Bugger

I said I'd have an entry about Edinburgh written by now didn't I? Failed again!

Spent most of yesterday catching up with work stuff after the holiday, then went to the dentist this morning for a cleaning and one filling, and came out THREE HOURS LATER with two fillings and some root canal treatment. I then had about twenty minutes to feel sorry for myself before spending most of the afternoon setting up disco equipment for a teenagers party at the Embassy tonight.

Sorry you're not getting anything more interesting yet, but it'll be here soon, honest!

Flying Home

At Heathrow waiting for our flight to Frankfurt, then connecting to Riyadh.

We did have broadband in the cottage where we stayed for Easter, but it was of the one-computer-at-a-time variety and
not wireless, so we all had to take turns; such hardship! I don't know how we coped! So that -- and the fact that we
were out a lot -- is why I haven't posted much here over the last couple of days.

I'll post something about the trip either tomorrow or Wednesday, and include some photos.

Bonnie Scotland

As I write, the minibus driver and I are the only two awake as we drive back to Edinburgh. The other fifteen people -
including my three - are snoozing after our daytrip out to visit Stirling Castle and Loch Lomond, both of which were
stunning on such a beautiful sunny day. Actually Elliot may be reading rather than sleeping, it's hard to tell from
where I'm sitting.

I got some great photos today, and will post a few when I get a) time and b) online.

Our last night in Edinburgh tonight, then back down to Langley for Easter with the family.

Oh yes... We saw Cole Porter's High Society at the Edinburgh Playhouse last night. Not the most memorable musical ever
but a very slick and enjoyable production that we all enjoyed, but which was immediately eclipsed by the superb supper
we had after at The Witchery: one of Edinburgh's best restaurants. It was wonderful. I had Smoked Haddock Welsh Rarebit
and it was excellent!

Me thumbs are aching now so I'll sign off and post again from a proper keyboard.

Do not adjust your set.

We're having a fine old time in Edinburgh: seeing the sights, lots of walking, good food and even a dram or two.

But, we have no internet connection where we're staying, so blogging has been a no-no for the last few days.

I can send posts like this from my Blackberry but it' not the same: no pictures, and it makes my thumbs sore too.

Got lots of things to talk about and will try to write again by the end of the week.

On the road again

...or should that be, "In the sky again"?

Had a very successful BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City last week. It was good to catch up with friends and colleagues (and remind them all what I look like!), and I had some very productive meetings.
A friend of mine, Kevin Smith, was involved in the keynote session on Monday, and he gave a great demo of our new product: Open Enterprise Server 2. Despite an early mistake that took a minute or two to fix, the demo went very well and he got some great feedback from the crowd afterwards.

Take a look for yourself here. Kevin's demo is about an hour in.

Tonight I'm off again, this time with the family to visit the UK for Easter holidays. We have a couple of days in England, then a five-day break in Edinburgh before returning to Berkshire to spend Easter with family, then flying back to Riyadh on Easter Monday.

I will be taking my laptop and will blog while I'm away, and even if it turns out that I can't get online, I can always send short updates from my Blackberry, so there's no escape for you!

Back in Riyadh

I landed back in Riyadh last night, after a very successful and enjoyable trip to BrainShare. I'll write more about it either tomorrow or Tuesday, but right now I'm very jet-lagged and struggling to keep my eyes open.

Off for an early night...

Testing, Testing

This post is to test Blogger's ability to receive blog updates via email. I am writing this in a regular email rather than going on the web and using Blogger's usual text editor. The how-to's say that as soon as I click Send, this post will appear.

How exciting!

Moab Trip: Canyonlands

Day Two, and we emerge fully refreshed from our sumptuous rooms at the Canyonlands Motor Inn, ready for another day's hiking and snapping.



Canyonlands National Park is a forty mile drive from the motel and about the same distance from Arches where we were the day before, but the difference between the two is striking.

On the way we stopped at Newspaper Rock: a large slab of slick rock bearing some ancient petroglyphs, some of which are thousands of years old.

Newspaper Rock

Our first stop inside the park was Wooden Shoe Arch. See if you can spot the clog in this picture:

Wooden Shoe Arch

The Needles

From there we drove on down a long dirt track (glad we had a 4x4) to Elephant Hill. There's an extreme 4x4 track here leading up from the car park to the top of the hill, over large rocks, deep ruts, and winding around tight hairpins and steep inclines. I took one look at it and decided no way would we ever make it to the top in our Toyota RAV4, so we parked up and prepared to hike to the top. Just then, an old gold-coloured Chevy SUV came past, with two old couples inside: the men in front and the women in back. They were all around 70 years old, but sure enough this clunking old vehicle headed straight for the track and started climbing it.

The old boy's 4x4 is halfway up the hill. Can you see it?

The three of us and several others assembled in the car park to observe this feat, all of us standing with arms crossed going, "No, they'll never make it.", and wincing every time we heard the grinding scrape of metal against rock. But we were wrong. Not only did they make it to the top, but they came back down smiling, and on congratulating them on their achievement we discovered that they were locals, and the driver had done this track, "many times".

When they rolled triumphantly back into the car park we all cheered, and breathed a sigh of relief.

After that excitement we hiked up to the top to take some more photos.



For lunch we went to the Stagecoach Diner, which is owned and run by Jim and Cheryl Nyland, parents of a Novell friend of ours JD Nyland. When JD heard we were going down to his home town he told us to "go see his folks", so we did. The food was excellent and the welcome we received even better.

Stagecoach Diner in Moab

After lunch we had time for just one more park before heading back to Salt Lake City. Dead Horse Point is a high hilltop from which you get some absolutely stunning views of the northern part of the Canyonlands park, with the Colorado River snaking its way around the canyon. This was the location used for the opening rock-climbing scene in Mission Impossible II.

Two stunning views from Dead Horse Point

I could've sat here all afternoon

All good things must come to an end though, and at 4pm we set off on the four-hour drive back to Salt Lake City.
Souteastern Utah is really beautiful, and if you're the outdoor type you'd be hard pressed to find a better holiday destination.

Moab Trip: The Arches

I'm back in Salt Lake City, getting ready for BrainShare after a great two-day trip down to South Eastern Utah. This area of the state has some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen, including sandstone arches, canyons, and ancient Indian petroglyphs.

The town of Moab lies roughly 300 miles South of Salt Lake City, and is very handy for the two national parks we planned to visit on this trip: Arches and Canyonlands. I'll cover Canyonlands in the next posting. I went with Novell colleagues Bernd and BP.

On the way down to Arches we nearly ran out of petrol, thanks to BP suggesting we take a slightly longer scenic route to Moab, following the Colorado river. I guess he wasn't to know that there were no services, in fact nothing but raw nature for around sixty miles. I was driving this section, and first noticed the fuel warning light come on about fifty miles out of Moab. There was nothing for it but to carry on, driving as economically as possible and hoping that we wouldn't break down in the middle of nowhere. I kept the lightest possible pressure on the accelerator, silently blessing each downhill and cursing each climb, but we made it in the end with just vapour to spare.

Arches National Park is a large area of natural sandstone arches, created over millions of years by a combination of underground salt bed shifting, remnants of ancient seabeds and surface erosion. I'll let the pictures take up the story...

The road into Arches.

This one's called Balanced Rock. I wonder why?


Landscape Arch. A 60ft-long chunk fell off the underside of the arch in 1991, making it even thinner.

From Landscape Arch we drove on to our next stop: the world famous Delicate Arch. This amazing structure sits atop a mountain, so it's a bit of a hike to get there. You leave the car park and walk/climb one and a half miles, climbing 500 ft in the process. The way is a mixture of gravel, sand, large stones, and solid rock, and there are some ledges to walk along with sheer drops beside them. It's pretty challenging but there were lots of people doing it, young and old alike. Bernd, being a card-carrying Goth, was dressed in his usual garb of black leather motorcycle trousers and heavy black leather boots. He has blisters now.

Biker Bernd regretting his decision to wear black leather trousers and heavy boots. If you click for larger image you may just be able to make out the car park along the line of the path into the distance. This shot was taken about half way up.

The hike was worth it though. The famous Delicate Arch.


It's actually pretty dangerous up here. In the UK I'm sure there would be safety fences everywhere to prevent people falling.

From there we went to catch the sunset at The Windows. Bernd's feet were hurting (everybody say Aaah) so he stayed by the car while BP and I hiked up with our cameras.
The sunset was one of the most spectacular I've ever seen, and the colour of the rocks changed several times in just a few minutes. A photographer's heaven!

North Window

...and again. Amazing things happen here at sunset. The rock went this fiery orange colour for only about five minutes.

Turret Arch

Dead tree "on fire"

We got to our motel at around 10.30, and collapsed exhausted into bed. They had only two rooms so I shared with BP, leaving Bernd to share with his feet.

Day Two to follow soon.

BrainShare again

Last night's concert didn't go very well (if you know what I mean wink wink).

After tonight's lack of a repeat performance I'll be jetting off once again to Salt Lake City in Utah for Novell's annual BrainShare conference. Five days of drinking beer and talking about computer software with 6,000 other geeks... heavenly!

The Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City: home for the next week!

But before we plunge into BrainShare I'm going on a two-day trip with friends down to the Arches National Park in southern Utah, where my objective will be to get some dramatic photos of the stunning landscapes on offer thanks to its 2,000 natural sandstone arches.

I hope my own photos look this good.

So, off tonight and not back in Riyadh until Saturday week. I will try to carry on posting while I'm away but I'm not making any promises; the conference can get pretty intense, through the day and into the evening activities, and I have a lot of catching up to do with co-workers so I'm not sure how much personal time I'll get, but with the jet lag there are bound to be a couple of periods when I'm wide awake at four in the morning with nothing to do, so you never know your luck.

Not the Riyadh Choral Society Again.

Following on from the Christmas concert we didn't have in December, The RCS is not having a concert again tonight and tomorrow, not including several arrangements of Psalm 23, some Brahms gypsy songs and an Andrew Lloyd Webber medley.

So, still no furtive singers creeping around hugging their music folders to their chests, no whispering of passwords, no speakeasy rehearsal dens, no hiding plain brown envelopes of tickets inside our coats (apart from anything else, it's too hot for coats!)

What's even less scary is, I don't have a solo to sing!

I'll let you know how it didn't go tomorrow.

Royal Visit

We attended a reception in the Residence gardens the other evening in honour of the visit by HRH The Duke of York, otherwise known as Prince Andrew. The Prince spent a few days in the Kingdom, firstly in Riyadh and then in Eastern Province, I believe to promote UK trade and investment.
He didn't get as far as our group, but he did spend about an hour chatting to some of the hundren and fifty or so guests, made up of Embassy staff, representatives from the British and Saudi business communities, and members of the British military missions, in uniform; the Duke himself wore a suit.
He was particularly interested in the two falcons. Bridget had been presented with the birds by a Saudi (probably a prince I'm not sure). They live in the garden, spending most of their time tethered to perches on the lawn, and hooded, which I'm told calms them. Since Bridget left another woman at the Embassy has taken over their care, which includes taking them for a walk in the mornings (she walking, them sitting on her hand), and feeding them a live quail in the afternoons.

Emergency Exercise

Our Embassy, in fact all Embassies everywhere, plan for how they would handle emergency situations where their national citizens living abroad may be in distress or face danger. Such plans must be carefully drawn up and reviewed regularly, but no matter how often you revise such a document there is no substitute for actually testing the plan's effectiveness. Last week our Embassy here held an Emergency Exercise, in which Embassy staff responded to and acted upon a fictional emergency scenario and simulated putting the emergency plan into effect, watched by independent observers.

Whilst not directly involved I was asked to visit the Embassy during the morning of the exercise to take some photos of the proceedings, and the rest of the day I had to stay in the villa and respond to radio checks.

I won't go into any more detail than that, but from what I hear the exercise was a very worthwhile activity and the lessons learned will help to further strengthen the emergency plans.

Farewell to Sherard & Bridget

At the end of last week we sadly said goodbye to Sherard and Bridget. As Sherard's time as Her Majesty's Ambassador to Saudi Arabia comes to an end he now faces a new challenge, heading up the British Government's expanded diplomatic presence in Afghanistan. Sherard is universally liked and respected here, and he is widely acknowledged to have made an enormous contribution to UK-Saudi relations over the last three-and-a-half years.

Sir Sherard & Lady Bridget Cowper-Coles

Last month I was asked by the Embassy to take a few portraits of the couple, and also a group photo of the entire Embassy staff.

(placeholder for group photo)

The group photo was enlarged, framed, and presented to Sherard as a keepsake on his last working day at the Embassy last Saturday. His successor will be William Patey, formerly Her Majesty's Ambassador to the Republic of Iraq, who will arrive in Riyadh to take over in a few weeks' time.

Sherard, I wish you good luck and every success in your new position.

Dubai Trek: Fourth and final bit

This has been a while coming hasn't it? Must've been four days since the last episode, but I've got an excuse. Well, several excuses really including a black tie ball, a farewell party for Sherard, and the Embassy's Emergency Exercise, which I'll tell you about in a day or two.

For now though let's get back to the Dubai trip and finish one story off before we start another.

We left off just after the Roger Waters concert when Elliot and I picked Karen up from the airport in the wee small hours. Thursday morning came too soon and we hadn't had enough sleep. Maybe it was enough technically but we wanted more. But no, it was time to get up, pack the suitcase and re-load our camping gear from Gerard's garage back into the car (I'd forgotten to tell you I'd unloaded it on Wednesday morning so that we didn't have rubber mallets and saucepans bouncing around in the back as we rumbled along the wadi). It was then that I realised my mistake. I thought we were setting off first thing, but the plan was actually a noon departure. This pleased Karen no end because it meant we had time to to to the shopping mall for a couple of hours.

"Wagons Roll!"

On our return we made another trip to the local supermarket for supplies and then we were off on the road to Al Ain, a couple of hours' drive to the South of Dubai and quite close to the Oman border. Gerard is leading the convoy once more and has the co-ordinates taken from the book, "U.A.E. Off-Road" programmed into his GPS. After a couple of hours on the road we leave it once more and deflate our tyres in preparation for some dune-bashing. Gerard is the drive-first-and-ask-questions-later type when he sees an ocean of sand before him, and it's as much as Dave and I can do to keep up as he goes shooting off, the back of his 4x4 bouncing up, down, and sideways as he speeds away from us in a cloud of sand.

Gerard being towed clear by Dave

"Oi, out the way! 4x4s coming through!"

The dunes here are smaller but still steep and very tightly packed together compared with the desert driving we've done in Saudi, where the dunes are spaced out and huge. The driving here is, therefore, hairier than we've done before, because it's all dune: you're always on a slope, going either up it, down it, or sideways along it which is the most frightening. In the Saudi desert at least you have the option of driving around the base of the dunes and having a relatively sedate drive, but here is like a rollercoaster. Karen's clinging on for dear life in the passenger seat but nothing phases the children, who are sat in back with their sunglasses on listening to their iPods. Again and again I watch as Gerard's car shoots up a steep dune, then slowly tips forward at the top and then disappears at what looks like an almost vertical incline. I don't want to follow but have little choice as I'm not confident in finding myself a new path over the dune, so I accelerate and blindly tip over the top of the dune, trying to assess what's on the other side as quickly as possible after the car has righted itself enough for me to see where I'm going again. This goes on for about half an hour until we eventually find a suitable site to set up camp. It's not flat but it's close enough, and there are some nice dunes nearby for the children to play on. So we circle our wagons, so to speak and start unloading the gear.

Gerard's got his daft umbrella thing out again! Note our new "Real Man's Tent" in the background.

I think Megan likes it here!

Some sand...

Some more sand

The intrepid photographer looks for a good spot to shoot the sunset

It takes us around an hour to erect tents, tables, chairs, lanterns, barbecues, and to find some wood for a fire, during which time the children are playing with sandboards that someone has brought along. These are like snowboards; you stand on it and "surf" down the dune. It goes quite slowly when I have a go on it - must have picked a softer route than the others.

Emily, Abigail, Megan and Dave: Kings of the Castle

Elliot showing how it should be done

...and me showing how not to do it

Dave with daughter Megan. Dave's another Nikon owner: good lad!

Emily thinks she's on the beach in Blackpool!

I'm afraid we made a bit of a mess on the way in.

Nice picture of some sand

Over the course of the next few hours Gerard sets off to meet other families at the rendezvous point -- a petrol station. Some have had to work during the day and have followed us down late, but Gerard loves bouncing around the dunes so much we soon see his headlights as he bobs his way back to camp in the twilight, with two more terrified families on his coat-tails.

Another day draws to a close over the desert

Gerard leading in the latecomers

The party then gets into full swing: barbecued kebabs, burgers, beer wine, marshmallows toasted on the open fire, and as midnight draws near and most of the children have gone to bed, someone suggests a little Pink Floyd music might be in order and there is (almost) unanimous agreement, so I oblige by putting on Wish You Were Here on my iPod through the car stereo and leaving all the doors open, and we chill out in our folding chairs with a Heineken and the starry night sky.

I awake at around 0630 the next morning. The sun is up and light is streaming in through the roof of the tent. It takes the rest of the camp about an hour to emerge blinking from their tents and get the breakfast going, and we munch on bacon sandwiches and share cups of coffee because there isn't enough for one, with Dark Side Of The Moon playing in the background.

At around 9am we've loaded our car up and really need to get going. The others are staying in the desert for lunch and are packing things away leisurely, but we have a long drive back to Riyadh ahead of us so as soon as we're ready we say our goodbyes and Gerard leads us back to the petrol station and some lovely tarmac.

This is as exciting as the drive home got

Oops! Tell a lie! This was such a lovely surprise we nearly stopped by it for a picnic.

I regard tarmac as less lovely by the time we reach Riyadh and home some ten hours later.

Dubai Trek: Part 3

Wednesday morning, and I lope zombie-like into the kitchen to find Gerard sat at the table with a bowl of cereal and his head in a book. The book is "U.A.E. Off-Road": a collection of wadi and desert treks and challenges that has Gerard licking his lips in anticipation. He has his eye on Wadi Asimah -- a place he's been to before, which reassures me a little. We're planning to set off from the house at 9am, Gerard leading in his white Nissan Patrol, me in my gold Prado behind and Dave bringing up the rear in his rented, ancient, dark green Jeep Grand Cherokee. Gerard and I have GPS units, but his is the only one with the off-road stuff marked on it, so he needs to be in front. He's on his own, I have Elliot & Abigail in my car and Dave has wife Ros and girls Megan (5) and Emily (3) (hope I got that right!). Gerard's wife Rachael is working and boys Charlie (9) and Oliver (7, I think) are at school. We even have walkie-talkie communications between the three of us; Gerard has four handsets total and I have two, and they all talk to each other when set to the same channel so we can stay in touch en-route.

We finally set off around 10am, Dave and I having earlier paid a visit to the local supermarket to pick up some provisions, and things begin to go wrong about ten minutes later. There's a large roundabout leading to a motorway off the 3rd exit, essentially a left turn off the roundabout. The approach roads are controlled by traffic lights, which predictabely turn red immediately Gerard has gone through them, so he's merrily going round the roundabout and setting off down the motorway to the left, while the rest of us are sat at a red light, totally dependent on the rear of his car as a beacon. Said rear is rapidly driving out of sight as we watch, helpless. The lights finally change after what seems like ten minutes, and we set off down the motorway after him, all the while trying to hail him on the walkie-talkies and calling his mobile, but the walkie-talkies are now out of range and his mobile is redirecting to the Novell Dubai office, whose Receptionist kindly informs me that Gerard is off work today. I just manage to stop myself shouting "I know!" back. We catch up with him about ten minutes later, where's he's pulled over having finally realized that we're further behind than he thought, and we set off in convoy once more.
The wadi is about an hour's drive outside Dubai, but halfway there Gerard pulls off the road and down a steep (to me) bank of shingle, and to a halt, simultaneously announcing over the radio that he has a proposition for us. We pull over and get out of the cars, and Gerard tells us of a desert challenge mentioned in the book that is just around the corner, and if we took it we could cut a corner off our journey to the wadi, the whole enterprise lengthening our outbound journey by no more than thirty minutes. Dave and I agree, I because I don't want to seem a wimp and Dave because he's a rally driver in his spare time and has been eyeing the dunes hungrily all morning. A couple of kilometres later we pull off the road onto sand, and prep for the dunes.

"Watch out desert, here we come!"

Dave and family in the Jeep

You prepare your car for desert driving by deflating the tyres to around half their normal pressure. This gives you a larger "footprint" for each wheel and reduces the chances of getting stuck in soft sand. Next step is to engage four-wheel drive. Some cars are permanently 4x4, but the Prado has selectable modes, with two-wheel drive being the default for road driving, so I have to shift my other gear lever forward to engage the centre differential (wow, getting technical aren't I?). Final part of prep is to switch off the air conditioner and open the windows. The A/C uses quite a lot of power, which you really want to have available to the driveshaft for those steep dune climbs. We've done plenty of desert driving in Saudi so I'm used to all this and feeling pretty comfortable, since the dunes here look pretty small. We set off across country and have a fun thirty minutes following Gerard as he tries to navigate to the next waypoint programmed into his GPS. The whole area is remarkably green for a desert, and reminds us more of African Savannah than desert. A little while later we decide to stop in a tree-shaded area for a rest.

My very own "Ship of the Desert"

A nice, quiet spot where we take a drink of water and eat some fruit while the children run up and down the dunes. Gerard takes the opportunity to show off his latest contraption: a garden parasol that he has modified to plug into a metal receptacle on his roofrack, thus providing a mobile sunshade. I'm thinking he's got too much time on his hands.

Talk about Mad Dogs and Englishmen!

After this stop we're soon back on the road and heading for Wadi Asimah. A wadi is a dried-up river bed, and when we get there it turns out to have been a very rocky river bed. Gerard leads the way once more as we try to find a safe way down the steep bank of loose rocks to the smoother and inviting gravel of the river bed below. Once down there we realise it's not as smooth as it looked from the top of the bank, and we bump and rattle our way along the wadi for about ten minutes before making our first stop, in a rocky gorge with dark, stark, jagged rocks rising up all around us.

This is what 4x4's are made for!

Emily enjoying the rocky gorge. The chocolate helped.

In the middle of all this is a small spring of clear water, and we can see tadpoles swimming around in the little rock pools. Gerard (he's such an Action Man!) catches a couple in his hand for the children to look at, and Elliot and Abigail are clambering all over the rocks (First the Hard Rock Cafe, now the hard rock gorge!). I'm worried for their safety but try not to be too anal about it, instead reminding myself to trust their own common sense.

"Elliot! Get down from there!"

After a few minutes we carry on to another stop, and another sheer wall of jagged rock that attracts the flip-flop-shoed children like a magnet. I stay at the bottom, ostensibly to take photos but really so that they have something soft to break their fall.

Rather them than me!

Elliot, Abigail, Megan and Emily with Gerard "Mad Dog" McDonnell

We leave the wadi to head back to the house at around 4 in the afternoon, a great day out and everyone back safe and sound. I have renewed respect for the Prado, that had reached places I never imagined it could go.

In the evening Abigail stays at the house to help the housekeeper with baby sitting, and the rest of us make our way to the Dubai Media City Amphitheatre to see Roger Waters in concert. I never got to see Pink Floyd play live, so this was the closest I was going to get. Waters split from the band in the mid-'80s: I won't go into it here but if you want to know the details check out this Wikipedia entry.

The concert was just awesome! The first half included Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Wish You Were Here, Sheep, and In The Flesh from The Wall. He also performed some newer material I hadn't heard before, and I liked that too. It was a large band, with at least four guitarists, two keyboard players, a sax, three backing vocalists and a drummer. Waters himself plays bass guitar and did most of the vocals. There was a huge screen behind the stage of the outdoor amphitheatre that showed video, stills, and psychedilic lava lamp-style effects, in concert with the song playing, and there was a large TV screen on each side of the stage. Most of the crowd were standing on the grass in this natrually sloped space, with a gantry of VIP seats along the back, but these were only half full.

The second half was given over to a performance of The Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety, and it went down a storm. Every song was performed meticulously by the unarguably aged but all-the-more-professional-for-it musicians, and the crowd went wild. It was the best performance I've seen for many years. After Dark Side the band went off, then returned for encores a couple of minutes later. They did Vera and Another Brick In The Wall Part 2, finishing off with the majestic Comfortably Numb, all from The Wall, which is Waters' masterpiece and undoubtedly his own personal favourite of the Floyd's albums.

The concert ended just in time for Elliot and me to drive to the airport to pick Karen up, finally getting back to Gerards, around 1am. Elliot still talks about the concert all the time and is learning to play some of the songs on his guitar.