Yet another reason to stay in shape

A news report titled 'Fat rises for slim waists' in yesterday's papers states that according to a study in the UK women earn substantially more during their career if they manage to stay thin - but for men a bigger belly leads to a bigger bank balance. A woman who begins her career with a slim physique but gradually puts on some weight can expect to earn up to dirhams 59,000 (INR7,08,000) a year less than if she had kept the weight off!
Wonder what results a similar reseach in India would come up with...

Freak accidents

I watched 127 hours over the weekend and loved it. I am so in awe of Aron Ralston. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like to be trapped for five days, with your arm under a boulder and then amputating your arm because that’s the only way to get out and survive. There’s no telling when a freak accident can happen to one.

And then there is this news report in today’s Gulf News about how a truck driver drove over a 1.5-metre-long metal piece that was recklessly left on the four lane highway. The truck’s front right tyre burst and the thick metal piece flew up and fell on a Bangladeshi cleaner’s leg and sliced it off! The poor cleaner’s leg was amputated from above the knee. Honestly the tag-line of 127 hours cannot be more apt – Every second counts.

P.S. (for anyone who is interested) - In the process of writing this post I came across this web-site www.freakaccidents.org

The sandstorm and the rain

My husband and I were supposed to drive to Umm al-Quwain with some friends last Friday. Umm al-Quwain is one of the seven emirates of UAE and lies 70 kms to the North-East of Dubai.

We left at 1:30 in the afternoon on a relatively clear day so when the sandstorm hit us we were unprepared and taken by surprise. Just five minutes into the drive we could hear the
winds blow and a few minutes later there was sand everywhere. Our car started vibrating and visibility dropped to zero. Radio stations interrupted regular transmission to give frequent traffic updates. We could see toppled over garbage bins in the middle of the road, fallen barricades and uprooted trees. The papers the next day said that the sandstorm left a trail of damage in it’s wake.

Since it was a weekend there was not much traffic on the roads and we were able to continue driving with hazard lights on. The photographs are those taken from my Nokia mobile phone, while in the car.

Visiblity improved when we entered Sharjah and it was raining by now. At Umm al-Quwain where it had rained already I spotted a rainbow – very faint and low. It was the first rainbow I’ve seen in the UAE and unfortunately it was too faint to catch it on my mobile phone.


The sandstorm passed as quickly as it came and the weather was perfect on our drive back, but the tell-tale signs of the sandstorm could be seen. The topic of discussion on Sunday in office was where we were at the time of the sandstorm. I realized that I was luckier than some of my colleagues who had decided to go on a boat trip to Mussandam, Oman for the weekend. At the time of the sandstorm on Friday they were ready with their life-jackets on, saying their prayers because their boat was poised to capsize into the chilly waters of the Persian Gulf. Luckily for them no such thing happened and they came back saying that it was the best and the worst weekend of their life.

I got some good pictures on my phone. My favourite is this one of the beach at Umm al-Quwain -

Guns N Roses & Bryan Adams - in one weekend

When asked how my weekend has been and what I have been up to my answers rarely vary. It's usually "Cleaned up the house...entertained some friends...watched a movie...read a bit ..." and so on... But last weekend was truly different. I attended the Guns N Roses concert on Thursday evening and the Bryan Adams concert on Friday and both were spectacular.

Not much of a rock fan myself I was at GnR on work since I was producing our evening show which was broadcast from the venue. The concert started at 10 pm on the dot and was followed by two hours of great music and brilliant production. I loved their rock rendition of the theme tunes of Bond and The Pink Panther. It was a high energy performance by Axl Rose, with him and the guitarists constantly running across the stage, good lighting and pyrotechnics - keeping the 21000 people strong audience enthralled. Abu Dhabi sure does know how to pull off an event!


The Bryan Adams concert on the other hand lacked the production value that GnR had but that became irrelevant once he started singing. My first reaction on seeing him was that he looked so much older than I had expected him to but obviously that has not affected his music.


The highlights of the concert for me, other than his singing Summer of '69, was when he sang 'When you're gone' with a girl from the audience. She was from Goa and was very impressive. He also performed with an Oud player from Lebanon, whom he had met backstage for just five minutes before the concert began. They were good together.
I will remember this concert as the first concert I attended alone and loved every minute of it.


Dubai has been good for me music wise. Since moving here I have attended concerts of George Micheal, Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Sir Elton John, Bryan Adams, Santana, GnR, Nelly Furtado, Jonas Brothers, Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and more. My dream would be to watch Madonna and Abba live and I wish I had had the chance to watch Micheal Jackson in action.

Anyway...here's to many more concerts in 2011!

How long does it take to write a letter?

I had made a resolution way back in July this year to write a letter to my sister's in-laws who reside in Germany. Having met them when in Germany I thought it would be nice to stay in touch with them after my return to Dubai. Letters would be the best way to do it since they are not internet savvy. For somebody who used to write letters very regularly about twenty years ago this tiny task took on mammoth proportions. My letter writing got pushed to every 'next weekend' and here I am five months down the line without a written word. With Christmas round the corner I have decided to make amends by sending them a Christmas card. I have finally managed to type and print the letter and hope to make it to the post-office early tomorrow morning to post them.
How long does it take to write a letter and when did I get so lazy?
While on the subject of letters I caught Aparna Sen's new movie 'Iti Mrinalini' (The unfinished letter) It was part of the Dubai International Film Festival which is on these days. I liked it, though there are some disappointing errors in the use of props and costumes which are meant to be of the eighties. Konkona Sen Sharma is such a brilliant performer. I hope the movie wins the People's choice award.

View atop the Burj Khalifa

I finally went up the Burj Khalifa last week and here are the pictures. (double click on image if need be) They are taken from the observation deck on the 124th floor of the building. The Burj Khalifa has 165 floors in all. I was fascinated by the lift that takes one up there. It is supposed to be the world's fastest lift and goes up to the 124th floor in just one minute.

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