A New Adventure

From miserable, grey, wet Heathrow to a hazy sun in the morning sky over Abu Dhabi. After a 7 hour flight spent watching '500 Days of Summer' and the brilliant 'Up'and attempting to get a little shut eye I've arrived to a gleaming Middle Eastern airport. Having had minimal sleep and aware that it should be the middle of the UK night, it feels very odd suddenly landing in bright sunlight at what should be 3.30am. As we cruised in to land the landscape is truly original and fascinating. Hugging the shoreline are large shimmering buildings, entirely dwarfing tiny houses and creating an amazing sense of scale. I thought I could see huge schools of fish in the clear water, however that may have been coral, but the water was bright blue and then perfect sand on the shore and then miles more sand and greeny blue waterways and canals. It's a beautiful sight and really remarkable. It's absolutely man-made, as the symmetry is so precise, but I can't really see how and why those canals would be used. There are random individual houses on their own sandy islands surrounded by these waterways and no apparent way, bar a boat to get anywhere! People have said to me that Abu Dhabi is like a huge building site and certainly once I'd got past the beauty of the initial coastline and the surrounding area and nearing the airport it does open up into a massive construction site. There are some fascinating buildings - a huge globe, again, just on it's own gleaming in the morning sun and from where I'm sitting overlooking the runway there's a beautiful curved control tower - like a large sail. I'd like the opportunity to go into Abu Dhabi itself but I guess that will wait for another time, as it is I'm on my way to Sydney - a city in a country that I've yet to visit and I'm about to embark on 3 months of living and working in a totally new and exciting environment. Bye Bye Britain, so long cold weather, farewell Christmas around the fire - Aussie here I come!