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Our week in Dubai was amazing! Here is my review of the resort, so prepare your popcorn, sit down and please allow me to take you on a little virtual journey!
With help from our travel agency ROCS Travel in Malta, we opted to stay for a week at the Jumeirah Zabeel Saray , a beachside resort located on the world-famous Palm Jumeirah, an archipelago accessible by bridge from Dubai. This hotel is one property from the hotel chain Jumeirah who has several other magnificent-looking properties around the city, including the Burj al Arab, the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, and the Madinat Jumeirah.
Just to give you an idea of where this hotel is actually located, here's an aerial shot of The Palm Jumeirah in Dubai!
After flying with Emirates for approximately 7 hours and being chauffeured with a limousine to our destination, we walked to the grandiose reception for our check in. We arrived very late on a Thursday night, the beginning of the Dubai weekend, and immediately we were in awe – the hotel is stunning. It looks like an elegant palace, adorned with gold touches everywhere, opulent marble flooring throughout and beautiful fresh flowers and scents strategically placed on the lobby tables to welcome you with aromas to get your senses all excited. Every crevice and corner is decorated in an opulent Arabian style, and the level of detail is amazing! For those of you who followed my journey on Instagram Story you must have seen a lot of what we saw every day!
We checked in and were accompanied to a Deluxe King Palm view room. It offered 46 square metres of Ottoman-inspired luxury with a private balcony with views of the Palm Jumeirah. It had a beautiful bathroom with an enormous bath tub and a balcony overlooking the beach side in view of The Atlantis in the distance. Excellent in-room facilities. Complimentary Nespresso machine, amazing tea selection, chic toiletries , good beds, fresh fruit bowls, chocolates and water bottles included. There is free wi-fi for everyone, and at a decent speed! Yes!
We were booked on bed and breakfast which meant we could choose to dine anywhere we wished outside the resort. However, being foodies and wanted to experience the hotel in its entirety, we found ourselves trying out quite a few restaurants and amenities available on site!
Let's start with Breakfast
Breakfast here is a huge celebration of food, abundant and wonderful as is everything else. Available at two locations in the resort, the hotel offers sections for fresh fruit, juices and yoghurts, bread section, sweet pastries, Indian breakfast options, pork products, pancakes, cereal, cheeses, and a hundred other things to enjoy including a personal chef who cooks any type of omelette you wish in less than a minute. In case this was not enough to make you happy, every single day they had a few different foods on the menu to try out!
Time to Swim and Chill in the Sun
For sun and beach worshippers like me and my husband, the hotel has its own pristine sandy beach with attendants coming around with cold bottled water, refreshing popsicles, and other free amenities to keep you in full holiday mode. The Jumeirah Zabeel Sarey has two main pool areas, one for the adults with an infinity pool and one more targeted for families with children with slides and more safety features. Fabulous! We did enjoy a couple of days here in the sun while our friends and families in Malta were suffering from cold winds and stormy days. I loved the idea of being in the sun before summer.
Talise Spa
For relaxation, we made a dash to the Talise Ottoman Spa for my husband's birthday. One of the largest and most luxurious spas in the Middle East, this tranquil hideaway may have more gloss than the traditional spit and sawdust hammams of Istanbul, but the therapists are every bit as diligent. It is a secluded space divided into separate women and men only areas, with all the usuals – sauna, steam room, adventure showers, Jacuzzis – plus snow rooms and hot stone beds. Here, you can enjoy an abrasive body scrub and cleanse or simply relax here, drifting off to the sound of water splashing onto the mosaic floors.
Winner of multiple awards including The World Travel Awards 'UAE's Leading Spa Resort' in 2014 three years running, the Talise Ottoman Spa is unlike any other spa I've ever set foot in. With its 42 treatments rooms and signature services like hot stone message, Turkish bath, sauna, steam room, hydrotherapy pools, and high-end beauty treatments.
This exquisitely designed spa is the largest in the Middle East and Africa, spanning more than 8,000 square metres in area spread across two floors offering authentic Turkish hammam and several treatments. Marco and I enjoyed half a day here on his birthday, where we relaxed entirely during a side-by-side massage which included use of the beautiful couples pool beforehand as well as warm refreshments before and after the treatment. What a treat this was! Certainly a Spa we will remember for a long time – The Talise Spa.
Restaurants on Site
There is an impressive range of restaurants, covering various cuisines. Our favourites were Al Nafoorah, the Lebanese restaurant, The Rib Room and Plaj the beachside restaurant where we often snacked and sipped cocktails. Staff were welcoming and so professional in every venue.
For meat lovers, The Rib Room restaurant serves you prime selected beef cuts, seasoned with the finest salt and pepper blend and grilled to perfection; heaven on a plate! – the most succulent, well cooked wagyu rib eye steaks ever. Highly recommended.
Plaj is a very relaxed family-friendly restaurant with panoramic views of the Arabian Gulf. We had many coffees and salads here listening to the trendy music and the sound of the gentle waves.
Al Nafoorah is reputed as one of the best Lebanese restaurants in Dubai so we just had to check it out. The high ceilings and dark wood carvings create a wonderful feeling as you enter, and the atmosphere created by the staff topped up by the divine food dishes makes it one experience that should not be missed when staying at this resort!
Please have a look at my separate blogs or Instagram posts about these experiences too here in Dubai.
Shopping at the Hotel
There are several high-end shops in the hotel in case you forget to bring your bathing costume or wish to surprise your loved ones with something special like a scarf or a pretty hat. We didn't shop here because we wanted to experience the large Dubai malls but the option was there if we needed it.
Other Amenities
Being persons who practise fitness every day, we also went for jogs outside the resort every day and made use of the gym facilities. They had some 10 treadmills, free weights and a few other machines just to keep you in shape on holiday. I also used the hairdresser situated alongside the Talise Spa mid-week to ensure I looked OK for all the selfies!
Parking for visitors and guests is also not a problem as the holiday offers valet parking. It was a treat for me as a car enthusiast to see all these fancy Ferraris and Bugattis and convertible Rolls Royces drive up and leave their keys with the valet. We loved that touch. So luxurious and well organised!
The Jumeirah Zabeel Saray is the sort of hotel where you can loiter for a whole holiday without leaving the grounds. Considering its incredible location on the sandy shores of the man-made Palm Island and the array of world-class dining options, this five-star complex offers excellent value for money compared to other nearby Dubai hotels, and it will be sure to provide a memorable stay for couples and families alike. We are very happy to have stayed here and we recommend this hotel. Thank you Jumeirah Zabeel Saray and all the team for this memorable holiday experience. We felt relaxed and well treated at all times and we really enjoyed our stay here!
For further information about the resort visit www.jumeirah.com and if you would like to contact our travel agency in Malta visit www.rocsholidays.com with your travel enquiries for Dubai or other beautiful destinations worldwide.
Blogger at www.graziellecamilleri.com


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But this morning, we got a cute little vid. Please enjoy the droopy pajama pants!! She must be pretty well balanced because she can walk with her pants all droopy and step all over the cuffs without falling...
She has also discovered the concept of the 'bag'. She carries a yellow pail like it's her purse, and now, the soft horse-bag that Matthew brought her back from his work trip in Austria. She loves to play in-and-out with her 'bags'.
On a totally unrelated note, last night we had our friends Javiera & Nico over, as well as their 3 year old son, Manuel. I'm sorry to report to all her Canadian boyfriends, but Manuel has totally stolen Elizabeth's heart. He taught her how to take the cushions off the couch, and then how to crawl up on to them and roll off of them. Hello, best game ever?? Elizabeth spent pretty much the whole evening following Manuel around, and he reciprocated by carrying a tupperware of shreddies and cheerios and feeding them to her every so often. Super sweet.
And there was another 'first' for Elizabeth last night - a boy brought her flowers! I foolishly thought they were for me, and Manuel said, "No, they are for Elizabeth only."

subset: commoncrawl


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- my youngest sis azi just finished her exams. had a long list of to-dos which includes the possibility of coming to dubai. att : abah!
- my sis syida is currently 'enjoying' a super hot summer in melbourne, while busy packing stuff to go back to msia on the 22nd. safe journey, babe!
- mr. khairul's youngest sis sofia bagged 1st place in her school as the exam results are out. congrats, girl!
- mr. khairul's sis teh would be flyin on a plane closer to us - cairo! she'll be doin dentistry at al-azhar uni. good luck and expect a pestering bro comin your way soon!
- my mak's bro, uncle nani passed away few days ago. al-Fatihah.
- i have yet to get my goreng pisang. sigh.
i have a secret that i am waiting to share. *snicker*
ok. what else is new?


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Most Gibson guitars have a one-piece neck that really, really wants to be in two pieces. 😉
That's a bit flippant, but most instrument repairers will tell you that Gibson headstock breaks form the bulk of their neck repairs. Gibson guitars are neck repairs waiting to happen and, to continue the bad news, there's not a huge amount you can do about it.
Except maybe understand it and some of its context.
Background: Angled Headstocks
In order to keep your strings properly seated in the nut slots, they need to 'break' over the nut at an angle. With a straight headstock, like the Fender-style, string-trees are one method used to increase the nut break angle.
Other instruments choose to angle the entire headstock back to accomplish this. It's certainly effective but, depending on how the neck and headstock is constructed, it can introduce problems.
Gibson One-Piece Neck Construction
Many Gibson guitar necks are cut entirely from a single piece of timber. This has been touted as a selling point — the rational being that a single piece of timber will resonate as one and lead to better tone.
The problem, however, is that this single piece of timber introduces a very specific and nasty weakness.
With the grain running along the neck length, you have a very strong piece of wood. It'll resist bending and breaking nicely.
However, where the headstock angles, this strength becomes a weakness.
When you cut an entire neck out of a single piece of wood, the angled headstock adds an incredibly effective 'fault line'. As luck would have it, that fault line occurs at what is already the thinnest and weakest part of the neck — where the headstock 'leaves' the neck. The 'shorter' section of grain here is much more susceptible to splitting or breaking apart.
Then, after making a neck with a natural fault line at its weakest point, Gibson then cuts a hunk of wood from the front of that weak area to accommodate a truss rod wrench. The truss rod access further weakens this area.
What can builders do to prevent broken necks?
I'm going to paraphrase something I read years ago (and I can't remember an attribution for it):
"Porsche designers decided to put the engine of the 911 over the rear axle and have spent the last fifty years trying to make a car defy physics because of that decision."
I like to think of angled headstocks in a similar way.
You could think of an angled headstock as almost a design flaw. But it's got something pretty great about it so, now we need to find a way to defy physics so it doesn't keep snapping off.
No one idea is the answer but there are ways to make the snapping, at least a little, less likely.
The Volute
The easiest way to help things is to add some wood at that weakest point. A volute is just a protrusion on the rear of the neck-headstock join. This adds a little strength and, while it's not a guarantee, can certainly help.
At different points in its history, Gibson has added volutes to their guitars. And then taken them away again. As of writing, though, they are beginning to introduce volutes on some models so, it's possible we'll see more in the future. Not a bad thing.
Two-Piece Neck
A more certain solution is to forget about making a one-piece neck (which is actually incredibly wasteful anyway). Jointing and glueing a headstock on to the end of a neck makes for a considerably stronger neck.
By cutting a piece from the end of a neck blank, flipping it and glueing it back on at an angle (as shown above) we can actually make that grain direction thing work for us rather than against us. Jointing a headstock on can be accomplished in a number of different ways but the theory is pretty much the same as illustrated. A good glue joint is strong. No grain fault-lines exist and the end result is a strong neck.
Purists claim it won't 'resonate' in the same way but, as with so many claims, I'd really love to perform some properly blinded testing on this.
Straight neck
Not sure if it's fair to mention a straight neck as a solution but Fender-style necks are certainly stronger than their angled counterparts. Again, the grain all goes in the same direction so it's less likely to crack. Not impossible, of course but, all things being equal, you'll have fewer Fender headstock cracking than Gibson.
In Gibson's Defence
I know I've done a lot of Gibson-bashing in this one. That's (partially) unfair. Gibson are not the only guitar manufacturer to make guitar necks like this. They are the biggest and best known though.
And, as noted, the company seems to be revisiting the volute, at least on some of their models.
Lastly, in Gibson's defence, they have a really, really hard time changing anything. If they announced, proudly, that they were going to scarf-joint all their headstocks, guitar nerds the world over would take to the forums and decry it. "But our tone! Gibson-fail! Headstock-gate!" There is a very invested, and vocal, 'lobby' of conservative Gibson fans. Many, many people do not like it when the Big G makes a change.
So, for the most part, many Gibson one-piece guitar necks will continue to fulfil their destinies by becoming two piece necks.
What can players do to prevent broken necks?
Don't drop your guitar.
Yeah, I know. Not hugely helpful, is it?
But, other than being careful, there's not a huge amount I can suggest. Just don't drop it.
And don't assume that being in a case will help. I've worked on plenty of Gibsons that suffered headstock breaks after falling in their cases.
Sucks, I know.
Be careful.
And on that depressing note, I'll take my leave. Sorry.


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Kim Berk Added to Mornings at WLS-FM
Kim Berk, former co-host of the Kim & Kane Show on WWFS-FM in New York, will join Brant Miller as a morning show co-host on WLS-FM in Chicago. She had co-hosted the Jim & Kim Morning Show, which was based at WWFS-FM and previously worked at WKJY-FM in Long Island. She began her radio career in Cincinnati. Follow Chicago's Classic Hits station on Facebook and Twitter.
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Employee Discounts / YouDecide
Pinellas County offers the Employee Advantages Program from YouDecide which provides employee discounts.
The program is available at no cost to all permanent County employees, regardless of whether you participate in the County group insurance program.
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This Beautiful 4 bedroom/2.5 bath features many tasteful and relaxing upgrades. A desirable single-level home with a split floor plan has a warm and private Master suite. Light and bright kitchen with granite and subway tile backsplash, stainless steel appliances and kitchen sink. Real hardwood floors in the living room and hallway, tile in the kitchen and dining area, and carpeted bedrooms. Landscaped backyard with tiered raised garden beds. Also offers 2 patio areas in the backyard, perfect for relaxing. Just walk up the staircase of the elevated patio and enjoy a panoramic view of the Nipomo foothills.
Listing courtesy of Regina Cosma from Why USA Preferred Properties
Listing sold by Michael Hess Aanerud from Navigators Real Estate
Based on information from California Regional Multiple Listing Service, Inc. as of . This information is for your personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties you may be interested in purchasing. Display of MLS data is usually deemed reliable but is NOT guaranteed accurate by the MLS. Buyers are responsible for verifying the accuracy of all information and should investigate the data themselves or retain appropriate professionals. Information from sources other than the Listing Agent may have been included in the MLS data. Unless otherwise specified in writing, Broker/Agent has not and will not verify any information obtained from other sources. The Broker/Agent providing the information contained herein may or may not have been the Listing and/or Selling Agent.


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Combining Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Treatment With Diversion for Juveniles in the Justice System: TIP #21
Total CE Credit Hours: 3
Course Info URL: http://www.addictioncounselorce.com/courses/101036
About the Course:
This TIP spells out a strategy for diverting youth with substance abuse problems from further penetration into the juvenile justice system. Members of the consensuses panel have defined a process for communities to use in building new linkages and partnerships among treatment programs, community health and social services, and the juvenile court to plan juvenile alcohol and other drug diversion programs. Note; This course covers chapters 1-3 (pages 1-31)
Publication Date:
Reprinted 2005
Recommended For:
This course is recommended for health care professionals, especially addiction counselors, psychologists, counselors, probation officers, social workers, and nurses who seek knowledge about combining alcohol and other drug abuse treatment with diversion for juveniles in the justice system. It is appropriate for all levels of participants' knowledge.
Course Objectives:
Explain the collaborative planning process.
Identify the five major types of decisions that have to be made by the planning group in regard to the collaborative planning process.
Describe an overview of a diversion program.
Exam Questions
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My Granny Went to Market
Join a very unusual Granny as she whizzes around the world on a magic carpet, shopping for amazing treasures in all the places she visits. Taking young readers on a counting adventure through ten different countries, "My Granny Went to Market" also introduces children to maps and entertains them with rhyme along the way.
Author: Blackstone, Stella
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Cover: Paperback
Key Stage: F-1