Two egg omelette please, no chilli

Things don't feel quite so negative around here after a reasonable night's sleep. Maybe it was the locally distilled whisky that that put me on a downer last night. I was certainly not very happy before going to bed

I'm stuck here without being able to work because the materials I need to trial in local factories are held in customs in Dubai. The courier we used to send the samples claims they have been with customs for extra security checking for around a week and there's no sign of them being cleared at the moment. If they have not been sent overnight my only real course of action is to bring Friday's return flight forward and go home, because I'm currently sat twiddling my thumbs in the hotel. A highly frustrating situation!

Last night I met an old friend here who I haven't seen for maybe three years. He hadn't changed a bit (and claimed I hadn't), and we had a lovely hour or two drinking tea and reminiscing. His son, who I met once before and who was then a teenager, is now a manager in a local communications company and doing well for himself

This morning I have been down for breakfast and had an omelette. It's very common for Asian hotels to have an 'egg chef' and the one here was very busy today not only doing omelettes but also turning out some very tasty looking scrambled eggs too

Bangladesh is five hours ahead of the UK and I am going to sit outside on the terrace for an hour or two and maybe go to the gym before contacting the office to see if any progress has been made with delivering our samples. I've been to the gym four times since leaving home (every other day) but seem to be coming down with a cold now, which might make my session on the treadmill even harder than normal. Perhaps some chilli in my omelette would have helped sweat out the cold and been a good thing after all!