Rain rain, go away..

Strange though it may sound, we've been having a bit of inclement weather lately.  In the last couple of weeks we've had some rainy spells and even one very impressive evening of thunder and lightning.  At the moment we're benefiting from the equivalent of a 'snow day', school was closed at 10am in order to allow children to get home before a severe storm hits us apparently.  This leads to every child reaching for their mobile phone so they could call their drivers and get a lift home as soon as possible, and that doesn't seem strange to them, the fact they have drivers to take them home and maids waiting to take care of them.  I'm sure a lot of these families would watch Downton Abbey and think that it was a 'fly on the wall' documentary.  Suffice to say it's now 3pm, what would have been home time, and there has been no rain at all..

The problem is that when it rains we get floods, for two reasons.  One is that it tends to rain for a short period of time but very intensely, the second is that the roads have no drainage whatsoever, other than gravity.  So you soon get to know where the puddles (and I'm talking over your flip flops and up to your ankles puddles) appear and where is dry.  A side effect of the rain is the panic it puts in to some of the local drivers.  Unused to wet conditions, some tend to panic and drive at 5mph with their hazard lights on at the first sign of a drizzle.

There is also perhaps a lack of forethought in how some buildings are designed.  A friend of ours has a villa with an open verandah along it's longest side.  Unfortunately this slopes towards the house so water just pools against the walls until she opens the front door.  She has taken the decision to avoid any surprises when this happens, so opens the front and back doors and has a little river running through the place.  Fortunately the floors are tiled.  Our local mall has the same problem.
 
 

As you can see it has quite a large roof, rain goes from here, down concealed drainpipes and out of holes at the bottom which are horizontal to the road, normally at about 150 PSI, enough force to knock a small person over!  You can also see the large car park which slopes towards the Mall, this means a wave of water runs towards the shops before being parted and flowing past the building.  This often leaves the car park under about four inches of water while the drainage is taking place!

The building site on the left by the way is shown on Google maps as the Radisson Hotel, don't book a room yet....

I guess the overall response over here to these observations about rain would be similar to comments about why we don't have anti-avalanche strips on roofs in England.  It's simply not a problem often enough to warrant any further thought or investment, you build to the norm not the exception.

Tomorrow is our three month celebration of making the move out here, and we both agree the time has flown by.  We still get flashbacks about the preparations that we made before we made the move and our first few days & weeks here.  There has been a lot of water under the bridge (no pun intended..) and tomorrow we pick up our biggest purchase to date, a car!  After only two months of research (beating my normal time by ten months) we can say goodbye to our rented Yaris, we'll miss you little fella!

When you reach these milestones you often tend to reflect on what you've been through, and I been doing just that.  It's amazing to me that I've been sharing these anecdotes with you for just twelve weeks, so much seems to have happened!  For me the most amazing thing is the people we have met, something which my daughter Lily who is traveling around the world at the moment also found out.  Whether it is at the Hilton, at school or just in the town,  we've had the good fortune to make some new friends.  Domi has lived in a multi-cultural environment before but for me this has been a new experience, and so far it has been amazing to meet so many nice people.  I've always thought that deep down the vast majority of us want the same things, a safe environment to live with their family and a chance to earn some money.  We meet people every day, some local and some who have traveled from across the globe to realise these ambitions and more often than not, they are polite and kind.  For example, when I ran out of petrol in a hire care within sight of the hire company's office, it was an Emirate who stopped to see if he could help.

 'There is no them and us, it's just us.'

Next week is National Day so there will be two days (?!) of celebrations.  Everywhere is bedecked with flags and slogans so I'll report back on what happens next blog.