It's 31 minutes past my usual bed-time.
My bed-time is 10pm. And that's pushing it.
But it's Ramadhan. It's Thursday night. And it's the start of the weekend tomorrow with no plans whatsoever!
I don't want to sit here and stare at the screen any more...
I'm going to bed then.
Good night!
Talk about quality of service.. the internet has been on the blink all day at the office and it's a hit or miss affair.
I wish I did this even before Nasser Jr. arrived, not that I'm complaining mind you, but I think the thing that allowed me to jump on a plane with Hanan and Arif for a quick overnight visit to see Abeer (my sister) & Co. was me finally doing a two-day weekend. This was the third ever two-day weekend I have taken in my life, and now I can tell you that I know what I have been missing... I plan to utilise these weekends a lot more now, and it will be very difficult for me to accept to go back (personally) to 5 and a half or 6 day week.
Anyway, my brother-in-law Alaa picked us up from an airport directly from the 70s! You never know how advanced the rest of the world is until you pass through Sharjah airport. It says a lot about the atmosphere of the Emirate itself and how it's run I think; people hardly smile, the airport staff obviously have got better things to do rather than sit behind ancient counters taking forever to stamp a passport, and forget about getting a welcome smile, Khaleeji or no Khaleeji. We didn't allow that to change the mood of our trip.
We exited the airport and Alaa drove us to his appartment we relaxed a bit and chatted, and obviously demanded that Nasser be woken up! Abeer complained a bit that he didn't sleep much last night and it's best to leave him be, but I was not having any of it, and obviously neither did Nasser as he woke up almost immediately!
The boy is lovely, he grew up a bit in the two weeks we didn't see him, he is a lot more alert, and he's got eyes that none in the family even approaches, truly unique! His eyes are deep green and hazel. I don't know if they change in babies after 6 weeks, but I hope they don't, they're very striking, like he is as well.
We chatted some more, Nasser got settled in his day-sleeper-thingy-whatever-they-call-it-baby-crib with dangly bits which focused his attention, and then the tornado Hussain his elder brother wanted to make his presence felt and he's just got to switch on the vibrating springs to soothe his brother, and swing him from side to side and give him a smooch somewhere on his face, if it lands on his cheek then that's just pure coincidence. I picked him (Hussain) up and tickled the bejeezus out of him and that distracted hiim a bit to leave Nasser to try to get a little more shut-eye.
Zain and the eldest Yara were hapy to see us too, and they liked their little presents we got them. We couldn't really get anything for Hussain but something that moves, so we got him a remotely controlled yellow Porsche 911 which he loved. He has other remote controlled toys as well of course, one that his father really enjoyed playing with (as well as the other boys) is a remote controlled set of wheels which flip and turn and make a good racket. I would hate to be their downstairs neighbours when that thing is being used. Fortunately it got switched off after a while and the preference went with the somewhat quieter Porsche. :)
Had lunch, relaxed a bit more then Alaa took us out to check out some of the malls in Dubai; the first was Ibn Battuta mall, named after a famous Arab traveller and contains whole sections done up in Chinese, Indian, Persian, Tunisian, and Egyptian architecture. It is trule a marvel and is a huge place filled with named brands and other novelty shops. Hanan went wild with shopping! Arif got a couple of things there I think, so did I for the house. I bought 5 hand-made South American pottery works from Peru and Columbia which are quite nice I think, and they arrived (obviously) at home where they are displayed around our living room now. Arif got a neon-lit Union Jack guitar wall clock which I have to drill a hole in his wall to hang this thing. It actually looks cool though and perfect for a young teenager's room.
We had some coffee to just take the weight off our feet and then onward we went to the next mall in the area, which was Mall of the Emirates. If you think you've seen malls before and you're yawning, close your mouth and get on an airplane and go visit Dubai simply to spend some time in that mall. It is unbelievable by any standards. The architecture and design and fittings in this mall are breathtaking. The facilities are astounding, and the kind of shops and activities you get in it are unmatched in any that I have visited. They've got a full built-in ski slope as well, so if you think that it is impossible to have snow fall in a desert, think again!
Needless to say both Hanan and Arif took the opportunity to buy more stuff, and so did I. We arrived back home after 9.30pm shattered - at least I was and so was my wallet! Instead of going out, which both Abeer and Alaa wanted to do, I suggested that we should order in as we're all tired and the road to Dubai was backed up all the way into Sharjah, so it wouldn't have been worth going out, especially that we received news that Saturday might be the first day of Ramadhan, which means that most people are in a mad rush to go out and buy stuff, even if they don't need to.
We spent some more time with Nasser and then Arif, Hanan and I decided that it was time for bed. We awoke the next morning and headed out again to a local mall in Sharjah which is called Sahara Mall. We were the first shoppers there! It was 9.55am when we entered the mall and the shutters were just begining to be rolled up :) We didn't let that stop us from shopping; technically it was Arif's turn to go crazy with my credit cards, but I kept on pushing Hanan to go buy more stuff! She ended up with a couple of pairs of nice shoes and more clothes; Arif faired well there as well as he got some clothes too, unfortunately none of the shops in any of the malls had formal suits his size, he wanted one for Eid, but they all said that he is at the difficult age-group that no-one produces suits for. We decided that we would have to have one especially made for him in Bahrain and that he should continue to get whatever else he needs.
Alaa took us then to the mall that I am familiar with, the City Center, which is I think the oldest mall in the area and is the one that gave birth to the zillions of malls we now have in the Gulf. Arif spied the Converse shop immediately he got off the elevator so he bought some Converse shoes and outfits, so did Hana. I got a pair of Oakley t-shirts (they actually fit me, barely! ;)) So the 2nd day spending started in earnest! Unfortunately as our departure time crept closer, and as I wanted to spend more time with my nephews and nieces, we arrived home soon thereafter and spent a little time with the kids after we force-packed everthing in the backpacks and my single small suitcase I brought with me. We had another wonderful lunch which Abeer cooked us and off we were dropped at the airport for the flight home.
Now it's Amna's turn to travel with me at some forthcoming weekend! Hopefully her mother would come with us as well... and as if Gulf Air were listening to my thoughts regarding cheap fairs, they sent me something by email this morning about a promotion they're running in Ramadhan where return flights to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait, Muscat, Salalah are for BD 18 (US$ 48) and Athens, Istanbul, Sanaa for BD 38 (US$ 100)!
So which will it be for next weekend?
We would like to profusely thank Alaa and Abeer for being excellent hosts, and to Yara for allowing us to kibbitz in her room for the night, and of course to lovely Zain and that bloody tornado called Hussain, and Nasser Jr. too. It won't be too long before we descend on them again!
I spied a few water features in the garden shop next to our office a few days ago, this one grabbed my attention:
I almost decided where it should go, but wanted my wife's opinion first (yes, permission!) so she was good enough to drop by the garden shop this afternoon so I can show her what's available. She too - thankfully - thought that this is the one and left it to me to place it in our garden. I paid the guys and they agreed to deliver it within the hour!
Lucky me that today is Monday, that's the day my part time gardener drops in to do the odd jobs, so when they did deliver it, not only my regular gardener was around, but also my previous gardener and their manager! So I set them all to it and after selecting where it should go, we got the shovels and wheel-barrow and started working.
It works!
After the guys have left, I decided to just sit on the grass and listen to the sound of the waterfall...
It most definitely as good as we want it to be, nor as good as it was, but the leak is stenched and we hope that we won't have to dig it up again for quite a while yet.
Rest assured however, that the minute I gather enough spare cash, I shall rip the bloody thing out again and redo it completely with new sanitary wear and tiles. It will do for now though.
You can barely notice from the picture that the first 3 tiles height-wise on the bath tub are actually a different colour than the wall, but with some trickery, I used a protruding border to break the colour gradation which I got installed around the perimeter of the bathroom wall above the third tile, and as the tiles and the border are from the same manufacturer and have the same texture as the pink tiles, it's not too bad and it's not sore on the eye.
The floor as you see carries the same pattern of the beige tiles in the middle (actually it's an L-shape, but you can't see it from the picture) and the white tile which the shop had plenty of.
Believe it or not, they've still to come and seal around the marble counter top and the sink....
I called the guy who installed the full irrigation system in my garden and told him specifically that the problem I'm experiencing in the garden is due to the water finishing far too quick, much quicker than before. I have a huge water tank especially installed together with two pumps exclusively for the garden. The water tank's capacity is 2,500 liters so it should be more than enough to water the garden, but it wasn't lasting for more than 5 or 6 minutes (I kid you not!) and it would stop.
That sent me 'round the bend, something really drastic was happening here, and after even cursory examination I found that the problem is most probably because whenever the timer switched on the pump to water any sprinkler zone in the garden, the drip system comes on as well! Apart from the fact that that was destroying the flower beds' plants as they are receiving much more water than they bargained for (my timing is set for watering each garden zone twice a day, each zone is split into two sectors, and each sector receives 10 minutes of watering; the drip system itself is on twice a day as well for 10 minutes each and my watering regime is only at night and very early in the morning (before the sun comes up)) 50 minutes! The ground was turning a sick shade of green with all the mould and algae...
Anyway, I call the guy and he opens up the inspection hatch and I hear an "aha!" I thought: brilliant! the bastard already found the problem! And he did, he said that the valve was stuck in the open position all the time. YES! He closed it and said that should fix the problem and was about to go on his merry way. Hold on a minute, I'm not done with you yet! What if it happens again? Why did it happen in the first place? How do I fix it if it does recurr? "Don't worry sir, it won't happen again."
Yeah sure... off he goes with my thanks.
The next day it got stuck once again and I called him back immediately. I make sure that I am right there to monitor what they're doing. This time, I told him to disassemble the valve and see exactly what the hell is going on. No questions. So he reluctantly did... and found a spring that was making the valve stuck open! That spring was exercised a bit and the internals cleaned, and finally it only came on when commanded at the proper time.
Now I can finally set the proper timing to water the lawn, and I did after much trial and error (this is actually where my phone, the Sony Ericsson K750i came into its own as it had a stopwatch for me to time the operation!) I got the water tank to pump enough water into two sectors before finishing, and allow enough time between waterings for the tank to refill from the measly pressure we get from the government line.
Maybe now I can really start correcting that drought period of a couple of weeks that wreaked havoc on my lawn, I've got great big brown patches to rectify now... it will take some work, but I'm up for it.
I think I found out why my irrigation system is so screwy of late... it looks like that the drip system valve is stuck open, so anytime the pump is on regardless of which zone, it pumps water through the drip system as well. Needless to say that utilises an awful lot of water, hence the tank of 5,000 liters finish in less than 10 minutes, leaving two halves of two zones bone dry.
I got fed up of having to have to browsers running at the same time to visit some of my regular haunts on the Internet, and also got fed up of the sluggishness of FireFox, so I thought I would give Camino a go.
I installed it yesterday on my home computer and was impressed with its niftyness and of course the ability to do Vox as well as my regular blog, and the latter even displayed the formatting buttons (ala bbcode above textareas) that Safari could never render for some reason.
I've just finished installing it on my MacBook and am sure that it will be even a better experience for me. Time will tell though. There are quite a few extentions that need to be installed to get back to the glory of FireFox on Windoze as I have used for years, but am prepaired to put up with a little inconvenience if the speed of page rendering and other "feel" of the application is better.
The extentions I used to use on my Windoze installation of FireFox is a Spellchecker, Mouse Gestures, Bloglines notifier, Reminders, Gmail notifier, and a couple more probably I can't remember just now.
Let me know if you have any tips please.
I think there is nothing really as nice as a good, well maintained, lush, lawn. I see this and I just want to sit on the grass for a while or lie down on it and just chill out.
Alternately, there is nothing worse than a patchy lawn. It is ugly and eyesore
This is unfortunately what has happened to my garden lately, and I think I solved it: that part of the lawn was starved of water! And I think it is a malfunctioning solenoid or a blockage in the main line or something of the sort. That zone receives the same pressure as all the other zones, but when the pump is on, the risers hardly break the surface and just lethargically dribble water rather than really spray it out and cover its circle. I just assumed that the pressure was as good as the other zones; in fact I reduced the pump's pressure last week as I thought the other zones' pressure was just too high.
This afternoon I thought I would really investigate so I donned my swimming trunks and switched the pump on. I was armed with a screwdriver and pliers just in case they are needed "in the field"; however, they weren't. The reason, as stated above, was plain to see. I went and increased the pump's pressure appreciably and will monitor all zones through the coming week to see if there is any difference. I'm sure there will be... I am determined to get my lovely lawn back.
