Afghani

I had a little conversation with a cab driver last night and it really pulled me down to earth - I thought I'd share it.

On the way from my hotel to a night out I got in a cab with a driver from Afghanistan. He started by asking me where I'm from, what I do, etc, etc.. usual cab talk here. He spoke good Hindi and my Hindi isn't the greatest in the world, I think I am more shy to speak it than anything else, even though I understand it perfectly well. Anyway, he then said your Hindi isn't bad considering you have grown up in Southern India and then lived in the U.S. for some time.

I guess he had some things to get out of his system or something.. cos he then asked me "why when Indians go to the U.S. they forget their mother tongues? Russian is never forgotten, Chinese is never forgotten, Japanese is never forgotten etc, but the Indian always thinks his language is not 'cool' enough to remember". He said I was a good example though, cos I still remember my languages.

Then came the sad part.. he asked me if I'd ever heard of Afghanistan.. I said of course and that I wanted to visit it someday because I heard it is very beautiful, but am almost scared to go there. He then started to talk about his children who are still in Afghanistan (somewhere near Kabul) because he can't afford to bring them to Dubai. He has 2 sons, one 10 and one 7 and he is trying to get them both through school. Apparently the 7 year old has been telling him that he doesn't want to study anymore, but wants to train in arms so that some day he can join 'a famous militia'. A 7 year old kid wanting to give up his books and toys for guns. The cab driver got a little teary eyed and said "what kind of society do we live in where little children are encouraged by their peers to take up guns instead of studies?"

The cab driver said he saves as much money as he can so that he can put his sons through school - a school that costs him AED 150 per month ($41) per child. He also said that there is a school that costs AED 2,500 per month ($680!!) per child. He would really like to put his children in that school, but can't afford it.

Hearing his story made me realize how lucky some of us are and how we more than often take it for granted.

Desert to Snow

There aren't too many other places in the world where you can do this.. actually there is no other place in the world where this can be done.

Last weekend, I went on a Desert Safari - basically dune bashing in a 4x4, ATV riding and then a barbecue with entertainment in the desert. It was a lot of fun. All the vehicles that were in the desert were all Toyota Landcruisers.. I got to drive ours for a little bit and it was a LOT of fun! After driving up and down and sideways on the sand dunes for about an hour, we got back to our camp where we were able to ride the dunes in small and underpowered ATV's. I'm definitely going back to the desert to ride some of those real ATV's and go sand surfing, which I wasn't able to do last time. After the ATV ride, we got to have a few drinks, smoke a hookah and then have dinner. There was also a belly dancer... I really wasn't impressed.. but it was the experience that counted I guess.



The next day, I went to Ski Dubai! From the Desert to the Snow. The snow was actually good, there was about 2in of powder. The only disappointment was how short the run was. I guess I shouldn't expect too much in an indoor snow 'hill' in the middle of the desert. It was fun nevertheless. The weirdest part of it all was going to Ski Dubai wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, then changing into boarding clothes, going snowboarding.. finishing after 2 hours, coming out and changing into shorts and t-shirt again! There was no running to the frozen car, turning on the heater and sitting there freezing until the car heats up. Neither was the 2 hours car ride back home. The lack of those took away from the whole experience, but I wasn't complaining too much. 150AED ($41) gets you a 2 hours pass, board, shoes, pants and jacket. Not too bad. Definitely going there as much as I can.

(sorry for the crappy picture - was taken with my cell phone. I'll take a better one next time)

Accident

We were just minding our business stopped in traffic on the on-ramp to the Al-Makhtoum bridge in Dubai when the truck in front of us filled with gas tanks (yikes) has a gearbox 'malfunction'. Instead of being in first gear, the truck was put in reverse gear. Who was behind the truck?? Us. What happened?

Look at the unfortunate placement of the dolly

No one was hurt, that was the good thing, other than the car that is. Sorry Echo.

Denied

So over here, there is a huge emphasis on blocking content that is not consistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values. The only other place I have seen this happen is in China. It is actually quite interesting that there is a group/company (I'd imagine) that is responsible for blocking such sites. There have been instances when Facebook, Myspace, YouTube have been blocked.

Also, if you buy certain magazines (GQ for example), you will find several pages that have been edited for content, and by that I mean someone has taken a black marker and blacked out areas of the page. I'd imagine that the person marking all these pages off must get bored going through an entire magazine and blacking out things. That person would not one do this on one magazine, but every copy of it sold here. I am sure GQ is not the only magazine that needs the 'editing'. I wonder if the cost of this persons labor is factored into the cost of the magazine here. :)

2008 F1 Season

So it seems like the 2008 Formula 1 season is going to be very interesting. Last minute jumping around of drivers leaves the line up pretty different from this year. Alonso just signed a $50,000,000 per year agreement with Renault of all teams (considering their dismal performance this year). He got a good deal though, at $50M per year, he will be the highest paid F1 driver. He is going to make more than Kimi Raikkonen in 2008. Apart from that, Alonso is going to get minimal sponsor commitments and an exit clause that will basically allow him to leave when ever he wants.

So, it looks like McLaren might end up with Heikki Kovalainen, who in my honest opinion has great talent, but hasn't had the right machine until now. We all know by now that Hamilton has the talent, it is going to be very interesting to see what Kovalainen can do with the same car.

This means that Renault is going to have Alonso and Nelson Piquet Jr. (Nelsinho). NP Jr. has been considered to be a great talent for a while now and with one year of testing with Renault behind him, he could be a great challenge to Alonso (are we going to see another rookie challenge the once 2 time champion??) One thing Renault is going to have is a good driver line up, what they can do with their new car (R28) is another story and one that we will have to wait till end of January to find out.

Ferrari meanwhile is going to retain its pretty successful line up and with good reason. Lets just hope that they start off next year in the same form they ended this year, and hopefully, we will see a repeat of last years Australian Grandprix!

So all this brings me to one question, if I am still going to be in Dubai when next season starts, where should I go (if I decide to do so and can afford it)? My choices are and the respective r/t flight tickets;

Melbourne - $1,300
Kuala Lumpur - $800
Bahrain - $700
Istanbul - $500!

Seems like a pretty easy decision based on the cost of the flight ticket alone, but the later in the year it gets, the less likely I will be in Dubai... thereby making it very difficult to be able to make a decision. If I wait to find out whether I will be here or not, the tickets are probably going to get more and more expensive.

I am stuck with a conundrum.

X-Games DXB 2007

The X-Games were in Dubai. Apparently this has been happening every year since 2005. But this year, they changed it to competition format, which meant that the stunts these guys were pulling were that much more crazy! I've started to realize that almost every event in the future is going to take place in the UAE. Formula 1 (http://www.abudhabigp.com/english/), Justin Timberlake was just here, so was 50-Cent, Santana is coming in Feb, the Dubai Tennis Open is also around the corner. Gosh. Anyway, here are some pictures from the X-Games 2007, that were here this weekend.



I have posted some more on my photo collection here: http://picasaweb.google.com/athreyap