Another load of ups and downs

It's been a little while since the last blog. Partly last week was such a challenge with too many yucky things happening and I had my confidence knocked as a writer by not getting shortlisted for the National short story competition or making it into the Time Out "blogs to watch" column. Perhaps I'm not really cut out to be a writer!
Last week work seemed to be very difficult indeed. Sometimes I feel very invisible in a company who don't really see marketing and communications as important and my meetings with my boss seem to focus mainly on the format for my weekly report rather than the content of it. Because I get very little time with him I try to give him an overview of what I'm doing but I'm afraid that results in him thinking I'm not doing anything!
I got stopped by the police for entering a parking area the wrong way and got 4 black points on my licence and a 200 AED fine. My dear colleague, Nidal, who was with me and speaks Arabic tried valiantly to get me off for being new and British, so not being used to what side of the road to drive on, but to no avail. When I went onto the web site to pay the fine I found I had another 500 AED of fines for speeding though no points. They don't give you much information about the fine so I'm mystified as to how I could have been speeding as I still a bit nervous and tend to drive at snail's pace. Two were in Dubai though so it must have been a sudden speed change which everyone ignores.
Then on Friday I discovered that my on line banking had been hacked by criminals and my entire life savings had been withdrawn through fraud. HSBC were brilliant and have sorted it all out but it made me feel very wobbly to have everything taken away. I couldn't pay my UK credit card bill due to lack of funds and would have been really stuck if I was actually in the UK needing money. It turns out that the lady from the fraud unit who sorted it all out when to Bradford Girls Grammar School at the same time as me, though I didn't know her as she was a bit older - it's a small world!
We didn't do much at the weekend as it was the Prophet's birthday and one of the Royal family died so everywhere was very quiet and of course, dry. Normally the Prophet's birthday would be a holiday, but, as it was a Friday anyway we didn't get a day off. The weather turned very windy so we couldn't go to the beach and mooched about at home and at the Mall. Still it was nice to relax and, as John was off to Korea in the week it was good to chill out together. He then discovered that he would only be back from Korea for one day before having to go to Dresden for three days which was a bit of a shame. Hard for him to have to do so much travelling and cope with so many time zones and hard for me as I still find it difficult being here on my own for too long. I really need to get better at being on my own.
We went out on Saturday night to Frankie's, the new Italian at the Fairmont which was lovely. There was quite a storm and the lights kept going out but we managed to have a super dinner all the same!