New Beach

It's been a bit of a messy day. I intended to drive G to work and sit in the same cafe as last Wednesday to do two hours of calls for the new temp job, but I had to get a dedicated SIM card first. G suggested I work from home and she will sort herself out, so I went on the hunt for SIM card deals.

Wouldn't you know it, I was too early for any of the people who man booths in the local hypermarket. I ended up in Etisalat's branch, a decision I always regret. They don't know what the words "competitive" or "deal" mean and don't care either.

Back home to make the phone calls, I used one of my one (spare) lines and had a fairly successful first day by myself (I think!). The cleaner came towards the end, which is just as well because not long after he arrived, the vacuum cleaner was out.

G came home, so we nipped to the local Lebanese for a quick lunch. It has been decreed by the manager that I should always get a discount on my order after I was horrified at having to pay £3 for fresh orange juice. (He let me have it for £2).

Stomachs filled, it was back to the hypermarket, where this time, the Virgin Mobile booth had someone who could dispense their products. As much as I loathe the name of this company, I had to consider them because they had the best deal. I now have 500 local minutes for around £10 and 2 gigabytes of data as well, so if I work away from home, I won't have to eat into my own!

Back home again and Patrick came over. We were supposed to populate areas on the new site, but a technical glitch made it impossible, so we just chatted and looked up other things. He had another meeting to get to, so we offered to drop him at the metro station, except, once you're in the car, what does it matter? We drove him to his meeting. And then, as we were out and in the car, we somehow ended up on Jumeirah Beach!

We found this beach which is much closer to town that looks like it has just been completed. Free parking as well, so I made sure I marked the spot on my GPS. It has two play areas for kids and at one of them, they even have a Beach Library (see extra). I'd read about this initiative, and today I got to see how it works. Brilliant. So pleased we ended up here as this could become our beach of choice.

And the rest of the evening was spent listening to music (rather loud) on my headphones - something I love doing but don't get to do often. I was asked to lead the OaSis meeting on Friday. Very short notice but I had an idea of something I would do, should I ever be asked plus I've recruited G's help.