Update from Abu Dhabi

Hi All,

I often wonder why I called this blog, what I did, seen as I don't live in South America at the moment. Anyways, some updates from life in the Middle East. I had an interesting thing happen to me the other day. The water heater in my flat basically exploded. I heard what sounded like someone having a shower, which was odd because no-one was in the shower. I got up to investigate and noticed a torrent of water coming from the ceiling in the kitchen. I should explain that the kitchen has the water heater above it and various other things like air con etc. Anyways, I went downstairs to let the man on the door know and he came up, lifted up the panelling in the kitchen, whacked it with a hammer and twiddled with a screwdriver and didn't fix it. He then advised me some people would come and look at it in the morning (today).

So, here we have it, there are two Indian chaps fixing it as we speak. I can hear mumblings and bangings coming from the kitchen right now. I just hope they repair it. As of now, they are going to need to come back and fix it.

I have also had to put with a load of banging and drilling coming from on my floor. Apparently a spa of some sort is opening on the floor, and they have been doing building work to make it ready for this week. Unfortunately, for the last 10 days or so the noise has been awful! It has eased off a bit now I think and I hope the noise will be less from now on. I just don't understand what needs to be hit with a hammer 35 times a minute for 8 hours. Any ideas?

I had a visit to the Ministry the other day as well. The BC were doing some testing there, and once I had got through security I was out in this golf kart thing and driven all of 15 yards across a car park to the main entrance of the building. It's one of the many bizarre things that happen here in the Middle East all the time. The guy driving must have thought I was mad because I was laughing to myself the entire way. When testing did finally get underway, we were put in a room where the lights kept dimming and increasing again. apparently the control for the room was in another room and they were adjusting lights there for a conference and kept adjusting the rooms we were in. That's all for now.