Waterfall & Fountains

Evening began with plans for a movie, and the three of us decided to head for metroplex in downtown. All the displayed movies seemed lousy and having endured the terminator salvation in the gone weekend, we agreed in chorus that we will scoot and instead visit the much hyped Dubai fountain.

The outdoor climate in Dubai is beyond description now a days, even after sunset you dont feel like stepping outside( betwee 50.2 degrees was the recorded maximum temperature yesterday and that too with 100 Percent relative humidity), so entering the cool air conditioned Dubai mall was really a relief thing. Mostly for the population in UAE, the choicest summer destinations/outings are these centrally air conditioned colossal malls.

Naturally, now we wanted to have another peek at the breath taking indoor aquarium, which is the grand attraction of this mall. This is a huge aquarium about 50m x 20m and almost three storey’s tall , filled up with about 10 million litres of water. Here you get to see a pristine deep blue aquarium with more than 33000 living marine animals and “finding nemo” ocean floor ambience. It has a 48 m long transparent tunnel at ground level running through its length and gives you a chance to be up close and personal with the romantic sharks and sting rays.

A little walk from here takes you to another soothing and mind blowing place – the indoor waterfalls - I was seeing this for the first time yesterday and was impressed. This artificial fall is about 3 storey’s high and the gurgling sounds of the water cascading down to the pool is truly relaxing and so natural.

We wanted to enjoy this relaxing atmosphere for a while and chose to try out the Entrecote Café de Paris – which is snugly located at the base of this waterfall phenomenon – the name of the café sure did sound trouble. The friendly steward placed a 2 tiered metal apparatus on the table and tried to explain their wonderful custom of serving some odd salad - strangely this did not excite us much – we enquired if we can have some hot beverages alone. The guy was sorry and mentioned that they don’t allow that. We ended up ordering brownies aux noix and three types of coffee, the names of which would instantly make the reader skip to the next guys blog (ഈശ്വരാ …...പുട്ടും കടലയും കഴിച്ചു നടന്ന പിള്ളാരൊക്കെ ഇപ്പോള്‍ ബ്രൌണീസ് aux noix-e കഴിക്കു ...).

Soon after the Italian adventure we headed to see another inspiring Dubai wonder – the Dubai fountain which is located in the compound of this mall itself. By the way, Dubai mall is located at the foot of the tallest tower Burj Dubai, and this happens to be the prime location of downtown.

The Burj dubai lake was silent with soft music in the open air. To our left side is the beautifully lit up Burj lake hotel and to the right is the still under construction Burj Dubai sky scraper. Some time in the past, I had been to the Burj lake hotel couple times, during its construction and then these neighbourhood were of a typical dusty construction site, but now it has transformed to an adorable place. We waited and waited....no fountains - by the time we had doubts whether the fountains were no more operated for the unpaid electricity bills, the show started.

The lights went dim and music went up – boy, it was one of the most fascinating spectacles I had seen in a long time. It is said that the fountain shoots water to heights of over 150 metres ( about the height of a 50 storey building). And once the fountain is operational, at any given moment about 22000 gallons of water is in the air! The water jets illuminated by terrific lighting, dances in all possible intricate eyecandy 3D patterns you could ever imagine, to the music being played - and you will crave for more once the music stops. We waited for a second round and this time the music changed from western classical to Arabic – once again words fail – you have to see it to believe it.

Being close to the lake, we were soaked in the spray and that was when Mahesh mentioned about the pending sewage analysis of the lakes water. The lakes water had turned greenish recently due to some contamination...it did taste good...well lets find out in the coming days :D

Wonders apart its sickening to think about the huge energy consumption for the maintanence of these stuff and the consequent environmental effects. Well swim on... I offer my hollow apologies to the ecology.

Roads & Radars

For people like me who spent most of their lives in India, there is a period of awe after setting our foot in a highly developed country like UAE – and one such awe-inspiring aspect is its excellent road networks and the wonderful cars speeding on these freeways.

During my initial days in DXB, I once had the opportunity of standing under a road bridge near Jebel Ali, and by being a stationary observer near the highway, i experienced the real momentum of the cars zipping by.. This particular road which connects Dubai and Abu Dhabi is known as Sheikh Zayed Road and is notorious for its fatal collisions (if you are a new driver, the only way to survive this road is to assume that you are cool with speeding) - In fact you feel nothing particular inside a car cruising at 120 or 140 kmph, and this is further damped with the increase in size and power of the car. Dreadful DXB!

I never figured out why Dubai is referred to as DXB, its the international airport code for Dubai - well, googling shows that Dublin airport has the code DUB, may be Dubai was late in setting up her airports - and had to settle for X instead of U, (hmm..as per high school math, X could be anything) or is it because of the X factor of DXB? i rest my case.

Back to roads : Few years back, it was just a matter of few journeys and one would get acquainted with the exact location of radars installed on way, just brake and slow down near a waiting radar and enjoy the remaining stretches at desired speed levels. Bejourn, a German engineer in my previous site used to claim that, by driving above 300kmph on the extreme left or right track, one could puzzle the camera and escape being clicked, useful piece of info, but the current radars and traffic fine system will make you think thrice...the fine multiplies in proportion to the variance from the maximum posted speed limit. The traffic department have recently implemented a new speed radar network in dangerous roads – these sleek networked radars spaced roughly at a kilometer has overlapping detection zones…the driver is forced to keep cool and this also caters for those radar-early-warning detectors some people install in their vehicles. The rumour mills even claimed that these advanced gadgets could identify if the driver is wearing a seat belt!!

Anyway the good news is that the crazy driving and consequentely fatal accidents are on a notable decline & bad news is that poor Mahesh had two violations on same day worth Dirhams 1200 this weekend.

TIP : if you want to be a celebrity, cross a red signal and park in the intersection, one driver of my previous company had this wish list item crossed during a rainy day, the coaster bus he was driving skidded while braking, and turned 180 degrees around, in the middle of a signalized intersection in Abu dhabi, and he had the rare opportunity to face the opposite direction of the road he was supposed to be driving. And the cameras never stopped clicking. Poor guy had a bad time pleading with the traffic police.

hmph… perhaps one of the reason for the speedy recovery of Dubai from the grips of financial crisis could be the revenue generated through traffic fines.

Food festival, Astrology

Wednesday evening me anlal n mahesh planned to meet up and decided to check out the food fiesta-09 in Lulu hypermarket - we couldnt find anything particularly interesting there, other than a couple of ladies cooking frantically in the wide corridor, participating in some cookery competition and a by and large bored audience...

We had food from Salkara - a real nice restaurant that treats you with delicious kerala dishes in Gods own country flavours. Intrigued by the guys in the next table having this mysterious looking beverage, we tried the "special tea"- you get a transparent glass with about 40% black tea topped up with thick milk froth. But unfortunately, after the ritual of stirring it, you are left with normal tea, anyway, i loved the flavour (yummy...for some strange reason i dont like this particular word, awesome is another, and there are lots more in my personal list of unpalatable english words).

Anlal then told us about an astrologer/palmistry expert visiting Dubai, who had predicted and read him precisely sometime in the past. Mostly I regard astrology/palmistry as a pseudo science and further, if it is all written beforehand, there is no point in holding on to the concept of free will. Anyways since our curiosity was stirred, me and Mahesh promptly decided to meet this astrologer in the weekend to have a glimpse of our future. Hope curiosity wont kill our cats...

We did bit of shopping and headed to our favorite hangout spot - the deserted parking lot in Qusais...we tried some fruits from the food festival sitting in the trunk of Mahesh's car, and he was threatening to close the door on us when ever we pulled his leg...mysteriously, mahesh found himself snugly tucked up in the dickey after a while...

Now as we started getting bored, we decided to test the anti theft security system of the altima by allowing mahesh to drive it while the key was outside, the display in the dash shows a "no key" warning, but the expected security feature was a total failure, the engine did not stall and mahesh drove the car around merrily without the key... Later i looked up in the user manual and figured out that, only if the car is switched off, the Vehicle Immobilizer System feature engages and only if all the doors and trunk are locked the anti theft alarm enters its armed phase...useful info...gulp!

(As usual), while mahesh was driving in zig zags thrilled for the failure of the security system, a white 4 wheel drive with an RTA sticker, pulled up, and the suspicious official asked mahesh to show his licence, he thought some friends were practicing driving lessons...the gentleman left the scene once we explained to him the importance of the anti theft testing procedure under progress, thankfully he did not notice the other two cars parked in the middle of the road haphazardly.

So the astrology appointment was before 8:00 PM on friday and we almost made it just before his office closed - we were infact delayed by our unplanned weekend road trip to Sweihan/Al-Ain. All three of us entered the office with the mindset of attending a job interview, and there was this palmist guy with a laptop, a lens and a counch shell. After an eloquent briefing on palmistry basics - he read our palms, one by one - inputs being our zodiac sign and age. Good news for me - Saturn's occlusion effect on Jupiter's blessing is almost going to cease by 10 September 2009.

Gadgets and Guys

Recently I happened to read a fun article in some magazine advising single women, on which type of men they should avoid marrying; much to my amusement, one of the categories was the guys who are obsessed with gadgets ;)

For justice sake we need to write an article on all those goofy article authors who have no other job than writing articles on such dangerous topics. I have temporarily made a decision to deny and refute all the so called 'proven-statistically' articles. Need of the hour is articles that could make life simpler and more realistic.

So our friend bought an Apple i-phone - and we appreciate this bold move promoting positive consumer outlook during the doomed world economic situation, especially as he had reluctantly cancelled his genuine requirement of a laptop couple days back due to mixed signals from stock markets...so let’s categorize this as obsessive impulsive purchasing (OIP) TM, another psychological term impending to be coined.

When asked about the above comparison chart, in particular item 2, which is a standard feature people reasonably would not mind when paying for a gadget worth a decent laptop, the i-phone enthusiast responded emotionally by pointing fingers at recent alarming rate of mobile phone scandals...

well well well....thats a valid cause...not bad, but still an i-phone is a sought after gadget...cool user interface, easy to read screen, and touch screen at its best...Last day the waiter in Rolla Sharavana Bhavan restaurant was staring at me curiously while I was practicing firing a flame torch in this i-phone by blowing air on the touch screen. Little does the waiter know about the fun of creating virtual fire ;)

That evening turned bit dramatic once our i-phone owner stated that his class mate is now the general manager of a renown developer in India. And knowing that Company’s global presence and having watched one of the funniest movies "to harihar nagar" just before that dinner, none of us would agree with the statement, so the whole evening was dedicated to him for we started relating everything to "appukuttan" (the funny character portrayed by Jagdish in the movie). Appukuttan soon turned Thomaskutty and assumed a cold war for next 24 hours - we made up after two days during another dinner and that was when we had to deal with yet another gadget wielding friend of ours - Amal - he got an i-mate PDA - and since his wife is back in Kerala, he is 24/7 busy with a stylus pen scratching zigzags in that gadget.

There is a new genre of strain injury viz, "blackberry thumb" caused by the frequent use of the thumb(s) to press buttons on PDAs, smart phones, or other mobile devices, this condition is known as de Quervian tenosynovitis, said the authentic looking Doctor, in another thumb numbing internet article ( Disclaimer : I take no responsibility for wrong diagnosis of any thumb disease the reader might be having). The cure is relatively simple, stop texting in the device & take a break. Forward me the consultation fees, I accept PayPal, cash...you name it :)

Now having said so much about gadgets, my little nephew dismantled his favorite car and was buzzing around in the living room with the front wheels yesterday evening - and when I stopped him as police, and asked what the matter was - he testified it was his vacuum cleaner... did someone say kids have no idea about gadgets? He could login to the computer at age of 2, type his name as password, play games, change options in games, watch movies.......and furthermore, he could locate and open the desired applications in a symbian phone in a matter of seconds - (that reminds me of how I painstakingly created my yahoo email account during college days with the aid of our then internet savvy friend Abhilash Vijayan. Internet was apparently at its infancy in kerala households those days).

Poor little nephew...

ignorance is a bliss !

as per our article he is going to have a tough time dating & matchmaking!!!