Big news since the last entry is that my brother, Damien got married to Renee, who he has been with since before I got married (that's a long time). Thanks to a total of zero annual leave, we were only able to make it back to Oz for four days in the country, so we made sure to make the most of it.
Day one was spent with my family, including a big family BBQ which was great for catching up with all my side of the family. I got to see their new place in Kingswood, as well as the amazing fence-mounted garden that my Mum invented, designed and built from scratch. Burke's Backyard? More like MacGyver's Garden, the way she came up with a thing like that. (Mum, please send me a photo so I can show the nice people at home what the hell I am talking about).
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| Me and the family at Damien's wedding |
The next day was the wedding, with the service being held in Parramatta Cathedral. Everyone was dressed up beautifully, and many, many, many great pictures were taken, mostly by the professional photographer who did a great job of capturing the whole day, right up until the end of the reception. The reception was fun, and I never realised before then just how many relatives Renee has. It was nice to finally meet her extended family, and everyone had a lot of fun mixing and dancing.
Congratulations again to Damien and Renee for tying the knot, and all the best for the many years of happy marriage that I know you have to look forward to.
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| The happy couple and their wedding party |
Day three was all about seeing Kate's family, and somehow most of them managed to arrange to meet us at Nan's retirement home for a big family photo, despite the preceding barbeque being just about cancelled due to rain. It was still a successful BBQ in my book, since Chris brought enough meat to kill a cannibal, and Aunty Sarah brought a bunch of fascinatingly delicious vegetarian dishes to balance things out. The spicy broccoli with almonds gets a special mention for making broccoli better than it ever was. No picture of that one because it was demolished almost as soon as it hit the table.
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| That's quite an age spectrum. |
Day four we woke up a bit later (we were tired after all this fun!) and went into the city to meet up with Aaron and Emma, our buddies from ages ago, who are now running their own accounting business, Nudge Accounting; and doing it quite successfully too, judging by the nice new smell of their office which is located about 100 meters from the Sydney Fish Market. We spent the evening with them, being treated to some excellent Greek cooking and wine, before waking up way too early the next morning to be dropped to the airport and start the long journey back to Dubai.
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| Nudge Headquarters! |
Of course there were loads of people we didn't get to see while we were back, and don't think we have forgotten you, (except for Brad, who we still try to forget about) but our next catch up will have to wait until the next time we are back in Oz, unless you find yourselves in Dubai first! Which reminds me, we have a bit more room now...
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| We Moved! And our stuff was left on the street until the truck showed up. |
Remember two and a half months ago, when I posted a pic of our new car, and mentioned that the next problem was the lack of a second car space at our nice little apartment? Since then we have left Jumeirah Beach Residences behind altogether, and moved out to a double car space equipped villa in the sandy suburbs of The Arabian Ranches. No more apartment living for a while at least! We are still in Dubai, but much further out into the desert, around 8km in from the coast.
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| The view from the lake near our place |
The big benefits of living in the ranches are:
* The community feel and friendly people
* The complete lack of traffic jams, except right outside the local school each morning, when every mother for miles drives their little angels to school in a monster truck with all the driving precision of a short-sighted learner driver with anger management issues.
* The fresh air, trees, plants, lakes and walking paths, which are everywhere.
* And of course, the second car space.
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| Our new villa! neighbours on either side, but none above or below! |
I have to say that I do like the idea of having a nice big place to fill up with junk, and have wasted no time installing proper metal racking into my office downstairs. And a filing cabinet. And a fridge. And a TV. OK, so I guess you could say that Kate lives in the villa and I live in the study. But we are also having a bit of fun fixing the place up; painting, putting up shelves and new light fittings and installing a bunch of new Ikea furniture. I now have at least 100 of those nasty little allen keys.
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| Kate in a painting outfit that actually kind of matches the paint |
Boring News Update: I got to go to London for a week to complete the last stage of my training for my job at the Embassy.
It was cold.
Back to you, Jim.
After moving out of our last place, then moving into this place and fixing it up, all while working at my new job (which is still going very well by the way), I haven't really had a chance to update this blog or TheTravelBites blog. It's only now that things are startling to normalize that I remembered I should write about it before I forget about it.
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| Hey, I've been busy, OK!? |
So here we are, and I think those are the main things we have done that are noteworthy, other than the things you would expect, like celebrating Christmas with fried prawns and sparkling red wine.
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| We even found our Angel tree-topper, brought from Australia. Hard to come by those in Dubai! |
Also, there was the New Year's fireworks, when the Dubai government decided to make a world record attempt for the biggest fireworks display ever. They got the award, and we were lucky enough to be at a NYE gig on The Palm at midnight to watch the whole thing light up. Fireworks everywhere. The crescent of the Palm had fireworks going off every 100 meters or so along it's entire perimeter, which meant that from where we were standing (just outside Atlantis at the top of the Palm), there were fireworks exploding around us in absolutely every direction. Really quite spectacular, and well worth the two hour drive through excruciating traffic jams to get there in the first place (usually a 20 minute drive).
And now it's 2014, we are happily settled in our new villa, and looking forward to whatever comes next. So Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and here's to a fresh new year full of possibilities!
Till Next Time! (it wont be two months till 'next time', promise!)
//Brendan
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| Just to show where everything is in relation to everything else. |
As always a great read.
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