Off the beach at Umm Suqeim

Before we again left Dubai for Germany, we were walking Umm Suqeim beach every morning at 7am, enjoying the exercise but not the ever-increasing pollution, and watching the offshore goings-on.

A few weeks ago, a wall was erected along the beach and a company statement from Zabeel Investments announced a 4.5 million square foot project development - much to the collective horror of local and expat residents.

Thankfully, Sheikh Mohammed stepped in and stopped the work - according to sources at Gulf News.

The wall came down, but the activity offshore has not ceased - neither have the onshore offices, (erected on the beach at the port end), been taken away.

In his blog, Life in Dubai, Seabee has been commenting on the whole affair, and recently mentioned the offshore activity still happening at Umm Suqeim Beach.

The tugs are still bringing in barge-loads of sand and muck, and dumping it about 200m off the beach.

They have been joined by 2 dredges - one close to the beach, and the other further out.

Shuttling back and forth under its own engine power, and probably taking core samples, is a little yellow drilling platform which we've seen close to the beach as well as further out in line with The World development.

The work is being carried out by Royal Boskalis Westminster Middle East according to the signage on the buildings. The equipment is probably either owned by them or leased from Gulf Cobla LLC.

What they're doing out there is not known in any certainty, but a thread on Skyscraper.com mentions what we're all thinking - the Zabeel project is still on the go.

On the Move in Melbourne

I think that this is the longest time that we’ve been away from this blog, since its inception, as we’ve been hellishly busy and travelling again.

Leaving Berlin and onto Dubai
After leaving Berlin, we were a week in Dubai as we sorted out business details around our new company which is now up and running in the DIC – yay! Bureaucracy has certainly increased over the years in Dubai. When J set up her first company 4 years ago, it was operational and legal within 10 days. This time, it took us 4 months to get everything established, including a detailed Business Plan which had to be presented to the DIC management, AND it was read as they came back with “suggestions” on how we could “enhance” our application by adding in some embellishment!

We walked Umm Suqeim Beach and, along with a large part of the Dubai population, watched in dismay as a construction site wall was erected along the beach which indicated that one of the last free Dubai beaches was about to be lost to the public by yet another reclaimed land development project planned for the area.

The Dubai wall goes up

There was also a lot activity off the shore with tugs and barges emptying loads of muddy sand in the first efforts of reclamation. The muck stank – and the northern part of the beach (towards the fishing port and breakwater) now has very soft sand with the consistency of mud.

A fully laden barge is pushed into position

Within minutes it doubles in height, as it splits in two to spill its load onto the sea floor
Umm Suqeim III is very popular with everyone – it’s the best place for tourists to photograph the Burj Al Arab and to laze in the sun, and it’s used by Dubai residents for sunbathing, swimming, picnics, dinners, surfing, kitesurfing, walking and running. The place is packed out each New Year’s Eve as everyone comes to watch the midnight fireworks displays from the Burj, JBH and Madinat.

Dubai residents and visitors enjoy the beach

Thankfully, it appears as if the beach has been saved from development, due to the intervention of Sheikh Mohammed who has stepped in to halt the project. Good sense prevails, and not so healthy tourist numbers would indicate that many vacationers aren’t returning to Dubai on a regular basis. Not everyone can afford to stay in luxury 5+ star beachfront hotels, and if one of the last remaining free beaches is taken away, there is one less reason for a lot of the tourists wanting sun, sea and sand to come to Dubai.

Melbourne bound
After a week of madness which included the surprisingly easy process of having to get our eCards renewed (oops – they had expired but luckily we were allowed back into Dxb!), we were back on a plane headed for Melbourne, Australia, where we’ve been for the past 10 days. We’re due to leave at the end of this week.

Melbourne has been a blast, and we are excited to have the opportunity to station ourselves here for a while from the middle of this year, as we have a few projects down this way which would require us to be in Melbourne for longer stints.

Plusses for this include:
- incredibly cheap rents (when compared to Dubai) for apartments within walking distance of the city. (For around 6,000 dirhams per month, we can get a quiet 2 bedroom apartment with pool, gym, tennis court and a 20 min. walk to the office)
- decent infrastructure in the forms of internet and telephony (no more Big Brother Etisalat and yes, we can freely Skype!), and great public transportation including trams, buses and trains.
- what construction there is going on stops at 5pm and doesn’t resume until 8am and they don’t work on weekends. It’s so quiet in the middle of the city!
- we will get to explore Australia and this part of the world even more that we already have.
- amazing food – yes, better quality than that of Dubai – something which I can’t believe that I would ever be able to state.

Minuses would be:
- the weather over winter – bitterly cold and wet!
- we are further away from J’s kids who live and school in Germany.

Getting back to the food, we’ve been staying with our good friend T, and part of the family ritual is to visit the South Melbourne food markets every weekend to buy supplies for the coming week. This place is just awesome, and photographically it has me grinning from ear to ear!

Here are "just a few" of the many images I've taken:

Click on the images to enlarge them

My favourite shop - the seafood bar!

Lots of yummy prawns, crayfish and oysters
Olives, dolma and dips

Theo's Deli is very popular

Do you want large or small Turkish bread?

Mixed dried fruit and nuts

Fresh olives

The store owners gather for their daily coffee and chat about the state of the nation

Apples and tomatoes

Big chocolate Easter eggs

Fresh flowers which also smell divine

One of the fruit stalls

Ferdinand, Skippy, Bambi and Schnappi on the menu!

The t-shirt says it all - she's a faaarking Magpies supporter!
What's good today?

Global coffee beans

Cute cupcakes

Every possible type of dip

Hmmph, they go off to play and leave me here!

It’s J’s birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday J – may all your dreams and wishes come true!

The snake, the watch and the bracelet

I think that we're turning into boring old farts whose main pleasure in life is walking Umm Suqeim beach and seeing what we can find!

Today brought highs and lows. Rubbish collected included glass, nails, wire, batteries and plastic bags.

We also found these:

A glass bracelet

A watch - a really nice genuine article, not a copy!


At this rate, we'll be collecting enough presents for birthdays!

We also saw a juvenile sea snake which was shedding its skin.


It was being pummeled by the surf, so M waded out to throw it back in deeper water - watched by some beachgoers.

Sadly, on our second trip down the beach, we found the snake with its head buried 5" into the sand and dead. Someone didn't like snakes and decided that should die.

Bastards.

Saving critters

Updating our last post, we're still picking up glass and saving beached sea creatures on Umm Suqeim 2 beach.

Apart from the turtle, we've rescued:

Lots of Jellyfish


A seahorse which we were very surprised to find still alive


and we also throw back starfish which have been marooned, but silly me hasn't taken a photo of any of these.

These last 2 pics are for our friend Lirun who is suffering from a lack of surfing action.


Small waves, but big enough to surf.

Eat ya heart out, mate!

Today's conservation effort

We love to walk down the free beach at the north end of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, and when we do, we stop to pick up all the pieces of glass that we come across and dump them in the bins.

Today, we gathered a lot of glass - mainly due to the surf tumbling onto the beach, as it's uncovered, or washed up, a lot more than usual.

We also rescued some wildlife!

On the last of our usual 6 laps of the beach, we came across 2 Indian gentlemen throwing something back in the water. It was a small turtle and unfortunately, due to the men still having their shoes on, they didn't throw it back far enough.

We waded out to rescue it, and as J refloated it, it was obvious that it was ill. Covered in barnacles, it made a feeble attempt to swim away but was very weak.

We carried it down the beach and gave it to one of our dive instructor friends from the Pavilion Dive Centre at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, who promptly took it into the diveshop to receive some TLC.

We hope that it will survive. We know that it has a better chance of doing so now, than if it was left to fend for itself on the beach.

Wth all the disturbance occuring to their natural habitat in the shapes of palms and world maps, these little guys need all the help that they can get.

Winter Beach Walks

Although it's now cooler in the UAE in comparison to other months, it's still warm enough to go for walks on the beach, barefoot and strolling along the water's edge to catch the waves as they wash onto the sand.

Our nightly view as we walked

We're going to miss this as we now head back to Germany for Christmas in the cold!