Blogosphere: April 15, 2008
Blogosphere: April 15, 2008
Gulf News web editor Adam Flinter plunges headlong into the blogosphere to find out what bloggers from the Middle East and beyond have on their minds.
PICK OF THE WEEK
Yesterday the kids and I went to the UAE Camel Festival in Madinat Zayed near Liwa, about two hours southwest of metropolitan Abu Dhabi. I absolutely loved the entire day, including the drive, because we saw what I've been longing to see more of: the desert.
As we got further into the remote western region of Abu Dhabi, there were fewer and fewer signs in English.
Once at the festival, I asked a police officer for information about the contest and he replied in French.
10 things I've noticed
Rents are showing no signs of stabilising. Apparently food prices are now going up?
Dining al fresco is still possible (yipee!), though not long to go before we're confined indoors.
I no longer recognise Abu Dhabi Corniche. It's heavily under construction.
Traffic into and out of the Emirates Hills area is now at all hours - hardly a luxury.
Dubai Police are conducting more random checks on drivers, making our roads a little safer.
Antibiotics are bad, bad, bad - we need more alternative health practitioners in Dubai.
Carrefour has introduced pay-as-you-go trolleys - keep a dirham handy!
Both etisalat and du still occasionally show "network error" messages on internet connections.
I need to Fly Emirates - soon!
The lazy man's guide to camping
It is no secret that my idea of roughing it is to stay in the Holiday Inn rather than the Four Seasons. So the idea of camping is not something that always fills me with glee.
I always find the thought of camping under the stars, while a romantic idea, the reality is one of an uncomfortable night's sleep followed by an even more difficult morning after, with a distinct lack of ablutions or creature comforts.
However, time with my friends, way out of the city on a beautiful beach makes up for it. That goes without saying. In an effort to make life a little easier here are my tips to have a more enjoyable experience…
Lounge woes
Getting to the airport today, I notice a leaflet that says Silver Skywards members can no longer invite a colleague or other person to join them in the business lounge. The "privilege" will be "temporarily suspended".
Why? Because "given the exceptional growth of Emirates airline, our existing lounge facilities are not able to accommodate the current volume of visitors."
Well, it's nice to see EK confirming what most of us have known for months already - that the current lounge is totally unable to cope with the volume of users, particularly at busy times like the 7-8am rush. Wiser heads know to nip next door and use the DCA lounge.
Facebook sweep
I lately gave my Facebook profile an overhaul. Cleaned some useless apps, deleted all emails and removed many "friends" I did not know from my list.
That revealed some interesting statistics about my Facebook friends list. Here is what I found out:
Two are not with us anymore - both passed away earlier this year.
Three ex-girlfriends - talk about awkwaaaard.
One is an exhibitionist.
Five are very radical political activists. Some of their posts could get me into trouble.
About six or seven friends turned from being totally Westernised, into extremely conservative, right-wing religious.
About a dozen I honestly, truly, do not remember anything about. But somehow they remember every detail of our one-time-only-met-via-common-friend encounter 10 years ago.
About three or four friends who were never ever nice to me back in college, work... etc. I don't know why am I keeping them.
Maybe I should give my friends list another sweep... what do you think?
http://dubaiconsumermirror.blogspot.com/
The Awakening...
Camouflage smoke in the GZ is a new phenomena. Nooooo, I don't mean the "whooshy" smoke but cig smokes. In my three years here, I can say that 99.7 per cent of the military that work with me are non-smokers.
Not only non-smokers, but they have those annoying personalities where if they see you smoke they give you an hour-long lecture about how "unhealthy" cigs are for you. Bla bla bla. Rolling my eyes.
But recently I have started seeing both men and women in uniform hiding in the courtyard corner smoking. The courtyard that was once filled with just us "contractors" is now being invaded.
Is it the stress that drives people to smoke? I think that's what it is. I know a few who told me they had quit smoking for 15 or 20 years and started again when they came here.
Yup, this place makes you pick up a lot of "bad" habits. I guess I need to get used to seeing smoke in camouflage.
Robots
I chat a lot. I practically grew up online; socialising with as many people in cyberspace as in real-life. The former are always more interesting than real-life people, and they usually stay that way until you meet them.
So to me, the idea of having a good conversation is very much related to a messenger of some sort. It started with IRC, then evolved into MSN and later GTalk. That's not to mention my enduring SMSophilia and the fortunes I spent over the years on witty, neat, short text messages.
As such, I seek good conversation all the time. This brings us to the point of this thus-far pointless post: the idea of having two robots chat together is so very intriguing. I just found out about it by chance while googling for something completely different.
