Hear n’ There

Tiring week this. Couple of things that I wanted to straighten up are completely out of track now. Frustration is the word when things like these happen. Depressing is the word when frustration keeps happening.

The only productive thing I have managed to do so far is to get used to lack of sleep. What a nice feeling to have a sleepless day of lectures in college after sleeping for only four hours. Meanwhile about half my batch have left for home which means fewer people in the hostel to have fun. Still I am eagerly looking forward to about the ten days of holidays. Eid shall also mean that no longer do shops not sell food in the afternoon or not being allowed to eat in public; effectively making all fast with the rest of the Emirates. It also means that malls will be crowded during sane hours. By crowded I hope you know what I mean.

Watched Don today. The movie is definitely much better than what the lame trailers show it to be. The twists are amazing, haven’t seen a movie with such a script in a long time. Only if Shahrukh could dance better than that horrible hip shaking. Trying to do a Shakira at this age must be tough. Botox may work, but hips don’t lie.

Eh, I just wrote that morning hours are sane. If my working hours are any indication of sanity, then that may indicate that I am insane. Hoof, never denied that, did I?

This post is about the ten things that I hate most about Dubai. But isn’t that too cliched? Ten things about so and so. The list is then cropped to seven. Oh damn, there is now a guy who writes about Seven habits of highly effective people and seven ways of so and so. Those seven habits which do no good to anyone except give the author royalties in seven figures. Since I am far from being effective in any sense lest you count annoying people, even seven is now out of question. But isn’t it cool not to do things that everyone does? So here is my list of six things I hate about Dubai, when I think from an Indian perspective. Coolio, innit?

1) The heat. I haven’t been here during the peak summer season. I wish not, it still gets hot enough here. Unlike Bombay summers which makes one sweat as if it is raining,this rather feels like you are being roasted and cooked like Shawarma. Consolation? Unlike Bombay, everything from the buses to the loos are centrally air-conditioned.

2) The traffic. Takes me two hours and fifteen minutes to get to my hostel from college. Morning takes less than an hour, but that is because we leave early, that is six am for you. Leaving for hour fifteen minutes late means reaching there an hour earlier. The Porsches and Ferraris are starting to bore me now. I rather see them race, than look at them as if they are parked in the middle of a fancy road. Bombay or Delhi, you win there.

3) Proxies. There is just one internet/telephone service here. Even Bill Gates could learn some monopoly lessons from Etisalat. Warez, Pornography, Flickr, Social networking even blog sites have been blocked (Do click, nice one). Many of them are blocked and unblocked periodically. This is worse than China. The people there atleast protest, or atleast Americans do it for them. But did you know this existed in UAE? Hope things will improve, another telecom company is about to open soon. Yeah they do burn paintings and ban books back home. Even the whole of blogspot was blocked because some teenager’s rants posted a threat to national security. India is still a much more a freer country, atleast blogspot was unblocked within days.

4)Expensive. This country is not as expensive as others, especially if you account that its a tax-free nation. But being the Indian that I am, I convert everything into Rupees which keeps reminding me that I could have what all for the same amount. The only items cheaper here are electronics and fuel. Things whose even monthly interest I cannot pay if I were to buy them on loan. I do not know about the engineering degree, but I am sure I am going back home with multiplication tables of 12.5 (1 AED= 12.5 INR) etched right at the back of my head.

5)Conservativeness. Every culture has its own traditions and foreigners are expected to respect them. I do. But that is no reason for me not to dislike them. They constitute laws on clothes, drinking, freedom of speech. Just so many restrictions make me uneasy. Even if Chief minister of Tamil-Nadu Jayalalitha, gets editors arrested for being a pain in her ass, at least Indians still call her a politician with a waistline five times the normal human’s, and brain a tenth of a retarted chimpanzee.

6)This just ain’t India. Yeah just that. Lived there long enough to miss it. Where one can get off being ticketed by saying you are the third cousin of so and so politician. Where you get stuck at your home for three days as everything got flooded, because it rained as heavily like it always does. Yet the resilience of the people, who had already expected that the drains wouldn’t be cleaned like it always happens, makes you smile. Where cows cause traffic jams and you get to bitch how cool it would be to be in a foreign country.Ahh… India.

~Aditya Anand

I haven’t lost myself in the deserts of Dubai. Just that I have been worked up like a camel. The sandstorm of activities I was engulfed in have finally come to a stop.

What have I been doing all this while? Landed in Dubai, had fun, had fun and some more. Oh quite a bit of studies here and there. After months of boredom at home, even a sloth would dream of being busy for a change. Busy it turned out, but didn’t want it to mean few hours of sleep and two evaluative components a week. A lot of counter-strike, MOHAA (Medal of Honor: Allied Assault) and saved episodes of Scrubs .
Another thing of note.I Bought my Mac-Book Pro! Hell yeah! Its cool! Those are three exclamations in a row. Apple deserves them! Will blabber about it in another post. The photo below is the view from rooms of the hostel.

I turned eighteen today. Of all things that it means, the most significant one presently is that the insignificant amount of cash present in my wallet just lost a significant chunk of itself. More of this later, yet to get my treat of ‘birthday bumps’.

So I have finally settled down in here, and shall resume blogging regularly. Ye Ye Ye