Back to blogging.

Two weeks in Singapore, arrived back in Dubai yesterday evening and this is a rambling bits-and-pieces post of things that come to mind.

Dontcha love Dubai International Airport? It seems to take as long to get from the aircraft to the exit as it does to fly from Singapore. They say that the skeletons of lost travellers have been found in the labyrinth of corridors, although that could just be a rumour.

DNATA seemed to have run out of trucks to fetch the baggage from the aircraft to the carousel, it took forty-five minutes and the bags appeared one or two at a time as though the handlers were carrying them individually from the plane.

Over an hour after we disembarked we finally got out of the airport.

And so to Dubai.

Not sure that I missed much, but then to be honest I haven't been keeping in touch.

But it's deja vu all over again now that we're back.

It took fifty minutes to cover one kilometre in Dubai Marina this morning, with our beloved RTA obviously deciding the best way to deal with the gridlock they caused is to ignore it. Well, they don't live in Dubai Marina I'm sure, so taking two or three hours to get to the office isn't their problem.

The closed bridge I talked about before is still closed - why open it when that would simply result in the traffic being less gridlocked?

People are still using it though, a whole fleet of small sedans to big 4x4s were jumping up the kerb, through the roadworks and off across the bridge.

Of course a lot of them are too important to wait until they get there to jump the kerb, so they drive down the wrong side of the road into the oncoming traffic - like this one, wrong side of the road, wrong way round the roundabout and across the truck, causing a jam in the opposite direction...



Then we have a fire on a construction site. Situation normal there then.

This one made the news though - it was in the US$1.5 billion Atlantis Resort, the flagship development of Palm Jumeirah. The lobby area had what looked like a big, big fire with a lot of damage.

The resort people are saying the hotel will open as scheduled on September 24, but there are conflicting opinions. Looking at the Reuters photo published in Gulf News I'd say they don't have a chance...




Then the beach romp case gets a mention, the case being adjourned until September 9.

I loved the optimism of Michelle and Vince, the stars of the show, who asked for a speedy verdict so that they could return home soon.

They're not expecting a jail term, obviously.

The good news is that my regular coffee shop has the Ramadan curtains up, so I can at least start the day as usual with a couple of double espressos and the newspapers.

It'll take a day or two to settle back into the swing of things I'm sure, and catching up with the news on all your blogs is high on the list.


How was Singapore?

Construction everywhere, rain every day, humidity which I always find much worse than Dubai's - it's relentless too, never below about 75% I'm sure. So this was not our best visit.


A rare view from the hotel room...




The usual view from the hotel room...




It was a working trip for Mrs Seabee, I just tagged along for the ride and had planned to do all the touristy things while she was working. I gave up on that, but we still had a reasonable time. We went back to favourite restaurants, found some new ones, spent time with family there

I'll post some photos when I've sorted them out, if I can find any that I think are interesting to anyone but us.


The stories I mentioned are worth reading by the way. They're here:

Atlantis fire.

Beach romp.