Fourteen in Dubai: March 2006

Monday, March 27, 2006

How I wish...

...I had these amazing computers. I was going through Wired.com and I saw this article about the world's most expensive PCs (only PCs, so supercomputers etc; are not in the list). There were some 12 PCs and displays. I ticked this one as my favourite: The Voodoo OMEN for $24,000. There were 2 terabytes (2000 GB) of storage, 4GB of RAM and an amazing AMD dual-core FX-60 processor (if you don't understand what this is, it is definitely much better than the computer at grandma's). The "Ultimate Geek Status Symbol".

A laptop for the ladies and diamond-loving men was also available: The Tulip E-Go, for $335,000. Apart from being a pretty cool laptop it was also encrusted with thousands of diamonds. Possibly much more expensive than your average Gold Souk outing.

Bet Al Ain Centre doesn't keep these!!

Friday, March 24, 2006

What were we planting again?

On Wednesday several schools took part in a "Let's Plant Campaign" organised by Dubai Municipality. I signed up too, along with some 37 boys from our school, though only 12 turned up (we had to search and persuade half of them). According to the form, each student would place one plant in the ground, at Nad al Sheeba Park, to "help make the environment green". The real thing turned out to be a big joke.

We arrived at the park at 8am, all sleepy and bored but armed with smuggled mp3 players and camera phones. Then we were divided in two groups of six students each, and each group assembled around one solitary young tree brought from a nursery and temporarily planted into the ground with two wooden sticks supporting it. There was a little bit of soil next to the whole arrangment with a shovel in it. Other school parties had also been divided in this way and were standing around the same kind of arrangement, wearing XXL sized "Dubai Municipality" t-shirts and wondering where all the seeds and digging hardware was.

We spent three hours standing there with iPod Nanos, Creative MuVos and Walkman Phones plugged into our ears, wondering why we didn't just put the soil where it was supposed to be put and then go home. After three hours of boredom we finally got the signal to shovel the soil in and start moving. At the end we did get some nice food and juice courtesy of DM, but the whole affair was completely useless. Out of the hundred or so students that might have come about twenty trees may have been replanted. "Let's Plant" turned out to be "Let's replant, eat some free food and go". We did spent some good time staring at girls from other schools though ;-)

I just hope that the sincere DM workers can do a better job than us.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Bush Talk

Recently George W. Bush visited India for nuclear talks. I got this email with some funny quotes made by Bush in his speeches during the visit. Read on...

"The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country." -George W. Bush "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." -George W. Bush "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'." - George W. Bush "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." - George W. Bush "The future will be better tomorrow." - George W. Bush "We're going to have the best educated American people in the world." - George W. Bush "I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."- George W. Bush "We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe." - George W. Bush "Public speaking is very easy." - George W. Bush "A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls." - George W. Bush "We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur." - George W. Bush "For NASA, space is still a high priority." - George W. Bush "Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children." - George W. Bush "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." - George W. Bush "It's time for the human race to enter the solar system." - George W. Bush Can the English language survive it ? God Help America...

Monday, March 20, 2006

Advert Oscars

I'm watching too much TV lately. There isn't anything to do except that anyway. Sometimes I wish I could time-travel back into my exams (no, I'm not a nerdy alien from Jupiter). Atleast there would be something to do. And I would also know whats coming in the question paper (he he he).

Nowadays there seem to be more ads than normal programmes, which is not justifying the ridiculous price of Pehla. It really bugs me when someone is poised to shoot the good guy in a serial, he is just going to press the trigger, and then some rubbish about "Head and Shoulders" comes up. But there are some ads which are quite good too.

This one is my favourite. It's for MasterCard (credit card). It shows this Indian man, who is in his twenties but very frail and thin. From the morning to the evening he is doing hard labor, carrying stuff, building walls, cleaning people's homes and basically doing every difficult job imaginable for very little money or food. At the end of the day he is exhausted and he is walking back when a message comes up, saying, "Bholu: Ex-pickpocket. Welcome to a cashless Society". I couldn't help laughing.

I don't have any movies to watch at home, and I have only one PC game, which is Age Of Empires (I think it's the old version). My parents would NEVER actually buy me a game (it's distracting, bad for eyes, blah blah blah). My outdated GameBoy Color (yes, I actually still have one) has got dreadful graphics. I also have a (outdated) Nintendo 64, which I like a lot, but can't play so often as my mum is usually watching some serial or the other (you know, mother-in-law VS. daughter-in-law types). If anyone knows anyplace where I can buy fake games for cheap please email me or leave a comment. I'm against piracy but right now I'm desperate.

I'm also thinking of getting my mom something for Mother's Day. Last time I got flowers for her from Spinneys. I got 5 roses. Even though I had only 20 dirhams and each rose was five dirhams, the flower-guy felt sorry for me and reduced the price to 4 dirhams for each rose. I also attracted many jealous glances from passing-by mothers on my way home.

Thats all from me for now. Happy reading.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Shawarma Seeking

I'm crazy about Shawarmas. I must have had my first Shawarma some seven years ago, from some restaurant in Karama, for like two dirhams, from a Malayali guy without proper Shawarma-making equipment, but it didn't matter. Since that day I've been eating Shawarmas like Bugs Bunny eats carrots!

After seven years of intense research and even more intense sampling, I know by now some of the best shawarma joints in the city. By now I've come up with a two Shawarma awards- one for the "Best Value" and one for "Simply the Best". My "Best Value" award would go to all of the Malayali restaurants in Bur Dubai selling shawarmas for dhs. 2.50, as I've found thats the best value, cuz despite the price they make it quite well. My "Simply the Best" award would go to Automatic Restaurant, but several other Arabic restaurants are also quite close. They have some special ingredients that make the shawarma taste better. I also know some of the worst Shawarma offerings in the city, like a restaurant which sells shawarmas for three bucks right on the Dragon Castle (now "Musalla Tower") crossing. I don't think the price is justified, but he still gets good business due to the good location.

I've always wondered why the arabs don't start their own chain of shawarma joints, like McDonalds or Burger King. They could call it Shawarma Sheikh. It would definitely be an awesome success. And they could have lot's of neat mascots, you know, Ronald McAhmed...

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Taxi Experiences

I have had many funny experiences with taxi drivers in Dubai. My mom doesn't drive, so for all school programs we had to use taxis. One experience I remember quite clearly.

I was about eight, and my mom and I were going to the Open House in my school, Indian High (I'm no longer in this school though, and I really don't recommend it). We needed to get my report card and have a chat with my teacher (I was OK at studies at that time so the chat was quite painless).We took a private taxi (there were many at that time). Unfortunately the driver turned out to be a strange one. We told him to go to the Indian High School in Garhoud. He turned up somewhere in the middle of Garhoud filled with schools, but none of them was my school. When we asked him that he had got us in the wrong place, he said (in Hindi, but I've translated)-

"Oh, they're all Indian schools, just go into any."

My mom found that very funny, and started laughing. I don't understand how she could keep her cool, as I was feeling annoyed and we were already late.

That wasn't all. The taxi driver then put all the blame on me and said that I should have known where my school was. Maybe I would have, if he hadn't got us somewhere where I had never been before. And I was only eight, and new to Dubai. After that we spent one hour in the taxi, with the taxi driver keeping up his chant of how useless I was and that I really should have known where the school was. If I had been any older or any smarter I would have told him to shut-up.

Then there was another taxi-driver, who entertained us when we got stuck in traffic on our way to the GITEX Shopper 2004. What amazing Urdu that guy spoke. And just recently we were n our way to Lamcy Plaza, with this driver who tried to impress us with his amazingly accurate knowledge of time-saving wrong-way routes, and his experiences with sympathetic policemen. He did save us quite a lot of time, mind.

Nowadays I usually prefer taking Dubai Taxis. They seem to have the most decent drivers, and they never get us wrong. But one thing is there. All of these taxi-drivers have an amazing sense of dodging jams. They know all kinds of routes, through all kinds of wierd places. And my advice to you is: if your taxi-guy wants to go wrong-way, let him. He'll be invariably saving plenty of your time (and money). Oh yeah, and always confirm that your driver knows the route before climbing in. That's very important.

Do share your taxi experiences too.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Recently my exams ended and I went to my friend's house, with another classmate of mine. He had a PSP. We spent the whole day playing on the PSP and at the end the PSP's battery had been fully drained out. We even used the wireless router at my friend's house to get the PSP online. By now I'm having dreams of owning a PSP. It Dhs.959, so I don't think I'll be getting it any time soon, but I have to try. The graphics are just too wonderful. If anybody has any ideas on getting a PSP in Dubai (other than buying it) please tell me. There are several of my classmates who would do anything for one, including me. For now, well, I'll have to satisfy myself with pictures of the PSP stuck onto my cupboard. Sweet dreams.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Driving Re-instruction

There seems to be a strange trend in Dubai. Drivers seem to forget how to drive right after getting their licence. No wonder traffic is like hell here. Gulf News has brought out a "Accident of the Week" feature on one of it's pages. According to the news, three accidents take place every one minute and one person dies every 36 hours. I heard that the police has brought out a small booklet on tips how to drive properly. I can just imagine what it would contain.

a. How NOT to kill yourself:

Do not kill someone else with you. That incudes the innocent Nissan Sunny on the lane next to you.
Do not cause a hold up on Shk. Zayed Rd. with some spectacular crash.
Do not do it in front of a tourist bus.

b. How to avoid killing yourself:

Do not go in the fast lane - that's 100% suicide.
Stay away from black-tints. They are potentially more dangerous than the Red-back spiders which scared some residents of the Greens.
Do not speed, talk on the mobile, drink before driving, you know, all the obvious stuff.

c. How to drive safely in a way that does not kill drivers near you:

Do not drive over 120kmph on a quaint old road in Ghusais
Do not change lanes before confirming you're not going to bang into a Toyota on your left/right.
Keep a distance sufficient to accomodate a camel between you and the car in front of you.

I could go on but I didn't want to put the police out of business. And yeah, the above guide was not a joke. I hope you take it seriously to make Dubai's roads less suicidal.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Top Five misconceptions people have about Dubai

I've met many people, and have aggregated a list of misconceptions people have about Dubai. There are many more, but for now this will do:

You need to know Arabic to survive here- this is not true. For all practical purposes, Malayalam seems to be the national language, but several other Indian dialects are also widely accepted along with Filipino and English, and some taxi drivers may also amaze you with good knowledge of Farsi. Arabic went out of fashion ten years ago and today is confined to signboards and police-cars.
Internet access is closely watched by the Government and several sites are banned- No, only sites which are "inconsistent with the moral values of the UAE" are blocked, which include free SMS sites that provide competition to the State-owned Telecom provider, Internet telephony sites like Skype for precisely the same reason, and Flickr.com, the photo sharing service, for no apparent reason.
Locals are friendly- out of the four million people living in Dubai, less than a million are Arabs, and if you do manage to get hold of one before he/she gets into their black-tinted vehicles or their palace like houses, I applaud you. Level of friendliness may differ greatly by area, with people in Karama a little more polite than the ones in the Greens and other middle-of-the-desert developments, who have issues like Home Loans, maintanance fees, flooding, and unfairly closed swimming pools.
Weather is very bad- well, actually no. We get at least five months of winter, and winter brings wondefully cool weather. Locals usually go to parks and give mall-jumping a rest. It's a nice time to come, between November and February. We also have Dubai Shopping Festival in Jan/Feb.
There is lots of oil here and plenty of money to be made. Well, if you're a European/Arab, then you're in luck, but for others it's usually 12 hours of work, getting stuck in traffic in the evenings and just enough money to pay your extravagant rent.

I have started an RSS feed for my blog, if you would like to subscribe. You can find it at feeds.feedburner.com/dubaiteen .

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Ticket Selling In Dubai

Recently I had to sell some raffle tickets from my school, for some charity drive. Exactly how they never told me, but I assumed that we had to walk door to door, waste our precious time and put up with rude uncharitable people. I'm no salesman, especially the door to door type. I'm into computers and writing, but I can't sell. So I joined up with one of my friends for moral support and set out.

Now the good thing about Dubai is there are plenty of buildings to try, and they aren't very far away from each other. And the area I stayed in was full over Mercedes-owning rich dudeS. I had nine tickets to sell. This is how I did it:

Me (with round innocent looking eyes)- Hello aunty/uncle. We are from ---- school and we are selling these charity raffle tickets. There are many nice prizes you could win like iPods, plasma TVs an'all. Would you like to buy one. It's only Dirhams ten.

I can't write what the person's reaction was as that differed greatly by nationality. This whole raffle-ticket mission was very enlightening as I got a good idea of people's attitude's towards innocent raffle-ticket selling teenagers:

Filipinos: Will here you patiently, appear as if thinking, look very apologetic and then refuse wasting our time and energy.
Indians: Will listen to you impatiently and then quickly buy a ticket, but buy they will.
Europeans: The worst lot. They'll just rudely shut, and many times bang the door on your face for no reason, before you even opened your mouth.

I also developed a good startegy for selling the tickets. The flats with some kind of Hindu signs on their doors, will usually always buy at least one ticket. Hindu signs incude: any kind of shiny stickers with gods printed on them, flowers hanging from the ceiling, 'OM' signs drawn on the door, bells, and other religious embolishments. What I did was go straight to these flats, do bussiness, and try the next floor without even trying the other flats. I mean, what's the point in wasting time?

All in all, this raffle - mission was quite exciting and educational, and I did my bit for the starving children of Africa, but I don't think I'll be selling any more. For those who are reading this, I would sincerely request you to be kind to any children selling raffle tickets at your doorstep, because believe me, they don't get it easy.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

First Ever Post

Hi guys,
I've been thinking for a long while about starting a blog to give way for my opinions. Having lived in Dubai for 7 years of infanthood I have many interesting experiences to relate and many things to criticize. I mean not like some of those complaining folks who write to 7DAYS, but sensible ones anyways. Things only teens and small kids pick up. We pick up quite a bit, you know!

I love talking about this city. So, I thought, why not start a blog? I mean, I've got so many things to talk about. So here is my new blog, which I plan to update regularly, through slow internet and blocked internet, through summer and pre-summer, and through Shopping Festivals and new Mall openings! Keep checking back, as I've got plenty of juicy stuff to tell. A little about me:

Name: DubaiTeen (I don't want scary Arab lawyers hunting me down, you know)
Age: Thirteen, obviously
Place: Dubai
School: Sorry but I don't want you to get a good impression about it!!!

Gotta go now;
Best wishes from Arabia.