Notes by Nectar

I was home all day on Sunday and in the evening went to see the new ‘Mission Impossible’ movie with my parents. It was good – the plot was, of course, totally preposterous but it was entertaining all the same. We had dinner at Wafi Gourmet afterwards, which was good.

On Monday afternoon I had a piano lesson. I hadn’t touched a piano in two months and was looking forward to having my lesson. We went through a couple of things I’d done before I left and then my teacher gave me the music for a new song called ‘Love Me Like You Do’ (from 50 Shades of Grey – which I have neither read nor seen).

On Tuesday I went to the monthly lunch of the International Business Women’s Group at the Trade Centre Club. I’d been to one of their lunches back in March and enjoyed meeting so many different people. Last week, I decided to apply for membership and I got an email in response inviting me to their lunch. It was a much smaller group – there were only five tables of five or six people at each. I suppose, being August, a lot of people are away for the summer. The presentation was about the new laws regarding health insurance in Dubai. Basically, by the end of the summer next year, you need to have health insurance before (re)applying for your residency visa – and this goes for all your employees too.

I had a session with Trevor on Wednesday morning.

We had to take my dad to hospital on Wednesday night and he was admitted for a few days. On Thursday I was home for most of the day and went to visit Dad in the afternoon. Visiting hours were from 4pm to 9pm and Mum and I were there until about 7.30, after he’d had his dinner. I stayed in that night.

We were supposed to have lunch at Yuan at the Atlantis on Friday to celebrate Dad’s birthday but of course we had to cancel that. I called the Atlantis to cancel the table – you would think it would be quite straightforward but it seemed to take forever as I was speaking to someone who could barely speak English and/or was incompetent. When I checked how long the call had lasted, it was almost 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Good grief.

Dad had been moved to a different ward on Friday morning, and Mum and I took a cake for him to cut (but he couldn’t have any of it). Being Friday, the ward was quite busy during visiting hours and Mum gave most of the cake to Dad’s fellow patients, their guests and the nurses.

I had lunch with a friend at Y by Yabani at Citywalk on Saturday. The food was good, but not as good as I remembered it. We had the spicy edamame and sesame seed cucumber salad to start with. My friend also had a miso soup. After that we shared some spicy salmon/tuna rolls, the aubergine miso rolls and the salmon izuzukuri (new style sashimi). After lunch I went home and soon after went to visit Dad at the hospital.

I love my life.

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