Normal Service...

...seems to be being resumed.

The 2-week mourning Sheikh Zayed / Eid Al Fitr shutdown finally came to an end today. Officially the mourning goes on for 40 days, which means that it ends on December 13th.

All of the schools went back today (I was a bit unprepared for the 6 a.m. alarm - nearly fell out of bed!).

And the radio stations returned to playing their trusty diet of drivel and mindless chat. Hurrah! They had been restricted to playing miserable classical music on two of the stations - I like classical music, but these stations only seem to have 3 CDs which they were endlessly repeating. Of the other two English-language stations, I've never bothered to tune my car radio to one of them, because I hate what they play, and the other one was playing every pop ballad ever written, but in an instrumental arrangement with Pan Pipes. Yuck!

There may or may not be an enforced ban on live entertainment during the 40-day mourning period, and this will affect a whole lot of school shows, commercial shows, and maybe even the Dubai Rugby 7s. Nobody actually knows, because the people making these decisions have been off work till today.