It's a gas

What's up with the gas stations of the UAE? It seems like every petrol station I pass has queues of cars everywhere you look. The parking bays in front of the fast food joints and cafes are all full. The car wash has them lining up out into the street. And they are hooting for service to fill up their tanks. If only they would extinguish their cigarettes and switch off their engines! I am well aware that petrol is cheap over here, but do they really need to be filling up all the time - day and night? Then again, it may well be that there is a deeper issue at the heart of this. Perhaps this is revealing the secret love affair that the people over here have with their cars? They are certainly pushed to the limits on the highways when they fly by at the speed of light. Then again, we already know that the Land Cruiser is the new camel of the desert. Until the mystery is solved, life will continue to be a gas and full of pump action.

The chill factor

Winter started with a vengeance about 2 weeks ago. Mornings were characterised by extremely heavy fog -- it was simply "white cotton wool out there" when I tried to see out of my apartment window. It made for some rather tricky driving as some people still seem to think that any or all of the following apply:

• do not slow down or attempt to drive at a reasonable speed
• do not switch on your headlights - use the emergency "crash flash" lights

It has been uncomfortably dark in the mornings and I find myself quite disorientated. I keep thinking that the alarm clock must have gone off early! The night times are not much better and it has been very chilly indeed. Now is definitely NOT the time you want to be out under the clear, but very cold desert skies.

Schools, colleges and universities will be closing soon for the winter holidays. Many people will be taking advantage of the 2 week break to head on home. It is what I will be doing.

Yo Yo Ma

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

UAE Christmas and New Year

We are very blessed in the UAE as so many different faiths are celebrated here. It most certainly makes for a wonderful learning experience and a whole lot of fun too. Being the festive holiday season all the malls have been decorated to the hilt. Kids of all faiths seem to take great joy in all the entertainment on offer and happily scramble over the bejewelled scenery for the sheer fun involved.

I vividly recall my first Christmas over here in the Middle East with great fondness. I was completely gobsmacked by the size of the tree in the Wafi Mall in Dubai ... it was HUGE ... the biggest I had ever seen and soooooo NOT what I expected in the Middle East. What is more, it was placed in among the Egyptian themed Wafi Mall making it a most unusual sight to behold. The pyramid stained glass windows at Wafi are simply stunning and now there is a Raffles right next door.

Christmas time is here again and the shops are heaving with happy shoppers pushing heavy trollies around. I do admit that I could do with fewer seasonal jingles and screaming kids. But I guess that's just par for the course no matter what country you're in.

In Abu Dhabi the Corniche is bedecked with magical lights from the UAE's 37th National Day celebrations. It makes for a simply magical spectacle when you are driving along the road and see the palm trees all lit up too. It is going to be a busy long weekend as Christmas is at one end and Hijira (Islamic) New Year is at the other. I expect that there will be a fantastic fireworks display on Sunday. One of the first things you learn is that fireworks are an integral part of life over here. No celebration is complete without them and many newcomers are startled when they go off indoors! I am fortunate that my apartment affords me a frontrow seat of the 'action'. The work week will be short as 1 January looms ever closer and many people have taken off on holiday.

Time flies when you're having fun

I will say it again because it is worth repeating ... where did the year go? It must be something in the warm Arabic air that makes time seem to pass so much faster in the Middle East. Or maybe the old adage applies that time does indeed fly when you're having fun.

The work week that has just passed has probably felt a bit long for many people in the UAE. It's all because of a 10 day holiday stint - first there was the 37th National Day and then came Eid. Most of my colleagues went away over the holiday time to take advantage of the many special offers. Some went local to the new Palm Atlantis in Dubai, one went west to Washington DC in the USA, another went East to Beijing in China, and I went south with the swallows to sunny Cape Town.

Conferences, workshops, etc

It has been a busy time in the UAE for library-related conferences. This has meant that I am singing the now familiar tune ... "on the road again".

Last week the MENA IUG conference was hosted by AUS (American University of Sharjah). This is the Millennium system user group for Middle East and North Africa libraries. I enjoyed the networking opportunity that this presented as well as a view into different ways of working with our ILS.

This week I am in Al Ain at a workshop on consortial licencing of electronic resources. The two presenters, Anne and Kimberley, are both experts in their field and good at sharing a vast amount of information in a logical and interesting matter. The sessions have been engaging and remained on target to identify core aspects of the subject. I am lookin forward to getting to the workflow issues.

Information Literacy has had a great boost with the 2 day ILN conference in Sharjah at AUS. A number if my colleagues presented papers.

Oh to be in Charleston

The annual Charleston Conference has come and gone. Sigh. It's long been a dream of mine to be able to go to this marvellous annual conference of acquisitions gurus. The full name of the South Carolina conference is "Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition". I met Katina at the South African acquisitions conference many years ago and she is pure dynamite. It is just wonderful to meet a librarian who is passionate about what she does. I am definitely going to need to plan ahead to be in the southern states of America in early November 2009. Ah, it's good to have nice dreams ... But for now I'll need to be content with reading all about it in Against The Grain.