Two Scoops of Sultana? What?

We have been back in the islands now for a week. It is amazing to see how things have changed. Stores on the main island that didn’t exist when we left are now open for business and other stores we frequented are gone for good. Simply amazing. One of the new stores had refried beans… go figure. During a visit to one of our old faithful stores, we found some interesting items. Braden came around and said, “Dad, look, BBQ Marshmallows!” I replied with “Oh disgusting!” He said, “No Dad, they are not BBQ flavored marshmallows, they are campfire marshmallows… they just call campfires BBQ’s here.” I was relieved as I couldn’t imagine what a BBQ marshmallow might taste like. We also found a cereal called Sultana Bran. It looked like Raisin Bran so we bought it. After further review (reading the cereal box during my breakfast) I discovered that Sultana Bran is from Australia. So I enjoyed my fake raisin bran with my fake milk and was off to a day of meetings.

I usually do not plan more than one meeting a day because, well… let’s just say that if I can make that one meeting happen sometime that day…. I’ve had a successful day. You see I usually see lots of people during the day, but rarely are they scheduled. Something about schedules and islands don’t go together to well. So occasionally a day like today happens. My goal was to have a meeting at the bank and also with a senior tourism representative… neither of which had a scheduled time or person. I managed to meet with both of them, along with the trade ministry, Shaheen, Pintu and a friend from Sri Lanka. Oh yeah, I met the landlord’s guy to pay the rent and tried to negotiate a deal on a one bedroom apartment…. for the guy coming to work for me at the end of this month.

Since it was such a good day, I thought I would end it with updating some pictures from the last couple of weeks. Included in this strange photo album is some pics of us traveling (don’t worry the kids were just playing around the with motion discomfort bags… no one was sick on the plane… well not in our family anyway… the girl behind us lost her lunch just before we landed). There is another picture of a man with an amazing comb-over (you gotta see that one), a beautiful pic of a Dubai mosque with the Burj Al Arab and the Jumeirah in the background, some shots of us riding 4-wheelers out in the desert, and o-yeah it has a few pics of the food we recently purchased here in the islands. So take a quick peek, come on you know you have time.

Oh! one more thought. I noticed a sign for a marathon to be hosted in the islands. Can you believe it? I am thinking about running. It’s 16 weeks away. I think the route is circling my island 8 times. So should I do it? Please comment.