Sunil deals with aircraft maintenance design issues - and so he always had cool anecdotes about one of my most adored inventions of mankind - air craft’s. And thanks for him in making me aware of how fragile an aircraft is ....sigh!!! Being an eloquent story spinner/teller Sunil always kept me entertained - for instance, one of the horror story I remember is about how the pilots of Air Transat Flight 236, glided and landed their air craft safely with an empty fuel tank and no power supply - the flight ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean with more than 300 passengers aboard. (YouTube has a terrific video recreation of this accident - highly recommended). And Sunil also cleared most of my naive doubts like whether an air craft has a reverse gear etc...(Air craft has no such gear - for reverse maneuvers a towing vehicle is used). Okay I did not trust all the numbers he quoted, once I had a bad experience of sharing the number of pilots and flights in Emirates, with my two other genius friends who started arguing and later we had to negotiate and reach a settlement :P
Sunil having spent most of his life in Abu dhabi, was relatively new in Dubai and had a great fascination for car navigation (GPS) and soon introduced that to me, I was impressed at how the navigation system would instruct you to take which lane, which left and so on once the coordinates were fed into the system. Pretty cool! And one day we set off with the voice assisted satellite navigator, to book a flat for him in sharjah . Poor navigator was at a loss for words, once we recognized that most of the roundabouts in the old map were now bridges - but luckily I knew the place in Al Khan, and we made it to the destination. Fascinated by GPS and its ability to locate spots like nearby petrol pumps, theatres, parking, shopping etc.. I had that in mind when I finally decided to replace my old phone with an N82 - but I stopped using that feature in the phone soon - I had enough pleasant experiences, me and expert navigator Anish once had a tough night in Abu Dhabi, lost in unknown desert roads trying to reach one place called Al Raha for a get together - Anish never figured out how the GPS in N82 worked but kept on assuring me that we were going in the right direction!! I started relying heavily on route boards since then.
Sunil has promised me and my wife a treat :) (of course once I get married). Yesterday me and Mahesh being chronic bachelors till day, were deriving inspiration from great men like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam etc...who never married - and so guess you will have to wait for some more time Sunil ;). Mahesh (here in after called as Raju mon) plans to adopt an orphan baby and look after it.
2 comments:
Hey Deep,
That was cool. But one mistake i saw was maybe a typo. It should read as quote " Once i flew and not flied" unquote. And by the way one correction or info whatever you call it. Aircraft does not have reverse gear. But they can make the aircraft move backward by deflecting the Thrust reverser (not recommended at all) or you can say highly not recommended at all. I heard that US air force pilots do it quite often. But anyway on the whole it was good. But the sad part is till today i have not be able to buy a GPS. My dream of owning one almost came true just before i went for training to Airbus (France) this January. My friend promised to get me the latest GPS from states. He ordered 2 units. One for me and one for my colleague. This guy was coming from states and it cost 1100 Dhs (Inclusive of tax and conversion from $ to AED) when it was selling for 1600 Dhs here. I and my colleague waited. It was postponed for 2 weeks and then the guy arrived with the GPS unit to DXB and then he went on leave immediately. So we waited for another week and by the time we got it. It was March first week. Then this guy came to our office and said that he had the GPS with him and me and my colleague were thrilled. Then he said that it was in his car dickey and he forgot the car keys as he came along with another colleague. So another week passed and finally the package arrived in our office. And lo after all this waiting. It turned out that this guy had bought only one unit instead of two. It seems he had other things of his own to buy and so was short of money. I told my colleague to take it even thought he refused initially and then took it. Then i had another colleague of mine go to states in March 3rd week. I told him to buy this unit for me and he went to states and the shop where he was looking did not have this unit and they told him that the unit i had requested was outdated. So after that i just gave up hope. Nothing more. Will talk to you later. Take care and enjoy your day.
regards
Sunil N.K.
Thank you
corrected :)
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