photo: weekend morning

Reading about the local golf scene and drinking cold coffee with chocolate ice cream. Yummm! That's Lee Westwood on the cover...He won the Dubai World Championship a few weeks back, and although this was printed before the tournament finished, the title works very well still.

Getting ready to leave tomorrow for our trip. Not sure how much I will be online, or if I will even take my laptop with me this time.

This shot was taken on a sunny day, but today is hazy, dusty and gusty. A sandstorm is predicted for today, but right now it's just a weird yellowly feel to the sky and sand flying everywhere. Photos of the dusty conditions in Dubai today on a local blog.

photo: patterns

As a lot of you already know, I love noticing the light that streams into our home. In the desert of Dubai, having sunlight coming into one's home is not necessarily a good thing, but I simply love the energy that it brings with it. And thanks to living in the Middle East, I have started noticing and loving all the patterns one sees here. This one is the shadow of our window grill.

an incentive to buy....a camera or a tv?

We renewed our annual newspaper subscription this afternoon and are now looking forward to our coupons along with tomorrow's edition. Yes, the newspaper subscriptions here give you great deals for subscribing, and so we're going to get the same amount that we paid for the newspaper as coupons for two different stores...one a huge electronic store and another a clothing store. The electronic store one will be very handy indeed, since we were thinking of buying one of these new Samsung HDTV or a camera...well, I'm always on the lookout for a good camera but still haven't got around to actually buying one..oh well. Maybe this will spur me on!

our tile crazy landlord

We've lived in so many places, so many cities and have such different types of landlords. This one has been very enthused about making changes in our building, sometimes painting the exterior, sometimes installing some fancy looking glass tile in the entry hallway and at others descending with his team of workmen on the holidays to make as many changes and clean up stuff in the compound. Yes, he is a very different kind of landlord and we're very happy for that. But we all have to admit, he's a bit crazy when it comes to anything to do with tiles!

a new mantra

        A tiny window in a traditional courtyard building in Bastakiya.

Yes, yes, since I mentioned it already...we're leaving on vacation in a few days so have been busy with getting everything sorted out and ready for our trip. It always seems that a hundred pending things all need to be taken care of all at the same time, and there's only so much that I can do, but this time around, I'm not getting hassled with all that I am not able to do, but instead am keeping happy with all that I have managed to do. A new mantra, a new way to live, and a new way to bring in the new year.

a new sink...no thank you!

It's been a bit crazy around here, with all sorts of work going on. The landlord got into high gear over the long holidays to get all the pending work sorted out with our recent problems with water leakage from the main line. At first he really didn't know what was going on, and neither did the series of plumbing chaps he brought with him, since the water seemed to leak from a variety of sources, but then he got into battle mode and decided to redo it all. And so we got new tiles in our bath and very nearly got some new Toto sinks and toilets that he was very keen to install, but we resisted since it would have just taken too long and caused too much chaos. Glad it's all done and over with before we head out for the holidays.

Blogging for social interaction

From the time that blogging started out, it really has come a long, long way. At first it was such a niche format, that one had to constantly explain to people what it was. I remember doing that when I started out blogging in 2004. There were so few blogs and many of them were rather technical and IT related. The interesting changes that have happened to blogging over the years is that they have become mainstream and that has led to a vast variety of blogs being written. The bulk of blogs now are personal blogs, where one can share one's thoughts and feelings.

I came across a site called Thoughts.com that offers users a free blog based on exactly this topic. A place to share thoughts and take part in social conversations, a place to interact with a larger community, and a place where one can automatically be updated on one's friends latest posts. You might say that a lot of other sites offer the same thing, but I think the difference here is that they have a lot more control over what information you want or don't want, which is really the key.

So along with the regular posts, there is also a section for users to post breaking news stories and where one can participate in discussions. It's a bit of a combination of blogging, social media sites and viral videos as well. I found their "one love policy" of being respectful to others very nice, since a lot of people find it a great joy to be rude to others while hiding under the anonymous tag.

recipe: Chocolate Mud Cake

I wanted to make something special for the double celebration of my sister's anniversary and our brother-in-law's birthday. I found this recipe that I had saved in my Word files on my computer...for some reason I didn't write the source, and I just can't recall where I got it from. So, if you're the owner of this recipe, thank you so much.

** Edited to add: Ashwin dug up the source and here it is on Katja and Minna's blog Nestled In. **

I loved making it, it's really super simple, and it comes out really rich and dark, even though we don't get any chocolate labeled just "dark chocolate" as one does in the baking section in the US, just as one finds "semisweet" or "bittersweet" chocolates. Here, they are in cocoa percentages, so I selected a 72% dark chocolate for the cake and a 55% dark chocolate for the frosting. Next time, I think I will go for 60-65% for the cake.



Chocolate (mud) cake Recipe

Dough:
• 200 grams of butter
• 200 grams of dark chocolate
• 4 eggs
• 2 decilitres of sugar…200ml by volume
• 1.5 decilitres of wheat flour….150ml by volume
• 1 tea-spoon of baking powder
• 4 table-spoons of cacao powder (for baking)

Frosting:
• 150 grams of dark chocolate
• 1 decilitres of cream...100ml by volume
• 1 table-spoon of butter

1. Melt the butter in a pot and add chocolate. Mix until the chocolate has entirely melted.
2. Whip the eggs with sugar.
3. Mix the flour, the baking powder and the cacao powder.
4. Add the melted chocolate into the egg foam and mix carefully.
5. Strain the flour into the dough and mix (still, carefully).
6. Pour the dough into a cake tin (that is greased and dredged).
7. Bake about 45 minutes at 175° Celsius.

After the cake is ready, make the frosting.
1. Heat the cream in a pot (don’t let it boil!).
2. Add the butter and the dark chocolate.
3. Stir until the frosting is even.
4. Let the frosting cool for a while and then spread it on the cake.


And then dig in :-)

Pls don't call me

Don't you just hate it when some calling list gets hold of your number and you start getting bombarded with calls? It drives me nuts, absolutely nuts. Since yesterday, I've been getting calls for everything from life insurance rates to time share sales to AC repair services, and I'm halfway to the point of just changing my number to stop it all. I know, I know, it shouldn't require such dire measures, I should just be able to ask them to take my number of the list etc etc, but it doesn't seem to work like that here. What list, there is no list, there is no way to be unlisted from their list and so on, and then there's the thing of talking to people who barely understand English and trying to decipher what they're actually saying...Oh well, I needed to rant a bit.....feeling better already!

At the Dubai World Championship

We've had a busy weekend watching the Dubai World Championship golf tournament here in Dubai. We went to see them play two days...Day 1 and Day 3 (thursday and saturday) and it was a wonderful, wonderful event. We walked along with my home town golfer Jeev Milkha Singh on holes 17 and 18 and then followed Sergio Garcia and Robert Allenby on holes 14 and 15, before heading to Costa for a break and then heading back home. Other players we got to see up close were Lee Westwood, who eventually won the championship with a huge margin, Ernie Els, Ian Poulter, Henrick Stenson and many more.

Jeev Milkha Singh sizing up his 3rd shot on the 18th hole in Round 3...should have been his 2nd shot, but he duffed his tee shot to the rough on the left.



Spectators around the 13th green, a short par 4, as Sergio Garcia and Robert Allenby approached in Round 3.



Sergio Garcia getting ready to chip onto the green on the 13th green. Round 3



Spectators around the 13th green. This was on Day 1 of the tournament, so there were few crowds.