Dubai & Iran

A day of marking after the Indonesian trip, and I was again on the way to the airport. This time to Dubai for 3 days, followed by 7 days in Iran.

- Iran! -Why Iran!? - 'haven't been there', would be the short, usual answer. In this case: -Well, the day after our Thailand holiday, Roza moved to Dubai to take her new position, which requires her to stay in Iran during the 1st year (or 1st and a half, depending on who you ask).

Dubai - The construction site

I've never seen so many cranes in one place - it's a real crane forest over there. The latest tallest building, The Palm islands, The World Islands, etc... everything is on sale, to be completed in few years from now. If I was into construction, finding a job would have been a breeze - but I'm not... All that development made me wander about three questions: who are they expecting to move over there, how many of them, and why?

The highlight, the sightseeing highlight (;) of Dubai was the lunch at Burj Al Arab.
Having three waiters asking you if 'everything is fine' after every serving - that's: manyServings X 3 = annoying - was the only thing that wasn't up to the standard of the world's only '7 star' hotel. Food was really nice, and the view from the 26th floor was even better (e.g. impressive Palm Jumeirah)... The interior of the hotel doesn't really agree with 'my style' – mainly it seems ‘too busy’. Whereas, I really like the sail inspired exterior.

On my 2nd day in Dubai, I went for a walk-around between 1 and 4pm. That was one tiring walk. The super dry air with temperature of 40 degrees Celsius does that to you. The better time to visit Dubai, when maximum temperatures don’t surpass 30, is between November and March.

Iran - The pretty contradictions

There was lots of talk about visa before my trip. At the end, it was only Emirates Airlines who gave us some trouble... everything else, visa related, was smooth.

This is another country is a place that I really would have liked to travel more.... It's a similar impressions that I had after the India trip... There are just lots of interesting/surprising/insightful things...

The place itself reminds me of both things India and things Europe... guess geographical location of the country would point out at that one. For example, in the capital, Tehran, the crowds and the traffic, and more so the way navigating through traffic - w/o much reference to the rules - is very similarly to what you would find in India. Though majority of cars in that traffic are made by one of the three famous French brands (Renault, Peugeot and Citroen). Moreover, a considerable parentage of those cars are quite newer models. French car makers have their factories in the country, making the cars, relatively speaking, 'more affordable'.

I am not big fan of going to museums during travels - manly due to the time constraints. Though, on this occasion I ended up there. National museum in Tehran is not all that big, but what it lacks on quantity it definitely makes up for it in quality. Impressive amount of things date well into the B.C.s years... some going back all the way to 40-50K B.C. Number of artifacts look as though I have seen them on some TV show.

Persians are pretty people... some ladies are just 'wow'... It was interesting to see your usual trendy hottie (make-up, dyed hair, manicure ...) and then, for the finish, there's a colorful scarf on the top of a head... How high on a head the scarf is, how little hair does it cover, and how colorful it is, - apparently - is a telling sign on how religious she is. People enjoying the luxuries of 'western life style' (think party) is not uncommon, though they only do it in the safety of their own/friends homes.

Esfahan trip was an adventure. We came back to Teheran without the car and without the camera. The car's engine gasket blew 4h into the journey, 50km before arriving to Esfahan. (I was not happy to have guessed the problem straight away, but my 1989 Nissan Bluebird showed the exact same symptoms a while back).

The taxi driver who picked us up after the car got towed away was not the most 'ethical' guy out there. But let's be nice and blame part of the unknown and over-priced taxi fair on the misunderstanding.

And then to top it all off, I dropped the camera during the (different) cab ride to the bus station at the end of the day. - ALL THE PHOTOS, LOST :(

None the less, Esfahan is the place to visit. The city, at the time, was the biggest in the world, and it was a political and cultural center of Iran. The amount of lavishly extravagant (Lonely Planet's vocabulary to describe it) architecture build in the name of the religion and rulers is definitely worth witnessing. E.g. Imam Mosque.

The day-trip to Caspian Sea was - luckily - straight forward. Also, Roza brought her camera along. The weather wasn't the best, and as I didn't have the 'speedos' I did not try to 'read the paper while floating' - the sea has a high salt density.

Driving from place to place, was by and through the 'naked' mountains. On the way south from Tehran the mountains are further apart so it seems as though you travel along side them. In the northern area, you travel trough the mountain gorge to get to the sea.

After all that driving related talk, credit is due to Roza's driver for all the extra driving he did during my stay. Also, the dinner and pistachios - did you know Iran was famous for pistachios? - I thought they come form Italy :)

My flight back in Spora landed at 7:30am. I was in the apartment at 8:45, and in the classroom at 9:15 - what a teacher!:?

What a holiday!

Thanks Roza...!

Ps: wish I had the next travel in sight, but for the 1st time in a while looks as though I'll have to 'lock' my passport.

Padang

And so thanks to all the long weekends, the 1st part of the last semester came to an end in no time. It was the time for the usual holiday travel. First stop: Padang, Indonesia.

Veki and Ive were on their way to Croatia, and decided to stop by for the week. A week is just a bit too long - imo - to spend it all in Spora, and not quite long enough to go around and travel.

After lots of yes, nos and maybes, I finally got the Tiger tickets for our four day trip to Padang.

Traveling in my style, we had little idea of what to do and where to go once we landed... The girls coped well - rather well - with all the uncertainty... Thanks :)

The first and last day of the trip, we spend in the Padang city. During our 1st day, we found out that there are lots of interesting activities around the West Sumatra. E.g. jungle tracking and active volcano, Gunung Merapi climbing. Though, as we did not have the time on our side, we settled for a lazy couple of days on a 'paradise island', Sikuai.

On Sunday (8th June), when we arrived to the island, there were number of people there, mainly Padang residents who came over for a day trip. After they left late in the afternoon, together with a young Swiss couple and their 7 months all baby(!), we were the only guests on the island.

Sikuai, is a typical volcanic island that has a mushroom like shape - with steep drop down towards the bottom of the ocean. It reminded me of Sipadan.

We went snorkeling with Henry, the massager/waiter/guide/diver... all in all, the legend of the Sikuai. During the snorkel, the underwater Sikuai, reminded me more of a poor man's Sipadan. The notables we've seen: one turtle, one small shark (that Henry saved from the net), one moray and two cattle fish. Sadly, there is lots of dead coral. Ive and Veki had enough after half an hour or so, Henry and I went all around the island. That was some 4km, 2h, and one very burned back snorkel.

The only disappointment on the island was the food. The last night back in Padang, we were on the mission to find a see food restaurant serving nice Indonesian food. In particular, we were keen on the Gulai Ikan, a fish curry dish recommended by Henry.

Kuching

Another long weekend (Monday the 19th of May was Vesak Holiday), another trip. Most of us current IFs went for an exploration of caves around Kuching, and Bako National Park - in Sarawak, Malaysia.

...!

Ps: Kevin's post.

Tioman

Tioman, known for diving, is an island about 5 hours away from Singapore, off Malaysian east coast.

The long weekend (Monday, the 1st of May, Labour Day, in addition to no classes on Fridays) gave four of us IFs an opportunity for a diving (snorkelling for me) trip.

Thanks Kevin for putting in the good work to get everything organised. Thanks all for all the crunk juice (a.k.a. beer) and the great times.

...!

Ps: Kevin's post.

Parents - 30th aniversary party

The party to celebrate 30 years since parents' wedding was on the Saturday, the 27th of April. This semester I don't have classes scheduled on Fridays, and with some rearrangement of Monday's classes I managed to give the parents the best party present I could - my presence. They were very surprised to find me sleeping in my bed on Friday morning.

That Friday was David's (the lover) cousin wedding (congrats to Sonya and Sunjif ( pardon spelling)). Vesna and I went over for a short while to enjoy the wedding ceremony.

The parent's party was the next day. It was nice, with few family friends attending; lots of food and drinks - the usual.

Also notable is that, in the mean time, we got the new PC box. All that work I've spent just a month ago trying to clear out the bugs from the PC was wasted, as it turns out that there was some kind of hardware problem there as well. Not too surprising for an 8 year old box. The good thing is that now everything works as expected, plus I got my parents into video skype which improves communication, as well as lovers its cost.

Sunday we spend doing nothing, and on Monday I was on my way back to Spora.

...!

Another Cat out of a bag

I've talked about ideas being cheap when telling the story about how I had the idea of something that became YouTube before YouTube came about.

Well, here's another one: On-line ERP for SMEs.

This kind of a web application would fit under a more general term used today, the cloud computing. ComputerWorld quotes the researcher who predicts that: "By 2013, at least one-fifth of enterprise IT workloads will be managed in cloud computing environments"

I've had this idea since the Sydney trip back in 2002. It came about during the 'under influence' conversations with one of Titania's friends, a waiter, I met during the trip. And unlike with the 'YouTube idea', there was actually something tangible behind this one: I had the business domain name registered.

It wasn't much, but it's a progress...

Onto the next one...!

Ps: luckily, unlike the transporter to cover wast distances in space, transportation to the next idea is readily available ;)

New Earths

Scientific American reports that "The most detailed survey yet of planets orbiting nearby stars indicates that a full 30 percent of them may harbor jumbo versions of our own planet."

As long as we (as a race) get to build that 'Beam me up, Scotty!' - or in this case 'beam me over there' machine -- in time -- there's no need to lose sleep over further messing up this Earth.

There's always the next one...!

Ps: of course, closer - in many ways - solution is Mars, with newly discovered water and fertile soil (updated, 28th June)