Water Training

Greetings from the Middle East...

I have often wondered how many of you know exactly what I do for a living...

Yes, I am a Paramedic, that much most of you already know. But that is only part of my current employment. Some of you may even now that I work for a company called Falcon Aviation Services...on helicopters...which makes me a Flight Paramedic...but what do you call me when I get lowered to the ground from the helicopter on a cable no thicker than you little finger...to pick up a complete stranger and then get pulled back into the same helicopter, but now with the patient on the same cable doubling the load...well, what would you call that....I'll let you decide.

We recently did a Water Rescue Exercise here in Abu Dhabi which involved the simulated rescue of a manikin first, then a real life person who volunteered to be abused by us for the greater good of humanity...below are some of the pictures that we took...

Below: Rescue Swimmer - Michael Wallis Hoist Operator - John Phu Pilot in Command - Ray Speights Co-Pilot - Gordon Jefferey Live Patient - Brian Mullin


Well, until next time and it would be great to get email's from you all once in a while...

Mike, Luiza, Chavez and Thorn...OH...and By the Way...

MERRY CHRISTMAS
and
HAPPY NEW YEAR

UAE National Day World Record

Not much interesting has happened in our lives since our last posting, but when something does happen, it is usually 'big'...and this weekend was no exception.

December 2nd is the UAE's National Day and the company for whom I work (Falcon Aviation Services - FAS) broke the world record yesterday for the largest Heli-Banner ever towed by a helicopter...a 50,000 Sq. Ft UAE flag. The flag was bigger than a acre of land.




The pilot, Ray Spieghts, is a personal friend of ours and we took his wife Tanye and grand-daughter Logan with us to Abu Dhabi to witness the 'big' event. Unfortunately the photographs just dont seem to do the flag justice.

The helicopter used to pull the flag was a Bell 412 EP Search & Rescue helicopter from our SAR program in Dubai. A smaller Bell 206 Jet ranger was used to take Aerial video and photographs and can be seen flying with them in some of the pictures.

Although the second helicopter does look remarkably close to the flag, it is infact not as close as it seems.

Until next time...

Mike, Luiza & the Kids

Luiza's New Car

After many long days of waiting, Luiza has finally taken delivery of her new car...

After looking at the various compact model cars available on the market, we kept coming back to Honda. After test driving the Honda Civic which we really liked in South Africa, we found it to be VERY under powered and sluggish which was a real surprise. Luiza then saw the Honda Jazz and fell in love with it at first sight.

We waited for a month for them to get us the Black Jazz only to finally be told that there was none on the ship...Middle East service...

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Luiza is now the proud owner of HER VERY OWN BRAND NEW OUT THE BOX Honda Jazz.

Cheers

Mike, Luiza and kids

Luiza'a Drivers Licence (25/09/2007)

As some of you may already know, Luiza went back to South Africa in July to renew her South African Drivers Licence. After about 6-8 weeks, the traffic department have finally issued her the laminated piece of paper that is the RSA Drivers Licence. That may not sound to bad to people inside South Africa that have not experienced anything else, but let me tell you...the system can be better...

We went to the UAE traffic department to convert Luiza's licence to a UAE licence so that she can buy herself a small car. The process began with a visit to the cashier who looked through all the documents and told us that we could not us colour copies of the passports, but must get black & white copies. They then PROVIDED us with a copy machine to do this with. The next step was to have passport photographs taken for the files...we did not unfortunately bring any with us so guess what...a PHOTOGRAPHER was on hand to assist us with this...instant pictures. After all of this they sent Luiza to the QUALIFIED OPTOMETRIST to get her eye test done. The final step was to sit in a room that resembled a place where MUG-SHOTS might be taken, and her picture was again taken with a really fancy looking digital camera set-up thingy.
After paying the fee of 250 AED (about R500.00) we were asked to wait in the reception area. We were called about 5 minutes later and Luiza was handed a professionally printed credit card type UAE drivers licence. Just to give you an idea about how long we had to wait for this to all happen, we arrived at the licence department at 23h00...yes, that's what I said...23h00 at night, and we left there with her licence at about 23h35. It took about 35 minutes to produce a professionally printed card...compare that to SA...just a thought.

Muscat, Oman

Greetings all and welcome back to our blog.

As some of you might know, we were given a free 2 night stay at the exclusive Shangri-La Barr Al Jissah resort and spa in Oman, and decided to take the trip this weekend, to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary.
We left the UAE on the afternoon of the 13th and entered Oman at about 16h30. We were lucky to have just missed a rather heavy rain, but it did leave the wadi's and river beds looking rather beautiful.

The drive to Muscat took about 4 hours or so and we finally arrived at the hotel at about 21h00. You should bear in mind that this trip was done on the first day of the muslim Holy month of Ramadan. For those of you that dont know about Ramadan, basically it means not eating, drinking or smoking in public until sunset. Not too great if you are doing a long distance car trip.

The hotel is actually made up of three seperate hotels. 2 Five star hotels and 1 Six star one. Although we found the room to be very average for 1750 AED ( about R3500.00 ) per night, we did find that the hotel itself was very beautifully laid out.
As you can see, we had a view of the pool area to the left of the room, and a beach view to the right.

At dinner on the first night I decided to have my first Martini. I allowed luiza to choose one for me and she chose the Don Vito...

Don Devito
Tequila, Chocolate Liquer, White Cacao Liqeur, fresh cream and chocolate

When you arrive at a destination at night, you miss out on the initial beauty of the area...you also tend to find out the next morning that what you thought we mountains that you were driving through...WERE'NT...as you can see below...

After driving aroung in the local mountains for a while the next morning, we came across a small fishing village called Quntab. A small but quaint little village with a total human population of 1000...and a goat population of 800...

We found a really nice place to do some snorkelling, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to become one with the local fish life...didnt see much though as it was rather late by the time we finally got into the water, and we had lost most of our light. The area does seem to have a huge scuba diving and snorkelling industry in Oman, which definatley warrants coming back here in the near future. Next time however, we will definiately bring the kids with us.

Day three proved to be the more interesting of the 3 days as Luiza convinced me to go on a Dolphin viewing boat trip. For those of you that dont know my history with boats...let just say by the time the boat trip was due to start, I was suitable and completely medicated for the trip.

After convincing myself that we were wasting money on the trip and that the hotel was just telling us that there were Dolphins so that they could get our well earned money from us...LUIZA managed to get some really good pictures of the Dolphins that I was conviced we would not see.






Oh, and one more thing before I end this story. When we checked in at the hotel, we told them that we would be spending our Wedding Anneversary with them and they said they would do something special for us...

I really didnt believe them....

On the evening of our anneversary, they showed up at our room with Cake, Roses and a pretty expensive bottle of Champagne...what a nice gesture...

Anyway, it was a really great weekend and it was a really pity to have to come back to work today.

Until next time...

Mike, Luiza and the boys

Welcome

For many years now, in fact, ever since moving to the Middle East, I have been looking for a way to share our experiences in the Middle east with friends and family, without them having to jump through hoops to get special email addresses and password in order to access our site. Finally, I seem to have found a way.

Welcome to the UAE Wallis family blog where I hope to be able to post details of events and happenings in our lives for you to read and view. I hope you enjoy your stay...