Merry Christmas from Athens Greece

Posted by Kanga.

Christmas decorations have been somewhat reserved. This is due to the economic crisis. However, I have a few pictures to share.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Christmas Day

…began with a brief exchange of gifts.

For me, two strings of pearls – one white and one “black.” Natural black pearls are actually shades of purple, blue and brown. Very beautiful.

For DaddyBird, a handmade wooden dhow.

The day ended with a pleasant dinner with 22 of our friends.

(The one mugging for the camera is Mali.) More pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/ivanbautista2008/Tweetmasparty2010#

God bless us, everyone!

Christmas Eve 2010

Last year we spent both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve with friends at our favorite fish shack restaurant, Bu Qtair. This has become the tradition.

There were Christmas crackers containing a paper crown, stickers and a funny joke. (A corny joke, if you want to know the truth – How do you fix a broken pizza? With tomato paste. What does a doofus call his pet zebra? Spot. You get the idea.)

This was our toothsome dinner – hamour, pomfrit, two shari (not pictured) and two kilo of spicy prawn (also not pictured). It didn’t take us long to stuff ourselves.

We are a little concerned about our beloved fish shack. They informed us that they now offer rice AND they brought out malmac plates (instead of paper) and forks. Getting downright hoity toity. Maybe this is what happens to a great place like this after being featured on a cable food/travel show.

Great fun was had by all, especially DaddyBird.

For more on this fun evening, see our friend Micheline’s blog. (She writes a great blog. You might want to follow her regularly.)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Time slippage

Where does the time go? I’ve been scolded for not posting more often (never make money with this blog if I don’t ya know – never mind that that has never been my intention). Not much has happened.

So, here it is:

i put up the tree.

The cats enjoy chewing on the artificial branches. (We did not even bother putting it up last year because they were still kittens.) It is currently encircled with a pair of toddler gates to keep them from grazing. Even though they could easily leap over it, it seems to be enough of a deterrent, so far.

We ate at pleasant little Lebanese restaurant with quaint decor (and good food, especially the freshly baked bread).

And I saw this in the store.

And, no, it will not be under the tree.

There you have December, so far, in a nutshell.

Lucky man

Daddybird, being a very lucky man married to a woman who knows where to shop and what to buy, got this for Christmas. And, as you can see, the castle is sometimes under the attack of a dragon.The dragons are now forbidden to get up on the table, but is it a hard lesson to learn. They do like to chew on the trees.

The castle is foam with interlocking pieces. Pretty cool toy. Of course, he wants another set so he can combine and make a bigger castle. Hmm… it’s already taking over my sewing table.

Kitties First Bubbles

Per Granny’s request, here is a record of Oliver and Bert’s Christmas gift. Had to split it into two parts.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone. We aren’t doing anything too spectacular this year. Christmas tends to sneak up on us here. I fully intended to get decorations up and have a festive December, but it just didn’t happen. Our artificial Christmas tree is still in the box and the box is under our bed serving as a support to keep the bed from sagging. It is stuck there until we find a substitute. I fully intended to get some shopping done and ship presents home, but that didn’t come to fruition either. With Paul working all the time at his “part-time” job and me spending weekends struggling to make a dent in the housework and laundry, shopping just didn’t happen. Christmas eve we did manage to get to a mall and shop for presents for each other, but that is the extent of it.

I got up early this morning because there was lightning. I went to the living room to watch it with the cats. The storm was actually north in Sharjah, so the lightning and a little thunder was all we got here.

Daddybird is still sleeping and we are waiting patiently for him to get up so we can open presents. We got a bubble blowing machine for the cats. I can’t wait to see how much fun that turns out to be. Hopefully, it will entertain Oliver when he gets in one of his yowling moods.

Daddybird: “Merry Christmas!”

Kanga: “Happy Holidays!”

Bert: “mew”

Oliver: “MAH-WOO!”

Christmas is coming

First, let me apologize for the crappy, blurry quality of this photo. Most stores don’t want people taking pictures in their store (you might be a retail spy), so I try to do it on the sly and usually end up with a blurry mess.

We went to Ace (they don’t bother calling it Ace Hardware here) and Christmas decorations were out in full force. There were some of the usual colors – red, gold, silver, etc., but there were also large amounts of black and brown ornaments. Not only that, there were brown and black artificial trees.
The one on the right is a light brown, the exact color an evergreen tree turns when it dies. Why would anyone want that?

Christmas trees

The Christmas tree at the Dubai Mall (which is still up, by the way) is gi-normous, as these three pictures show.
The color of the lights changed before I got all three pictures taken.

Here you can see the tree at Festival City.
As you can see, you can ride the escalator through the tree. Weeeee!

I’m not sure when the trees will be taken down. Some had “Happy New Year’s!” banners draped on them. Maybe they will add hearts and cupids next. January and February are the “Shopping Festival.” Like they need a shopping event here.

Book sale

Here we are at the Magrudy’s Bookstore warehouse sale. “Everything must go!” This is the line of people waiting. Yes, that is a man holding a Siamese cat (on a halter and lease, no less). He put it down later and took it for a drag.
Below, we have a Christmas tree. Yes, the Christmas shopping season has begun in Dubai.
A display of Christmas books.
The line continues…
And continues… Mostly expats, so they knew how to line up, at least.
Finally, the golden gates, the emerald city, the holy grail, the river Jordan, the end of the rainbow…
The madhouse — where butts collide. Just rows of boxes full of books of various kinds.
They had a very efficient system and once we got into the checkout line (which I thought would be long and slow) it moved too quickly. I wanted to checkout the books as I stood in line, but it moved fast. They counted them up, you paid your money and you got out. Simple as that. Dhs 5 for paperbacks ($1.37) and Dhs 10 for hardbacks ($2.74).
Above is the cafe where we sat afterward and watched the line which was still strong when we left an hour or so later. (Really bad service at this cafe. Felt bad about leaving a Dhs 7 tip, but had already waited a ridiculously long time for our food and didn’t want to wait for the change.)
Below are our treasures. Mostly travel and language books. 41 books for $60.00. Now we need a book case!