Attended a vapid, expat dinner party last night until past midnight. The usual fare of conversation: poking fun at the locals, la-dee-dah-well-we-went-to...on-vacation braggadocio, reminiscences of former colleagues and their whereabouts, CultureTalk, and the workplace. A very uninspiring evening but with good food and drink. I must be fair, though, I was the only one who had not worked in the same workplaces as the rest of the guests.

The spacious flat is located in a compound whose security leaves little to be desired. I've entered it a number of times in my car and the wooden arm-gate is usually up. The guard sometimes does not even venture outside his guard box but peers from inside on his chair. The same entrance has an exit and the wooden arm is usually down when I approach it to leave. So much for common sense. Burglary seems to be common inside the compound, especially of those who had assumed the security guards were doing their job and had left their flats unlocked.

Yet one topic of talk last night was the pigeons roosting in certain crannies and leaving their droppings and how to get rid of them. Should the housing office at work be contacted first or the management company who maintains the complex? Putting spikes in the crannies was deemed a good solution.

Yesterday in the Gulf News, 32% of its poll of 700 readers thought that the UAE was ripe for a terrorist attack.