|
Pick of the week:
Five lives wasted
The death toll on Dubai's roads reached 10 since Thursday when five people in a minibus were killed yesterday. On Shaikh Rashid road, a dual carriageway in Dubai, the minibus crashed across the central reservation and into an oncoming car.
The driver of the minibus and four passengers were killed, four others were injured including the driver of the other car. Looking at photographs of the wreckage it would have
been a bigger death toll had the minibus been full. I, and others, have talked about the standard of driving displayed by bus drivers many times in the past. And the roadworthiness of the buses. I see, almost on a daily basis, hugeconstruction worker buses, minibuses and large private buses being raced around the streets. In Dubai Marina and Knowledge Village in particular I often see them lurching around the small roundabouts almost on two wheels.
On a post a while ago a comment was left by a pupil who said his school bus driver frightened them with his dangerous driving. This latest crash is being blamed on
speeding and possibly the driver falling asleep, pending investigation. I don't think speeding is in any doubt, looking at what happened and the damage caused.http:
http://dubaithoughts.blogspot.com
The Sharjah bus route
Enigmaticaly, little orange bus stops have started popping up all over Sharjah. The fact that bus stops have popped up isn't in itself enigmatic: the enigmatic bit is that they all carry the number 14. It must be the mother of all bus routes, the Sharjah No 14. There is no other number. Every single bus stop is served by the number 14 bus: from Al Wahda and Al Arouba street right up to the airport and around the university, down to the industrial estate and out to the Emirates Road.
And, of course, this being Sharjah: if every bus stop on every route is numbered 14, then obviously every bus should be a number 14 bus, too. And so it is. Yup: every man
jack of ‘em's a number 14 bus. This from the place where every roundabout is named as a square. Ya gotta love it.
http://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/
Reassuring in the air
While boarding the plane during my last trip to Algeria and Morocco, I noticed the display screen loading the Linux operating System. I was pleasantly surprised to see that,
considering my IT background and all. I felt a little bit safer knowing the airplane was not powered by Windows. Imagine the operating system crashing in the middle of the
flight. Scary!
http://umarsiddiqi.com/blog/
Yob culture exported from UK
Go to any UK city centre on a Friday night and you will be confronted with undignified behaviour by any standards, drunk young and old wandering the streets in a daze and
causing mayhem wherever they go. This is what the UK is known for in Europe and around the world now, the binge drinking, the street fighting and the whole “good night
out". It's nothing to be proud of and even the nay sayers in the UK are now admitting they have real problem on their hands. However it now seems this culture could be on its way to Dubai, not to say the hedonistic lifestyle wasn't already here. However the recent arrest of Michelle Palmer for allegedly having sex on one of the beaches in Dubai as well as assaulting a police officer has brought the whole issue to the fore. Ms Palmer faces seven years in prison for her “fumble in the dark" and the schizophrenic nature of Dubai's current plight will once again be thrust into the limelight.
http://www.thedubailife.com
Registration
The Goatmobile is four years old. Consequently I spent half of the morning down at the Tasjeel Auto Village in Sharjah having the registration done. I dropped off the vehicle
at the entrance and then retired with my paperwork to air-conditioned comfort to await the verdict and pay the fees.
I wonder why Billy Whizz and his colleagues can't be employed at normal commercial garages? These guys work at such a blistering pace that the car inspection is over in
a matter of seconds.
http://grumpygoat.blogspot.com/
Dubai Duty Free
Because of a very extensive travel schedule, Dubai Duty Free (DDF) has become a favourite shopping destination. I end up buying everything from there. Especially perfumes. They are at least 20 per cent cheaper than market.
On my last trip to Paris, my wife and daughter tagged along. Wondering what a seven-hour flight might do to a hyper-active toddler, my wife proposed we buy one of them portable DVD players. To me, that was a brilliant idea as we can distract her with Dora, Barney and the Teletubbies.
So, after a bit of browsing, we bought a Sony portable for about Dh800 and three kids' DVDs, paid for everything, picked up the bag and rushed to the gate after that and into
the plane.
After take-off and the seatbelt sign switching off, I reached out to my bag to pull out and plug in the player in the in-seat power socket and get the little one entertained a bit.
To my surprise, the DVDs were nowhere to be found.
http://dubaiconsumermirror.blogspot.com
|
