It’s high summer and the living is not easy. Temperatures are jumping and inflation’s running high. Prices rising and the bank balance is not a pretty picture, so much that it’s beginning to make some people cry.

Well I’m not crying yet, because I’ve lived all my life with the maxim that "what goes up must come down" and "in the end everything’s going to be all right".

However, I’ve spent hours last week talking to people on how the steep cost of living is affecting their standard of living and that’s not a pretty picture either.

The UAE is in the headlines again this week. Fascinatingly, in Abu Dhabi, the restructured bones of Einstein, a 23-metre long, 4.5 tonne vegetarian Apatosaurus who is 140 million years old, is being set up to provide a free educational opportunity at the airport.

Meanwhile, at the gateway to Heathrow Airport in London, Dubai’s Emirates’ airline has unveiled a 24-metre long, 26-metre wide, 45 tonne model of an Airbus A380; the largest-known aircraft model in existence according to The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

Abu Dhabi states that the summer sees thousands of families passing through the airport and this is an excellent opportunity for them to see the first significant prehistoric dinosaur skeleton assembled in the Middle East, get the lowdown on his vital statistics and have a picture taken with the relic without having to check-in or make a journey through the airport.

On Friday, July 18, Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela, one of history’s great icons will celebrate his 90th birthday.

His life, like most of ours, has had its ups and downs. My profound respect, however, and the respect of millions of my generation for the man stems from the fact that despite being a political prisoner fighting for equality and justice in his own country for almost three decades, he emerged as a brilliant healer of the great black and white divide.

The year 1990 was a watershed year for me. I saw the much hoped for fall of communism in the aftermath of the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Saddam Hussain and his army invaded and looted Kuwait, forcing millions like me to start life from scratch after losing everything. Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady of the United Kingdom and a woman I respected, along with Indira Gandhi, resigned from her premiership. Lech Walesa, another human rights activist, became president of Poland. And, most important of all, Nelson Mandela, the South African freedom fighter was free at last after spending over 27 years in prison.

Despite a rise in oil and food prices the world over, happiness has also risen, reveals a survey headed by the University of Michigan’s political scientist Ronald Inglehart.

The results of the survey going back an average of 17 years in 52 countries and involving 350,000 people showed that the "Happiness Index" was up in 40 countries between 1981 and 2007, but fell sharply in 12 countries.

Denmark is the happiest nation, while Zimbabwe is right at the bottom of the pile.

Ah, July! Temperatures are soaring to record highs – around 50 degrees centigrade – the fog on my glasses as I step out of the air-conditioned comfort of my car, home and office and the humidity that causes my clothes to stick like a second skin are slowly becoming major irritants.

On the other hand, however, schools are out, many families are off on vacation to cooler climes, traffic has thinned out making driving an absolute pleasure and nobody’s asking, "Do you have a reservation, madam?" when I go out to an impromptu lunch or dinner.

There’s always more than one side to every situation and unfortunately I’ve found out that most of us – call it the human condition – think seriously of one side, like it very much and then begin the moan and groan much to our detriment.