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It’s funny sometimes the little things you can get excited over. Yesterday at the store we found HotPockets. In the US we used to buy them all the time because they’re a good and quick snack and breakfast. A couple of minutes in the microwave and you have a hot meal on the go. No cooking, no nothing.

They only had the four-cheese HotPockets but we hope they bring in some other ones. This is a good way to finish off the year.

We would like to wish everyone Eid Mubarak!

EmiratesToday has an amazing photo on their cover, showing a prayer taking place close to Mount Arafat, southeast of Makkah.

Prayer at the Hajj

Dubai at random writes:

Today is Arafa Day, so, unless things have changed, there will be goats tied to trees in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, and goats running around freely in the Northern Emirates.

By tomorrow evening, the number of goats will be greatly diminished.

Eid Al-Adha (or ul-Adha, depending on the transliterator) commemorates the day when the Prophet Ibrahim (or Abraham) started to sacrifice his son Ismael (or Ishmael) but was stopped by an angel who provided a goat in the boy’s place. Consequently, every father is expected to go out with his sons and a goat to commemorate.

I witnessed this in Al Ain and Abu Dhabi back in 2001.

So I advised my squeamish vegetarian friend in Abu Dhabi to stay inside tomorrow morning.

I, however, am back in Dubai for the holidays, and Dubai doesn’t allow the traditional commemoration of Eid al Adha.

So there won’t be any scenes to appal the squeamish vegetarians in Dubai tomorrow morning.

If you have been in the US yesterday or today, you probably heard about John Edwards announcing that he is running for president in 2008. What a lot of people do not know (unless you read other blogs) is that Edwards has invited some well-known bloggers to travel with him this week. It seems that Edwards is trying something new, in that he is trying to get to the grassroots and where at of people get their news, blogs.

We will just have to wait to see how Edwards does, but I think it is neat that he is going about it this way. You know all bloggers are, Time’s person of the year. LOL

We would like to wish every one a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! No matter how far apart we are, you are all ways in our heart!

Love,
Magnus, Crystal, Coal, and Bella

I found this story in my local newspaper in Myrtle Beach. This little dog is a miracle and what a sad dog she was. You have to read the story, and what a sweet story it is.

Two days after Eartha Bodger was buried in a cemetery in the Duford community, Luther Enzor spotted a starving little dog lying on her grave.”She was so thin, you could count every rib,” said Enzor, who lives nearby and was gathering straw when he saw the dog.

Someone told him the dog was Bodger’s, but Bodger had lived more than seven miles away, so it seemed impossible.

Enzor tried to coax the little golden retriever off the grave, but she wouldn’t budge. For several days in October, he and his grandson, Christopher Enzor, fed her and tried to get her to go with them.

“She was skittish of us, and she never left the cemetery,” said Christopher.

One rainy day, Enzor and Christopher built a shelter, picked her up and put her under it, but as they were leaving, they looked back, and she was on the grave again. She was still there in the days following.

“I felt so sorry for her, I didn’t know what to do. I just could not leave her there,” Enzor said.

Finally, he picked her up and took her home. Christopher named her Biscuit and made an adoption certificate for her. They thought she had mange, but instead she had insect bites all over her body.

So far, Enzor has paid more than $600 in veterinary fees for her care. Now she is healing, gaining weight and having fun with his two big dogs. And when Christopher, who lives nearby, makes one of his frequent visits to his grandparents, she gets to play with him, too.

Paula Bodger of Loris said it is indeed her mother’s dog, though how she found her way to Eartha Bodger’s grave is a mystery.

Eartha Bodger raised the dog from a puppy. She named her Sunshine, loved her and took good care of her, Paula Bodger said. When her mother unexpectedly died and was taken to a Mullins funeral home, Sunshine disappeared.

“It’s kind of strange to me,” said Paula Bodger. “I’m so happy that little boy’s got the little dog. It was a miracle from God that his granddaddy found it for him. That little boy has my heart. I’ve got him in my prayers, and I’ll always be thinking about him and his little dog.”

Sunshine, now called Biscuit and about 10 months old, was taken back to the cemetery for the first time recently.

Enzor lifted her out of the car. She was shivering. Her ears drooped, she tucked her tail between her legs, wrinkled her forehead above sad eyes and lost all resemblance to the happy little dog she had been in Enzor’s yard.

As she sat by Bodger’s grave, Christopher knelt beside her, and she turned her face up and licked his cheek.

Back home with the Enzors she was again a playful puppy.

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From ValleyWag:

Google’s planning a $750m investment in what sounds like a huge server farm in South Carolina, if local press reports are accurate. A shell company, seemingly linked to the search engine, just bought 520 acres near Charleston. Google’s staying mum on its plans, but the local county disclosed the scale of the planned investment, and the purchaser was said to be concerned about supplies of electricity and water.

What’s with this paranoia over bags in stores? We went to a Carrefour store this evening and I had my Macbook in a bag over one shoulder. The guard at the entrance stopped me saying I had to leave the bag because it was a “big bag” and they were not allowed in the store.

Now, let’s see… while I was there arguing with the Carrefour people I saw other customers walk in with various bags. They were of different shapes, sizes, colors, etc. and some of them were not much smaller than my bag. So why were they accepted in? Because they are not “laptop bags”, the guys told me. Well that’s as clear as mud, isn’t it? That some of them, even larger ones, were carried by women had nothing to do with it surely, how could it? Sure, we can spot most bags that are made for computers, but more and more of them look like regular bags. Further into the discussion their argument changed to “large bags are not allowed”. So not just laptop bags, but “large bags”. Okay, I was getting confused. So a smaller bag, that doesn’t look like a laptop bag, in which I can stuff all kinds of laptops, iPods, and other goodies, is perfectly okay, but my somewhat larger bag in which I already have a notebook that they don’t even sell, that’s not allowed.

So what was their solution to the problem? Well, you know the answer, right? It was that I should leave the bag with Customer Service (CS). You leave them bag with CS, then you get a little plastic thing with a number on it, and you go claim your bag once you’re done. That doesn’t make me feel very secure, I must say. Even as the Carrefour guys kept telling me “as long as this store has been open, not one single thing has disappeared from [CS]“, “we are Carrefour and you know us”, and “your bag is safe with us” I just kept thinking “I wouldn’t trust you with my sandals”. I asked them, “what’s my guarantee that if my computer disappears while in the care of [CS] that I get my money back for it?”. And you know the answer right… “we are Carrefour”.

At one point I had four Carrefour guys standing around me trying to argue their point. They kept saying that the rules were there to protect customers like myself, but it seemed to me the rules were there more to protect Carrefour. If the rules were there to protect me as a customer, they sure didn’t do much to protect me tonight, protect me from Carrefour’s rules that is. Seems I needed more protection from Carrefours arbitrary rules and their even more confusing attempts to enforce them, than from myself.

Let’s be clear about this, before I finish: I don’t have a problem with rules. Rules are for the most part fine and are usually necessary. I’m the kind of person that by and large actually likes rules because they make some things more understandable and predictable. But when something is enforced because of rules and the rules are non-existent or at least very unclear and arbitrarily applied, then I have a problem.

I understand Carrefour may have a problem with items being stolen in the store and sure a large bag could be used to conceal stuff that someone could carry with them out of the store without paying for it. But there must be better ways of dealing with these issues. At the very least, I would suggest that there is a clear policy about items left in CS that is available to anyone who asks for it, or why not post it on the wall at CS. That would go a long way to making things easier, that, and to enforce the policy evenly and fairly.

This post has nothing to do with anything UAE related, Sweden (other than it is a Swedish company, or the US.Â

This has to do with a company called IKEA and what they are doing for their employees in the UK. It seems that the company has decided to give every employee a folding bike, that they can ride to work, and if that was not enough they are giving every employee a 15 per cent subsidised travel tickets to encourage them to use public transportation.

These gifts where given to the employees at their annual Christmas Breakfast.

Now I think this is a wonderful gift, it will not only help their employees, but will help us all. Hopefully this will help our environment as well.

What I notice here in the UAE is that IKEA is asking customers to bring in their old newspapers so that they can recycle them. For here that is a big thing, for any company to do, but it was nice to see IKEA try to do it.

You do not see much recycling here in the UAE, and I think that is sad. We should take care of places that we live, and make sure we leave it better than what we found it, a lesson for all of us. Read more at BikeBiz.com.

IKEA UK manager, Peter Hogsted, said:

“We want to create a better everyday life for the many, and do what we can to make greener living possible. This is both for our co-workers, as well as our millions of customers.

“The bike is a fun present but there is a serious message. We all have a responsibility to do what we can to protect the environment.”

The gift of folding bikes was welcomed by the Government’s environment minister Ben Bradshaw MP:

“As someone who does not own a car and has cycled to work for years, I am well aware of the environmental and health benefits of cycling. Most journeys by car are under five miles and could easily be done by bike. Folding bikes are a particularly good idea because they are easy to take on trains and buses.

“More companies should follow Ikea’s lead and encourage staff to cycle to and from work.”

How many of you have ever used Wikipedia??? I just love Wikipedia, because I can always find the information that I need no matter what it is. So if you have not checked out Wikipedia, you should. But that is not what this post is about, it seems that the founder of Wikipedia, has decided to give the software and all you need to build your own community. I just wonder what wonderful communities are going to be formed from this. Read more about this at US Today.

Free software is about to get freer. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday his for-profit company, Wikia Inc., is ready to give away — for free — all the software, computing, storage and network access that website builders need to create community collaboration sites.
Wikia, a commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia, will go even further to provide customers — bloggers or other operators who meet its criteria for popular websites — 100% of any advertising revenue from the sites they build.

Started two years ago, Wikia (http://www.wikia.com) aims to build on the anyone-can-edit success of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Using the same underlying software, called MediaWiki, Wikia hosts group publishing sites, known as wikis, on topics from Star Wars to psychology to travel to iPods.

“It is open-source software and open content,” Wales said in a phone interview. “We will be providing the computer hosting for free, and the publisher can keep the advertising revenue.”

That could prove disruptive to business models of websites that provide free services to customers but require a cut of any resulting revenue in return.

Wikia gives away the tools and the revenue to its users. It requires only that sites built with the company’s resources link to Wikia.com, which makes money through advertising.

Wikia calls the free-hosting service “OpenServing” (http://www.openserving.com). It runs on an easy-to-use version of MediaWiki software developed by ArmchairGM.com, a sports fan community site Wikia recently acquired and plans to extend.

Wales is betting the plunging cost of computers and networks can help Wikia support the free services offer. “It is becoming more and more practical and feasible to do,” he said.