Adventures in Sandland: November 2006

What I Do ....

Although this blog is mainly about personal life in the UAE, I do have work here that supports the fun times. Mainly I am running a consulting enterprise (small) that does project management and business development. This covers the range from SAP implementations to the development and launch of an Offshore Registry (like Cayman and Isle of Mann).

The Offshore Registry we launched in September is getting a lot of attention, and SLS is now a legal consultant working with that "product".

We regularly have country delegations arrive to meet with our Free Zone and our Chairman, H. H. Crown Prince Sheikh Faisal bin Saqr al Qasimi. Most recently we received the Prime Minister of the Isle of Mann and his team to discuss collaborations between them and Ras Al Khaimah.

After the meeting there was the exchange of gifts,

and of course the photos.

Laptops and clouds

The gap in posts has been caused by the death of my trusty laptop, the Compaq Evo. It has outlasted the company that created it, but finally the video circuit went. So there was the acquisition of an Acer, extraction of the hard drive, and finally back on-line and catching up.
Fortunately Murphy did not strike and take my mobile phone at the same time.

Winter has finally arrive with the daytime temperature dropping into the 20's and falling into the teens at night. Carrefour has put out winter coats for sale (really!).
We have also had our first overcast days and a couple of night time rains.
Stop laughing my readers in Spokane and Kitchener.

To give an example of the impact of rain, the news link below is about Ajman, the emirate 50 km south of us.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2006/november/theuae_november520.xml

Finally, Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. Enjoy the three F's (Family, Food, Football) and eat lots of ham for us.

Beach Clean-Up

This past weekend myself and SLS participated in the international coastal clean-up for our region. Working during the day, ourselves and a group from the schools, diving association and sailing club cleaned up a 300 meter section of our coast.

The result was 130 bags of debris (mainly bottles and plastic), and 5 huge bonfires of burnable material (mainly wood scraps).

We all agree that this region needs to start learning how to take care of it's environment, but it all starts with little steps.

But in the end we reverted to ourselves and celebrated our inflated civic pride with a BBQ and relaxation.

The other emirates were also involved.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2006/November/theuae_November308.xml§ion=theuae&col=

Guy Fawkes

With our considerable British (Commonwealth) community here we have the annual Guy Fawkes celebration here (see Wikipedia for the un-informed).

The kids all brought their Guy's to the sailing club,

and then they were lit in great tradition by the Commodore.

As they burned all cheered as the conflagration engulfed them.

Soon all was consumed and the flames flared into the night.

The party continued into the night and mass quantities of all excesses were consumed.

No Pearls :(

We needed to get some money so a pearl expedition was in order. And the Persian Gulf seemed like the right venue.

Near the bulk container port (Port Saqr) is a reef from the remains of concrete buildings that have been pushed into the sea. At first glance a mess, but over the years the sea has reclaimed it and it is full of sea life, including oysters.