More thoughts

Hey thanks you guys for all your emails and comments. We love getting them - keep them coming. We try to reply to each email individually at the mo - cause we have the time.

Here is an exert from Brian.....(apologies Linda and Phil)
We continue to enjoy things here, it is certainly very different from NZ and even what we had imagined of the place. We are somewhat limited still by a number of factors. We really need a vehicle as getting around is otherwise limited to cabs at the moment which gets a bit expensive even though they are generally a lot cheaper than Auckland. Also it is difficult to go anywhere during the day without having air conditioning - its very hot ( and this is kind of mild to how it can get - up to 50 in August/Sept ) so big walks are out unless its early morning or evening when it cools down. Also componding things at the moment is that it is Eid which is three days of Holy Celebration whereby many shops are closed during the day. So we spend a fair bit of time at the moment hanging around the apartment going from one cup of tea to the next ( substitute coffee into that as well ). Thankfully we have a mac full of music, plenty of books and a whole lot of Herald puzzles I accumulated before we left.

Occasionally we have been invited out with someone at our apartment block who has a car which is great. Seems like a pretty good bunch here, mostly Kiwis, and tomorrow we have been invited along with some of them to drive to the northern end of Qatar which we are really looking forward to as we will get to see outside of the city, along with a possible camel or two and maybe if lucky get to see an Orix, which is kind of the national animal. Also we will see a fair bit of desert, along with some ( historic ) port towns and a few beaches, maybe an old Fort or two - should be great. I cant wait to have a swim, the water teperature is about 30 - 33 degrees, which sounds hot but if the air temp is in the very high 30's then the water should be fairly cooling. I dont have a fishing rod yet ( I sent over some reels and tackle ) otherwise the fishing I hear can be quite good. The fish is certainly cheap and so far we have seen fresh Kingfish and Trevally and a fish that very much looks like snapper for sale in the seafood section of the supermarket. They had a fish called white snapper that looked more like a very big trevally on sale at about $1.50 a kg...looks like we will be eating a lot of fish if that sort of price is anything to go by and it seems that about $8 is a maximum price for fish...YUM....

Export quality meat from NZ ( No Pork here ) is about the same price as at home, veges come from all sorts of places, a lot from Jordan and Egypt can be very cheap. We have even been buying Kiwifruit. Most food is imported as nothing grows easily here being so dry and generally the soil infertile. Greenery is pretty sparse around the place although some peoples gardens are very lush and local date palms are everywhere.

Water is a bit of a commodity here, tap water is desalinated and not that nice ( or safe ) to drink. We get bottled water which is pretty cheap and have just orgainsed a weekly bulk delivery where we get a 5 gallon ( 20ish litres ) container for $3.20. You really need to keep your water intake up as you can dehydrate very quickly. I have been getting a few headaches which maybe is the result of still having a bit of flu, but, I think dehydration contributes somewhat too.

Lynne starts work next week from Tuesday and I will soon be contacting a chap who is the manager of a big construction firm so hopefully something may come from that.