Mrs QB is sat next to me in the internet cafe as I am doing this blog. She has just shown me an advert for The Garden Restaurant in Skopelos Town. Their tag line...
So, today we have got Janis the carpenter in!
We are redesigning the entire top storey of the house - it is too big a job for me so we have got a carpenter in who is knocking down walls and taking out cupboards as I type (well, not really as I type 'cos he has just phoned me to tell me that he is knocking off until tomorrow.
It's dead exciting seeing the walls come down and a new bigger open plan room rise pheonix like from the ashes of the old two rooms and a corridor.
Really looking forward to him finishing and to all our furniture arriving from Dubai - it is currently clearing customs in Athens so should be here in the next year or two!
Well, we have been here for two weeks now and Mrs QB and I have been working... well... not far away from flat out. The front balcony floorboards are now ready to be put down, the balusters have been repainted and a new top rail has been made. The new top rail just needs one more coat of paint before it is ready. We should be in a position to put the boards down and the new top rail on on Saturday. After that I will need to make a cover board for the bottom rail but that is a fairly small job.
This afternoon we are going to paint the balusters on the other balcony, I'm not putting new floorboards down on that one this year, that will be my project for next summer. Similarly, we are going to paint the top rail this afternoon (after the balusters), but I will leave off replacing it until next year.
One of the jobs I have been putting off for the last four years finally got done this year! One of our interior walls was in terrible condition - the previous owners had replastered the wall and, presumably, painted the plaster before it was properly dry! Result - a great chunk of plaster fell off the wall (well over a couple of square metres by the time we had finished getting the loose stuff off). So, this year I finally bit the bullet, went to the hardware shop and bought plaster and the relevant tools. Looked in my DIY manual and found out how to mix plaster and how to put it on the wall. I have to say that I am dead chuffed with the result! Yes, I can afford to be smug about this one - plastering no longer holds any fears for QB!
Mrs QB has also done her share of the DIY - she has been painting window frames that were desperately in need of painting and she also had a go a plastering!
So, today we decided to try to get Mrs QB residency status - not quite as easy as one would hope. Firstly I have to have residency and then Mrs QB can have residency based upon mine. This is because I am European and Mrs QB isn't. The problem is that I have to have some kind of a card which (apparently) all EU citizens have which allows them reciprocal Social Security and Health insurance benefits. Well, I haven't got one of these (I don't think they had them 14 years ago when I left Britain) and I have no idea how to get one. At the moment then, unitl I can find this stuff out we are somewhat screwed, Mrs QB and I cannot have Greek residence. Ho hum. The big problem with all this is that Mrs QB's Shengen Visa runs out on the 10th of August, so she has to leave the country and come back in again. What a pain - fortunately she has a visa for the UK, so I think she is going to go EasyJet from Athens to Luton and back in order to prolong her stay. I guess that we will sort out residency for her some other time.
That's it for now. In a couple of weeks Mrs QB's brother and his wife arrive to stay with us for three weeks and we are going to have a complete rest during the time they are here. In the meantime it is time to get back to the grindstone.
See ya.
OK, so I am not in Dubai anymore. I have decided not to be Dubaibilly anymore. My email address (which was billbrad@emirates.net.ae) no longer works. But Blogger won't let me change any of this. I have tried to change my email address which is associated with the blog, but Blogger simply refuses to do it. I still have to sign in as dubaibilly and use a non-existent email address to do so. And I don't understand why.
If you have anything to do with Blogger (rather than just using it) or if you happen to know how to make blogger do this mundane thing, please tell me.
I guess I could set up Waiting for Skopelos 2: The Qatar Years, but I don't want to.
Suggestions?
It is the 2nd of July (I think) and Mrs QB and I are at home in our lovely little house on our beautiful island of Skopelos.
We have been here for a few days and the work has started! We decided that one of our balconies (how about that for a bit of one-upmanship then!) was in need of some fairly urgent repairs - particularly in view of the quote last year of 14000 Euros to replace them both!
So we have decided that we are going to replace the top rail and the floor boards. I have cut the floor boards to length (3.69 metres)and have sanded them, undercoated them, sanded them again and undercoated them again. Tomorrow they will get their final sanding and then I will apply two top coats before I take the old ones up and replace them with the new.
Our house is white with all the exterior woodwork done in that beautiful rich blue that says to eveyone - Greece. You know the one. It is the same colour as the Greek flag. Vathy Ble Arithmos 2 - Greek speakers please excuse me not using the proper Greek characters, and Kat, can you translate the Vathy bit - I think it means Navy Blue number two but I'm not sure. Anyway, that is the colour the balcony floor boards and the top rails will be.
Other jobs on the cards for this holiday:
Mrs QB wants a corner shelf making and putting up in the bathroom.
The other balcony is in better condition than the one which is being refurbished, it just needs a light sanding and repainting.
Three sets of shutters need taking down, sanding, repainting and re-hanging.
We have bought a new kitchen in Dubai and shipped it out (it is due to arrive with lots of other of our possessions on 5 July). It is currently flat-packed so I will have to build that!
We want to take down two stud walls on the top floor - it sounds easy enough, but it isn't. Quite apart from disposing of the detritus, the walls are 4 and a half metres high and I can't get up to the top, plus, in taking them down we have some wiring that needs re-routing. There is a professional coming round to take a look at that job tomorrow afternoon. If we can afford it, and if he can do it quickly, we will be changing the use of the top and middle floors of the house. This involves in the sub-job of taking beds apart, moving them downstairs and rebuilding them.
Other than that, it should be a nice restful holiday!
Well, it has finally arrived, my final full day in Dubai has dawned - am I ready, packed andwaiting for my flight - not exactly! Still got lots to do before we go. The kennels are due to come round this morning to collect Baggins who will spend the next two months with them prior to his being flown to Qatar in early September. The maintenance people are coming round to do an inspection in a few minutes. I've got to cancel Etisilat and Showtime, Mrs DB has gone to the physio, we haven't finished packing and we are going out tonight with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice! Oh boy, roll on 10:05 tomorrow morning. DXB terminal 3, Emirates Airlins to Athens! Wish I was there already!
Sadly, I didn't have my camera with me, but a building near to the Bur Dubai bus station is sporting this wonderful sign:
DUBAI INTERNATIONAL REAL ESTATE
WWW.DIRE.AE
And the web address is real!
Makes me smile anyway!
Well, today was my final day! I have now left Emirates International School - Jumeirah. Is it time to dish the dirt? Not a bit of it, I have had ten years there and during that time I have risen from being a Maths Teacher to being a Deputy Principal, learned a hell of a lot along the way, made some wonderful friends who are scattered around the world (with many of them still being at EIS, others being in Dubai and still others in far flung places such as Madrid, Azerbaijan and Australia to name but a few. There is even one who is going to the same school in Qatar as I am!
Anyway, over the last few days friends and colleagues have been showering me with leaving presents - I have had some lovely gifts, but today the whole staff clubbed together and gave me some gift vouchers for the Mall of the Emirates. Mrs DB and I toddled off over there after work and I bought something that I will treasure for many years. I bought a wide angle lens for my camera and so you will soon be seeing my efforts of photography with a wide angle lens - I have wanted one for years but never got around to buying one - now I have finally got one and I will have to start learning how to use it! I have already realised that I now need to buy a proper flash unit, so that can go on the Christmas wish list for Mrs DB!
Anyway, to all my friends at EIS, past and present, and I know there are some who will read this, I just want to say, thank you to all of you, for your wishes, for your kind words, for your thoughts, for your prayers and for being my friend during the time that we have been colleagues together.
Well, it has been something of a longtime, hasn't it! You may recall that I have been job hunting and I didn't want to tell you anything more until I got a job. Well, I've now got one!
In the last few months I have been all over the place - I've had interviews in Bangkok, London (twice), Bratislava and Munich, I've had references taken up by schools in Vienna, Rio and Quito amongst others, I've had telephone interviews for schools in Egypt, Sao Paulo and Shanghai and I've been totally ignored by schools in Sweden, Beijing, Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, Shangai and Scarborough!
Now, after being at times totally demoralised, I have finally secured a position just a few hundred miles away in Qatar!
I am just totally relieved because we are out of Dubai on the 26th of this month and I was expecting to have to go back to the UK to supply teach. Now, Cher and I are really looking forward to our holiday on our wonderful Greek island of Skopelos. And it is going to be a great holiday! Because of Ramadan, I don't have to start at my new school until sometime between the 4th and 12th of September (not sure of the date yet), but, and I've never heard of this in any other school, I get paid from the 1st of August!!!
Excellent!
Mrs DB decided that we were going shopping - she wanted to leave early so that we would get back at a decent time. 6 and a half bloody hours and three different shopping malls and all we got was our usual weekly groceries!
We could have done our grocery shopping in one place in less than an hour. I am now sat here at the computer wondering why I have been dragged all over Dubai for absolutely nothing!
She bought a Nintendo Wii with her accumulated air miles - fair enough I have no problem with that - it may be a source of fun but she wants the fitness suite that can be purchased as an accessory. Again fair enough. Off we go to the Mall of the Emirates (one of my least favourite places on the planet!) Start in Carrefour (another of my least favourite places on the planet) - they only have NTSC versions and the version we need is the PAL version. So we walk the length of the Mall to Virgin - they haven't got the PAL version though it is, allegedly, on order and will be in next week. Now, I don't know about you, but the message I am getting is "There aren't any, give up now, come back next week." What message is Mrs DB getting? "There might be some in Geant in Ibn Battuta Mall about 20 km away!" Where that idea comes from I do not know! Maybe they have some in Abu Dhabi!
Whilst we are in Mall of the Emirates she decides to have a look at coats - to be fair, we are going to London in February and she will need a warm coat - so we went to Debenhams - they didn't have anything neither did somewhere else, but I can't remember where. Next stop - Ibn Battuta Mall.
So we drive to Jebel Ali and go to look in Geant - guess what, they only have NTSC versions of the fitness suite (well, quelle surprise!) We tried several shops for coats - nothing. Mrs DB decided that I needed some new white shirts for work - this involved walking half the length of the mall only to find the shop we went to didn't have quite what I wanted (apparently). But never mind, as we've come this far we may as well try Sharaf to see if they've go the fitness suite. Have they buggery!
And so to Mercato.
Now Mercato was always on the cards 'cos we had a complaint to make to our bank. Which we duly did - only to discover that our bank was doing nothing wrong at all - the fault lay, and still lies with our insurance company's bank. So our bank could do nothing about it. No joy there then.
So we went in to Spinneys and did the shopping and came home.
Six and a half hours after we set out, with nothing to show for it except some groceries!
What a bloody waste of a day!
Who ever you may be, whether you are a regular reader, someone who leaves comments, someone who just lurks or even if this is your first visit to my blog, Happy New Year to you. I hope 2009 brings you all that you wish for. Sadly, I don't think it will... but what the heck - enjoy the good bits of it.
Cheers
Dubaibilly
I don't actually do New Year resolutions, I never have, I think they are a total waste of time! I gave up smoking a couple of years ago, but not at new year - I did that in February (still going well). I tend to do things when I want to rather than on some society imposed day. I know that a lot of people will have resolutions, but I wonder how many of them will carry them out?
I do, of course have things that I will be doing in the new year (not least of which is looking for a new job!). For instance, in January I have got a week in Paris - three teachers (me and two others) are taking a group of kids on a trip to EuroDisney to study maths! Good eh! It'll be cold, but I am looking forward to that. Then in February I am going to a teacher recruitment fair in London. Mrs DB is coming with me to that so we will have a weekend away (you never know we might win the lottery whilst we are there). Added to that I have an application in for a school in Hong Kong and I will be applying later today to a school in Shangai. Things are really quite exciting!
And what about New Year's Eve, I hear you ask. I'm not really a New Year's Eve type of person - we are going out, we are going to spend NYE with our friends Ted and Alice (and lots of other people), but to be honest I don't care about it and, if we weren't going out I wouldn't be bothered staying up until midnight.
Other than all that, the only thing I want to do is continue with the diet. Mrs DB and I went on the Atkins diet a few weeks ago and the weight was going down quite well. I lapsed a bit over Christmas - had a lot of carbs and the weight went back on. So I shall be cutting the carbs out in order to get rid of a few kilo's - I only want to lose 4 or 5 kilo's and then get my weight steady, it isn't that much but it will make a difference to me and the way I feel so I will be a bit more strict with myself in the new year - but that isn't a resolution!
Christmas Day started quite early for Mrs DB and I - we were up and working at about 7:30 or so. We had 7 guests arriving at 3 pm and we were going to feed them. With both a ham and a goose to roast before then (we only have a small oven so there is no way we could do them both together), all the veggies to prepare, a trifle to make, not to mention finding some time to have breakfast in all the preparation.. we rather had our work cut out!
Dinner was planned for 4 pm with our guests arriving at 3. I don't know how we did it, but Mrs DB and I had just about finished everything when our first guests rang the doorbell. To be honest we were knackered! But a glass of champagne soon picked us up.
From then on we had a lovely time eating, drinking and being merry.
About 7 pm saw the arrival of an eighth guest who had been elsewhere for Christmas dinner, she was just in time to sample our Christmas cake.
We all had a wonderful time - the hard work was well worth it, as was the hangover the next morning!
Apart from failing to copy Christmas albums, Mrs DB and I did some nice things this weekend.
Way back in September, we made the Christmas cake. We have been adding brandy to it on a regular basis - only a little at a time and just once every two weeks to give it time to mature - that way the alcohol will bring out the best flavour in the cake rather than dominate all the other flavours (which I believe it does if you put loads of brandy in all at one go). So the cake is nicely matured and ready for the table. We put the marzipan on it last weekend and then we did the icing this weekend.
There are times when I get totally pissed off with this bloody iMac of ours!
We've had for ages now (at least 2 years) and you would think I would be used to it by now - but no - not a bit of it! Every now amd then it decides to bite me in the ass and really piss me off! Today was one of those days!
It all started three days ago - Mrs DB came home with three Christmas albums... "copy these for me", she asked. "OK", I replied, all the time thinking "oh, shit, why don't you just ask me to make a compilation album from all the Christmas music we already have."
I kept putting it off.
Today arrived... and went - we went shopping, we played crib, I watched Bolton win against Portsmouth and move up to 9th in the Premier league. We got ready for bed... "Have you copied those CD's?" asked Mrs DB. "No, I'll go and do it now."
2 hours later, one of the CD's is lying on the floor where it bounced after it hit the wall - one is copied and the other?... well, it ain't gonna get copied - not tonight and certainly not by me.
You see, with an iMac, copying a music CD is not as easy as it may seem - you can't just open the CD and copy it onto another CD - unfortunately you have to copy it into iTunes first. Now the first CD I somehow managed to copy into iTunes without putting it into my main music catalogue - I don't know how, but I opened a separate folder for it - copying it was then easy, I just copied the folder onto a blank CD.
The second one was not quite as easy - it point blank refused to be copied into its own folder and insisted on being put in my main music catalogue - to the point where I now have 3 versions of the same CD in my main music catalogue and I don't want any of them. It would not go into a folder by itself and I got so angry with it that it is now lying on the floor as I mentioned earlier - but it isn't the CD that is at fault, it is the bloody Mac. Why one should work perfectly and the other be so intransigent I just don't know, what I do know is that it is a bloody site easier with windows - at least with that if it doesn't work you can throw the damned thing out of one!
The previous night was a lot quieter because the wind had dropped and everyone had a good night's sleep. Just as well because day 3 was a busy one!
We had breakfast early and set off at about 10 am for Jebel Shams, which is over 3000 metres high. The road is absolutely spectacular - steep gradients and hairpin bends all the way. It was a great drive and at times I didn't think our car would get up some of the gradients! But at last we reached the top and we were treated to a breathtaking site that I hadn't anticipated - the truth is my photograph doesn't do it justice at all.
It had been a very windy night - the wind didn't penetrate the tents at all and everyone was warm enough, but it made for a noisy night, tent fabric flapping all over the place, the morning came and everyone was knackered!
We started late - the sun was well up before we surfaced and then we dossed around for a while drinking tea and trying to get enough energy going to make breakfast - eventually we got there!
We decided not to have a particularly busy day, but we didn't want to just sit around at the campsite all day, wasting the day doing nothing. We decided on a fairly short trip to Wadi Damm. We took a drive to the wadi and drove part of the way up it and then hiked up to the dam.
Mrs Dubaibilly and I and two of our very good friends, Ted and Alice, have just got back from a three night camp in Oman. What a super time we had! (those of you who have been reading this blog since the start will remember that the four of us went camping at this time last year, that time for a two night camp in Liwa).
I am ashamed to say it, but after 12 years in the UAE this is the first time I have ever been to Oman - well apart from passing through Omani enclaves within the UAE. I am well pleased that I went and so is Mrs. DB.
We left at about 5 am to avoid queues at the border (which worked) and we crossed the border at Jebel Hafeet - I didn't even know there was a border post there! I thought the only border in the Al Ain area was at Al Baraimi - clearly not, there is Hafeet and also another one at Hili. We chose Hafeet and went through the border with minimum fuss and delay. Just over the border we stopped at a beautiful Omani fort and had some breakfast.
since I last blogged - September the 25th to be exact and I have had a few people asking me when I was going to start again and if anything was wrong. Thank you for your concern kind people.
So, where have I been?
Well, pretty much since starting back at school in August I have been working 11 and 12 hour days and seven days a week - not much time in that for blogging. Somewhere in the middle of that lot the school had a holiday for a week and I was in every day of the holidays trying to catch up with the amount of work put on me by my boss. School teachers have an easy life? Being a Deputy Principal at our school seems to mean giving up your life completely and working ludicrous hours to satisfy the demands of a boss who doesn't seem to understand that people have families that they ned to devote some time to!
Anyway, things have eased up a little recently - on December 1st I was called into his office to be told that I do not fit in with the way the school is headed and given the option of either resigning or being 'terminated' at the end of the school year. To be fair, I was looking for a new job anyway, but I would have preferred to leave on my terms rather than his.
The upshot of this is, of course, no more 12 hour days, no more seven days a week and no more working through the holidays.
So I have got time to start blogging again.
And time to start looking at other people's blogs again. I haven't even looked at blogs for a long time now, so I have a lot of catching up to do with friends in the blogosphere.
And I am looking forward to it - as I am also looking forward to the job hunt - anybody know of an international school that could do with a good Head or Deputy?
I first came across this on Lulu's blog, but since then it has popped up on several others, so I thought, what the heck and decided to do it myself.
This is what you do and here are the results:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. I don't know how to cross things out - I will make them italic instead and maybe someone can tell me how to do crossed out text
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.
The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros - don't fancy this, eggs and peppers - might try it but...
4. Steak tartare once, but never again
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding LUSH! First had this when I was 4 from a stand outside of Gigg Lane, Bury Football Club ground - my first ever football match and my first black pudding - heaven (except Bolton lost)
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht Cooked by a lithuanian - delicious!
10. Baba ghanoush - dunno what this is and I am too busy to go to Wiki
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses - dunno about this, I've tried some pretty smelly cheese so I may have - I would given the chance
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes Mmmm, some nice stuff too.
19. Steamed pork buns - steamed pork on a bun? or...
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom ?tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese - when I was a child (under duress) -never again
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda - see 10
31. Wasabi peas - dunno what the first bit is.
32. Clam chowder not in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Prefer coke float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O - not yet
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail One of my favourite meals
41. Curried goat and uncurried goat
42. Whole insects only by accident
43. Phaal - And this is?
44. Goat’s milk preferably in the form of Feta cheese
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more - close but not that much, but I have drank brandy from a bottle costing 3 time that,
46. Fugu?
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut but I don't like them
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear A pain to handle and peal but delicious cold from the fridge
52. Umeboshi?
53. Abalone
54. Paneer?
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal I will admit to this, but I haven't been in a MacDonalds for years and will never eat this again, what is the point, it only cardboard with the flavouring removed
56. Spaetzle?
57. Dirty gin martini I don't understand the dirty bit, but anyway my ex made wonderful gin martinis
58. Beer above 8% ABV Possibly too many of them
59. Poutine - see 10
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolinassuming that this is the stuff that goes in maalox!
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake - dunno about this, there is a bisuit/cake thing that I love that Mrs DB calls pigs ears - would that be the asme stuff?
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho - this is almost italic
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche? absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost?
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu?
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky?
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. FlowersI've had many pints of this and got banned from a pub in York for eating chrysanthemums
89. Horse- once, never again
90. Criollo? chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa?
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake
OK, as promised, some more pics of our home - this is the bottom floor (assuming that you don't count the cellar.
Oh dear!
The Pajero was ill...
I had to take it to the karma mechanic (5 points if you can say where that phrase comes from - no, don't be looking it up, it's an easy one).
This is the story...
I got in the car the other day and drove it to work - 100 kph down SZR and it's fine - takes the slip road and eases off the accelerator to slow down for the up coming roundabout - revs fell to 0, zilch, nada! Car stalled on me. Steering went really heavy.
It's an automatic - to start it again I have to put it in park which entails coming to a complete halt. Car starts, no probs. But, every time I take my foot off the accelerator the same thing happens.
Start getting worried about this.
Friday morning (the quietest day of the week here) I drove it to the main dealers (no, it is not still under warranty, it is about nine years old, but I can't afford to replace it, don't even want to replace it). So I take it to the main dealers with Mrs DB following me to give me a lift home (via the shops where she could relieve me of even more of my wealth! But I digress...) All the way it is fine whilst I keep my foot on the accelerator but take it off and it tries to stall. I had to drive it with my right foot controlling the accelerator and my left controlling the brake (hence the reason that I chose the quietest time of the week to take it in).
Saturday saw me back at the garage booking it in and explaining to this guy what is happening. By now I am thinking "New automatic clutch mechanism, new automatic gearbox, new engine, plenty-several thousand dirhams job).
"We will phone you when we know what is wrong, Mr Dubaibilly". Yeah, right, I'll look forward to it.
Anyway, the next day was Sunday and I was back at work. My phone rang. The Pajero people.
"Mr Dubaibilly, you can collect your car now if you like".
"How much is it"
"85 dirhams".
"I'm sorry I must have misheard you, I thought you said 85 dirhams".
"Yes, that's right, sir".
"What, eight five with no zero's?"
"Yes, sir".
"Thank you, I'll come and get it then, bye".
Now, 85 dirhams is 23.15 US dollars, 12.94 GB pounds or 16.31 Euros, depending where you are.
I am gobsmacked!
Apparently all that was required was the throttle body and the idling control needed cleaning.
Thank you Al Habtoor Motors who could have really ripped me off but didn't. I think that is the cheapest non-warranty car repair I have had in my entire life!
I promised you a little while ago that I would put up some pics of the inside of our house - so these are the first two.
It is Friday evening and in about two hours 6 of our friends will descend on us for a dinner party. Mrs DB and I have decided to have a greek night - not that everything will be Greek, but I don't suppose our guests will know. We've done these a couple of times before and they have always been successful (ask Keefieboy). I usually do a menu in an odd mixture of Greek, transliterated Greek and what I can only describe as Greeklish, and I always put a Skopelitan scene on it as a background. This is tonight's menu:
I promised you some photo's of Skopelos that I took while on holiday. To be honest, blogging has taken a bit of a back seat since coming back to Dubai. The last two and a half weeks have been really busy getting the school set up for the new year. We had a lot of new staff this year and the changes have made things a bit more difficult than a normal start to the school year for yours truly. Never mind, things will settle down soon, the new staff are beginning to find their feet and find their way around the place - soon they will have to cope because the kids come in on Sunday. We are in Ramadan now and our hours are supposed to be shorter - officially we work from 8 until 1, but for me it was start at 7:30 and finish at 4 and no break for lunch - ah well, when Ramadan is over I guess I will be back to normal - in by 7 and leave at about 5 or even later and still no break for lunch - it is just a matter of getting used to it!
And I shouldn't be using it as an excuse for not blogging. Mrs DB and I (her working hours are every bit as bad if not worse than mine) have agreed to not moan about our day at work to each other no matter how bad it has been - I wonder how long we will last!
Anyway, I promised you some pics, so here they are:
