Golfin'

Tucked in behind our hotel/home is the illustrious Al Dhafra Golf Club. This beautifully laid out 9-hole course is a must play for any golf enthusiast. A sand-wedge is recommended.

The storied 9th green. A huge target of tamped Arabian sand, it is even sprayed (for your convenience) with some sort of oily chemical substance to keep it compact. All you need to do is sweep away your foot prints (with the complimentary broom) when you finish.

The first tee, a tricky camel-leg left. Eat your heart out Augusta National.

The 9th fairway.

The Clubhouse. This is my favourite place to hang out in the entire UAE (serious). The bartender is a super nice kid from Sri Lanka and tall cans of Murphy's Irish stout are only 25 Dirhams. I'll take ten.

Excess in the Desert - part II

A few decades ago the UAE won the natural resources lottery. Since then, ostentatious construction has been spreading faster than the sweat rings in my pits. Recently B and me visited the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It is a sprawling house of worship built of gleaming white marble and inside is the world's largest persian rug. It is really beautiful.

Bridget, like all lady visitors to the mosque, had to wear an abaya over her clothes. I think the heat was getting to her a bit in this pic.

Side note: When Bridget was getting her abaya from the lady at the mosque entrance, she quipped how it was going to be hot under all those layers. The abaya lady retorted something to the effect "You will be hot for one hour, I must be hot every day!" Oh snap!

Inside the mosque was cooled by a turbo-powered yet silent air con system, which turned Bridget back into her old happy self.

Gleaming. White. Marble.


We also visited the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai a few weeks back. Now the world's tallest building at 828 meters. UAE! UAE! UAE!

A model of the Burj.

Excess in the Desert

There is a huuuuge aquarium and mini-zoo inside the Dubai mall. It is really clean and well maintained. Makes the (Korean) Jungmun Beach aquarium look like a gulag.

I forgot how awesome penguins are. This is a Magellanic penguin. He was named after Ferdinand Magellan because he 'discovered' them in coastal Argentina/Chile/Falkland islands. Later Magellan was killed by a warrior's arrow on a beach in the Phillipines. Explorin' ain't easy.

108 Sun Salutations

Me and Bridget feeling all loosey goosey like Gary Busey after performing 108 sun salutations. It was good fun for a good cause. We started at 6:00 a.m. and 20 minutes in I was hotter than a rattlesnake's taint. It has been around 40 C every day this week. I'm told she'll peak around 50 C come summer. Yeeeeeeeee Haaaawwww!

In the zone. And trying to harness the power of the sun into my beard.

I remember once in grade 3 my buddy Luke Butters and I had a conversation while running laps in gym class about how awesome it will be when we got old enough to have huge patches of sweat on our chests. Funny the things you remember. This one's for you Luke.


Bridget working on her 108.

The most amazing woman in the WORLD.

Finally...a sense of community!

Man, life is boring out here in the desert. But not this week! Yeeee Haaawww! (shotgun blasting sounds). A co-worker of ours has organized a little marathon yoga session to raise money for victims of the earthquake/tsunami that rocked the east coast of Japan last month. She contacted the Gulf News and they published her story and pics.

Front page sucka!
Top shelf, in between the blurb about the Taliban and Dee Oh double Gee himself. The Gulf News is a funny paper. It's illegal to criticize the government here (nervous laughter).
UAE ! UAE! UAE!

This is the beach at our hotel. It's on the Arabian Gulf. Look closely and you may see oil tankers on the horizon. The hotel is also our home. We stay here because there is no place else for us to live out here in the desert. I've always dreamed about living in hotel á la Howard Hughes. Come in with the milk, come in with the milk.
That's the BEAUTIFUL and TALENTED Ms. Bridget Best second from the left.

We're going to do 108 (significant number in the Buddhist tradition) sun salutations tomorrow morning. I'm not sure what those are, but I'm ready. How tough can it be to salute the sun? I once did seven one-armed push-ups in the rain. Karate chop!