Happy Birthday, UAE! Get your silly string ready...

There are middle-aged men I play pick-up basketball with that are older than the United Arab Emirates. That probably explains why I was the leading scorer last week.

The UAE just celebrated its 43rd birthday. Only 43 years old? I know, crazy.

Another December 2 has come and gone in Abu Dhabi as the capital celebrated National Day in style. And when you think of celebrating a country's birthday, overly-decorated cars and silly string comes to mind, right? Only in the UAE...

For more pictures, check out The National's photo gallery from UAE National Day.

They love to celebrate with silly string. I'm not really sure why. What exactly is silly string? Well, the good people at Google helped me clarify your inquiry.

Silly String (generically known as aerosol string) is a toy of flexible, sometimes brightly colored, plastic string propelled as a stream of liquid from an aerosol can. The solvent in the string quickly evaporates in mid-air, creating a continuous strand.

I spoke with a party vendor in the city and he said sales of the product jumps five fold around National Day as he can barely keep the item on the shelves during that faithful week in early December.

Then I asked if there were any other hot times for silly string sales?

"No, not really," he said. "We get a kid's birthday party every once in a while but that's about it. National Day is the biggest day of the year -- by far -- in terms of silly string distribution."

Kid's birthday parties and National Day celebrations? I'm starting to see a trend here.

***

The government announced a five-day break for all employees, but that did not really apply to us in the media. Someone has to put out a newspaper...

Regardless, the mood was also festive inside our office with balloons and lights but unfortunately, there was no sign of any silly string.

And when the dust finally settled on the silly string party that was National Day, it was the country's faithful maintenance workers were emerged as the true heroes.

They spent most of the wee hours following the celebrations cleaning up the corniche in Abu Dhabi and other festive zones through out the country.

Click here to read a story from The National about their silly string heroics

Happy Birthday, UAE!