Random Musings - Day #49: (Dubai #1)

Airplane
I have theory about turbulence. I think there is a much more pronounced effect on the back of the plane. I imagine grabbing a fish by its head, the rest of it goes all over the place. A bit like a plane in turbulence.

Belarus
I loved to do a remix of Sash's Ecuador and call it "Belarus!" "BELARUS!!!"

Airport
Interesting that I didn't get any questions at passport control, they just scanned my passport through and that's it. Also both Dubai and Bahrain airports have free wireless Internet access.

Bus
There are lots of buses about. But looking on the Internet, there really a site that lists out where/when to get buses to locations. Here is a list of bus services. Here is a list of routes from the airport.

Exchange rate
I would seriously think twice about changing up front in the UK. I got an exchange rate of 4.65 dirhams to the pound. However in Dubai, I got 4.97. Worse than that if you go to the mall of Deira City Centre, you can get 5.14. It's disgusting...

Costs
2 bus rides (4d)
Internet Access (4d)
Concierge (10d)
Tennis (50d)
Costa Food (36d)
KFC (20d)
BK (16d)
2 bottle of water/apple drink (4d)
Travelling
I walked around and attempted to get from Deira to the Aviation Centre. I went over both the floating bridge and Al Maktoum bridge.

Tennis
Finally I got to the aviation tennis centre at 7:30pm, which still gave me a chance to watch a couple of matches.
I kind of hope there would be price reduction because of the late session. No, still had to pay 50 dirhams.
They had started second session and I started watching with Jelena Jankovic serving to stay in the first 5-2 down.
She lost the set and looked outclassed by Kaia Kanepic. Jankovic quickly went 4-0 down, mostly due to her hitting forehand drives long. But Kanepic started to miss her first serves badly and double-faulted a few times as Jankovic played a fair bit better. She got back to 5-5. But Kanepic broke her Jankovic one more time to win the match. The second match was between Serena Williams and Jie Zheng of China. The score didn't really reflect an entertaining game as Williams came through 6-4, 6-2. The time of the match was interesting nearly 90 minutes! A lot of the games were tightly contested albeit mostly on Zheng's serve. It was fairly even the first set but I couldn't see Serena been broken. She served a 200kph fault. Zheng reminds me a lot of Justine Henin, small but very gutsy in more than holding her own in rallies.
Also I saw former England footballer and racehorse trainer, Mick Channon in some court-side seats.

No moths/mosquitoes
One thing I have noticed there are no mosquitoes at all. I saw one moth whilst watching the tennis.

Sex
It's funny I was watching Mr & Mrs Smith and they cut out the love scene after the massive household fight in my hotel. Whilst outside my hotel, I see a number of ladies of the night loitering about the street corner outside my hotel. Just where exactly have I booked my hotel this time. Well I supposed it's not a hostel. Talking about my passport, they wanted to hang on to my passport for my stay at the hotel. That's not a common thing, is it?

Random Musings - Day #10

In the world of football, we love it when football managers go over the top. Yesterday saw Rafa Benitez (Liverpool manager) lay into Sir Alex Ferguson (Manchester United), alledging that he never get penalised over remarks over referees and moans too much about fixture schedule. Rafa had compiled very nice dossier too and seem calm against the master of mind games Ferguson. Here's the press conference. This is not the first (nor probably the last) that Fergie's games have caused a rant, e.g. Kevin Keegan when he was manager of Newcastle.

On really sad news, today marked the end of the popular short programme, I'm on Setanta Sports which features the special one Jose Mourinho. You can catch a lot of videos from the official and unofficial youtube channels.

Whilst flicking through my mail, I saw on yahoo an article about 12 healthy foods that people should eat. Now, I can't find it. I really wish yahoo made easy to find stuff that they feature (and yes I did look on their so-called featured article page). However, I just about remember what the food items were: berries, carrots, beans, oats, bran, oranges, bananas, tomatoes, walnuts, spinach, olive oil, pumpkin seeds. The last one I am not sure about.

Dubai. I've been told by people who have been to visit it. Others that haven't visit will probably know about how respect/strict the UAE, with that infamous sex on the beach incident. My biggest concern though is the story that you can be put away in jail for 4 years even if you found 0.003g of an illegal substance, which quite easy picked up if you stepped on something. Also not some prescription and normal drugs here, may not be so legal over there. It's ok to have a tough stance on drugs but this is quite insane!
If you can brave that, they are some interesting things to do in Dubai. February looks a good month to go, particularly if you love sport. There is the Dubai Tennis Tournament and the horse racing. There's also some camel racing if you can find it!

Dance Music. Just thought you should know Canada probably have an arguably better service for dance music than the UK. They have bpmtv. Whereas the UK have MTV Dance and Kiss

Dance Forums. I going to get involve with in a couple of dance forums and start chatting away about dance music when it really was dance music, back in the 90s.
According to the searches, I have seen lots of references to anthems. There isn't that much choice there. Trugroovez would appear to offer more genres and categories. bangingtunes looks too hardcore for my liking, but if you like that then that's for you. UK Music is another popular site but I don't think there is that much activity on their dance forum. There is a dance forum dedicated to the London scene as well. Finally, for all you eurodance fans, there is puroeuro.

A directory dance music forums can be found here