My first sari - a night to remember! And a totally new and liberating experience! I wore this sari to a party at Karen & Dale's on Thursday night. It was a night of compliments like I have never had before. Pete thought I looked totally wonderful - he loves my new evolving Middle Eastern wardrobe; he thinks this is totally my style and he loves it. I wore a Salwar Khamis to the Hilton the other day too and that felt like a million $ !

Renuka took great pleasure in wrapping, pulling, pleating, tightening and pinning 21 feet of material round me an hour before we went to the party and at the end of all the tugging, I felt like a queen. I don't think I ever want to wear anything else. The joy of all that chiffon, the cascading material around me, although hot, made me feel the most feminine I have ever felt. This is my first sari ............. and definitely not the last.

Quick hello - Really busy right now; too many Iftar parties and waaaaay too much beading to do in these last few days before Eid. So, just so you don't get bored, here's something addictive to occupy your time:

Happy Halloween

Off to Oman on Tuesday next week but I'm bound to post some stuff here before then! So watch this space ............. j xx

Wow - My Eid Mubarak card is now beaded..... I still have to pretty up the edges by beading some other stuff around it. I must say I'm very pleased with the result after 30 hours of beading using 7,740 beads and 128 rows of pattern to decipher.

Ho Hum now I have to start the 2nd one - identical but reversed colours so bye for now. Hope to catch you soon.

Meet Babe, a stray and beautiful unwanted bitch who's living on the doorstep of friends of ours till we find her a home. At this time of year, lots of dogs are thrown out into the streets for some reason and around Khalifa City and Sas Al Nakhl we are seeing more and more dogs running around or dead by the side of the road.

If you would like to adopt this beautiful blue-eyed babe, please call or email me. She is a medium size, short-haired, cream-coloured bitch with blue eyes. She's always smiling and happy and waggles her tail at every little move you make towards her. Very friendly with other dogs and children. Please help! I wish I could keep her but with my female being 11 years old, it's impossible as she won't tolerate a new bitch in the house. I would think she's no older than a year.

Is there anyone out there who'd like to meet Babe?

Update re Abu Dhabi Divas; 24 hours after opening the chat rooms we've got :

23 New Members - 115 New Messages

Is this cool or what ??

Keep on joining girls & boys; it's rocking in our room
Press this button - now:

Elle - You ask a lot of questions which I can't answer cos I don't have your address!!! So if you want to keep yourself anonymous, just join my Chat Rooms - Abu Dhabi Divas and you can ask away !! The link in on the right of this page.

Ciao !

Hi All,

Today I've had some fun creating a new chat room called The Abu Dhabi Divas. If you Abu Dhabi ladies want to join us in some fun, feel free.

Click to join abudhabi_divas

This chat room is meant to be a light-hearted way of sharing our lives in this city, to help all the newbies arriving daily to find their feet, not to mention everything they need to set up a new home/school/community etc. and to just chill out by sharing good and bad experiences in our day to day lives. So visit often, chill out and let's rock and roll.

Last night, I was honoured and very touched to be invited to share in Iftar - the breaking of the fast Muslims are having daily during the Holy month of Ramadan. It was the first opportunity I had to meet local ladies and, I must admit, I was a little nervous before I went because I haven't enough knowledge of their etiquette and traditions. I knew I would be mortified if I caused offence without meaning to, so I contacted a new friend who is married to a local gentleman to guide me. And thank you Charley - you gave me perfect advice for all through the evening.

I will not go through details of the evening here - I feel these ladies like their privacy and I will respect that all the way.

However, I feel sure they would be happy to know that I have never, ever, anywhere in the world met such a wonderful, gentle, loving, generous crowd of ladies before in my life. I feel special just for being with them and their wanting me to stay longer and longer through the evening and half the night! And all the hugs and kisses they gave me before they let me go touched my heart so much - I had tears in my eyes because I was so afraid that I won't see them again.

Warda, Aisha, Asma, Sheikha and all your gorgeous, wonderful sisters and aunts (I'll bring paper and pen next time to write down all the names) - you are delightful and warm and I love you all so very much. I hope to see you again soon - in an abbaya and burqa and speaking broken Arabic next time inshallah!

May Allah be with you always - jacky xx

What a super surprise we had tonight. A lady called Jo called to ask me whether I still wanted to introduce my giant girls to her giant boy tortoise. I knew that my good friends, Caroline & John had met a lady at a party who knew of someone who had a boy tortoise.... Caro had told me she'd given the lady my phone number some days ago. So I was hoping that the boy's mummy would like the idea of introducing him to my girls and give him a good time!! This great looking, handsome hunk of a boy is called, aptly enough, Attila and as you can see below, he's the right size for our Persephone!

Thank You Caroline, John and of course Jo

Top Photo - Attila is on the left

Bottom photo - Attila on the right

As you can see, Persephone didn't really show too much interest, but then nor did Attila. He was more excited at being on a real life lawn with grass than any silly girl, so he just chilled out next to her and nibbled at her food. We have this wonderful boy for a couple of weeks when he will be returned to his parents when the honeymoon is over. He will hopefully keep joining us every now and then for a fortnight's sabatical with his lady love. Watch this space ........

This one is for the ladies of Abu Dhabi:

It seems that I'm not the only one who's really cheesed off at what has been happening on the forum in the last few days. By deleting threads which ask fair, polite, relevant questions, the moderators are showing a great deal of disrespect to us, the forum members who, at the end of the day, MAKE their forum work. We are the forum ............ look at how many people posted a year ago - about 10? We have made this work so surely we are entitled to be treated fairly.

Some of the ladies who think my thread called Over & Out (posted yesterday) was unfairly removed when some of you asked questions are now boycotting the forum. This is simply to prove that the Editor and Moderators need to start a proper debate online for everyone to see and not just delete us when they can't answer us - or when they prefer to answer questions in a private email like they did to Eshta-Jayne this morning.

I have no idea why it was decided to remove my thread - it was not controversial - it was the truth! It had no profanity in it nor did it insult anyone ........ in fact, the entire email which was sent to me was not quoted in all in entirety because it would have made the moderator look like a fool and I wanted to save her face.

I would be happy to post a new thread to start a debate with the moderator - it would be deleted for sure though, and I can't do this without everyone showing their unhappiness over this situation.

I said yesterday that I don't care whether I continue posting or not; however, I am not an error on a page to be deleted with no reason and I still stick to everything I said on the forum!

Anyone here who for some reason missed the last 2 days and wants to know about it, you can contact me on menhennet@gmail.com or call me on 508066974.

Thank you and watch this space ......... !
j x