Signs of the times

Here's some signage I stumbled across in the UK which caught my attention.

The first isn't unique to the UK of course, the stupidity is world-wide.

A packet of peanuts...with an allergy warning to buyers that it contains nuts and may contain traces of nuts.

You'd hope a packet of peanuts would have at least traces of nuts, wouldn't you.

Then a couple of local signs.

An obviously dissastisfied customer of the  enclosure solutions operative  wanted the passing world to know of his frustration.

A reply was added by said fencing contractor:

And another, this one a classic of the way the bureaucratic mind thinks so differently from the rest of us.

From their parallel world you get this:

A bureaucrat sees the overgrown shrub, goes back to the office, writes a notice, gets it printed and laminated, goes back to the site and pins the notice in place. Then presumably puts in a requisition to the environmental solutions department to carry out the necessary landscaping.

A non- bureaucrat would simply have gone back with a pair of shears and trimmed the offending leaves.

And now for something completely different.

Something that's intrigued me for a long time has to do with racing camels here in the UAE.

Very big, camels.

Big, clumsy and weighing over half a tonne.

So why were the jockeys very small young boys, replaced when it was acknowledged that was an unacceptable practice by even smaller robot jockeys?

Photo life.com

This makes much more sense to me, as we do it in Australia, where we have huge herds of wild camels by the way, with a proper grown-up human jockey:

Photo Greg White

It's a rhetorical question, I'm sure there's no logical answer.

BTW, the pic is from Australia's richest camel race with A$30,000 in prize money (Dh110,000), held every July way, way, way out in the bush in far western Queensland. It's about 2,000 kilometres from the state capital Brisbane.

Just a bit of background, that gives an idea of the vastness and sparse population we enjoy in Oz. Boulia Shire covers a land area of 61,176sq kilometres and has a total Shire population of just 600 people. That's four times larger than Greater London, which has eight million people.

The town of Boulia has a population of 300 people and the other town in the Shire, Urandangie, has a population of 35.

So there's a lot of empty space.

It fills up a bit for the camel races, when about 2,000 people turn up.

And of course, it's empty apart from the 250,000 sheep and 75,000-plus cattle that are usually around the shire. The wool clip is approximately one million kilograms weight. Yep, a million kilograms.

They say the largest employer in Boulia is the Shire Council, the main role of which is the maintenance of the roads within the Shire.

I'd say there's not a lot else to look after really.

And on that camelian note I'm disappearing for a while. We're off to the UK in the morning for three weeks.  Not sure whether I'll be posting much for the duration.

Boulia Shire Council has a website - a very good one actually - that you might be interested to look at to get a glimpse of a very different lifestyle. It's here.   Info on the camel races is under 'Events'.

I'm intrigued

I'd love to know the story behind the brand new Amwaj Rotana at Jumeirah Beach Residence.

I've watched it being built, furnished, flags telling us it was Opening Soon, Rotana signage going up all over the building...



Suddenly, as it seemed it was ready to welcome its first guests, everything stopped.

Now black garbage bags have been taped over all the signs...

The roastery mystery

Yesterday I was wondering about the use of the word roastery in the name of a shop that isn't a roastery.

That was Queen Palace Flowers Roastery.

A mistranslation, I wondered?

El Shalab told us that the Arabic said mahmasa, meaning, yes, roastery.

So it wasn't a mistranslation.

Dave told us he'd checked it in Yellow Pages and they're listed as '"trader of coffee, confectionary, chocolate, flowers, plants and nuts".

There's another one too:



I looked in and they sell flowers, pots and vases, wickerwork baskets, chocolates...



I'm still trying to work out why they call themselves 'roastery'.

Maybe because they roast the nuts and the coffee...?

The things you see...

A flowers roastery.

I'm obviously missing something, but I can't work out what it is.

A mistranslation perhaps?

Curiouser and curiouser

Seeing curious signs with strange names, spelling mistakes, letters transposed is not unusual around Dubai. They're hand-painted or printed.

But on Al Wasl Road the other day I came across a type I've never seen before...

Another bizarre Oz story

A silly story for the end of the week.

We regularly get bizarre stories coming out of Australia and here's a new one that particularly fascinated me.

It comes from the Western Australia Department of Environment & Conservation, who were caring for a carpet python. That's one of these:


Photo: goldensnakes.com

They found it when they were out in the bush on routine woylie monitoring operations south-east of Perth.

A 'woylie' you ask?

A woylie is a small nocturnal marsupial which was reclassified as endangered after populations declined by 90 per cent from 2001.

That's one of these:


Photo: Sabrina Trocini

A released woylie with a radio tracking collar had been swallowed by the 2 metre long python, which obviously cared little that it was eating an endangered animal for lunch.

The officers tracked the radio collar to inside the python and took it back to be cared for because it would need to help to regurgitate the collar.

But then.

A thief broke into the centre and stole the python.

An appeal for its return had no effect, so the big guns were called in.

"The investigating team decided to use a plane to track the snake after an appeal for the thieves to return the python did not have the desired effect and ground-tracking efforts were unsuccessful.

After considerable assistance from the Australian Government Department of Defence and Air Services Australia to secure the required military and civil aviation clearances, the plane was flown to Perth from Manjimup (300 kilometres from Perth, the state capital) and started the search on Thursday afternoon and soon picked up a signal.

"They got us within 60m - we were able to pinpoint a Heathridge house with hand-held tracking devices and told the police who went in to recover the snake."

Apparently the residents were rather shocked when the WA police turned up.

I wonder what the total cost was to rescue the python?



The WA DE&C website story is here.

RAK's agitated ox

It's been a while since we had a worthwhile story from Ras Al Khaimah.

Amongst others we've had panic caused by a dragon on the loose, and the black magic maid drama.

Now we hear that: An agitated ox spread fear and panic in Ras Al Khaimah...Residents said they were shocked when the ox appeared in their area all of a sudden on Saturday. Fearful of being attacked, people hid in nearby houses, buildings and commercial outlets.

Sadly someone went to investigate and was badly gored before the police captured the animal.


Gulf News has it here.

Fun stuff from Singapore

Every time we visit Singapore I come across more that is odd, strange, bizarre, eccentric.

My little pocket-size digital camera makes it easy to record and share them, so here are a few from last weeks trip.

We have some bizarre buildings in Dubai, but we're not alone in that. How about these examples of architectural art at Bugis Street:




The description of food always fascinates me. Unlike westerners who come up with fancy names for animal body parts used in cooking, the Chinese tell it like it is for the ingredients:



Pig's Stomach Soup or Spine Meat Soup. Boy, they make it sound appetising.

One thing that mystifies me - they list liver, stomach, kidney, spine meat etc, so I wonder what goes into Pig's Organ Soup?

And on the subject of food - Wife Biscuits?





I came across this poster extolling the virtues of a career in real estate (!!) in the local area of Toa Payoh. I loved this section of the message in particular:

Here's the full poster:




And something that I often complain about on Life in Dubai - inevitably the use of 'solutions' has hit Singapore too:



The Final Solution ^TM (how can they trademark that?) for those who must write something despite having nothing to say.

A classic in the world of solutions.

The things they ask about...

Every so often I check the phrases people who've arrived at Life in Dubai put into search engines.

I liked this one, which someone in Jaipur, India put into Yahoo search,:

crossdressing withsaree-bra

Amazingly the enquirer got: 306 for crossdressing withsaree-bra - 0.32 sec

Before you ask, the reason s/he was directed here was one of my 'great moments in court' posts.

Inexplicable discrimination

A piece in Gulf News today reminds us of another very strange rule that I struggle to understand.

There's a restriction on expat residents sponsoring their spouse based on income. Earn less than Dh4000 a month and you can't sponsor your spouse, which to me makes sense and I understand it.

But there's also a long list of job categories which are barred from sponsoring spouses regardless of their salary. Apparently there are 57 jobs on the list.

It was highlighted again because a Filipina bank cashier earning more than Dh6000 a month and with 'proper' accommodation had her application for her husband to join her rejected.

I suspect my rule about dealing with government counter staff might have applied - if the first person rejects your request you go out, come back in and take another ticket and try a different counter. If necessary repeat the process until you find one who says 'yes'.

Discrimination like this based on the job you do is surely indefensible.

The Gulf News website has the story here but it doesn't include the list of some of the barred categories which appears in the print edition.

As strange as the rule itself, the list includes cook (with the very specific catagories of Arabic cuisine cook, continental cuisine cook - does that include the highly paid Executive Chefs in our five star hotels I wonder? - falafel maker, sweets maker, pastry maker), goldsmith, butcher, waiter, tailor, hairdresser, make-up man (eh?) and, get this, salesman.

Time for a rethink?

The things you see...

The sorting out of the hundreds of photos we took in Oz and Singapore is under way, but it'll take me a while.

I've picked out some of the stranger things we came across though. Like this shop in Sydney's Chinatown:



Yes folks, it's the same one.

Also in Oz, this time up in Noosaville in Queensland there was something I've never seen before:



Is it like the normal car wash you get at petrol stations I wonder. You walk the dog through the car wash?

Then in Singapore some food delicacies caught my eye:

No I didn't try them. Nor these...

Tradition or comfort?

The Walk at JBR has plenty of activities going on as part of the Dubai Shopping Festival.

The other evening we came across a group performing their traditional dances, dressed in their traditional clothing.

Although I wasn't entirely convinced about the authenticity of the traditional shoes...

Great moments in court

The defence offered in so many court cases here keeps me amused for hours. I note some of them on 'Life in Dubai' because it's a glimpse of the ultra-modern city people outside are not aware of.

Only last week we had the gentleman who refused to pay for three nights in a hotel because he saw prophets and angels who told him that he only stayed one night.

And who can forget the case of the bulletproof sheep?

Now we have another.

A man was charged with cross-dressing in public - at Mall of the Emirates no less, which is about as public as you can get.

Dubai's Finest, working undercover, said his outfit was glittering like a woman's clothes, and he wore a bra, mascara, women's perfume and a wig.

The defendant didn't deny the charge but...

I'm not guilty... I was cross-dressed because I was training to perform a woman's role in Indian cinema.

You might wonder, as I did, why he was parading around Dubai's busiest shopping mall.

I didn't intend to go to the mall but I went there because I received an urgent phone call.

Urgent? I'd say it must have been.



Gulf News has it here.

The case of angels vs hotel

Every so often we get a story in the 'must cut that out and put it in the scrapbook' category.

One pops up in Gulf News this morning.

A gentleman is in court for refusing to pay a Dh900 hotel bill for a three night stay.

He's refusing to pay for more than one night and his reasoning seems faultless to me:

"God almighty took away my soul then resurrected me again. During this experience, which happened upon His will, I saw prophets and angels who told me that I only stayed one night in the hotel."

Al Slammer for a month said the judge, at which the cheery accused saluted everyone in the same way he greeted them when he first entered the courtroom.



The full story is here.

I do get bemused

The longer you spend in Dubai the more likely you are to spend your twilight years in a Home For The Bewildered.

I came across this in Ibn Battuta Mall today...



Please don't touch the turtle which isn't there.

Ummmm....

Mooring the chopper.

Dubai Festival City

Another strange sign

Desert turf. Sounds like an oxymoron doesn't it, but we get used to things like this in Dubai.

The fun things you see

Spotted these at Global Village.

Something lost in translation but you get the general idea...



A whole row of jars containing different honey but this one had me wondering what was in it...

More about Global Village later.

Only in Dubai

One of the nice things about Dubai is its cosmopolian nature and tolerance.

It's said that two hundred nationalities are represented here, and certainly many religions are.

But those facts do throw up some strange sights.

How's this for an odd mixture. The ultra-modern Burj Al Arab, the traditional Arabic architecture of Madinat Jumeirah, a Christmas tree and a fake Alpine village with fake snow.

All next to a man-made lagoon in the desert.