Of course I miss Sweden on Midsummer's Eve, one of those major Swedish happenings that has no equivalence elsewhere in the world. I miss the Midsummer pole, dancing the Small Frogs' dance, the herring and new potatoes, the strawberries and cream - and the bright summer night in the north.

I'll make do with a pool on the eighth floor of a hotel in Dubai and a good book. My iPod. Maybe they've got strawberries downstairs. I can't upload photos to my blog from my iPhone, I've discovered. Here's a link to my hotel instead of a photo: http://www.mediaonehotel.com/

Glad Midsommar! Happy Midsummer's Eve!

Not wanting to miss the longest lunar eclipse in a 100 years, I decided to hedge my bets and try the local beach first, before driving 85 kilometres into the red desert. However, there was not a single cloud in the sky here in Fujairah last night, and the weather report indicated that there would be clouds towards Dubai - with the humidity being higher there as well - so it looked like a good option to stay locally.

On my way towards Khor Kalba Beach, I suddenly got this urge to stop and take a picture of the moon with a palm tree in the foreground. I had to wait for ages before the camera lens had cleared - humidity was around 60% - but in the end I managed to get a couple of good shots.

Here's the moon pre-eclipse in a picture taken at the same spot. Lots of light pollution in this area, but the shot turned out quite well anyway.

My second concern was whether there would be heavy traffic on the beach at Khor Kalba on a night like this. I didn't want to have dozens of headlights constantly crisscrossing the dunes while I was focusing on the different stages of lunar eclipse. However, when I arrived, mine was the only vehicle there. Here's my Daihatsu enjoying a bit of pre-eclipse posturing.

The conditions couldn't really be better for the longest total lunar eclipse of the century. Full moon, no clouds,  local time being well after sunset and very little light pollution at this side of the beach. Around 9.00 PM, the moon was still relatively low and the light reflected beautifully on the surface of the sea.

I walked a bit and found the perfect spot on top of a small sand dune, with a great view of the moon and the sea.

Here's the moon at the penumbral stage of eclipse. Apparently, this is part of the eclipse cycle, but I couldn't spot anything. I might sound a bit like an expert when I say "penumbral", but I just looked it up on Wikipedia while setting up my tripod in the sand.

At 10.22 PM local time, we entered the umbral stage and right on cue - to the minute! - the bottom left of the moon started to darken. This is breathtakingly beautiful, I think.

While watching this spectacle, I was also staying in touch with friends on Facebook - mobile reception is excellent on Kalba Beach - and my sister in Sweden told me the sun was still shining brightly in Karlshamn, so she was obviously missing out on all this. However, friends in Cairo and Malawi were getting a good view of the moon. A bit before 11.00 PM, the moon had reached this stage.

We entered the stage of total eclipse at 11.22 PM local time, and again - as if on cue - the whole moon went red. Awesome! I seldom use that word, but I think it's the right one this time.

As the red moon turned darker and darker, I could hear prayers being chanted at a nearby mosque. The auto-focus of my camera wasn't working very well at this stage, but I was still able to get some good pictures.

It was really only during this time that I had some company on the beach. A few cars drove by, with the music turned up real loud. As a nature-loving Swede who finds that words like "peace and quiet" have positive connotations, I don't really get this. "Oh, we're having a total lunar eclipse.  Let's drove down the beach with the music on full blast." Maybe the music is supposed to drown any sneaking fears of impeding calamities? I don't know. I much preferred the chanting in the background.

As we were approaching 12.13 AM, the point of the deepest darkness, I was finding it difficult to capture the beauty of the moon with my camera. This picture was taken just after midnight.

However, around 12.13 AM, I was only able to capture anything on camera by using really slow shutter speeds. I think this picture was taken just a couple of minutes before the greatest darkness, and the shutter speed here was somewhere between 10 and 15 seconds.

I know there are a couple of other total lunar eclipses between now and 2018, but I'm very happy I was able to enjoy this - the longest eclipse in a 100 years - under such perfect conditions!

Fujairah is squeezed in between the mountains and the sea - two of Fujairah's main assets - and both the beach and the mountains are terribly under-used. Many times I've wondered about the miles of sandy beach between Fujairah and the Omani border - and why I often am the only person there on a Friday morning. You have the unspoiled sandy beach next to a small area of real sand dunes - and then you have the wetlands with lots of mangroves. And in the background you have the mountains.

How it is possible - I just don't get it! - that I'm the only one there on a Friday morning? I'm not talking about now, in this crazy heat, but in January or February, when it's 25C and not a cloud in the sky. Anyway, the only people I see are young guys driving their 4x4s along the edge of the water for five minutes and then disappearing.

But this blog entry is not about the sea. It's about the mountains. It only takes me twenty minutes to drive to the village Hayl from my flat. And just behind it - on the small, windy road towards the Hayl Fort - you're at the foot of the mountains. 

I love these mountains. And again, I've never met a single soul when walking up the mountains here. I've seen a few donkeys and the odd (what looks to me like a) grouse. But no people.

Anyway, let me introduce me to one of my favourite spots. This was me two days ago, sitting under a tree.

Not a soul. Complete silence - except for what sounds like crickets. No flies or wasps. And a remarkably fresh breeze blowing in spite of the fact that the thermometer showed 37C when I left home. Here's my view to the left.

And here's what I can see straight ahead.

There's something truly relaxing and wholesome about sitting under a tree. Getting into a serene and contemplative mood comes almost automatically. My sister tells me that we are way too tense and worked up in today's busy lifestyle. We need just to sit down and do nothing for a while. "Just look straight ahead and do nothing", to quote my sister. Which is something I find incredibly difficult to do if I'm at home.

But if I'm sitting under a tree, it just happens all by itself. Here's the view to the right.

I have this hiker's foldable seating pad (which says Ändhållplats) and which weighs only about 100 grams. But under this tree, it didn't really need it. The rocks were flat and even, and just the right angle. If I had leaned straight back and turned my head back all the way, I would have seen this view upside down (but I actually sat up straight with my camera).

A whole hour went by and I didn't really do anything but just sit there. Under my tree, like Disney's Ferdinand the Bull. And the nice thing is that I can't say I was thinking about anything in particular. I was just there. This picture is me using the zoom to get a nice shot of the small tree right in front of me.

Just below the big boulder I was sitting on was this tuft of green. Not sure what it was.

And then I just lay back and looked up into the tree.

It only takes 20 minutes to drive to the foot of the mountains, and to get to this spot, it only took me another 40 minutes of walking. So the mountains here in Fujairah are very accessible.

And looking up into my tree, I can't help wondering why I never meet anybody up here.

Walking back home two hours after sunset with a strong wind blowing in my face, I'm wondering to myself whether there is such a thing as reverse wind chill. Today, we've had 49C.  It's now around 42C and that wind really made my face burn. If there is such a thing as reverse wind chill, what is it called? And what would the "heat factor" make 42C feel like in this evening's blustery weather?

I'll be going to Sweden for three days in connection with my Aunt Ingrid's funeral. Here's my itinerary in case you happen to be nearby at any point and would like to meet up.

Wednesday 18th May

• Flying from Dubai to Copenhagen with Qatar Airways
• Karlshamn in the evening

Thursday 19th May

• Karlshamn in the morning
• Train to Karlstad around noon
• Arriving in Karlstad 10.00 PM

Friday 20th May

• Aunt Ingrid's funeral
• Afternoon train to Gothenburg
• Gothenburg in the evening

Saturday 21st May

• Flying Gothenburg to Copenhagen early morning
• Flying Copenhagen to Dubai around noon

1927-2011

My wonderful and very dear Aunt Ingrid Wallerström has passed away.

Her love of life and genuinely positive attitude have meant a great deal to me over the decades, and have been an inspiration to me as far back as I can remember. Going as far back as the mid-60s, Aunt Ingrid and her visits were always associated with a very real sense of fun for me.

This sense of fun has never abated, in spite of repeated and serious health issues, and shows a strength of character and ability to focus on, and be grateful for, the good things in life. Something I will miss terribly when I think of her. Her enthusiasm was contagious. A phone call would be enough to catch a bit of her vibrant spirit, which was still true just a few weeks ago when she rang me and we spoke on the phone for quite a while.

One example of Aunt Ingrid's wonderful love of life, enthusiasm and sense of adventure is from when she and Uncle Olof came to visit me for a month in Egypt in early 2001. This was just a couple of months before I started blogging, so I don't have anything written down from that time. But I remember this: Aunt Ingrid and Uncle Olof went on endless walks around Cairo every day, and coming back from work I would listen to their stories of who they had met, who had invited them for tea and which shops or markets they had found themselves in. When we were invited to my friends Youssef, Mourad and Isaac and their family in a small flat above the bustling streets of a Cairo suburb, this had such an impact that Youssef and Isaac and their family are still enquiring about Aunt Ingrid when I talk to them. A fabulous testimony to my aunt's amazing ability to connect with people from all backgrounds - despite the fact that she didn't speak English at all.

Another fond memory I have is from a journey we made together by car from Karlstad, where she lived, to Trondheim in Norway. For a bit of background to this car journey I can just mention the Aunt Ingrid had just undergone major surgery and was turning 80 that year. And Trondheim is over 700 km from Karlstad. Here's the blog.

Similarly, Aunt Ingrid's visit to London - while I was writing my MA dissertation - is another wonderful memory, and example of Aunt Ingrid's tireless sense of adventure.  I will never forget her infectious laughter at Guildford Station - lasting for about 15 minutes! - when she thought a British driver had interpreted her hand signals when he was driving by as a sign of her flirting with him. Blog here.

The last time I saw Aunt Ingrid was last July, when she arranged a spectacular 80th birthday party for Uncle Olof and I happened to be travelling through Sweden. She was still chatting to the dozens of guest - including me -way past midnight and that is a memory I will cherish. She had a love for life, a love for fun and a love for all the people she knew.

Aunt Ingrid, I will miss you so very much.

Please note the Higher Colleges of Technology logo at the beginning of the music clip!  I think Khalifa is studying at the Abu Dhabi Men's College. This song was specially made for the Education without Borders Conference in Dubai a couple of months ago.

We've got a rapper at Fujairah Men's College as well, but he hasn't recorded any videos yet.  

Ten Years of Blogging

Today, exactly ten years ago, I wrote my very first blog entry.

I guess I instantly took to the idea that I could tell people what I was doing and that there was an audience out there. Anyway, as it turned out, blogging wasn't a fad in my case. It's more, like, a part of life. 

Here are few posts from my blog - a mini-walk down memory lane.

This blog entry is probably one of the more dramatic ones, when I was stuck in my office during the terrorist attack in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in May 2004.

This blog entry was the first one I ever wrote on a concert - Sting by the Pyramids. I've done quite a few blog entries on concerts and music festivals over these past ten years.

This blog entry is about one of the most exciting and fun experiences I've had from the last ten years: the camel trekking I went on in the Sinai desert in 2002 with a group of ten people. This entry includes my Ode to the Camel.  Ten years ago, I didn't have a digital camera (did anybody?) and there are very few photos on my blog entries from this time.

This blog entry just has to include the most nostalgic component from these ten years of blogging - a picture from the hospital where I was born, way up in Lapland - now a furniture shop!

After twelve years in the Middle East, I'm pretty used to Palm Sunday being on a Friday. This year, I had decided to make use of one of a bunch of one-night-for-free-if-you-book-one-night vouchers for four and five star hotels in the region - so I didn't have to travel so much back and forth this Palm Sunday weekend. I had discovered that there was a Marriott Courtyard hotel in an area called the Green Community, which was near the church. Good choice, I told myself as soon as I had checked in Thursday evening.

The hotel was next to this man-made lake, and there were a couple of Venetian-style bridges over canals next to the hotel, so it was all very atmospheric. One thing I particularly liked was all the candles they lit in the lobby after sunset. Very cosy, very Swedish.

However, the feel-good factor suddenly came to an abrupt halt on Friday morning when I discovered I was the only person at church. Now picture this. We always have a service on Friday morning,  52 Fridays a year, so it was really weird to walk into a completely empty church at this time - especially since there are normally 400+ people there any given Friday.

It was not just that I had planned this so carefully for the Palm Sunday weekend - with the hotel for two nights and everything - but the realisation that I was the only one who didn't know that the Palm Sunday service had been cancelled or moved. It was like I could see for my inner eye how everybody in the church was invisibly connected with everybody else, so when the service was cancelled/moved (moved, I found out), everybody just knew it through their little connectors. And there I was, the only one who was not connected properly to the network. Instead, I was flapping disconnectedly in the wind.

I felt pretty rotten after that - disconnected and rotten. The luxurious surroundings at Marriott Courtyard helped dampen the impact, but the image of the empty church kind of stayed with me for the rest of the weekend.

That said, the weekend was not all bad. On the way back to Fujairah, I stopped at my favourite spot along the desert road and I kind of walked right into these camels as I was going for a walkabout in the red sand.

There was a camel watchman nearby, keeping an eye on things.

I really like this part of the desert. The sand here has this golden reddish hue, and even if the sand looks quite soft, it is surprisingly easy to walk across the dunes - a bit like snow that has been frozen over.

During my desert walk, I came across this bush/mini-tree in full bloom.

I have no idea what it is, but it always lifts your spirits when you see something blossoming in the desert. My desert walk did actually go quite a long ways in helping me forget the Palm Friday that wasn't.

Holy Week is now here and I'm in firm possession of a comprehensive church programme, with days, times and places for all the services.

When I got acute laryngitis two days ago I kind of knew my birthday would be a fairly quiet affair. And I was right. Today, I'm reading all the dozens and dozens of birthday greetings on Facebook in silence - not because I don't want to respond with exclamations and LOLs here and there (e.g. when reading Bahrom's birthday greeting in perfect Swedish), but because I'm still voiceless. In fact, I'm not even supposed to whisper or clear my throat.

So, what does this voiceless birthday look like? Well, I'm lying on the sofa in front of the telly most of the time, watching Mankell movies and [spooks] or reading Tom Clancy's latest. I have to avoid comedies since my vocal chords can't handle laughing at the moment. Now and then, I do have to cough - I can't help it - and then it's the weirdest sound earth. Like I'm dying or something.

Anway, a silent birthday doesn't mean I'm not celebrating in small ways.

I had a lovely shrimp salad for lunch.

And this evening, I'll do a stirfry of some sort. Also, in-between movies and naps I have hot tea with ginger snaps from IKEA (dunked, of course).

So, it's a decent birthday after all, methinks.