Dubai

I'm here for a couple of hours and I have my own laptop, so might as well spend my time talking to you lot. Usually I'm standing at an airport PC frantically swiping my credit card every time it beeps.

Nice airport, I've been here once before in 2003 but all I remember is the wall of heat that hit me as I exited the terminal building, and being a lather of sweat before I covered the ten metres to the blessed sanctuary of a taxi. And this was at midnight. Luckily this time I don't have to go outside.

Emirates is a good airline - I hear from their in-flight channel that they are gradually fitting their planes with "Aeromobile", a system that allows use of mobile phones in flight. What a coup - all the other airlines are still shaking their heads and trying to enforce the un-enforceable. This flight did not have it fitted and I probably would have made a nuisance of myself anyway, by sending unwanted sms's in the wee hours to my unfortunate friends.

I was surrounded by beautiful young Dutch poeple on the flight from Bangkok. Nice women, but the guys all have terrible B.O., or at least the spotty trilby-clad youth next to me did. Also the Dutch are an unfeasibly tall race, which irks me somewhat. Also teenagers are never still, even when apparently asleep.

Pardon my gushing, but I can't wait to hug my missus. This is no life, spending six weeks out of seven apart, and for what? A degree for Lyn and freedom from debt for me is the unavoidable answer.

I just drank a Starbucks triple strength latte, so feel I must confess this fact to wifey, who hates that organisation with a passion. You're right dear, it was far too milky. I could feel her disapproval as I approached the counter. Must have had a fair amount of caffeine in it though, since I'm far from short of meaningless twaddle to type on here. Bizarrely, coffee actually makes me less productive in work because it stimulates intense conversation. I hope I'm productive at home this trip because deadlines are looming and I have to pass some milestones before my next platform trip.

I've filmed my journey from the office to the train terminal as a memento, since I make the journey every day. Also since I'm currently in love with "you, me, dancing!" by Los Campesinos, I spent the dreadful waiting-to-go period last night splicing a nice pop video together. If the resulting file isn't too large I'll post it on here when it's finished. Obviously the video is very grainy since it was done with my phone, but that aside it looks quite good.

This time Lyn is meeting me at the airport so I don't have to drag myself into two trains, what a relief.

I see from the forecasts that the weather is "warning up" to a toasty 3 degrees. I suppose I should count my blessings (one, two, three) that it's above freezing, but I'm going to suffer since I've been in 34 degrees every day for a while. Lucky I remembered my coat, jumper and scarf or I'd grind to a halt and shatter into a thousand pieces on the way to the car. Actually last time I came home I relished the cool air on my face when I exited the plane, but that was ten degrees and it soon wore thin anyway.

Better go, back is aching so I'll walk around a bit. Still 90 mins to my flight, which is seven hours long. One day I won't have to keep doing this...

More soon.