Not nice weather

For 3 days now we have been experiencing sandstorm in Abu Dhabi.
Tends to keep you inside. Temperatures have ranged from 38 to 45 C with winds up to 35 kmph.



Last Day in Abu Dhabi

Tomorrow we begin the long journey home - the 15 hour flight from AD to Sydney, and then the 3 hours or so wait in Sydney, then the 2 hour flight to Adelaide.

So today is the last day with Andy and Kathryn. A very hot 38+ and rather humid so that the city looks a bit like it is shrouded in mists.

We visited a few picnic spots today and in particular paddled in sea water that was almost body temperature.

You probably don't need to be told, but the top picture is Bob and me, and the bottom one is Kathryn and Andy.

We have been very lucky with our visit because Kathryn doesn't start her teaching job until late August so we have had our very own tour guide and limousine driver.

We have almost, but not quite, got used to the constant heat - the day begins at about 36 and sometimes when we've got back into the car, the temp gauge shows 50 but drops back once we are moving to about 43.

Almost everywhere you look there is building going on.

Kathyrn and Andy have a lovely apartment on floors 9 & 10 of Crystal Tower, with 4 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms, so we have had our own ensuite, airconditioned quarters.

Not only have we seen lots we have eaten at a variety of places: a top notch Chinese restaurant, Arabic food at least twice, as well as visited many shopping malls and their food courts. We have not had a holiday like this for a long time, and have very much enjoyed ourselves.

More from Abu Dhabi

Yesterday we took a tour at the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital, a local foundation dedicated to the care of captivity-bred falcons.

Kathryn had seen the tour written up in a local magazine and as it turned out we were the only 3 people taking the tour.

Here you see me with one of the falcons they use for visitors, and the poor little guy sitting patiently on the bench with his hood on is waiting to have bandages on his feet changed, or his talons clipped or his beak trimmed or similar.

We had a very comprehensive tour of everything that happens at the hospital. It is currently the moulting season so many birds are "hospitalised" there while they lose most of their feathers. The tour is followed up with a lovely Arabian lunch. More here.

Today we drove back to just south of Dubai to Madinat Jumeirah, a beach front resort which has its own souq, hotel accommodation, Venetian style canals, and cafes.

This very close to the Palm Jumeirah, a new set of islands being specially constructed off shore.

Below is a view of the souq, where it would have been lovely to spend a small fortune, but we had to be content with some very packable wind chimes.

In the background of the photo below you can see Dubai's very famous monument, Burj Al Arab and just behind Kathryn and me, part of the canal system that divides the souq of Madinat Jumeirah from the hotel accommodation.

Prices for 1 night's accommodation start at 999.99 AED ( about $300$AUS) for a very basic room.

And no, you haven't gone mad - I haven't got my photos muddled up. The photo below is at Ski Dubai which is at the nearby Mall of the Emirates.

A mere -4 degrees C in there, and only 42 C outside! People who work in there must have serious thermal adjustment problems when they leave work.

Sunday Salon #11 - 1 June 2008

According to the site, there are now 152 members of Sunday Salon, which is staggering growth. I haven't yet managed to identify all the crime fiction devotees though.

We arrived here in Abu Dhabi a week ago now and have only 6 days to go before we take off back for Australia. My daughter has a guide book that lists the top 10 things to do in Abu Dhabi and so far we are doing pretty well, as well as a good range of things outside AD.

One of the effects of being away from home is that fact that I'm not able to spend as much time on the internet as I do at home, and also I 'watch' RSS feeds from my favourite blogs via an RSS reader on my desktop computer. Won't I have a lot to read when I get home! And just one more thing.. my webmail is not reachable today - hopefully it will come good soon.

However there has been plenty of time to read. It is really hot most days, with the result that there is a limit to how long you actually want to be outside. So we retreat back to our daughter and son-in-law's apartment for large parts of the day.
The other thing to do is to visit a shopping mall - there are some huge ones, with hectares of shopping and food courts, all air-conditioned to the nth degree. One we visited today has a running club from 7-10am every morning for those who prefer a cool 22 degrees Celsius to 40+ degrees outside later in the day.
Today we also visited a couple of Kathryn's favourite book shops.

My postings this week (in reverse order)

• Travels in Abu Dhabi
  Yesterday we explored an oasis in Al Ain and had Friday brunch on the top of a mountain at Jebel Hafeet
• THE DEAD POOL, Sue Walker
  I was disappointed in this book - I read and enjoyed her previous two.
• NO TIME FOR GOODBYE, Linwood Barclay
  Highly recommended. Those who've called it a page-turner are not wrong.
• SNOW CANDY, Terry Carroll
  Sortlisted for Canada's Arthur Ellis awards. Well worth looking out for.
• Ned Kelly Longlist 2008 announced
  Lots of goodies listed here. Ned Kelly Awards are highly prized Australian Crime fiction awards announced at Melbourne Writers' Festival. You'll find many of them linked to reviews by me or at Aust Crime Fiction.
• RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN, Marshall Browne
  This is a good read from Australian author Marshall Browne - you may be familiar with his Inspector Anders series
• TRICK OR TREAT, Kerry Greenwood
  This is what I read on the plane. Didn't get as much read as I thought I would. Good light read though. You've probably heard of her Phryne Fisher series but maybe not Corinna Chapman.

Travels in Abu Dhabi

Didn't manage to record where we've been for the last 2 days, so this is a quick catch up.

It is amazing how quickly the days are passing.

The day before yesterday we went to Dubai for the day. The roads are just amazing - up to 5 or 6 lanes wide in both directions. As we got closer to Dubai the traffic became more congested and we travelled very slowly after the very high speeds out on the open road.

In Dubai we visited the Soukh, in fact 2 of them, that involved crossing the Creek on an abra.

We had lunch at the Ibn Battuta Mall where 7 different areas celebrate the explorations of a 14th century Arabian explorer who visited the farflung borders of the Islamic world. The ceiling of the mall is amazing, looking like a well lit night sky.

Yesterday we travelled out to Al Ain, known for its oasis. This was a real eye opener. A large town has grown up around the original oasis which is now a rabbit warren of date farms with large walls around them. Quite different from my idea of a large pool of water with a few buildings around the edge.

After that we had lunch at the Mercure hotel up on Jebel Hafeet. Friday brunch is a very popular meal in the Emirates, a good start for the weekend. The spread at the Mercure was delicious, with a definite focus on prawns and lobster.

My picture is of the view from the top of Jebel Hafeet.

This entry must not go past without mention of the temperature for the last couple of days - a consistent 44-46 degrees Celsius, with an occasional flirtation of the car's temperature gauge with 50 degrees. Believe it or not, as the days roll on to August, temps will climb even higher.

NO TIME FOR GOODBYE, Linwood Barclay

Orion Books, 2008, 339 pages, isbn 978-0-7528-8861-3

The morning Cynthia Bigge woke to find the house empty, her father, mother, and brother gone, would haunt her for the rest of her life. Because they never came back, disappeared off the face of the earth. A 14 year old rebel, she knew she was hard to live with, but why did they leave without her?

For twenty five years Cynthia has never lost hope that one day they would contact her, would ring, simply turn up just as they had vanished. Now she wants to go further than just wait. Happily married with a daughter of her own, she wants to solve the puzzle. What happened that night in May 1983 back in Milford, Connecticut?

And her story is just the sort of thing that people who watch the television show Deadline love. But three weeks after the show has screened there are still no results, so Cynthia decides to employ a private detective, and that's when things really start to move. Various events occur which make it seem that her family may still be alive.

Those who've called this a page-turner are not wrong. I loved the structure. Between the chapters dealing with the main story there are mini-chapters containing telephone conversations. These conversations provide a puzzle and at the same time clues to what really happened.

Highly recommendable. My rating: 4.7

Linwood Barclay is a Canadian author who published his first book in 1996, and a mystery series of 4 books in 2004. NO TIME FOR GOODBYE is a stand-alone. More details on his website.

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Notes from Abu Dhabi

Kathryn has been introducing us to the relaxed life-style of an ex-pat's wife. (She'll miss it when she starts work teaching 3 year olds in a local school at the end of August)

Today we saw the Picasso exhibition at the sumptuous Emirates Palace hotel.

It's Kathryn's birthday today so we followed that up with coffee and cake in one of it's cafes.

If you look carefully you'll see the gold sprinkled on top of the coffee.

SNOW CANDY, Terry Carroll

The Mercury Press, 2007, 171 pages, 9-781551-281353

When the raucous whining of snowmobiles wakes old Hughie Campbell on New Year's Eve, he reacts in anger, takes his .22 out from behind the stove, and takes a pot shot at the intruders. But shattering a headlight doesn't see them off, it brings them to his doorstep.

The fire that guts the Campbell farm early on New Year's Day is the second one in St. Thomas, Ontario, in only a few hours, and Sergeant Carl North can't help feeling that this is too much of a coincidence. There are two burnt bodies in the farmhouse kitchen. One is quickly identified as Hughie Campbell, so who is the other? North's offsider Constable Pete Heemstra remarks on how odd the placement of the bodies looks.

The other fire that night was at a strip club whose owner had been threatened by local bikie gang, the Pythons, who have controlling interest in a rival club. Coincidentally the neighbour who reported the Campbell farm fire has a son in the gang. Even without this gossamer thread, two fires in one night is just too much coincidence.

Sergeant Carl North, with one defunct marriage, and one almost finished, seems to be a person who attracts disaster. He's a bit of a lone wolf, one who doesn't always do things by the book, and we gather that in the past he has gained a reputation for pushing the boundaries. Nor does he devote the time to relationships that he should. His actions in SNOW CANDY put the people closest to him, as well as himself, in grave danger. He's impulsive, flawed, but very likeable.

SNOW CANDY demonstrates what a soft underbelly a small town can have once it is infested by the corrupting influence of a bikie gang. The corruption isn't evident in just strip tease clubs but can reach out into the police force itself. Gang leaders who will do anything to augment their own power place little value on the lives of others, even those inside their gang.

Read an excerpt from SNOW CANDY on the author's web site.

SNOW CANDY has been shortlisted for Canada's 2008 Arthur Ellis awards for best novel.
It is the second Carl North novel.
The first, BODY CONTACT, was published in 2006, and set in another small town, Belleford. Once again an excerpt is available online.

My rating of SNOW CANDY: 4.4

Many thanks to Terry Carroll for sending me a copy of the book.

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Notes from Abu Dhabi.

Another hot day today: 44 degrees C.

We went on on a tour of the great Mosque, which is nearing completion. It's a stunning accomplishment of fine architecture and remarkable craftsmanship.

RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN, Marshall Browne

Random House 2006, 287 pages. ISBN 978-1-74166-527-7

Tokyo detective Aoki and his team are expecting that the case they have been working on for the last seventeen months will soon be over. Along the way they have lost 3 of their team who fell under the pace of the investigation, but it will all be worth it. This case is about to break and they will all have promotions.

But that's not the way it works out. They are called abruptly to a meeting with the superintendent and the director general and told that the investigation is over, no action will be taken, the case will not be proceeding. The ex-governor with connections to the yakuza will get away with it yet again.

In the following months, the ex-governor's star rises and people begin to talk of him as the next prime minister, and Aoki's star goes into decline. A member of his team commits suicide, a journalist, and both his father and his wife die and Aoki himself is suspended from duty. And just when things really can't get any worse, Aoki is sent by his superintendent to the Kamakura Inn, a ryokan in Hokkaido, to recuperate.

The detective in Aoki is revived as he realises that the other guests at the ryokan have secrets to hide, and he wonders if he has been sent there intentionally. He remembers an unsolved mystery of the disappearance of a woman 7 years earlier, and reaslises that at least two of the other guests have connections to that case. When the ryokan is cut off from the world in a snow storm, this tale becomes a classic locked room mystery. The ryokan is a house of many secrets, built to hide as well as accommodate, and the tension grows as first of all the telephone, and then the lights fail.

All the other Marshall Browne books I've read, the Inspector Anders ones, have rated highly. This one is no exception. My rating 4.3

I bought RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN at Adelaide Writers' Week after I had heard Marshall Browne talk, and he duly signed it for me.

Meanwhile in Abu Dhabi
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An inviting pile of books beckons outside the public library at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi.

Today was 44 degrees C, windy, and a bit dusty, so we spent a couple of hours viewing an exhibition about Sudan (in airconditioned comfort).

The pile of books is a "sculpture".