Day One- 16th November 2006

What an exciting day. I woke up at 6 am and was nervous, my flight was scheduled for departure at 10,30 am and Dad had already told me that we were leaving for the airport at 7,30 am. I wrote my 3^rd post about Sharjah while I was still in Delhi, then went upstairs to get ready to leave… checked a million times whether I’d packed everything, and ended up leaving my mp3 player (christian music) at home. No worries. I have my bible, and my laptop has my music

We left for the airport at about 8,30. Mum was really stressed cos she thought we were late, but Dad already knew the flight was delayed and didn’t tell us. He told me only when we got to the airport, he is a funny guy. Lol. We got into the plane at about 11 am, and took off around 12,30. I slept for this hour and a half, Dad on the other hand was awake and probably very bored. Oops. Anyway, I woke up for take-off and prayed a lot not to crash, I am very nervous in airplanes and I’m very nervous when people I know are in airplanes. I have always been scared of travelling by air. But taking off was amazing. It brought me so close to God. I felt so aware of God holding this airplane and carrying it to where it had to go. And I started by praying “please don’t let us die” and ended with the Lord’s prayer. It felt great to pray the Lord’s prayer, it took my mind off everything else and went back to the Lord only. I wanna only ever look at him. Sigh!

I slept for about half an hour after take-off then I woke up, there were 3 hours left of being in the air before we could land. I decided to watch a movie, because while Dad was choosing his movie I saw the option of “Don” on his screen. I doubted that it was the new one, and I was right, it was the old Don, starring Amitabh Bachchan. I heard excellent reviews about it so I switched it on. I watched it till we had to return our headsets to the stewardess, which means I missed out like the last 20 minutes which was the climax, but that’s alright. The movie was ok, not “great” or anything, but at least it had a good story and the ending was a happy ending where the good guy wins and the bad guy loses and stuff. From what I’ve heard. I didn’t see it.

We landed in Dubai at 4 pm which was 2 hours late but ok still. The weather here is AMAZING. It’s like warm and light breeze and stuff, mmmm almost my favourite type of weather. While we were at Passport control, the guy checking our passports entered Dad’s name into his computer, and then stopped with a concerned look. There is a guy with a name similar to Dad’s name, who is blocked or blacklisted or something. So Dad explained “yeah I have this problem everytime, there is another guy with a similar name.” So the guy grins and a minute later he looks up and says “it’s you” then he lifts up his head and says in a low voice “police..!” and I started laughing and he was also laughing and Dad grinned politely. So the guy cleared our passports and let us go. Dad thought it was kinda stupid, but I thought it was a really nice, friendly way to welcome us into the country. It would be nice if more passport checking people tried to crack jokes. As long as it didn’t make them slack in their work of course. Anyway that made me think, silly things are my favourite thing to laugh at. Good, clever jokes are funny, but silly things always make me laugh harder. And that is the difference between my parents’ senses of humour. Dad makes the silliest jokes and I don’t laugh harder at anybody’s jokes than his. Mum on the other hand is extremely witty, especially because she has great command over hindi and her home dialect, and when she is talking in those languages her jokes are extremely well made. My sister doesn’t make silly or funny jokes, but her laugh is contagious. I love my family!

Ok so while we drove from Dubai to Sharjah, I noticed lots of things on the way, most of which I have forgotten now. One thing I remember is that there was a building under construction and I was thinking “God holds the lives of all these men who work here, whether they work on the 50^th floor or on the ground floor… he sends them safely home each evening.” And I remembered Psalm 127, which says “unless the LORD builds the house, the labourers labour in vain.” That made me realise, this whole cemented city and group of cities built on desert, the Lord has made it possible. Contrary to how people believe that Man has made it possible to live such good lives in the desert. Man has laboured, but it would have been in vain if the Lord had not made it possible.

Speaking of building houses and labour, Dad and I realised that living in a Sharjah house is like living in a fridge… it’s really important to keep the fridge working. While we were in Delhi, a window broke in the house, and lots of dust and humidity and stuff came in and beat the building’s airconditioning, and the wooden doors expanded and got jammed. So 2 hours late to get home, and it took over 3 more hours to get the doors off (carpenters came and yes they took the doors off and made them smaller) and the house was a mess. Dad had been away for 2 months and in this time (who knows when or how the window broke) the place filled up with dust and muck and broken glass and now a broken door. Lol. I was just wondering in amazement and how intricately God plans everything. So Dad and I got to “rest” on the first day, very tiring day of rest too. Dad’s friend came over after the door was fixed and the broken glass cleaned up, and he took us out for dinner with his family. His wife and his son were there, with the wife’s brother. So we had dinner at a really nice vegetarian restaurant and got home by… was it 10,30? 11? I don’t remember. And then we slept.

Mum wrote her first blog posts yesterday, I like the look of her blog and I am glad she is blogging. Thank you guys who visited and left comments for her. I really love my mum.