The Mute Herald

Tired of your job? Sitting on a (really big) pile of cash? Got at year and a half to spare?  Then this is for you!  Emirates Aviation College launched a new course taking you from riding coach to sitting behind the controls.

At the discounted price of AED 600,000 (that’s EUR 115,000), the Ab Initio Pilot Training Programme squeezes into 17 months what is normally done gradually over the span of years.  Granted I’m not immediately aware what the cost runs into usually, but this 600k includes:

• 8 months theory in Dubai
• 2 exams
• 9 months practice in Lisbon
• Full course accommodation in Lisbon
• Final exams

From the literature:

Emirates Aviation College, in collaboration with Jeppesen, is pleased to announce the launch of a JAA Licensed Ab Initio Pilot Training Programme to assist in meeting the future demand for highly skilled professional airline pilots.

Minimum requirements are 17 years of age, high school certificate, medical exam, and a pre-selection process.  Rich parents highly encouraged. Don’t go burning any bridges though, in the accompanying email the College makes an emphasis that, at the end of the course, job placement is not guaranteed.

People might think that upon taking photography more seriously one should stay away from the tourist hot spots.  Quite the opposite, they are the perfect setting for shooting people rather than the attractions themselves.  Nobody questions why there’s a guy with a camera in their general direction, everybody’s doing it right?

These are some of the pictures I took at the Dubai Fountain, just outside the Dubai Mall, in the shadow of the Burj Khalifa:

While there I liked how the fading sunlight was bouncing off one of the Emaar buildings and that other building to the side of the Burj. I also like how their contours grace the frame:

Today I’ve been up since 5am.  Doing chores, laundry, breakfast, battling the cat litter (I won).  But first I took these:

It only involved 90 minutes driving around Dubai’s back roads towards Lahbab, trying to get rid of electricity poles, fences, occasional ugly buildings, the wrong side of the road, and so on.

On the way back home I looked up and saw the below frame. So I had to stop and snap it too.

As you might have noticed I’m suffering from something of a blog visual identity crisis. While I loved the looks of the previous theme, it was lacking in support for current WordPress versions.  The last theme update was in 2009.  It also lacked some features that I’d thought I could do without, but found myself missing.  Like the subscribe by email or at least the rss feed button.

In any case this will be the current skin for this platform.  For the immediate term at least. This theme is not as customisable as I would have liked.  I’ll correct that – it’s not customisable at all.  I would have liked to get rid of the paperclip holding the topmost post.  Actually that’s the only thing that’s bugging me, the rest I really like.  Oh well.

No prize winning photos yet, just experimenting with a sample of what the camera can do.  I’ve booked a course in a couple of weekends time, hopefully it will not be money down the drain.

Look ma, no cats.

Of course many more pictures were taken (including of cats), this is just a Least-Worst-Of.  In addition to the shooting I’m also trying my hand at some very basic post processing.  Very. Basic. One tries to keep oneself busy when one’s wife goes away for weeks.

The biggest problem I’m facing is lugging the camera with me all the time. Last week I drove past what in my opinion was a very promising shot. By the time I got home, grabbed the camera and rushed back on the scene (a minute drive), the moment had passed.  So now I have to take it to work with me, dump it on the desk (cannot leave it in the car as it gets too hot), then carry it back out.  People would understandably think I’m nuts.

It’s official, I have taken up the hobby of photography.  Which seems to go rather nicely with the title of this blog, if I may say so myself.  I say official because the money spoke, this is my new baby:

Canon EOS 550D

I had already bought a couple of books on the subject, which (as a side note) appear fantastic on the kindle app for ipad. This is not to say that my shots will dramatically improve overnight, I’m realistic enough to know that.

It just means that, among other things, there will be yet more cat & kitten pictures, just of a better quality.

Friends and colleagues

You might have heard the Boss shout his head off yesterday when he saw this month’s electricity bill.  Since much of the increase can be attributed to air conditioner (mis)use, I was tasked with making sure this does not happen again.

For those of you not living in this epoch, I’ll paint the picture.  All but three areas within the office are air conditioned, these are: the larger than necessary store, the otherwise unventilated and probably building code violating toilets, and the pantry.  Graciously enough albeit unsurprisingly, nobody leaves the toilet doors open.  However when the door to the store is not shut, the connecting room’s air conditioner will notice the temperature rising, and will try to set it right again.  Quite the futile task, given that the store’s volume is double that of the entire remaining office space.

The pantry on the other hand, although at one dwarf-length squared is the smallest room in the building, has a crafty extractor fan to the outside.  This has the effect of sucking cold air from the adjoining room and spewing it outside the building. We have no idea why this was installed, since there are no cooking facilities inside, or even from where to switch the fan off.  The only people who seem to benefit are the smokers, who stand beneath the extractor outlet to feel the somewhat cold breeze in the 45+ degrees shade temperature. We suspect building contractor sense of humour was involved at some point, but we can’t be bothered to check or rectify it.

You see, it is not just about the money, which we will disproportionately charge to your salary if you are caught setting the temperature too low or leaving doors to the store room and/or pantry open.  It’s about the little white baby seals that get squashed beneath a block of solidified CO2 by-product of the needless power generation, the postcard perfect white landscape suddenly looking like the aftermath of a zombie polar bear buffet.

Now that the image is stuck in your head, let’s add another dimension to it.  Whenever you go through an aforementioned door and foolishly choose not to close it, you will hear the baby seal plead incomprehensibly in that squeaky little voice, yet you know what it’s asking for.  You look back and in the store/pantry you see, not the seal itself, just a floating close-up of its ridiculously bambi eyes, about to burst with tears and catching the light with their moisture.  The eyes that wordlessly plead the same message.

Help me! Close. The. Door.

Thank you for your future cooperation.  I look forward to seeing the result of this communique in reduced future electricity costs.

Yours truly

I could fly

those birds would be toast.

You are a woman who, returning to her car after lunch break, drops the car keys which slide out of reach beneath another car. Do you:

1. Get down and dirty to try and retrieve them?
2. Give up and walk 10 to 15 minutes to the office in the mid-day 45 degree heat?
3. Stand helplessly and despair, until minutes later you flag down the man walking towards his car and beg him to get them for you, this man who seems to be on an altruistic streak, who then with the aid of his tennis racket always carried in the car proceeds to swipe the keys out?

What do you do?

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I was on the scene to save the day one more time. Karma may be trying to tell me something, maybe push me towards my true calling.

A roadside assistance truck operator.

Image credit Wikipedia

Today I made my first licensed purchase of alcohol in the UAE.  Nothing spectacular, just a couple of beers to remind myself what it tastes like.  Of course there was someone to (sort of) share it with me.

Don’t get me wrong.  Prior to this I wasn’t getting my fill from a shady guy selling bootleg liquor from his pickup.  Or doing what all other expats here seem to be doing: drive across the Sharia state of Sharjah to Umm al Quwain’s Barracuda outlet, where alcohol can be bought without a license. I was just relying on the occasional transit through the airport duty free.  And the last time I bought beer it was by the two-dozen – it ended up expiring and I had to throw half of it away.  That’s how much of a home beer drinker I am.

[Haraam is an Arabic term meaning forbidden]