Well I've been complaining that it was hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it feel like summer outside. Every day in meetings, puttng the date at the top of my notepad, I had to pinch myself to remember it's actually December. Then on the weekend when I finally got my Christmas tree, went Christmas shopping and sent out the invites for our mince pies and bubbly event, I got my wish! Not snow, but rain of biblical proportions - it was quite awesome, even for someone who comes from Manchester and is pretty used to rain!
It started lighly enough on Thursday, Friday was warm and drizzly, reminding me of childhood holidays in Brittany. We had planned to go out for dinner on Thurs or Fri to one of our outdoor favourites but ended up returning to the Mexican at the Sheraton, where we used to go before we moved into the apartment and were staying there. Fortunately they had turned down the air con from the summer as after a walk in the rain we didn't really need it!
John was working on Saturday, attending a messaging workshop at the Yas Hotel so I thought I'd take him as it would be fun to try out the new motorway to Yas Island. By the time we got there it was pouring down and the car was covered in dust and water. There were lots of pile ups on the motorway as the surface is not really designed for the wet, more to not melt in the heat. I also realised that I have no idea how the windscreen wipes work on the car and I didn't even know that I had one on the back window! Well it's never been a priority up till now. However, the Jeep really came into its own, since by Sunday everywhere was completely awash. The rain came down in sheets of water and all the roads were flooded. I thoroughly enjoyed sloshing my way through several inches of water though I didn't enjoy the traffic melt down which resulted. It took me an hour and a half to get home from work, which normally takes about 15 or 20 minutes. There were also drivers, similar to those in the UK when we encounger snow, who's response is to go at 10 miles an hour with their hazard lights flashing - only here they tend to be in the outside lane! The college came off really badly, being a flat roofed building made of what seemed to be porous concrete. The water poured in and damaged a lot of equipment as well as making offices in accessible. The roads and carpark had about 10cm of water on them and looked like venice. I got soaked just trying to get out of the car into a lake when coming back from a meeting. However, the clean up team have done an amazing job and within 24 hours they had it more or less back to normal. The VC closed the college today to students and staff could come in on a discretionary basis so most did.
It has been quite amazing and something which apparently only happens once every 4 or 5 years. Interesting that it happened during the Copenhagen talks when the world leaders are debating climate change - here in Abu Dhabi we were experiencing a one off rain event to equate with Noah's flood (though that did happen before the excessive consumption of carbon and fossil fuels.
In the midst of all this I bought a lovely Christmas tree from Carrefours and decorated it and rushed round all the Malls to try and buy presents which would be suitably UAE special but not too heavy to carry back to the UK! Difficult as all the special Christmas shops are full of European goods!
However, every shop is full of Christmas food and decorations so I had no trouble finding things to decorate the table with on Christmas day and I'll be able to buy things to eat for our drinks party. However, I couldn't find any mince meat so it'll have to ready made mince pies which is a shame I can make sausage rolls though, which is not something you see a lot of round here! We went to Spinneys once J finished work and stocked up on some very agreeable Australian bubbly that we are rather fond of! It doesn frustrate me that I can only buy wine when J is with me as he has the licence - we were getting dangerously low! We also went to have a key cut for the apartment so I could give the cleaner one whilst we're away and discovered that you have to have a letter from the police giving you permission! How you prove to them that it's your apartment I have no idea since nothing has your address on! Certainly a new piece of bureaucracy which I hadn't come across before!
Today things are drying out nicely, which was handy as J had a site visit up at Masdar and I didn't want him to get too wet.
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