The Aftermath

Today has turned out to be quite a day so this journal entry might be a bit long(er) than normal!

Firstly, we went to watch the new Spiderman movie. We went to Reel Cinemas in Dubai Mall rather than VOX. It's a long story, but this has always been my preferred cinema but with my credit card provider tying up with the competitor to give us 2 for 1 ticket, I couldn't ignore the deal, especially in our current situation.

About a year ago, there was a change with my bank signing up with Reel Cinemas for the same deal, but VOX had an interesting loyalty programme, so we continued to watch movies with them. Last week, with almost no notice, they scrapped their old loyalty programme and have changed to something that I can never see working for me, so now there is no reason to go back to them. It was great and much easier to get to Dubai Mall, and apart from two kids kicking the back of my seat (local family on summer holidays), the entire experience was very nice.

As you can see, the cinema is super modern. My main blip (picture on the right) is what was left after the family of children sitting next to G left the theatre. As for the movie, it was great to see the scenes in Venice, Prague, London and Berlin, but I'm not really one for these superhero movies.

We got home to a clean flat (it's Sunday after all) and I switched on the aircon in the living room to cool it down when the electricity in the entire flat went off. I didn't realise two other a/c's were on, so I went to rectify the problem. Then I got the smell of something burning but couldn't for the life of me see a fire anywhere. Anyway, I isolated the problem to the living room a/c, called an electrician who came in less than two hours.

The problem area was as I diagnosed but I had no idea what a nuisance the repair would be. It wasn't a case of the switch failing and needing to be replaced. Sameer (the electrician) said there was a problem with the supply caused by a wiring joint going wrong. We had to find out where it was. Not easy when it is concealed in the wall. Fortunately, we had noticed a burning smell before and yesterday, I noticed a stain on the wall which baffled me as neither G nor I had made it.

It turns out the stain is where the burn was and it didn't take long for Sameer to expose some shockingly bad wiring carried out long before we ever came to live in this flat. *Someone* had joined two wires without using connectors, covered them over with insulation tape, and buried the wire in the wall! Unbelievable.

Sameer sorted it all out, but there is now an unsightly switch in the middle of the longest wall as well as the poly filler used to cover the very large groove which had to be carved out. Ugh. I'll have to look into painting the entire wall when I get back. I am very pleased that the problem got sorted within a few hours and it came to light while we were in the flat.

In the meantime, a historic Wimbledon match was being played with Roger Federer just missing the chance to equal Martina Navratilova's record of nine titles. On the cricket front, England won the World Cup! Very pleased for them especially as the last time they were in a final, it was in 1992 in Australia when Pakistan won! The only reason I remember it is because it was the day I flew over to the UK with SweetArt, and we met G for the first time!