International Day

It has been an amazing day with several pictures to choose from, but I decided to go with the flamenco dancer and guitarist.

So, first off, I had a 10 am meeting with a real estate agent to talk about documentation required to renew the trade licence. That started late but went well enough. The government have realised that they need to relax some rules and lower costs to help budding businesses stay afloat.

I raced from there straight to G's school. Their annual International Day event was in full swing by the time I got there. SO fantastic to see, even though there were less than fifty countries in the Parade of Nations. You could see how much effort had been put in to showcase one's country.

The flamenco dancer kicked off the cultural part of the programme. Her guitarist was really talented and treated us to a one guitar rendition of the Gypsy Kings classic Bamboleo. They were followed by Egyptian musicians and a whirling dervish-type dancer.

Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for the whole programme as G wanted me to see the stalls that had been set up and taste some food. I had chicken biryani from Pakistan, Arabic coffee from Kuwait, a (very juicy) date from Saudi Arabia, a scone (complete with clotted cream) from England and a crepe from France! I really wished I had more time to look around!

Back home and the cleaner came to do his thing. He has told me that my old cleaner could be back by the second week of March, so I am really looking forward to that. There was no Awana today, so we were left with a free afternoon. I wanted to find out about new speakers for my car, so we headed to the car stereo souk in Deira. That was a waste of time. Despite getting there fairly quickly (traffic wasn't as bad as we expected), there was absolutely nowhere to park up and go into any of the shops to enquire... so we drove over to City Walk to have dinner.

We walked straight into Innovation Week, or the last evening of it. We also ate at a new restaurant for us. Trying to locate the restaurant (Roux), we passed the Bvlgari Chocolate store. They had dark chocolate ice cream cones, so dessert was sorted before we ate.

Heading back to the car, we looked at some of the exhibition of new innovations. Our Public Prosecution Department has been busy simplifying things. A young Emirati lad talked us through some of them. I was particularly interested in Smart Bail and One Day Court! We then went on to the Electricity and Water Authority's stand, where I got to ask someone to explain what the new smart meter is all about. One was installed for us back in November but we hadn't been told of its benefits etc.

And last but not least, a local travel company were promoting packages to Cyprus, so we stopped to find out more. As we were leaving the stand, she suddenly handed G a bag of special Cypriot tea. She was told she can give it to "special" customers!!

March tomorrow. Yikes!