fran and Roz are pretty much into cars too…..so when Top Fuel Drag Racing was advertised, it was a must to go see it!...the Venue = Um Al Qwain.
We nipped back to the flat to get ready and jumped in the car (a nice mondeo as my chevvy died) and headed for the Emirates Road. For some reason a car full of females caught the attention of a 4x4 pulling a trailer of 4 quads……..not particularly safe at 120km….anyway, these boys though we would be impressed by them pulling along side, hanging out of windows etc, but when I braked they slowed down too……..then the mobile phones came out……Roz received a Bluetooth business card….they were so forward that they sent her their number……hahahah very funny!
Drag racing was a strange affair! Not a woman in sight! And NO TOP FUEL CARS! It was basically boy racers and a few fast cars and bikes (the bikes were nuts!) the second run of the night saw explosive action with an engine literally exploding into flames. I think he pushed it a bit far……the funniest thing was the safety at the track….1guy running down the strip with a fire extinguisher, a golf buggy with a couple of guys going as fast as a snail to the accident and no marshals in sight…….most bizarre…..and more frustrating was it took well over an hour to clear it up………Eventually the racing started and we saw cars and bikes blasting down the track…….but at 9pm it got a bit boring if I am honest, and we headed to Dubai……..dropped CJD at NGS and then proceeded to get pizza and meet Kath, Ed, Chris, Ian at Barasti…….only for a couple…….

Thursday 19th April. WEEKEND……….plan was established midweek…..with various little tweeks last minute…..I had booked the Burj Al Arab afternoon tea for Roz and Fran. Given that they were at the far end of town, we discussed and decided that the crowd could meet at BarZar at Souk Madinat and move on after…….
Fran Roz CJD and I got to BarZar pretty early…nice setting, live band and outside were bean bags and tables next to the waterways of the Madinat. Gradually the NGS massive etc, met up and sunk a few bevvies…….a few extra faces from the office joined us and we stayed for a good few hours. You see, this part of the evening is the chat part, before it all goes down hill. Time to have meaningful conversation not drunken waffle.
Not sure of the time, but it got to dance time and the crowd voted for a place just round the corner. (and because I have been slack a updating the blog, I cant remember the name of the place!) It was reasonably shiney, had a dance floor but didn’t really BUZZ! Grabbed our drinks and went to sit outside chatting. This was not ideal for the cheese seekers………Natasha arrived (she was leaving for the UK at the weekend and had come to see everyone)………It was no good the requirement for dancing got too much and as creatures of habit JD was the obvious choice……so CJD, Roz, Fran, Scott and I said our goodbyes and found a cab big enough for us all…….our first FEMALE taxi driver! We arrived at Dix for a couple of hours of dancing………
We later found out that the guys at the other venue had had photos taken with a famous ex goalkeeper!! Excellent.

You will have to excuse the shortage of photos, check Daves Dubai days as i think she was a little more snap happy!

WHAT A WEEK! (W/C Sun 15th Apr) My mates (Fran and Roz) came back for a visit….so we packed in as much as possible this week! While they hit the beach we were busy working so that meant lots of evening activity!
They arrived Sunday night…..so I met them later that night.…….
Monday we chilled in the flat, lots of girlie chatting (YES I can do girlie chatting too!), catching up, take out etc…..just what was needed by us all! CJD was cleaning…leaving us to the heart to hearts, in fact it was quite a windy night…..opened the balcony door and the breeze was enough to blow the cobwebs away…………;-)
Tuesday, CJD dropped us off at the Deira Gold Souk. I wanted to get something for my mum and the girls wanted to see the souk in its full glory when the shops were open!!! Mission accomplished, it was off to the taxi rank to head to Irish Village. No sooner had we got to the bar and Roz had attracted interest! (cant take her anywhere)…….These ‘boys’ at the bar were dropping a shot of baileys into Guiness and downing it…….funny how they waited to see if we were watching them before proceeding to neck their drinks….very impressed lads……:-/
We went to grab a table and one of them followed and proceeded to tell us that his mate was too shy to speak to Roz but would she go back in so they could talk………..erm…..see ya mate! NO!
We stayed for a couple of hours and then headed home. (its still a school night!).

Wednesday night we hit the slopes……..emailed around work to see if anyone fancied some snow bashing……and all met at MOE.
The first run is always the ‘getting used to it again’ run! Well that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it…The skis felt so fast. Usually a sharp turn would be enough to slow my decent, however, I wasn’t anticipating that I would turn so much that I would be facing upslope and proceed to descend butt first! The last thing I remember before getting a face full of snow was Hmmmmm I don’t know how to stop in this direction! (note the dusting of white stuff on my hat!)Nevermind………after almost ripping my knee joints apart I stopped……,and after catching up with Stu and Katie, waving a few times to CJD and Fran, Roz and I got our confidence to fly down the slope! Bottom to bottom was taking around 6-7mins….not bad considering the lift is around 5mins of that time.
We watched Stu gracefully boarding down the slope, occasionally getting some air….unfortunately the jump was shut, otherwise I am sure he would have pulled more tricks. Spurred on by such displays and the realization that it was probably our last visit to Ski Dubai Roz and I pushed our ability further…..mainly increasing speed……this was great until I was sandwiched between a skier and a boarder, forced to go straight down in the general direction of the shelf that Stu was jumping off…..OH MY GOD! I couldn’t see the slope, just the ‘jump’ and BANG! All I could do was relax my knees and go with it…..Proper air!!! And I landed it! GAME ON! Had to do it again……and again…….erm….and again! Great fun! If I recall correctly…..CJD did have one good wipeout!.....in front of me…it was sooooo good she lost her skis! Very impressed…..i held up the 10 board as I went passed…..(of course I checked if she was ok too!)
At the end of the session CJD, Roz, Fran and I went for a fully loaded hot chocolate, Jumped in the Chevvy and headed home!

We had a munchie craving in the office, Not completely sure why, but the name of the biscuits tickled us! Chocolate biscuits called WANT!

they were not very tasty though!

Remember the Races? Well that was a public holiday for the Prophets birthday…..instead of getting a day off in lieu, the weekend rotation started again…..this meant that our planned weekend to Muscat wasn’t going to happen, because what was our 2 day weekend became our single weekend! Oh Well……that wont stop the fun!
All week the plans were being hatched for the Thursday night event……….
Cheese was planned for Friday, but secretly I was not sure I was going to make that…..1) Thursday there is no holding back and 2) Friday is a school night! (ok so I am a lightweight! Not as young as some of the whippersnappers out here! CJD was up for it though!) we decided that due to the possible 2nd night out that we would have a sedate BBQ on the roof for the metro massive…….we recruited Stu to ‘Guard’ the barbeques while some of us went swimming, some drinking, some getting ready………..met at 8 and some how CJD turned into Delia………well, a drunk Delia……nothing wrong with the kebabs, don’t remember seeing any sausages, and the charcoal Frisbees, Burgers, were to die for………:-/
It was very pleasant sat on the roof, chilling but something had to be done to liven it up…..(I know the purpose of it was to chill, but still…………..)
As sporty types will know, the cricket world cup is on at the mo, so Stu and Scott headed for Barasti to catch a bit of it….we stayed on the roof to chat for a bit but then decided we had to go out…..it is the law! We threw the BBQ stuff in bags, dumped it in the flat and CJD, Paul, Ian and I grabbed a cab, followed by Kath, Sara and the nurses (who came a bit late and were forced to drink their bottle of wine very quickly from mugs at Kaths flat), and the architects…….Quite an interesting journey….taxi driver obviously thought we were tourists and was taking his time getting out of Al Mina road…..the longest slowest way possible!!! He was good enough to pose for a photo though!! Eventually on our way to the bar! I was dreading it as the previous visit (after the races) was pants!!! So quiet it was boring….the taxi ride was very educational affair….Paul has just recently come out to Dubai, so CJD was giving him the usual tour guide talk…….we all established where we were from….apparently I sound like I am from Birmingham….and that I don’t sound like I come from Cambridge because I sound rough! Hahahahahahaha bless you Paul…. Good thing we were all merry….it did make me laugh though!....................Finally got to the hotel. Barasti was buzzing! Some guy on a guitar, TVs showing Cricket (yawn)…….managed to fight to the bar and found the guys………….very shortly everyone turned up….lots of chatting and deciding what exactly we were going to do after Barasti……now I was well and truly up for dancing, by 1am but didn’t fancy shiny!!! AT ALL…..most of the group wanted 360, but two of us were seriously considering giving J.Dix another chance……problem was we were 1/2hr away….CJD had just sat down with a break away sect with a drink, and no one wanted to come with us……that’s it, lets go! 2 of us headed for town……felt a bit bad because I had split the group, but when you have to dance you have to dance! CJD was torn but had to have the drink that was bought for her……..Jumped in the cab……and got to the Movenpick! First tune on when we got there!!!!?? ZOMBIE!!! Straight on the phone to rub it in to CJD and guess what,…..they were in a cab to join us………Great night, still love that venue!
Again, very quickly 3am came along and we were pushed towards the taxis…..back to the flats………….some people were not well, but we pushed on through…..in fact, for the rest of the morning we watched DVDs…….until sun rise…………

Check out Daves Dubai Days for another account!!!

Didn’t move from the sofa until we had to get ready to go for breakfast at a colleagues house…the whole team was invited, and it was a fantastic spread! Really nice to see what a traditional Arabic breakfast is like….houmous, bread, pastries etc really nice….we didn’t leave until the afternoon, just talking about all sorts and drinking different teas and coffees.
I had made arrangements to see some friends to say goodbye, but we left the breakfast thing a bit late….so will hopefully catch them soon…….we were in work on Saturday.

Monday 9th April….yep, a work day…..BUT……..for us it was a mega early start!
I am sure our colleagues are totally fed up with our woeful tales at how the hot air balloon keeps getting cancelled….once, while we had a BBQ in a sandstorm and the other time, we actually got up and dressed!!! (that was the day of the races!) and it was too windy again! We are running out of weekends so the next best option was to go on a morning during the week…….Monday was that day!
We checked with the company the likelihood of flight and they were optimistic, but instead of going to bed early, we just had to wait till we were tired……
0415hrs the mosque clock called….Got up and dressed and the only phone call we got was the pilot saying he was out side the flats waiting for us!!! (not in his balloon! In his car!!!) Surprisingly we were able to contain our excitement….after all we were still half asleep! We wanted to text everybody, but knew that it still could have been cancelled! We jumped in the people carrier and we were off to the Hyatt! Catching ZZZzzz’s until we got to the hotel. At the hotel we had to wait what seemed like an eternity! I think there was a mix up with telephone numbers or something…but eventually a young couple (I say young cos they were in their early 20s if that!!!) came down and jumped in. Then it was more ZZZzzz’s to the flight site…….unfortunately I cant tell you how long the journey was, or where exactly we were….i know we could see the Oman mountains…and I believe we were on our way to Al Ain.

There was a balloon already in the air….it had a big basket holding around 18 people! Our pilot told us there were only 4 of us plus him going up in our balloon…..BONUS!
The balloon was sat rather limp on the sand! They were blowing it up with a fan to start with and the occasional blast from the burners when they could guarantee the nylon wasn’t going to burn! The first thing that surprised me was the size of the basket!! It looked a bit small for all of us!!!! Very quickly, it came to life! The basket was up turned and we were beckoned to jump in!! both CJD and I bumped our heads…but at this point the adrenaline was kicking in and you could have punched me and I wouldn’t have felt it!
THIS WAS IT…..we were really going for our flight!!!
We helped the girl into the basket….she was quite delicate….and very quickly and soooooo smoothly we were airborne!.......Silence (well, except for the periodic blast from the burners that were a few inches from our heads!!!)….oh yeah and the little screeches that the other girl let out when we had to get more heat in the balloon……we had a brief safety chat, but to be honest, if anything had have happened up there, there was not a lot that we could have done to save ourselves…..WOW that made it even more exciting!! we started with a little low flying…..then we went up…..2700 feet (ok so I have been told before I should state it in metric, around 823m)…the view was fantastic..i then thought to look at the way the balloon was coupled to the basket....Wow, those wires dont half look thin when your 0.8km from earth!!!….there isn’t really a lot that words can do justice……just check out the photos….we could see a massive dry river bed, sun rise, mountains, camels, goats, sand dunes…..oh yeah and smog from the city in the distance….Right TEXT TIME...out came the phone everyone got the same text in the UK and Dubai, we just had to share our experience! Was ok except we forgot that UK was only at 3am…Sorry Nick n Steve!….….we came down and did more low flying, and a touch and go…..well, I felt a bit robbed by that actually……we didn’t touch the sand at all! But it was still cool……then faster than we dropped, we were up high again! ACE! We managed a circuit (no idea how he steered it) there was no breeze! Ok so landing……totally poised for excitement!!!! Being dragged across the sand by the out of control balloon, basket thrown all over the place….sand and dirt all over our work clothes, BUT NO………………the calmest, softest, smoothest landing EVER! And we came in to land where we took off…….really amazing! We jumped out of the basket still buzzing……..was excellent…..definitely has to be better than going gliding with cadets!!! And I really love that too!
The other balloon came in to the same place and they all decamped and jumped into a bus (cattle truck) and disappeared! Our pilot got the picnic chairs out, and we had fruit, yoghurt, croissants, pain au chocolat, Tea, juice (BREAKFAST BASICALLY) in the desert! HOW COOL! Well actually by 7:40 it was starting to get quite humid and warm! we chatted about all sorts…….how our pilot got into ballooning, ballooning and the UAE etc it was great. But then reality hit in….we had to go back to Doobers for work!!!
We dropped the tourists off at the Hyatt and we were dropped at Union Square…..in for 0900….HOWSATT!