Happenings in Dubai

The Big news of the last few days, has been the landing of the Emirates first Airbus 380, landing in Dubai. And, getting ready for it’s first flight to New York tomorrow, the first of August.

People turned up in the hundreds/thousands, to see the great ‘bird’ landing at Dubai airport, and rightly so. All with their cameras, of the real kind or the mobile phone kind, of course. Kids, aspiring(inspired?) to be pilots, were thrilled to be seeing the landing of the A380 and were some of those who ” waited patiently in the sweltering heat for at least an hour at the Airport Expo parking lot for a glimpse.”

I was just reading the interview of the pilot of the superjumbo in a local paper, and he said” I had butterflies, thinking “I’m going to be flying that in 10 minutes.”You really feel it’s magnitude”.

Incidentally, the price of this 469 seater superjumbo,for those intersted in the economics of it, is ‘just USD 320 million’, and, Emirates will finally have a fleet of 58 of them.

That adds one more ‘required’ to my list of ‘1001 things to do before I die’ list, I guess. Not because of the snob value, but, to experience the best with the best- Emirates with the A380, I mean.

And, just see one of the eye-catching (pun intended) ads appearing in the papers here these days.

The 'happy-looking lady' in the pic is standing in an Emirates A380 in-flight shower room. The "shower spas" are pretty decently kitted-out, and the aircraft carries an extra 1,100-pounds of water to allow every one of the 14 first-class passengers to have a splash. As a result, the shower only runs for five minutes, and there's a traffic-light system to let you know how the time's going. And if you're planning on trying to form a new "mile-high, in the shower" club, you'd better forget it: the showers are small, "designed for single usage."
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The other big news: Still on Dubai and the U.A.E. , the temperatures really been getting everyone down the last few days. Once, the temperature in Al Ain(One of the Emirates) reportedly crossed 51 deg C, and, that’s ‘hot news’, is it not? Well, to compensate for that, it also rained in Al Ain yesterday. While we were sweltering in the hot and humid weather yesterday. In fact, I went for my usual 1 hour walk, and returned in 40 minutes, looking as drenched as I do in Baroda when I get caught in a light shower. (Good for weight loss, of course. LOL).
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We have a nice long weekend this week, beginning today. So, looking forward to a good bit of blogging, visiting my favourite blogs, reading, et al. (As such, it’s too hot and humid to venture out during the better part of the day). A good time to go see one of the new releases, like Ugly aur Pagli, Kismet KonnectionMoney Hai to Honey Hai...all promoted as good comedies.Let's see.

So, till the next post(which is already 90% ready, and might be coming up today), cheerio!!