now, then habibi ...

A "Dibi" is a bee in Arabic. A locust is a "Daba" and the round shape of the bends of the creek running through Dubai is known as "Deira". Deira is still an area in Dubai today, as is Al Wasl, which is what the whole of Dubai was known as, to the British, circa 1820.

None of this however solves the question as to what does the word "Dubai" mean? I'll settle for "Big-construcion-site-with-LOTS-of-dust-and-cranes-and-huge-shopping-malls" I'll also settle for: Our new home town, for the forseeable future. Yip, we're moving on up (well, up to coast) and we found a beautiful townhouse with a garden and it's close to work for Gideon!

I give you:

and the view of the neighbourhood:

The development we're moving to is called "Victory Heights" and is situatued within an even bigger development called "Sports City". When it's all finished (they're still building big parts of it) we will have a small shopping centre, as well as a community swimming pool, play areas for the kids, a nursery and all sorts of other amenities. Below are some more links, if you wanna go read up:

http://www.vh.ae/

http://www.dubaisportscity.ae/

The boy having fun on the little garden area just outside our front door:

(notice the cranes in the background? I was not kidding about Dubai being one huge construction site!

More of the boy being cute:

Now, onto why this move is not a bad thing:

http://www.alec.ae/projectsdetail.asp?uri=31&s=5&ss=1&iType=1

Yes, that's an airport, Dubai International Airport, Concourse 3, to be exact, they need to make space for the 60 A380's they ordered for a mere $13 billion, according to Gulf News. {WHAT recession?!} I'm not complaining obviously, as this means that the G-man will have work for at least the next three years, which keeps our personal plans right on track.

Moving day will be around the 21st of July, thankfully just ahead of Ramadan, 'cause we've done a move in Ramadan and it's just horrid. So apart from the heat that we'll have to contend with, we're really hoping for a trouble-free moving day. Notice I say "day", as in singular, we're in no mood to do this for one second longer than is absolutely necessary. Which also means, that unlike previous times, I'm gonna start packing, very soon. We figured that the more we have packed and ready to go, when the moving company arrives, the less they have to do, the quicker we can get there!

We send much love to all.