The Bog is Black

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O.K. Now that we've got the lame excuse for toilet humour and a poor anagram out of the way it's time to update you all on what's been happening to the Toms.

We are now mostly settled into our new home for this year – a newish 2 bedroom apartment well situated in the heart of Abu Dhabi. We are on the 10^th floor and have a very pleasant and expansive view with a little bit of sea in the distance.

Abu Dhabi is so far really great – quite the opposite of Doha in many ways. It has a very settled and almost western city style feel to the place – in that it is quite established and conventional looking. There is some construction going on here and there but so far I haven't seen any rocks or dust or potholes. The streets are set out in an easy grid pattern, there are footpaths and pedestrian crossings, and the driving is pretty sensible and courteous. We are in the central area with shops of all descriptions, restaurants, cafes etc... We could walk to the closest shopping mall which has a big Lulu's supermarket and we would, if it wasn't quite so hot currently.

The Corniche is particularly pretty with a couple of good beaches and more being developed. Set across the road from and parallel to the Corniche is a long strip of established gardens with a few restaurants and cafes, kids play areas etc.... it is all very splendid , well thought out and leads to ( at one end ) the magnificent Emirates Palace and out to the impressive Marina Mall, which, if you can manage to not get lost, you might find the Ikea store where there are no end of useful household gadgets, furniture and more. Absolutely spectacular views from the mall are to be had back across to Abu Dhabi city.

So Lynne is now working for Cognition again here. In their infinite capacity to totally mess up a good thing, Qatar's Education Council has decided to try and go it alone in education – the general consensus being that they are in no way, shape or form ready to do this massive undertaking without expert help. So very probably next year they will be calling out for help again.

It is not just in Education but pretty much every infrastructural undertaking in progress that an inability to do a proper job seems to be their forte. It would seem that there is an inverse correlation between having the money ( and they have obscene amounts of the stuff ) to do the job and actually accomplishing it.

An example, all too commonly witnessed, in March they decided to dig up the road outside our apartment – there was nothing wrong with the road! It was a lovely road with virtually no potholes. It was then left as a dusty track with large piles of asphalt and rocks for over a month, then a ditch was dug to expose an old sewer pipe running the length of the street. Weeks later concrete trucks arrived and the pipe was neatly encased in concrete. Fantastic we all thought progress...mmmmm.. A couple of weeks later huge digging machines arrived and smashed up said concreted pipe and the ditch was filled in again. Large holes were dug...Nothing much happened for another month. Just as we were to vacate the building prior to the end of contract, a flurry of activity saw berm edgings being laid. We heard that while away on holiday in July that they had laid a new road. On our arrival back a month later yes there was some new asphalt down but soon after being laid massive big holes were dug right in the middle. No doubt somebody forgot something that should have been connected or put there in the first place...So nearly 5 months and still the end is not in sight. On leaving it seemed that the workforce on this road had been reduced to a couple of guys with shovels.

In the 2 years we were there I only saw a couple of things completed, but never fully and not without ongoing problems.

I for one am not going to miss that road one little bit. Another thing I wont miss is, while driving, some crazy, dangerous, mad f...wit in a big 4 wheel drive right up my rear end, flashing his lights and tooting so that he can get to the cafe and sit down with his mates ( who also probably don't have or need jobs ) and smoke in the well signed non smoking areas and generally do nothing useful.

Well time for a change it seems and I look forward to the next year in civilisation.