Oh look, a new year.
Hard to believe we’re already in the second half of the 2000s. Just yesterday we were all getting hot and bothered about the millennium bug, and those silly sunglasses with “2000” won them were making their appearance on drunk faces in Times Square (one wonders how the manufacturer plans to tackle the 2011 edition?).
I’m back in Dubai, where, if you’ve been keeping up with the news, we’re having what can only be described as not the best start to the new year. The ruler of this emirate died yesterday, and the funeral is going on as I type this. The much-touted annual Shopping festival was all set to start and has been put on hold. I suppose they’ll start it up by Eid next week, but until then the roads are relatively empty, malls are apparently full of closed shops except in the food court and a million dollars worth of fireworks that was set to kick off the festival is now sitting idle.
As I’m not a fan of fireworks, that last bit comes as some twisted variety of good news.
Other than that the new year seems to be going as well as the last. I have somewhat recovered from wedding-itis though the sore throat and dry cough still persist, not helped by the fact that while Mumbai was unusually cold — 12ºC at night — Dubai is much colder and drier. I’m suddenly much more thankful for the yellow Minnesota Vikings hoodie my cousin bought me from the states. I don’t know much about the Vikings, except that they play that completely unfathomable variety of sport called ‘football’ (I can, however, shout “First Down!” at random intervals). Also I live in a country where the temperature is well above 30ºC for most of the year — a thick hoodie is the last thing I thought I’d need. But, lookie, now I can do the morning walk without freezing to death.
(Look, I realise that for most of my American friends 12ºC is considered a nice spring day, but this is the tropics, and that too in a metropolis that suffers from acute Heat Island effect. If you want to eat an ice-cream stick you start at the bottom where the drip is and hope that the top of it doesn’t fall off before you get to it!)
Yes, I just spent the majority of this post talking about the weather. Well, the year so far has been that interesting, and other than taking a general survey of what needs to change in my life if I need to fulfill my dreams (lose weight/eat well, clean house/learn to cook better, develop skills/make money) I haven’t been up to much.
I owe all of you emails of various lengths, and so off I go to type them up.
Happy New Year.
V