running - camels

Liz and I went to see Carlos run the Dubai marathon this morning. Here's our photos:




As you can see, we totally missed all the runners.
We took a day of sleeping in, and then took our time with coffee and by the time we made the 10 minute walk, all the runners were gone... whoops!

And tonight, I finally stopped for a photo I've been meaning to take of a classic camel crossing sign:

back to W

Back in the Emirates and have been up to a couple things:

Yesterday, Liz and I went to a big market called Global Village which is out on Emirates road on the outer circle of town. It is a collection of markets from countries all over the world. The grounds are only open for about 3 months of the year. They have foods and goods from all corners of Asia... Thailand/Philippians/China/India/Iran/Syria/Lebanon/Palestine/Saudi/Egypt/etc. The grounds also have a bit of a theme park with loads of rides. We ended up getting some seafood from the East Asia section and then some noodles from Thailand... quite the spot!

Everyone's favorite W is in town this week. He started his 2-day visit in Abu Dhabi and visited with the Royal Family. It looks like they got a laugh out of a good bird joke.

George W: Why do humming birds hum?
Sheikh Khalifa: Because they don't know the words!



Since the W is in town and he needs every single road closed, Dubai decided to declare tomorrow a local holiday. It seems as though this is probably the best idea, since Americans and W don't need to add any more reasons for people around here to hate us. Here's a quote from the above article if you didn't click on it: "Motorists had to take alternative routes home and to work on Sunday as traffic came to a crawl due to the closure of some major roads in the city a day before the expected arrival of US President George Bush in Dubai. Indian national Naser Barayil, a General Manager of a Dubai company, said it took him three-and-a-half hours to get through “approximately four kilometers” at midday on Sunday"

Meanwhile, I'm still catching up on work and working every night and am being about as boring as possible. More later!

bangalore, india

I had a good excuse to visit India for the first time last weekend, so I took full advantage, and booked a long-weekend trip to Bangalore for my friend Kavitha's wedding! I asked a few people here in the Emirates if they wanted to join, but no one could swing it... so I went alone.

Here's what I can recollect:

I arrived at the airport in B'lore at 4:00 am, and didn't splurge for a room, so I had to wander the streets until the 9:00 am wedding. This was a pretty fun little journey in the dark. I dropped my bag off at the hotel that I would be using the next day, and started wandering the streets. I wandered for a few hours and finally found a coffee shop open and managed to explore until the wedding time came. I took a quick three-wheeler ride over to the Hindu Temple she was getting married in.


When I walked in I had no idea what to expect, let's see if I can explain how it works:
First, it appears to be a completely informal event, well from an outsider's eyes. There is only one formal part, right at a certain time ( Muhurtha ), when everyone throws rice and cheers, as that's when they are officially 'Wed' ( I'm assuming ).

When I got there ( about 90 minutes pre-Muhurtha ), the bride and her family hung out on a stage inside a 4-poster enclosure section. It was decorated with thousands of flowers, had a nicely decorated bench and many floor cushions...very beautiful. While sitting around there, they went through multiple customary proceedings ( that I was clueless about ).

After a while, she left the stage, and the bridegroom and his family took the stage for similar activities. At Muhurtha time, the bride walked through the crowd with someone holding a wicker square thing in front of her face ( this was so the groom could not see her prematurely - see below ), she then made her way up to the stage for the culminating moment... where we all yelled bad spirits away, and threw rice at the couple, and eventually cheered!


As you can see, Kavitha was all decked out in necklaces, bracelets, henna tattoos, formal sari, and the headdresses. From the moment I first saw her, she didn't move her head a lot... she moved only calculated maneuvers to keep her 'situation' in place... seemed like hard work! More hard work for her ( in my opinion ) was the whole format... Since it was informal, it seemed that she had every aunt / uncle / cousin / friend / neighbor bugging her the whole time, asking her millions of questions, and needing constant attention... It was like the wedding was everyone's day... that someone was just happening to get married as well...


Well, after another hour of celebration with snacks, and little coffee drinks in the crowd ( 300+ people ) we all went to lunch in shifts. I had the pleasure of hanging out with the groom's uncle. He was an engineer in the automobile industry, and had worked in all sorts of places in the west, and could really relate and explain the foreign customs to me. He explained what each dish was, hindu temple references, wedding procedure descriptions and so on...

After the meal was done the next group of 100 or so people shuffled to our dining area and started on shift two. As the ceremony had concluded, I went to talk to Kavitha and her new husband Radhakrishna to say congrats and hi!

The rest of the day I ended up wandering around the city and taking in what I could. I ate at a chill little bar, and had a veggie platter. For those of you not familiar with Indian cuisine, much of it is veggie... which I have been digging lately... so I managed to swing a full veg weekend. Later that night I ended up running into a pub called Pecos, which greeted me with a wicked Jerry montage at the front door... I was in heaven! The place was made out of a garage and only sold beer! Turns out that it's one of the oldest pubs in B'lore - at 15 years old. I'm told that it started out as a Mexican place and evolved into what it is today. This place only played the classics, and had the headiest bartenders in the city.

After a while there I decided to keep bar-hopping and ran into a few more places, included a bar called 'Nasa' with it's black light only 'cabin' with views of planets through the portholes, and all the staff in captain uniforms :) While there, I met up with a Ugandan named Tim who was on a business trip. Timmy and I ended up bar-hopping the rest of the night meeting all sorts of people. I broke one of the cardinal rules of walking home alone half-drunk in a new city with a half-a-clue of where I was going. Luckily for me, I managed to throw in the towel after a few wrong turns, and jump in a three-wheeler to take me to my hotel.

I woke up early the next day to have an 'excursion' out to a neighboring city to see the sites, and the land a bit. On the way out of Bangalore I was surprised over a couple of things: 1) the amount of education that most people seem to utilize, and 2) the amount of cattle in the city. I've heard of how India's economy has been evolving over the last 20 years, and I got to see a few angles of how they are progressing in just a few minutes.

After a couple of 'rough-back-seat-minivan-driving-with-hangover' hours, I managed to reach Srirangapatna. Home of Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, a large Masjid ( mosque ), and a nice Hindu temple. Right outside of the city, we reached the main destination of Mysore.

Mysore is the home of the Mysore Palace, which is where the King of the state stays and celebrates certain nation holidays. It's quite the building! I did a full tour and took a few fotos:



On site next to the Palace was a few Hindu Temples, and a large garden. For some reason they were also providing joy rides:



After the palace and a quick bite, I was headed to what I understood to be the Mysore Jew. The driver told me all along that I would love the Jew, and that it was a highlight, but I didn't pry and try to ruin my surprise. I just went along with it. Well, when I arrived to the Jew, I still had no idea what I was spending my 50 cents on for admission... but by the time I walked through 250 children standing outside and peeked in, I realized I was heading into one of the oldest Zoo's in the world! The Mysore Zoo was built in 1892, and was quite nice!

While at the zoo, two notable things happened: 1) after a bit of antagonizing from the crowd, a gorilla decided to put on a little show. He did a dance, jumped up and down, threw a bunch of rocks high in the air, and ran around in a big circle clapping his hands and screaming! He did this a few times, and he was having quite a bit of fun with it. 2) I found out that kids, and some adults don't see a lotta 'white' folk down in Mysore, so I found myself as much of an attraction in the zoo, as the bengal tigers! I had no less that 5 groups of people come up to me ( mostly children ) wanting to shake my hand, and pose for a photograph with them. It was pretty funny, and after the third of forth group I couldn't quit laughing.


Day 3 was my final day, and I met up with an old colleague Sankar. We had no plans for the day, but he met me at my hotel at 10:00, and we found out that a big Cricket game was going on down the road. I am vaguely familiar with the game, but knew that 2 of the top two teams in the world playing so close was nothing to miss.

So India vs. Pakistan test match was going on, and the match was sold out. Sankar said that the price of tickets before they sold out, were about 200 Rupees each. Since he brought me 'round while scalping the tickets, we ended up spending 500 each! Only 13 usd, each!


During the official 'Tea-Break' in the afternoon, Sankar and I had a walk through a few of the parks next to the field. Here's a photo of me and Ghandi.


During our walk, Sankar informed me that our Cerner India office was quite literally next to the MG Park we were at. We strolled by, and I manged to snap a quick pic of our logo in the local Kannada alphabet:


We went back for the tail-end of that match, and found out that not a single Wicket or 'Out' had happened since we arrived at 10:30 that morning! This means that the batsmen got to bat for about 3 hrs each... and they each scored an extremely large amount of points, which really got the crowd going. After scooting out of the match in the last 15 minutes, Sankar and I split up and I ended up wasting the rest of my final day skipping around pubs and coffee shops.

It was a bad-ass long weekend, and I'd recommend South India to anyone.. but I would say that 3-5 days is quite enough for Bangalore alone... Also, if you are interested in more pics, click here.

al manara villa

I snapped a few fotos today of the new crib, here's some highlights:

We have decent little yard with lots of greenery... well for now it's green. If we don't pay a gardener, it might not stay this way. He wants something like 300dhs a month... it's much cheaper to lay a hose down and flip on/off the water once in a while.


Here's our grilling setup.. the table is 100% recycled - strait from the 'rubbish-skip'(UK English) or 'dumpster'(US English). The handy-man Tonie managed to drill some holes in the top for some 'tiki-torches'(UK ) or 'tiki-torches(US ).


Mewsuf the kitten is mighty-cute, and it takes all I got to not lean down and play with the little thing. I did find a way to manage somehow, turns out she really likes a good kick!


To step inside a bit, you can see our porch from the sliding-door of our living room, and quite the mis-match of furniture lining the entire place.


And lastly, here's our room. You can see Liz packing, as she leaves tomorrow night for the states. She gets to hang in KC for about 12 days... lucky her!

Africa Part 2: Lake Nakuru

Our Dutch safari partners were headed to a friends Kenyan wedding, so we dropped them off before we made it to the town of Nakuru. We got there during a bit of a rainfall, and by dinner time the electricity in town went down. That didn't stop the hotel from serving a hot Kenyan dinner(beef/rice/potatoes), or the pub from serving the tasty local beer Tusker around a sea of candles. We took an early nights rest, as we were getting up early to head out for our last safari day.

Lake Nakuru is famous for their Million-plus Pink Flamingos among much other wildlife such as: Rhino, Leopard, Lion, Baboon, Stork, Water Buffalo, and others.

We started the day by seeing a bit of commotion near the ticket booth. As we stood waiting for our guide, we heard shouts of security yelling 'Get Back', as a leopard on the other side of the fence ( about 30 meters away ) sprinted towards our direction. We hightailed it towards the building, but definitely saw the cat jumping and sprinting his way towards us... needless to say, we didn't find the time to snap any fotos!

After that quick scare we slid through the park hearing all the baboons making a fuss over a Lion in a nearby tree. He was just casually resting watching all of us pass.



We then stopped in closer to the lake to meet a few of the pink flamingos that lined the entire 40 Kilometer lake. We snapped a few fotos, but had to jump back in the car as some water buffalo wandered a bit to close to us.





We then stumbled upon some Rhino's and Lion's hanging about. Since our vehicle was fairly alone, we got to get pretty close and snap some cool pics. Was pretty cool seeing the Rhinos just feet from the car!






We then ended the trip on a visit to a high cliff that overlooked the Lake. The baboons are quite familiar with it's beauty ( or more likely the many tourists with food that come up there ) and usually spend their time up there harassing all of us Homo Sapiens. We managed to snap a few fotos, and talked to a German guy about the next safari we should take. He spoke highly of the Gorilla treks in Uganda!! Who's coming with???





Ben, Liz and I then headed back to Nairobi where we spent our last evening in town. Liz and I met a friend (Mohamed) who gave us a detailed tour around town, showing us different parts of the city and taking us to a couple markets. I got a pretty sick chess set carved out of soap-stone.



Liz and I met some great people, learned a bit of the culture, saw some animals and couldn't have had a more enjoyable first African experience... definitely looking forward to going back to spend more time in some other beautiful African countries.

Africa Part 1: Masai Mara

Tom bo li de say de moi ya
Yeah, Jambo Jumbo
Way to parti' o we goin'
Oh, Jambali
Tom bo li de say de moi ya
Yeah, Jumbo JUMBO!

Some of Lionel's most famously mistaken lyrics... at least I was always completely clueless when listening to it. Turns out that it is Swaheli, and everytime I heard someone say 'Jumbo'(hello) this past week, I thought of this upbeat-yet-confusing chant...

My friend Mohamed who showed us around Nairobi said it roughly stands for: "Hello Hello, can I have a cent?" Which makes even less sense, but I guess it wasn't all that bad to be singing 'All Night Long' for 5 days. Liz is still singing it to me at home now.

We had a pretty sweet trip once again, and even managed to snap a few fotos.
The first day went about like this:
Airport > travel lodge > road to Masai Mara > game reserve for sun down activity > food at the camp site > campfire beers > bed.

When we got to the lodge, we met a couple of Dutch people, Thijs and Hanukkah ( actually have no idea how to spell her name!), and jumped in a van with them and our tour guide Ben. We then shot through about 7 hours of the bumpiest roads I've seen on this planet. It is hard to describe the roads(not even sure you can call them that) you have to take to get to the game park from Nairobi... but they aren't for everyone! We got to the park, dropped off some gear, and went directly back out to see some sun down activity before it was too late. We managed to see our first Gazelles, Zebra, Wildebeest, Buffalo, Elephants, and Giraffes before heading back for food/beer/rest.
Here's our crew:


We got up and did an 8-5 safari in the park and had a great time! The weather was in the 70's and 80's the whole time, which was heaven coming from Dubai, and so we made the best of it by sticking our head outside our trusty safari van's roof most the day.
Today we saw a couple of Cheetahs, and many Lions... including a full pride of Lions resting on top of a huge piles of rocks ( they stayed warmer up there off the grass )... Un-Be-Liev-Abl-E.














After we got back from the full day safari, we got to visit one of the local Masai tribes that are still living the way they have for hundreds of years. I got to dance with the 'Warriors' ( The 15-20 year old boys that protect and represent the tribe ) and liz got to dance with the female reps. Quite the show they put on for us! Here's a couple of video's:


They live in huts made of trees, mud and cow dung. They have a whole family in a tight little hut, and have about 20 of them in the village. The huts only last about 8 years, so they don't get too attached ;). We got to go inside and hang with a family for a few while they cooked some afternoon tea. We then saw the pens for the cows and the sheep. They create a pretty cool barrier to keep out predators, and have watch dogs and so forth if they do end up sneaking up.




The next morning we got to do an early morning excursion in the park to see the wildlife active during sun-up. Saw some pretty sweet visuals and then scooted off to the next place...






I have uploaded all pics from the whole trip here if you want to see more...
I will follow up with more on Lake Nakuru tomorrow.