Nature and her backlash

The headlines are terrifying...

More than 6.2 million people without power.

Hurricane Sandy unravels into post-tropical storm.

Superstorm Sandy slams East Coast leaving 17 people dead across 5 states, causing massive blackouts and flooding.

Pitted against Nature & her fierce elements how small our efforts appear. It is only when calamities of such magnitude appear do we realise how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things.

Praying for the safety of the affected.
Hoping everything gets back to normal soon.
Stay safe everyone!!! Prayers and best wishes!!!

15. The Lost Chambers

At the Entrance

During the summer holidays we had visited the “The Lost Chambers” at Atlantis. I was not very happy with the pictures I had taken and so had decided against putting them up on the blog. Now when I’m running out of subjects to blog about, the same pictures don’t look half so bad:-)).

The Atlantis is a famous hotel resort at Palm Jumeriah and without a doubt a must-visit-atleast-once tourist attraction of Dubai. 

The Abyss

The Lost Chambers is a series of inter-connected chambers(around 10 I think) with a theme. It boasts of maintaining 65,000 marine inhabitants. A lot of thought has gone into creating this amazing experience. 

JellyFish

The beautiful layout, lighting, recreation of habitat, the stunning displays, the astounding number of underwater species all combine to create a very unique and special one-in-a-lifetime aquarium experience.

LionFish

The whole experience if done quickly takes about 20-30 minutes but I’d encourage you to stay and explore. Read up all the material given alongside and make it worthwhile. 

StarFish & fish camouflaging themselves in sand 

There is no time restriction which means you can spend the whole day inside if you feel like it. Did you know watching fish is therapeutic according to Scientists? 

Seats to relax in and watch fish are placed in front of these tanks

Most of the aquariums have a seating arrangement; you can just lean back and let the fish lazily swimming in and out of the foliage mesmerise you.

Lobsters

My whole experience was ruined by a group of local children who used the dark chambers and its ambience as a backdrop for battle and ambush; shrieks and screams punctuated the atmosphere as they jumped out of dark corners and scared their friends But once they left it was calm and serene once more.

Sea-Horse

The whole experience is priced at 100dhs per person and the general verdict is that it is quite steep. If you[or anybody in the group] are carrying an emirates id with you then you can get a 25% discount on the ticket price. On the other hand, if you are a guest at Atlantis then the whole experience is free.

The lagoon

The whole experience is surreal like visiting a lost world. It’s definitely worth one visit and   children will love it.

14. On Mute

I feel like I am standing behind a huge sheet of glass and watching the world go by.

I can see the sea roaring and the waves powerfully crashing against the land but can’t hear a thing.

I see cars and other vehicles zooming past in unbelievable speed but can only hear the air-conditioner humming in my ear.

I can see children playing boisterously in the park but when I strain my ears I can only hear the wall-clock quietly ticking away.

____________________________________

Keywords: Eid, holidays, looong, stay indoors, boring, disappointment, all because I fell sick:-((

13. Tendjewberrymud

By the end of the conversation you'll understand the word[@title]

Read aloud for best results. Be warned, you're may find yourself talking "funny" for a while after reading this. 

This has been nominated for best email of 1999.

___________________________________________________

The following is a telephone exchange between a hotel guest and room-service at a hotel in Asia, which was recorded and published in the Far East Economic Review.

Room Service (RS): "Morny. Ruin sorbees"

Guest (G): "Sorry, I thought I dialled room-service"

RS: "Rye..Ruin sorbees..morny! Djewish to odor sunteen??"

G: "Uh..yes..I'd like some bacon and eggs"

RS: "Ow July den?"

G: "What??"

RS: "Ow July den?...pry, boy, pooch?"

G : "Oh, the eggs! How do I like them? Sorry, scrambled please."

RS: "Ow July dee bayhcem...crease?"

G: "Crisp will be fine."

RS: "Hokay. An San tos?"

G: "What?"

RS: "San tos. July San tos?"

G: "I don't think so"

RS: "No? Judo one toes??"

G: "I feel really bad about this, but I don't know what 'judo one toes' means."

RS: "Toes! toes!...why djew Don Juan toes? Ow bow singlish mopping we bother?"

G: "English muffin!! I've got it! You were saying 'Toast.' Fine. Yes, an English muffin will be fine."

RS: "We bother?"

G: "No..just put the bother on the side."

RS: "Wad?"

G: "I mean butter...just put it on the side."

RS: "Copy?"

G: "Sorry?"

RS: "Copy...tea...mill?"

G: "Yes. Coffee please, and that's all."

RS: "One Minnie. Ass ruin torino fee, strangle ache, crease baychem, tossy singlish mopping we bother honey sigh, and copy....rye??"

G: "Whatever you say"

RS: "Tendjewberrymud"

G: "You're welcome"

A Dozen Wishes:-))

&

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

11. Some Cool Facts

# Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch procejt at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosnt mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter.

# If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

# The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the males head off.

# Astronauts cannot burp in space.

#The blue whales tongue weighs more than an adult elephant.
Its heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

#The average French citizen eats 500 snails per year.
Any French citizen care to confirm this?????

#Pepsi-cola was originally called Brad’s drink.

#The word Tips is actually an acronym standing for “To Insure Prompt Service”

#The giant South African earthworm can grow up to 22 feet long & 1 inch in thickness.

#Virginia Woolf wrote all her books standing.

#The banana tree cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.

#India has a bill of Rights for cows.

#The Hippo's milk is Pink.

#To take an oath, ancient Romans put a hand on their testicles.

#A group of geese on the ground is called a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein.

#The Pacific island of Nauri’s economy is almost entirely based on bird droppings.

#The US Government spent $277,000 on pickle research in 1993.
Now I've heard everything.

#Smelling bananas and/or green apples[smelling, not eating] can help u lose weight.
NOW I've heard everything.

#A completely blind chameleon will still take on the colours of its environment.
Cooool huh!!!!

#Another name for a Microsoft Windows tutorial is ‘Crash Course’.
Heee…..sooo funny;-D

#Clinophobia is the fear of beds.

#The world’s youngest parents were 8 & 9 and lived in China in 1910.

#In an average lifetime a person will walk the equivalent of 3 times around the world.

#Grapes explode when u heat them in the microwave.

#Most people who read the word ‘yawning’ will yawn.
I didn’t. Did u????
Alright I felt like it but suppressed it ruthlessly;-).

10 points for 9na

Naina

She loves books. If we let her she will read all the time. When she wakes up in the morning and finds nobody around she’ll quickly put on her glasses run to the book-shelf, choose a book and scoot back into the covers to read. Even if she watching a movie she’ll have a book with her, you know just incase. When we go out she'll try to stuff a book into her tiny bag or mine......

She loves her parents no doubts but her heart beats for her sister. She just can’t bear it if Nikita is out of her sight[only exception is school], she’ll clock-watch and drive us crazy with “How many minutes more….???”

She got selected to sing in the school choir this year and is over the moon. Just like chechi. Nikita though is not very excited;-P

Did I say she loves books??? Almost every conversation with her starts off with regard to some book.
“Why did Harry have to fight Voldemort??? Why couldn’t Dumbledore who is more powerful fight Voldemort???”[She has read the 1^st 4 books the rest I’ve locked away promising to give her one each year].
“What is Appendicitis??? Sally Hope in Malory Towers was in terrible pain because she had appendicitis.”
“Mama, is New York a very dangerous place??” When I look puzzled she explains with a puzzled look herself “Frank and Joe live in New York and they always have terrible things happening to them”

Give her burgers & French fries 3 times a day 7 days a week she will never complain which is why we've stopped asking her opinion on where we should dine.

Compared to her sister she is very laid-back. Nikita is the kind who will shake the tree and then dive to catch the fruit mid-air. Meanwhile you’ll find Naina already under the same tree, mouth wide open hoping a grape or two will fall directly into her mouth. Which reminds me of an incident…

Nikita was playing a game on my iphone & grumbling away about its deficiencies[one of the oldest models you see].
“I’ll study hard and when I grow big I’ll get a nice job and earn good money and buy myself the latest iphone. Then I will be able to load all the latest games I want.”
“Even me” chimed in Naina.
Nikita: How???? You need to study hard to get a good job you know.
Naina: I’m going to marry a Sheikh.

She is a good mimic and sometimes enacts interactions between the teachers & her classmates. Sometimes it’s so funny I get a stomach-ache. Her latest inspiration is Mathilda’s mother[a dumb blonde] from the movie “Mathilda”[based on the novel of the same name by Roald Dahl].

Very, very shy when she meets somebody for the 1^st time. She will not even look up to meet their gaze. Will just nod and smile with eyes fixed to the ground. She’ll hang around the peripherals and watch Nikita who would have taken charge by thenJ. Once she’s sure everybody’s attention is off her she’ll slowly join in.

People who meet us for the 1^st time always comment on our resemblance. But none of the family members including me can see it.

But her characteristics, every single one of them[except for the mimic-ing ability] reminds me of me;-P

9na

Sorry I just couldn't resist it[@ post-title].....I'll post something on Naina tomorrow. 

Even my last post-title was misleading. I can't for the life of me now think why I wrote “Dog ate my blog-post” in my subject-line yesterday.

For one thing, we don’t have a dog.

The kids have been asking for one for sometime now.

But the apartment we stay in don’t allow pets.

Thank goodness for that.

Don’t mistake me, I love dogs but I can’t imagine keeping a dog in an apartment. I’ve explained to the kids that animals need open spaces to run around or they’ll be sad and fall sick. We've agreed that they can have one when we go back to India.

Which brings me back to what I wanted to say….I’ve been sick for 2 days now. Had severe body-pain and flu. At the med-centre they told me I had 102 deg temperature. Was diagnosed with the ‘Infection of the Month’ and sent back home with heavy-duty antibiotics.

Feeling better today…a bit weak but so much better than yesterday.

Yesterday this time I was sick as a dog.

Dog 8 the post I was working on...

When copywriter Robert Pirosh landed in Hollywood in 1934, eager to become a screenwriter, he wrote and sent the following letter to all the directors, producers, and studio executives he could think of. The approach worked, and after securing three interviews he took a job as a junior writer with MGM.

Pirosh went on to write for the Marx Brothers, and in 1949 won an Academy Award for his Battleground script.

(Source: Dear Wit.)

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as strait-laced  cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave "V" words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land's-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around. 

I have just returned and I still like words. 

May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh
385 Madison Avenue
Room 610
New York
Eldorado 5-6024

Taken from here 

The 7th day

When I first came to Dubai in 1999 I was relieved to see that I didn’t have to make drastic changes to my life-style. Wherever I went I was surrounded by my country-men; Indian food was available everywhere, Indian clothes were prominently displayed in shop windows. Except for poppy seeds[khus-khus] everything else is sold openly [anybody found carrying or selling Khus-khus will face imprisonment upto 20 yrs because it comes under the drugs category].

I’m digressing here;-P. Coming back to the subject, there was one thing out here in the Middle East which took some getting used to.

The weekends.

Weekends originally fell on Thursday and Friday. I used to find it so different initially. Then around 7 yrs back the authorities changed it to Friday and Saturday. And so it has remained till today. It still took some getting used to.

When one has been going to church on Sundays all their lives, dressing up in Sunday best on Fridays took some getting used to. Children go to Sunday school on FridaysJ.

Actually I’m even prepared to overlook this but can you just imagine getting up early on a Sunday to go to work. That’s right, Sundays are working days out here. Adults get up early to get ready to go to work and children to school. I still haven’t gotten used to this. Even now when I wake up early Sunday morning I think wryly “Poor kids, imagine going to school on a Sunday;-)”

Easter Sunday is a holiday which is taken for granted everywhere else in the world but out here in the Middle East it is a working day. We need to apply for leave to spend time with family on this day.

Some interesting facts about Sunday:

Sunday is observed as a day for worship of God and rest, as the belief among Christians is that it is Lord's Day, the day of Christ's resurrection.

Sunday is a day of rest in most Western countries, part of 'the weekend'.

In most Muslim countries, and Israel, Sunday is a working day.

According to the Hebrew calendars and traditional Christian calendars, Sunday is the first day of the week.

According to the International Organization for Standardization ISO 8601 Sunday is the seventh and last day of the week.

In Russian the word for Sunday is Воскресенье (Voskreseniye) which means "Resurrection".

In other Slavic languages the word means "no work", for example Polish: Niedziela, Belorussian: Нядзеля, Croatian: Nedjelja, Serbian and Slovenian: Nedelja, Czech: Neděle,Bulgarian: Неделя.

In the United States and Canada, government buildings are closed on Sunday, with a lesser number being closed on Saturday as well.

National and regional elections in Belgium and Peru are always on Sunday, because voting is mandatory.

Sunday is associated with the Sun and symbolized by its symbol ☉.

In Puritan times, to be born on a Sunday was interpreted as a sign of great sin. Puritans believed that children born on the Sabbath Day were conceived on this sacred day. Sexual intercourse on Sundays was a sacrilege in this austere society. As a result, Benjamin Franklin's birth on Sunday, January 6, 1706, had the potential to cause the young Franklin ignominious shame for life. To remove suspicion and eschew the scandal of having a "child of the Devil", Josiah, Benjamin's father, had Franklin quickly baptized on the same day of his birth.

Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."

The term “Black Sunday” is used to refer to historical events which occurred on a Sunday, or the names of several creative works.

"Cold Sunday" was a meteorological event which took place on January 17, 1982, when unprecedentedly cold air swept down fromCanada and plunged temperatures across much of the United States far below existing all-time record lows.

And a fun fact…

A sundae is called a sundae because long ago, religious laws of Illinois banned Sunday consumption of Ice Cream/Ice Cream sodas; it was stated these ice cream sodas were too "sinful" to be eaten on a Sunday. So the spelling was changed to sundae to avoid offending religious conventions;-D.