Cows, Pigs & Human Dung

Sunday, 26 January 2014

Tree Tunnels

Somewhere between Baramati and Nira, Maharashtra, India

Some tree tunnels for the time being. This feature is common on the roads in rural Maharashtra. But only on the roads where developers and contractors like us haven't gone in, and widened the hell out of 'em. See them while you still can.

Baramati to Nira Road, Maharashtra

Saturday, 18 January 2014

A Princely State of India

New Palace, Kolhapur, Maharashtra

First blog entry of 2014. 2014 so far has been mmm.. pretty shitty, to be frank.

Worked non-stop except for the breaks, with some days extending till 2am! Getting tired… Maybe because age is catching up. The writing creativity’s gone for sure. Not only that, the English’s going down the drain fast! Can’t come up with the words that I need. And I hate my sentences. But what to do? I gotta deliver. It’s the quantity and deadlines that count nowadays, not the quality of the writing. That kind of attitude has rubbed off on my blogging, but I only have …this little time. Anything’s better than nothing.

Haven’t wished anyone a Happy New Year except thru whatsapp. As a matter of fact, haven’t even checked my personal emails since the end of last year. So to anyone who still reads this blog (I doubt there’s any), here’s to wishing you a great grand 2014! Hope this year, and every year after that, will be better than the one before. God bless all of you. May your wishes come true, and may the force be with you.

For the time being, here’s how we spent the New Year last year, in 2013. With a visit to Kolhapur, a former princely state of India. There’re hundreds of princely states in India once upon a time. They have their own kings (Rajas, Sultans, Nizams, Nawabs, you name em, etc.), own territory, own flags, own palaces, ministers, etc. Before India gained independence from Britain, Kolhapur was ruled by a Maharaja who is a direct descendant of the kings of the Maratha Empire. Kolhapur is in southern Maharashtra, near the Karnataka border. It’s about 270km from Daund, and took us 5 to 6 hours to reach (this is India after all, …5 to 6 hours is considered pretty good for a 270 km journey, OK? It'll probably take 10 hours if it's Assam)

A roundabout in front of the New Palace at Kolhapur (doesn’t look very New to me now)

Mahalakshmi Temple, Kolhapur – a famous temple in the region, dedicated to the Hindu goddess of wealth, and is supposed to bring good luck. If my Malaysian Chinese empat-ekor friends know about this, I’m sure there’ll be a throng of ‘em here.

Flowers and fruits for the temple – at the gate to the Mahalakshmi Temple, Kolhapur

Street leading to the gate of the Mahalakshmi Temple, flanked with shops selling religious stuff

Finally managed to catch a picture of Justin, running all over the compounds of the temple

Bhavani Mandap, used to be a palace court or something, and now a temple

A Jain Temple (I presume), near the Mahalakshmi Temple – this is only my guess ok, coz Jain Temples all look like this, intricately carved white marble structures

Rankala Lake, Kolhapur

A mosque of some sort, near the bridge crossing Panchganga River – no names so don’t really know what it is

A group of temples beside (or more like inside) the Panchganga River – again no names in English, so dunno what they are. Kinda bumped into it while driving around Kolhapur

More views of the Panchganga River Ghat

Monday, 30 December 2013

What a Holiday!

Christmas carolling at Dubai Festival City Mall

What a holiday! Parents and little sis Hazel came here for Christmas. I took 2 days off, one on 18th Dec (school celebration at Justin’s school) and another on Christmas Day (nope, Christmas isn’t a holiday here). But I’ve been sick the whole time thru, and the work is shit, with big tenders due after the New Year, and bosses getting jumpy (over the lack of …progress, they want them completed by the 31st …but submission’s only on the 7th and 8th, so we technically still have time!)

If only the bosses can understand what a procrastinator can do in the last minutes before a deadline. But I’m not the boss, so here’s a short end-of-the-year post before I get back to slogging on the tenders.

Hope the planned New Year’s Eve record-breaking fireworks in Dubai can bring back some festive mood to the season. Looking forward to 2014!

Here’s a little bit of the Christmas flavour from Dubai before I sign off. Happy New Year!

Light, Sound and Water Show, Dubai Festival City Mall (…why do people give grand sounding names to a friggin makeshift musical fountain) …peanuts compared to the grand Dubai Fountain at the Burj Khalifa

Church play at our local Friday church (New Covenant Church, Dubai)

Family pic at Justin’s school on Grandparents Day (yeah, there’s such a thing, first time I ever come across such a day!)

Justin with his grandma and aunt, with a gingerbread man picture he made at school

Another family photo, Burj Al Arab, Dubai

Saturday, 14 December 2013

Bravo Dubai!

A cane swirling Arabian dance, at the Mirdif City Centre, Dubai

Dubai’s won the World Expo 2020! We were looking forward to this to boost the economy. Now hopefully, there’d be some new projects. Hopefully, that’ll bring better job prospects, …and salary increases (of course, that’s what jobs are for!) Hopefully, the landlords and the business owners don’t start jacking up the prices so soon. Shit! They’ve already started! Bloody opportunists! One colleague’s already shifted house and another one’s searching for a new place. And the news keep going on about rent increases all over the UAE.

Let’s see what comes out of this now… Some recent pictures of Dubai for the time being. Nothing much’s changed since the last we left here in 2010. But the people and the cars on the road have certainly multiplied in the last few months!

A funny looking metal sculpture at the Gold Souk of the Dubai Mall

A Fashion Show at Souk Madinat Jumeirah

Dubai hosts a string of exhibitions, trade fairs and international events. It’s like there’s an event or two every week in Dubai, especially at the Dubai World Trade Centre. We hear it every day on the radio. This week alone (or was it last week?), I’ve heard that the China Homelife Show, some International Jewellery Exhibition, a Gulf Traffic Exhibition and an exhibition on Education are on. And then the Dubai Film Festival will be here maybe next week. So far we’ve visited the Gitex fair (an IT and electronic fair) and I’ve visited the Big 5 fair (the largest construction fair in the Middle East). And we’ve sort of crashed into a few events like the Dubai Grand Motor Parade, a Bollywood promotion of a new movie Krrish 3, with the cast and producers present, causing a normally quiet shopping mall to be filled to the brim with people…

The Dubai Grand Parade in Downtown Dubai in conjunction with the Dubai International Motor Show – picture taken from the car while stuck in traffic full of super cars. Ever seen a Ferrari Police Car? The Dubai Police have it, or more like have some.

A Break-Dance Competition in Dubai Festival City

Here’re some pictures of Justin’s school in Dubai, Uptown School

Anu & Kim at the Ibn Battuta Mall

Our home in Dubai on Justin’s 4th birthday

Sunday, 8 December 2013

Justin 4 Ers Old

Happy Birthday Justin! With Amy, daughter of our friends, Dong Weihong and Li Lei

Justin’s turned 4! And for a change, I’ve decided to upload something recent, instead of past old events. …OK, it happens that I actually have the camera in my work bag, so... that explains, hehe.

This year has been a year of high adventures. We’ve visited 7 countries, flew umpteen times, stayed in a host of different hotels, visited I dunno how many places, travelled thousands of kilometres on road… and snapped a gazillion photos with the trusty ol camera, and the phones, and the tab, whatever we could get our hands on basically. So here’re some photos of Justin’s adventures this year. Just a very random selection. Luckily he doesn’t like to keep still for photos or we’d have a gazillion more photos of him.

Just a quick update. Justin’s started schooling now. No pictures of him at school, yet. (Pretty impossible to make him stay still for a photo, as usual). He spent the first week at school in Kindergarten 1st year (KG1), drove the teachers’ crazy within that one week, changed his class to Pre-K (the year before KG1), and that’s where he is now. He loves school, coz there’re lots of play stuff and friends, and nobody forces him to eat at school. He has daily battles with his mom at home about eating.

He still loves cars and all types of vehicles. His favourite toy of the week now is a garbage truck. He can name most of the cars we see on the road – Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Renault, Honda, Mazda, Hyundai, Kia, Land Rover, BMW (his favourite), Audi, Volkswagen, Chevrolet, Ford, Mercedes…

He talks a lot now, but only on topics that he likes, …like cars, and drives us crazy. His own language has more or less died out in favour of Standard English now. He no longer calls himself Duntin, and will correct me if I call him that (which I still do sometimes, purposely, hehehe). Here’re some of the last traces of Justin’s language before it’s completely forgotten – Engain, Blathy, Plato, Thurken, Chicken, Dedi, Heva, Endader, Pepe, Ers Old, Compinter, Kiwi, Konhe, Dra-dra, Masala, Moodles (again, battery, petrol, curtain, kitchen, already, have to, another, paper, years old, computer, his wee-wee, his bump (because when he was young, every time he passes gas, his mom will ask him ‘kaun hai?’ meaning ‘who’s that?’ in Hindi), rumble strips on the road and anything rough, noodles, also noodles…) Also, previously, for any word starting with an S followed by another consonant, the S would be silent. For example Step, Stand, Stone, School and Spit will be Tep, Tand, Tone, Cool and Pit respectively.

OK, I’m leaving it at that for the time being. No time (and no more imagination) to come up with good writing ideas nowadays.