F1

The Etihad Airways Formula 1 Grand Prix is due to take place at the Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi, this weekend. This year's race is more exciting than last year's since it will be the deciding race of 2010 F1 season. My radio station is the official media partner of the event and I've been to Yas several times lately for meetings. I do not follow the F1 races but today I realized that it is difficult escape the excitement when actually at the venue. These are the pictures I took from my mobile phone -

I also caught a glimpse of Italian F1 driver Jarno Trulli and our very own Karun Chandhok. Mark Webber of Red Bull was checking into the Yas Hotel while we were leaving and he was happy to pose for a picture for me. He stands at number 2 in the rankings so far with 238 points, but experts say that it could be anyone's race this time at the Yas Marina Circuit.

Display at New York Fries...

Off to the races...again!

So it was that time of the year again when the Dragon Boat Festival took place as part of the Adrenaline Sports Festival in the capital city of Abu Dhabi. This year too I volunteered to be part of the Radio 2 team which was supposed to be a mixed team with a minimum of 13 men and 5 women in it. We had asked our listeners to text us, if interested in being part of the team, and the response was overwhelming. This time we were hoping to do better than our previous races in which we had come last in all the races!

Training sessions took place on two Saturdays before the event from 2 pm to 4 pm in the waters behind the Shangri-La Qaryat-Al-Beri hotel. We were trained by professional dragon boat racers and it was nice to once again respond to commands like Paddles up, Stop the boat and to row to shouts of 1 to 10. In our second training session we had an excellent coach Yanni, a Canadian citizen of Romanian origin who has been a coach for more than thirty years. This particular training session was intense and Yanni helped us focus and gave us the strategy of starting with 10 powerful strokes, followed by 10 quick strokes and then covering the rest of the 200 metres on a steady count of 1-2 with long and relaxed strokes done in unison. The result of the training was an aching back and arms but confidence levels were up since we won the mock race held that day against two other teams.

The day of the finals dawned and our first race was scheduled for 11:40 am. There were six teams and we came third covering 200 metres in 1 minute 5 seconds. Our timing was good enough to get us into the semi-finals with the next race scheduled at 3:20 pm. It was a warm day and we had to make sure that we were not dehydrated. We came first in the semi-finals timing 1 minute 6 seconds which was very good since the wind was against us. For the first time ever Radio 2 entered the finals of the Dragon Boat Racing Festival.
Our final race was at 4 pm the next afternoon. This was the finals of the Corporate Plate category and although the excitement and commitment was great our performance was not and we came sixth in a very closely contested race. It woud have probably taken a miracle to make us win since the other teams were professional dragon boat racers. On the bright side of things we were the sixth fastest team out of the 43 teams in this category and were also the best Radio team since the other radio stations lost in the first round itself.

Three things that I realized over the last three weeks – I love dragon boat racing. It gives me a high and I love being in the waters and being part of a team sport. Secondly being short really helps since the shortest person in the team needs to be on the last row of the boat. Last but not the least we have some wonderful people listening to our radio station. Out of the 18 member team only 3 of us were staff and the rest were our listeners who put in a lot of passion and time into this. Two of them could not make it to the finals because they were aching too much but they arranged for a substitute and were there to cheer for us.

Damn....was a second late on 10/10/10

Sign in a hotel close to my house

Not bad, huh?

When I got an email from the Lecturer of the Multimedia & Graphic Arts Department of the Cyprus University of Technology saying that the photograph I had taken of the Rock of Aphrodite, Cyprus, was selected for research and a possible publication I was thrilled to bits.
The photograph (one above) is part of the many I had put up on Picasa after my vacation to Cyprus in June 2009. The Cyprus University of Technology left a comment for me on Picasa, more than a year after the album was put up online and I signed the consent letter today.
For a photograph taken from a simple point and shoot camera the result is not bad, huh?

Bright-time or Night-time

Over the lunch table yesterday my colleague was telling me about her four-year old’s way of describing day and night. It’s so simple and uncomplicated - for her it’s either bright-time or night-time. That prompted me to pen down some other beautiful moments I have spent with children that have either left me spellbound or speechless.
Another friend’s three-year old daughter Neha, was showing me her storybooks and pointed to the picture of Billy Goat’s family – youngster, father and grandfather and said ‘That’s Appa Billy Goat, this is Amma Billy Goat and this is Neha Billy Goat’. How cute is that?
My little niece Aditi has always amazed us with her questions and comments. Once, she was irritating her mother with her continuous questions, and my sister grimaced, to which Aditi, then just three, asked ‘Mama why are you getting frustrated?’ And not too long ago their television set was not working and a very worried Aditi asked ‘Mama, is there a technical problem?’
And then there’s my three-year old nephew Mihir, who goes up to his mother and says ‘Mom, I have a terrific idea….’ When he was visiting us in Dubai he took to me instantly and was not so sure of my husband Aniket. So his way of addressing Aniket was ‘Kanchan Maama’ :)

I mean seriously...what is with her bathroom obsession?

And no wonder my plants look harassed when she is around.

Nugget

Little Nugget (my manager's kitten) is with us again, this time for more than ten days. She's grown and is still very naughty. She's taken a liking to all things linked to the bathroom, as is obvious from the pictures -

Holiday trivia

I'm waiting for the weekend to write about my vacation to the south of Germany and Amsterdam. But here is a quick post on some things I learnt while on vacation -

This is the symbol for a Toilet, so if you happen to be at a place that is old, chances are that this is what you should be looking for, if you are looking for the facilities. I saw this for the first time at an 17th century brewery and again at the Neuschwanstein castle.

While in Fussen I noticed a strange system of house numbering. Now the norm is to have all odd numbered houses on one side of the road and even numbered houses on the other side. This is done to make it simple for guests, courier delivery services and postal services to locate the house they need to be at.
But couldn't quite figure out why some houses were numbered 51/2, 91/2, 121/2. I saw this in Fussen only and so I wouldn't be surprised if there is a story behind it. Wonder what it is...

Another thing that caught my eye was this - 20*C+M+B*10. I found this written in chalk on the main door of most of the houses in Germany.

I was told that it is how the singers of a chorus keep track of the collections they have made for Christmas. 20 stands for the millenium. 10 stands for the year. C+M+B stands for the three kings - Caspar, Melchoir and Balthasar, who went in search of Lord Jesus on the day he was born. Now since orthodox Chrsitians (followers of the Julian calendar) celebrate Christmas on January 7th, the collections for this year were made and Christmas already celebrated.