Wadi You Know

In Doha we lived in Madinat Khalifa South - a.k.a. District 34. Here we live in 34th Street. So far, so spooky. Well, there are numerous 34th Streets, most districts of Al Ain seem to run to a 34th. Ours is the one in Al Khalidiyya (Com 3), which is part of Al Agabiyya (Dist 30). All this info is helpfully included on the street signs. Not that the average cab driver will find it all that helpful - you need to be ready to give running navigation instructions. The average Emirati or Qatari (descended, of course, from a people who were master navigators of the trackless desert), just knows how to get to where he needs to go, without recourse to a mental map cluttered with numbers and names. Last week I helped Ange's friend and ex-colleague Una, recently arrived from NZ to work for an Emirati school, to collect her personal effects cargo from a freight depot in town. We spent a hit-and-miss half hour looking for the place, finally happened upon it, and later asked the proprietor what was the name of the street. He scratched his head, then said "I have been in this shop 25 years and I still don't know!"

Houses in Al Ain do have numbers (just like Doha), but there appears to be little danger of a postman service magically starting up any year soon. I also had a mini-adventure trying to post a letter to NZ - not quite the epic that posting a parcel in Doha turned into, but quite enough on a hot morning thank you. It involved the queueing-by-ticket system - yes! just to post a letter! - in the city's one and only Post Office, being in disarray due to a lack of power for the ticket machine, and also for the Eftpos, which therefore necessitated backtracking to find a mastercard-friendly ATM. All this in Ramadan, so no recourse to the water bottle in public (although it should be noted that the trekking involved was made much easier by Al Ain town centre's superior pedestrian-friendliness, just like Abu Dhabi, with adequate sidewalks, reliable pedestrian crossing lights, and even underpasses - Doha take note). Eventually the letter was dispatched at an agreed 11 Dirhams, despite erratic readings on the scales (variously 11, 17 and 47 Dirhams, though the weight read zero grams each time...).

So if you want directions to our place (surprise visitors always welcome), and you have your direction-finding duck with you, they are as follows: after the long tree-lined drive from Abu Dhabi (2 hours) or towards Abu Dhabi from Al Ain centre (20 minutes), you should come to Twam St, which you should follow for several blocks (i.e. roundabouts) until you cross a bridge over the wadi. There are, by my count (from the map - I haven't laboriously visited them all yet, but it would make a good familiarisation exercise, so watch out for the coming blog post), between 25 and 31 main-road bridges over dry wadis scattered around this town, most of them stylishly decorated to rival the roundabouts and underpasses. Water in the wadis is reputed to be maybe a once or twice a decade treat, which I hope to stay long enough to see. Meanwhile they all look something like this (our local one you have just crossed over).

I think the camera was on the wrong setting, but it does give an idea of the washed-out (!) colours in the noonday heat. At dusk it looks a bit more inviting, you can almost hear the eels and kingfishers splashing about if you stare at the picture with eyes half-closed, no?

There's a nice curry restaurant on the bank - you can relax under the date palms wihle waiting for your takeaways, like me and our neighbour Joss, who introduced us to it and lots of other useful local knowledge. To keep you cool they have big fans which have a clever water misting device attached.

Anyway, you make a left at the next roundabout (before you get to the dunes)

and you find yourself in a district of moderately grandiose villas, many still under construction

or stalled unfinished.

These are by no means the grandest houses in Al Ain (more photos to come as we discover the standout examples) but are I believe the sort of thing the government has just announced plans to provide (free, including land) 17,000 more of (here and in Abu Dhabi) to Emirati nationals who apply for them. Four bedrooms, expandable to seven if required.

There's a biggish mosque

and a few shops, including tailor, hair saloon, takeaways, and a proper supermarket, plus a solitary Indian corner shop, all about 1km from our place.

I test-walked it the second day we were here, stupidly forgetting to replace my jandals with shoes. The burning of the soles of my feet didn't really become undeniable until I was more than halfway there, so nothing for it but to hobble on. I only got rid of the blisters last week. Anyway, got a car now so no worries. This is one of the blameworthy streets.

So you've hung a right at the mosque, found 34th, and the red umbrellas and green massif (only apartment building around here, at about 70 apartments it dwarfs even the biggest neighbouring villas, but not half as splendid) of the Alfilah Building (known to Cognition as The Pool Apartments, or Colditz to the more cynical among us - I don't necessarily share the sentiment) finally heave into view.

The cardboard sign hanging up says "NO STOB".

Angela and our neighbour Sue (also ex-Doha Gharrafa) welcome you to the airy (rather warm) halls within.

See, there really is a pool. Confession: we've put off trying it out, first because it needed cleaning, but now that has been seen to, our current excuse is we're waiting for the weather (and the water) to cool down a bit. Will brave it soon, just so I can post a report from poolside).

The interior of our apartment also shall remain cloaked in mystery for now, at least until we get our stuff from Doha (any day now we hope - was taken to freight agent there last Sunday) and jolly it up a bit. The space is nothing special, but for me it's totally liveable (less to clean than some of the more unnecessarily-spacious alternatives we have visited). We will try to decorate sensitively with due regard for the cracks in the walls, which none of the neighbouring apartments I have visited can match for length, breadth or convolutions (the building is reportedly one year old).

Meanwhile, until they can receive the attention they deserve (from decorator, photographer, plasterer or mason, insha'allah), here are some nice views out our loungeroom window (faces approx eastwards). Yep, we do have (on not-too-hazy days at least) a reasonable view if you crane your head, of about half of Jebel Hafeet, second highest mountain in the UAE at 4000ft, one of Al Ain's proudest tourist attractions, only about 10km from here and definitely deserving of its own blog post - watch out for it. Also note that unlike the foregoing photos, I have accidentally managed to include quite a lot of the greenery for which Al Ain is justly renowned. This oversight will be further remedied in future posts.

The mountain is truly a sight at night when the summit road (3 lanes and streetlit for all of its 15km) really stands out (actually taken from a sand dune vantage point 5 minutes walk from here).

And if you crane the other way, there are the camels (already seen in wide angle at the top of this page).

There are lots of camels in and around the town - best viewed at the extensive livestock souqs to be found behind the posh Bawadi Mall just a few km out of town towards the mountain - also another post in the making.

Meanwhile, it's ma'asalaama from me and her.

Take Me to the Wadi

Water, water.

Well, it has been quite hot here.

One gains respect for the devout who have just embarked on a summer Ramadan. Not only is it more of a burden in the 45+deg heat to observe the dawn-to-dusk ban on liquid refreshment and food (let alone sex, gossip, slander and cursing, any of which can render the fast ineffectual), but of course the days are an hour or two longer than when the movable month-long festival falls in winter. Then there are the 14 Common Mistakes that the website of Dubai's Department of Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities reminds muslims to beware of during the holy month. These include watching too many popular Ramadan TV programmes; falling asleep all day; breaking the fast with a cigarette; spending too long in the shops; for women, wearing too much perfume and making too many excuses to get out of religious observance, whether menstruation or pressure of kitchen duties; and indeed, overdoing the preparation of lavish Iftar feasts.

The after-dusk Iftar get-togethers might appear to the casual expat eye to be at least as much what Ramadan is about, as are fasting and devotions. Hotels and restaurants compete to advertise the most sumptuous experience, at many hundred dirhams a head, and you could jump to the conclusion that it's more like a month of night-time parties; but we presume this wouldn't be a daily indulgence for the average family. There is an equal emphasis on charity, with leftovers being saved for distribution to the needy.

Us infidels only have to remember not to scull that can of coke in view of the faithful, after the long hot trudge across the car park from the cool of the shopping mall, but just hang on until we get home. No food shops are open until sundown, but the hypermarts carry on with normal hours, all-day chanting of the Q'ran on the PA, lots of Blessed Ramadan Special Offers, and the proviso that one should be patient with the shop assistant who may be dehydrated and a bit out to lunch (in his/her dreams perhaps).

I never felt hotter and sweatier than in the few hours trekking the pavements and malls of Abu Dhabi on our first two brief visits so far. Two weeks ago I took a minivan ride with Angela and other Cognition staff down to the capital, where they spent the day cloistered in Le Royal Meridien hotel for their induction conference, and I hit the streets armed with guidebook and water bottle. Judging that the 1km walk to Fotouh al Khair mall, which has a Marks & Spencer, was survivable as well as worthwhile (for the several other recommended malls and souqs on the way), I strode off in vaguely the right direction.

Most of the water bottle later, the goal was almost in sight, but I hadn't allowed for the inadvertent detour around the maze of construction sites which will one day be the rebuilt Central Market. I couldn't seem to find my way into what I think was the nearby New Souq either, but the remainder of the water just got me safely to the cool of Marks & Sparks (where Ange's beloved custard creams were in stock, so the journey wasn't wasted). It's a smallish mall, no food court as such, but after a juice or two from the M&S fridge and a half hour slump on the seating in the quiet atrium I was ready to face the return trip.

Though the shopping was disappointing (being a Monday afternoon, many shops were closed; the Liwa Centre was just one store, the Home Centre; and there was no sign of the recommended second hand bookshop in the rather tatty Hamdan Centre), at least the mall-hopping kept my boiler from busting (it still took me an hour in the cool foyer lounge of the hotel to stop sweating); meanwhile I did get a few acceptable cityscape photos on the way.

It's different from Doha - you get a sense, which is reinforced as you get to know more of this leading state of the UAE, that things are less frenetic and more settled here. There are normal sidewalks for a start, with more zebra crossings (that's not to say the average driver takes any more notice of them than his Qatari cousin) and even some underpasses.

Instead of the two-headed Doha layout of the old City Centre with its maze of somewhat crumbly, mainly low-rise buildings, and the separate craneforest eldorado of West Bay, it's more homogeneous.

High-rise offices (with lots more being built) mix it with apartment blocks posh and not so posh.

In keeping with Abu Dhabi's green image (a reported billion trees planted to date must offset the unthinkable Gulf-standard carbon footprint at least a bit), there are more and better-maintained parks

making life a bit nicer for the rubbish-bin cats.

Just like Doha there are the trademark decorated roundabouts - this central strip has cannon, coffee pot, oud (incense) cup and I'm not sure what the cone thing is.

(But you have to go to Al Ain to see this art form taken to the limit. The plethora of roundabout art up here where we live was bound to inspire someone to this labour of love - saving me the trouble, thanks BSS & BRN - which makes as good an introduction as any to the Garden City I guess. Feast at your leisure).

Meanwhile, back in Abu Dhabi: a week later, recovered from the heat stroke and sore feet, I was back for another go. Ange and her colleagues are in the bizarre position of having no kids to teach until October due to Ramadan and the Eid holiday that follows it, but instead are required to spend a month doing PD (for NZers not up with education lore, that's not Preventive or Periodic Detention, but Professional Development). By the end of it there will surely be no better-prepared group of teachers anywhere. Sessions are held at various schools and staff residences, and last week they got together in Le Royal Meridien again. This time we stayed overnight at a vast and nearly empty Cognition apartment in a slightly upmarket building a few kms from the scene of last week's trek. Here's the view of more apartment blocks from the bedroom window:

and two views out the front. People are living in at least half of the house with the partly collapsed roof; the vacant lot was a school which was demolished (perhaps to be rebuilt?).

The buildings on the skyline are where I was the previous week. You begin to realise: Abu Dhabi is (a) quite big, and (b) in many ways, just another city, though it still has big dreams and the means to realise them.

Having sussed the nearby bus route (buses are 1 dirham anywhere in the city), I made a bee line for the universally recommended Marina Mall which is on an island off the Corniche along with the Heritage Village which I didn't get to. Marina Mall is on the big side, features a 100m tower which you can only go up if you want to eat in the posh restaurant, a small artificial snow slope under development, and a crazy fountain which reputedly aspires to demonstrate what rain looks and sounds like. Computerised rhythmic rain, that is - fascinating in the mindless way of such things. I'll get a video of it next visit. Meanwhile here we're looking out the back of the mall at some of the marina developments on the island, and further on to the waters of the Gulf.

Even though it's a light airy tent of a building, the humidity that day was a juggernaut that the aircond couldn't cope with - even the locals I spoke to complained about it. After two or three hours of sweaty window shopping (watching our pennies at this early stage) I was glad to escape to the honest blazing heat of the bus stop, and after three unwanted #5 buses, at last the cool of the #9 back to the apartment.

The next day I intended to take a look at the intriguing exhibitions in the art galleries in the Emirates Palace, reputedly the most expensive hotel ever built (whatever that means), but the day got taken up sorting out a rental car, with eventual success (after several taxi rides at wildly differing prices - always go with the cheap guys, the drivers are marginally more likely to have some idea how to get there, let alone how to drive).

There's plenty more of the big city to explore on on future forays: more big inescapable shopping malls, souqs when we can find them, galleries, museums (they are building a Guggenheim among many other Doha-rivalling projects like the Performing Arts Centre), and the tour of the Grand Mosque is a must. And then there's Dubai to get to grips with (they say don't bother to turn on your GPS as the roads are all dug up just like Doha, just enjoy getting utterly lost).

But for now it was into our new Tiida (just like the old one) and homewards along the 150 tree-lined km to the hills and oases and dry wadis and beautiful red sand dunes of Al Ain, which after a slightly iffy start we were beginning to decide we rather like living in, but that's another blog post.

Qatar Rising; and A Productive Neeting at the Sheraton

Does this land (a few km south of Al Ruwais, at the northern tip of Qatar) look restless to you, heaving and straining to crowd out the cloudless but dusty sky?

I found out (re-reading Lonely Planet) that Qatar is not only the flattest, but indeed also literally one of the most upwardly mobile. According to the venerable guidebook (which however has a few other things a bit wrong, e.g. that major banks will readily cash traveller's cheques), the whole peninsula has risen 2 metres over the last 400 years. Actually due to tectonics, no doubt, but yer can't help wondering what will happen as they get all the gas out over the next 200. Or will the bubble burst? (etc etc, stop me). Meanwhile, it's handy if you want to reclaim some more coastal real estate, less so if you want a stable water table.

I was privileged to spend most of last weekend at the Sheraton in the role of Gordon, the irascible director and chairman of the mainly fictitious Little Doha Amateur Dramatic Society, wrapping up a very enjoyable short season of David Tristram's "Last Tango in Little Grimley (Doha)" for Doha Players. Due to the wet nature of the catering arrangements (lasagna, salads, dessert and a bar, plus the 45-minute show, QR175 thank you) and the (very) mildly risque content, it was officially a members-only function - no advertising, no door sales and no under-21's, on pain of heavy penalties if these conditions were not strictly adhered to (recent new regulations), so it was announced on the direction board in the foyer as "Al Maha Room: The Doha Players: Neeting". We had near-full houses, which allowed the production to break even, and all had a good time judging by the laughter. I did, anyway, and will treasure the experience as a highlight of my stay here.

Here's me, Helen Swan as Margaret, Sharon Cole as Joyce and Jack Rigg as Bernard bemoaning the dire state of the LDADS and cooking up a salacious and seat-filling last-ever production:

and disastrously (and hilariously for our audience, thanks more to the expert character turns supplied by my fellow cast members than my sub-Basil Fawlty incoherence) rehearsing it.

Thanks to our very relaxed director Sarah Jenkins for the photos, and to Doha Players for finding room for my flash-in-the-pan appearance. (For those who don't know, Angela has a new job lined up and it looks like we will be moving to Abu Dhabi in the UAE after the holidays, though yet to be confirmed, so Sarah will have to find a new, improved Gordon for the planned sequels.)

A Sheraton official told me a bit about the history of this esteemed edifice. It was in fact the very first of the pleasure palaces to spring up here, back in the early 80s, when West Bay was all dirt roads and greater Doha was about ten times smaller than now - as he said, "Someone had a vision - or too much money." The saga included the original concrete structure sinking 2 metres, and being replaced by a lighter and obviously (still looks OK after 30 years) more stable steel-framed one following a change of contractors.

Rumours I have heard include that construction has had to halt, due supposedly to subsidence, on more than one tower among the dozens currently rising in West Bay, a stone's throw from the Sheraton, and elsewhere in town; and that there were, at least until recently, plans for 200(!) of these 30 or 50 (or more) storey palaces of commerce to go up in the area (I estimate there are about 5o at present, completed or being built). Far from me be it to accord these whispers (just like the constant cross-undercurrents of knowledge that none of these towers has anything like full occupancy, and Qatar is next after Dubai to be dragged into the world economic maelstrom never mind the gas, or alternatively that they are all fully booked and Nothing Can Go Wrong) any evaluation further than 3-monkeys wisdom.

But it will be interesting to come back every 6 months or so (insh'allah) and gauge the rate of completion of projects. You can't really quite watch the growth happening before your eyes (like I have said, infrastructure seems to progress in fits and starts, and usually behind schedule just like anywhere), but neither can you see it grinding to a halt just yet. I hope we can keep returning to see it all keep on mushrooming according to the Plan - a few more well-maintained parks, The Pearl abuzz with full occupancy, the fabulous institutional edifices of Education City completed, the ambitious metro transport system in operation; even February 22nd St and the Al Rayyan flyover finished and functional would be nice.

On my tiki-tour up north (see below) I counted about 20 flyover/interchanges at various stages of incompleteness in the first 5okm of highway. The highway itself is a bit like a South Island braided river: dual carriageway nearly all the 100 or so km to the terminus at Al Ruwais, but the carriageways sort of meander - often taking a wide sweep around another junction under construction, or swopping duty with each other or a service lane to the side while surface reconstruction happens. So you sometimes find yourself travelling between the endless orange and white plastic barriers (like cranes, there must be more of these per square km here than anywhere) on a road with arrows marked on the pavement in the opposite direction, or in conflicting directions over a few km, which tends to sharpen the driver's attention.

Grinding is the word (or one of them), as far as the stormwater (I think) excavations that bedevilled our street for about a month up to a week or two ago. They were excavating abut 3 metres down, into bedrock, with a giant jackhammer mounted on a large digger (plus half a dozen guys with pick and shovel of course) inching up the street towards us at about half a metre a day, in half hour bursts with only five minutes' respite to clear the spoil, from sometimes as early as 6am and often until 6pm, even on Fridays and Saturdays. Here on the first floor it was a steadily growing un-ignorable background nuisance, but for the poor unfortunates on the ground floor it was enough to render them incapable of humour by the second week. The last 20 metres of the trench is still there, half full of green water and suspended telecoms conduits. Nothing unusual there; "Deep Excavation" is one of the most common signs you see on and among the ubiquitous roadside barriers.

We saw another intriguing hole in the ground one Friday morning on a reconnoitre of a Family Park a few blocks from here. There were guards on the gate, but we, two ladies and a gent of indeterminate age but with no family attached, were happily waved through into the large empty car park. Well, it was morning, when the mosques should be full; we should have returned in the afternoon to check if it was full of cavorting families, but we got caught up in the mass hysteria of the Trade Fair (another story, suffice to say a heaving mass of people, jewellery, perfumes, middle eastern couture, carpets, spicy sweets, etc etc, under the two-acre roof of the Expo Centre; not to mention the craziest car park mayhem yet seen - I preferred the more relaxed "Deplomatic Bazar" held two weeks earlier in half of the same hall, where many countries mainly from Africa and Asia showed their wares and cultures).

Anyway, we had a nice walk in the already baking heat around the two acres or so of well-tended lawns and flowering borders, looked at the extensive (empty) paddling pool with its two arched bridges too steep to walk across, the baking concrete amphitheatre with its circular flat concrete floor (ideal for skating except for a foot-wide drain across the middle) and the deserted half-pipe. Then we found a locked and fenced off area with a large, deep cave in the middle, with concrete steps disappearing down into the earth. Two security guards were having a quiet picnic under the trees nearby, and we were informed in halting Indonesian English that there are others like this around Doha, but no, he didn't really know if the fencing-off was for safety or to protect an archaeological site, or what. By this time the heat was really getting to us, but the cafeteria was nowhere near open yet, so we couldn't try the advertised "machine juice" and ended up instead at the Grand Hyatt (very, but somehow less opulent than the more compact but ever-stunning interior of the Sheraton), with its casually displayed Konigsegg supercar out the front, for a rather more expensive, but almost worth it, coffee.

That trip up north was one the completist in me just had to make, so with our 30 June ETD looming up, a week or two ago I grabbed water bottle, Pink Floyd CDs (why not), camera and Tiida and headed off up the main north road, which after all starts right outside our front door at the esteemed Al Gharrafa interchange. (To elaborate on the comment above about 22 Feb St: if you are heading south over the flyover towards central Doha, you are now on 22 Feb, but only for 200 metres; you can see the completed dual carriageway beyond the barriers, all the way to the curving, not yet tarsealed Al Rayyan flyover in the distance, which will replace a six-branched roundabout, but here the road stops for now and you have to fight a tangle of uncontrolled traffic heading to and from a bumpy single-lane bypass connecting the north road to our suburb and No-Rules Intersection (it's actually preferable to braving the Gharrafa roundabout, once you have gained enough confidence at the local art of pushing in). But the overhead direction signs on the motorway still tell you that the closed road is the way to Doha, Al Wakra and places between and beyond. You just have to know...)

I already described the road north, which apart from the constant detours is pretty much straight (and mainly devoid of traffic once you get past the Al Khor turnoff, but you still need to watch the mirror for occasional speedsters) all the way to Al Ruwais; the scenery is mainly just as you saw in the heading photo, with construction camps (rows of single barracks, each room with its airconditioner), half-built flyovers and occasional walled plantations or market gardens for variety. I wanted to press on and cover the western return route before the day got too late, and was digging "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", in the context of the landscape, too much to bother with many photo stops, so there aren't too many to bore you with. The one up top of the page really is typical of a lot of the countryside.

Here's the fishing port of Al Ruwais, with a guy wading out to his boat (not the sunken one);

and here it is, the very northern tip of the country, looking west towards Bahrain (which will be connected to Qatar by the world's longest - 40km - causeway within a few years).

And here's another of my little vids, expanding on the three photos.

In Al Ruwais township, among the sprouting but mainly unoccupied smattering of condominiums and villas I followed a little boy towing a bike wheel behind his bike all over the road accompanied by a cat, found the shops all shut but managed to get camera batteries (and a free chewing gum bonus from the smiling Indian shopkeeper) at a grocery further down the road; and admired the huge fort-like building under construction half a km out of town (sports stadium? - it has a floodlight mast).

The return route via Al Zubara (Qatar's main port in centuries past, not a lot to see now) is on a wide straight utterly empty (two utes and an empty bus in 50 km) two-laner as in the top photo. Highlights were: getting confused at a t-junction not shown on my out-of-date map, but put back on the right road by some friendly Indians in a ute; and traversing half a km of thick tyre marks 30km from nowhere (a long way to go to do burnouts, bro). Back on the main highway I had a duel all the way back (50 km) to Doha with a dude towing a float with two slightly perturbed-looking horses at varying speeds between 60 and 140 km/h, never mind the potholes.

So next week we are off back to the known (NZ) and back into the unknown (awaiting final word on the year to come). Ange is coping with unabated challenges in the last week of school, I am packing our stuff ready to put into storage ready to be trucked to Abu Dhabi, or flown back to NZ if the contract isn't finally confirmed. There are dinner dates most evenings (Ange went to an Egyptian colleague's 8-year-old's birthday party last week, we are to be hosted by an Indian teacher and family on Friday), and we must get down to the souqs one more time to buy a few more presents for people back home (but have to watch riyals and dirhams until we know what's happening). Tonight we went to Cognition's end-of-contract knees-up at the Intercontinental - sumptuous catering, but atmosphere of uncertainty as hardly anyone has a signed contract for next year yet.

I have enjoyed getting into doing this blog, I know it's been a bit of a travelogue at times; I would have liked to find myself engaging with the locals a bit more and opening a window on the human side of Qatar; but considering my cautious and shy nature, I'm not too dissatisfied with what has been thrown together on these pages while I learned to make sense of the process, and we got acclimatised to a hugely different environment from that at home, while cocooned in a building full of kiwis. Now I've got a taste for the medium, I won't just let the blog fade away - coming up: "Al Gharaffa Interchange - Exit to Abu Dhabi" (or Pakuranga, as the case may be), or some such adjustment. Might even have another go at regular social netfacetwitting too, despite earlier recoilings.

Tomorrow I will take the last chance to get out and about and take a few more pix of cityscapes I had been intending to, and chuck some of them on line in a final gallery of Doha impressions fer yer edification along with some choice final comments and comparisons with faraway but rapidly approaching NZ. If there's time, that is...Will do it when we get back home if not (if there's time; there may be a shortage, as family, tax and other considerations may require us to be away again before the end of July - if we are indeed coming back to the Gulf, as expected, but not to be known until mid-month).

Meanwhile, to sign off, here is a crucial message from City Centre mall car park:

To be sure, I have seen cars shoehorned into some pretty inadequate places here. It's good to know the aesthetics of parking are not being overlooked in Qatar's ongoing quest for a tidy society.

Stop Press! Wedding photos just to hand!

Hopingly no apology is required for not having posted to this blog for a week or three, given that you may still be trying to find time to peruse the three or four posts that came along in a caravan like Link buses (for non-Aucklanders, these are supposed to run every 10 minutes, but Auckland traffic knows better than to allow that).

But I have been keeping busy (by my standards anyway). Apart from learning lines and rehearsing (much fun with a very welcoming team) for the Doha Players production I was initially stunned 2 months ago to find myself cast in (further report when it's all over next week), I have been finally getting around to compiling the definitive photo album of our wedding nearly 6 months ago. Having received the last of the collections from the dozen or so greatly esteemed guest-photographers more than a month ago, it was time to get on with it.

This entailed firstly sorting through nearly 700 photos and putting them in some sort of order; about 180 made the cut, which is a lot to look at, but they are all excellent shots that deserve to be there, and cover just about all the good things that made the afternoon special for us and I hope everyone there.

Then, having sort of made friends with Blogger over the last few months, I had to get to grips with the peculiarities of Flickr. I agree with those who recommended it, that it does a nice job of presenting one's prized images to the world. But it would have been nice to have known in advance (like, before I had written numbered captions for them all) that they will appear in reverse order to that in which they were uploaded; and that this is because it behaves like a blog and presents the latest photo first (even if it's just the last one of an album, therefore the latest to be uploaded); and, that consequently the only way to edit the order is to rewrite the time of uploading (in reverse order to their number sequence, just to make it confusing) for each image. OK enough if you have uploaded just a few photos like any sensible person (well, I would just have put them on this blog instead, wouldn't I); but trust me to want to kick off with a monster album (well, that's why I went to Flickr, as supposedly better able to handle the bulk). Not to mention one or two other glitches, all of which I think I have now sussed, no thanks to Flickr's so-called Help page.

But enough moaning, here they are, all re-timed and looking good I think. A worthwhile lesson, and time well spent, I am sure you will all agree when viewing the results by clicking here.

Acknowledgement must be made to all the abovementioned faithful snappers (in no particular order): Mark Yates, Gerri Judkins, Rachel Clarke, Bec McGarry, Laura Campbell, Una Booth, Peter Lee, Pratima Soma, Yvonne Stephen, Joan Earl, Christof Colpi. I will trust that by generously providing us with the photo files, you have all indicated that you have no objection to your work being published this way. Further, my apologies for not being able to instantly credit each individual shot to the particular photographer, though this could be sorted out given (quite a lot) more time.

It seems like only yesterday/so long ago...

Right, start press up again.

Direct to you

I got around to exploring Blogger settings and found the function which allows me to send each new post to selected email addresses - only a maximum of ten, however. So if this pops up in your mailbox, do please consider yourself a specially-favoured distributor of my deathless ramblings, and forward it on to anyone who may be interested. I know the blog is essentially a vanity-publishing medium, but it's nice to think there is a readership out there; hard to gauge with the minimal feedback I get. If on the other hand you are reading this without having received an email, it is probably because I know you already check it out regularly via RSS feed or similar, so you in turn can rest assured that I hold your ongoing readership in special esteem.