Hello every one…not a normal hello…but a hello from the land of the Sheikhs…THE KINGDOM Of SAUDI ARABIA
where petrol’s cheaper than water….no not kidding…one litre of drinking water is 12Rs and one litre of petrol is around 8 Rs (btw in case u wondering how cheap Diesel is..it’s 3.36 Rs,don’t ask me about aviation fuel now, go find out ureself..)….wow isn’t it??…it’s when I come here that I understand how lucky these Arabs are cos of cheap petrol..if u notice the car advertisements here there’s one thing u’ll notice u won’t see the mileage written anywhere…I’ve stayed here for 15 odd years and never in my life seen the word mileage in any car advertisement let it be print or Tv etc..instead every company boasts about the number of horse power it generates or the number of cylinders it has….in fact Chevrolet has certain car models especially tailored for the middle eastern market produced which u don’t get in even the US of A bcos they are normal family cars with 8 and 12 cylinders and are not feasible to sell in other markets bcos of bad mileage…
But there’s a flip side to this place which I don’t like….u don’t get things in loose quantities here like India…I mean u can’t buy one pencil or one A4 paper or one cigarette…U’ll have to buy the entire box of 12 pencils or entire box of 20 cigs from the shop…..and sad thing is they don’t have all these trial packs that’s available back in the Great Sovereign Democratic Republic of INDIA..trial packs like shampoo sachets, 5rs dairy milk or 2rs chota tiger biscuits….oh btw talking abt high prices here, I forgot my tablets (if ure wondering which tablets read my old post abt my mumbo jumbo with the Doc)…so ya I forgot to pack my omaprazole tablets and since I dint want to break the course I bought it from here….now what’s great in that right?? I’m coming to it….i bought 30 tabs for 100Rs in India and that thing when I buy from here (locally manufactured in SA) it cost me 80 Saudi riyals which is close to 900/Rs…..what the &*%$!!!...I need a calci to compute the percentage increase but I know it’s a 3 digit figure so not calculating…..
ok now let’s rewind a little bit and restart the story from India….I flew to Saudi via Emirates airlines which took off at around 9.40 pm from Calicut…the announcement on board by the crew advised us to switch off the cell phones as it supposedly would hinder with navigational aid….since me being a obedient passenger I switched off the cell after sending one final text to one of my friends..then after we took off like say after 30 mins when the flight was cruising at 887kmph and at a mind boggling 11,200 feet I switched on my cell and I was shocked….
bcos immediately after I switched on there was full tower and showing AIRTEL/aerospace and then I got an SMS….i was like what the bull?? A text message at 11,200 feet…..when I slowly opened and read it…..it read….“nice post…have commented on ure blog”…..(it was a text message from one of my loyal blog readers)….I still haven’t got over that incident where I get full range on my cell and receive a text message at that altitude when I was maybe over the Arabian Sea……but there’s more to it….when I touched down at Dubai international airport my phone switched from AIRTEL/aerospace to normal Airtel which meant that Airtel had pre-activated international roaming on its numbers….which is like awesome cos I don’t remember the last time when I came here me having it…
Now cut from airport and into one of my favourite topics which uncharacteristically I’ve never spoken abt it in my blog….and I feel ashamed….cos fazinically speaking I’m not me if I haven’t talked abt food and photography…..food ive already talked abt in a earlier post (restaurants) but still I’m tempted to talk again…..photography can wait now….talking abt air travel and food there’s one thing that comes to my mind immediately..that’s great food….
u get great food on board most of the flights be it for breakfast lunch or dinner but the sad part is u wont enjoy it as much as u’ll enjoy it while at sea level or at least on 20th floor of any hotel for that matter….the reason being ure TASTE BUDS in ure tongue are not at its best or at its full potential at 10,000ft altitude which means what u taste at that height is not what it actually tastes like….it tastes way better at ground level….sad…can’t help it…..now cut….and action to other topic photography….if u aren’t interested skip and go to next paragraph….I’m least interested in lecturing to an uninterested person…ok this is an article I read somewhere on national geographic….
it’s something abt MEGAPIXELS in cameras…..how many megapixels is gud enuf?…..the reason they did this study was bcos of the increasing megapixel war among the different makers like Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax ,Kodak etc…(don’t ask me y I dint include Sony Cybershot in the list, I dint cos I think Sony, Samsung et all should make what they make best that’s TV and shut their mouth when it comes to diversification….i mean I don’t see a day far in which Britannia will make cameras and LG making bottled drinking water and Jk tyres making underwears….i mean y u laughing…..did u know that Raymonds who makes suiting materials also makes contraceptives..…don’t believe me….go to the raymond’s website(http://www.raymondindia.com/off_pc_ks.asp)
(oh btw talking abt raymond’s, u have any idea what’s the costliest products they have?? it’s actually a suit cloth, that also not stitched just the material….it costs a mind boggling or rather wallet swallowing 6 lakh rupees….don’t believe me??go to the any big raymonds showroom like Mumbai or B’lore and ask for suit with count “SUPER 240”…that’s the thing u shuld look for,the count..) So what I was saying is diversification has gone to such an extent that companies have started making everything and anything regardless related or not, another funny example is ITC making cigarettes and also Classmate notebooks….no way related right…..talking abt related I’m talking something not related to photography cos I got carried away so lemme continue….)
Ok so what national geographic did was they took a photo of a child sitting on a sofa in three qualities…..viz 6 megapixel ,10 and 14…..and they took big prints of this and stuck it on a wall in the busy times square in New York and asked all the passerby’s to identify which was from a 6,10 and 14 mp shots……
99.9% of ppl couldn’t identify….only 1 could….that too cos he was a photography doctorate holder and a professor teaching photography in the university…….no one else could……so what am I trying to say here…..??.....I’m not saying more mp does not account to more quality…..of course it does but beyond 6 or 7 mp it’s not of any perceivable difference unless it’s printed to a very large size like a banner or a big A1 size poster……for normal prints that u take up to even A3 size it doesn’t make a hell or heaven lot of difference…..another area where more mp’s make a difference is when u zoom into a pic to see more detail….so pics taken with more mp’s u can zoom in further with decent quality viewable…..and the last application of more mp’s is when u do lot of tight cropping or when ure too bad at composing pics that u always take a long shot and then crop a small part of it to print or use…..ill explain that with an example….say u take a shot of a family pic with say 14 members in it and after u put the pic on ure PC u see the baby’s smile so cute that u want to cut it and print it as a separate stand alone photo then it’s nothing but technically zooming in or taking a very huge print…so in such situations extra mp’s count and 10 mp 12 mp and 14 mp’s make a difference…..if ure confused after reading this paragraph I’m sorry…..I tried my best to convey what I had in mind abt this issue….
Over the last 2 days I read some random blogs of various people (includes u tiger) and after I read I felt so ashamed I even thought of stopping blogging forever…the content they speak, the usage of words, the vocabulary, writing style is so awesomely awesome that i got such a bad inferiority complex reading other blogs that I’m be tempted of divorcing from my blog…..it’s not a decision taken, just a thought that had come across my mind….i might do it if I come across more such good blogs……in fact I’m jealous of those people who have lot of readers and around 30 odd comments for each post where as I’m stuck here stuck here with 8 people reading(yes I counted)….and that too I have to call and force some of them to read my blog…and god know how many of them simply say nice post bcos they can’t bluntly say on my face “ehh ya it was ok,I dint understand anything and nothing great…all crap only..it’s not ure cup of coffee….don’t waste u’re time on this Fazin ”….are there really people existing like that who can actually tell like that on others face?....i mean if u call me and say I’ve updated my blog pls read….obviously I’ll read and I’ll comment that it was good….come on man he/she’s my friend, how can I say it was bad…..oh ya I cannot leave a comment itself if I dint like it….hmmm…..but then I still insist u better leave a comment on mine regardless u like it or not….what u write is ure wish constructive criticism or blunt brickbats I don’t mind….bcos as long as comments come it’s a testimony that u are writing for an audience not for oneself…well I don’t know if 8 people can be called an audience….. bcos if it’s for oneself I could rather write a Diary instead of a blog…..what else??....oh btw I’m burning here cos the temperature here in the day time is 48C….and if u don’t know how
much that is make water boil and put ure hand in it….the pain and heat u’ll suffer is 100c….so 48c is like half the pain, scream, doctors fee, burn spray etc….ok I know that was a pathetic way of describing 48C…
Oh I read a funny thing on the newspaper here….it showed a pic of a lady who’ll be the first lady pilot in the kingdom….the irony is women aren’t allowed to drive here but they can fly an airplane….lol…..thats ultra funny…..now from funny to something not so funny….ive been out of the country for the past 15 days when I type this line and these 15days I felt the importance or rather I must say influence of internet on me…for the past 2 weeks I dint have access to internet
nor the mind boggling 65 channels on cable or the extravaganza of 10p calls on airtel…was real trying days these..felt like as if I was under some house arrest or rather living in north korea (FYI google abt life in north korea, I can’t sit here and explain everything)…I mean life was tough bcos my normal daily routine comprised of at least 2 hours on orkut , facebook ,yahoo mail and you tube and occasionally some sports sites…the only reprieve I had in this boredom was my camera with which I used to eat sleep and drink but there also a problem occurred as I thought of clicking flowers and the only one’s I could find were cactus, lol….okey juz kidding, middle east is not that bad…we do have vegetation here…in fact Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of pomegranate also not only petrol….oh guess what I did a small study about impact of global recession here and the facts that people said were startling….they said its affected a in UAE but not much in Saudi…its seems turnover had increased in most of the sectors and very very few sectors have been hit by recession….most of them laughed when I asked about recession here….they were like “whats that dude?”…..my friends who works in company here said they are not able to supply to their buyers even after being at full capacity and he was saying Nestle has started construction a new factory in dubai….even on the roads when I noticed there was no shortage of luxury and ultra premium segment cars released this year,roads were filled with top of the line cars as has been the case even before recession era….even banking sector has not been affected testified by numerous new branches opening in various parts of the city,I fact there are more bank branches scattered lavishly than normal shops..hehe…..another thing I noticed over here this time around which has significant importance to make its way on to this blog is about their increasing coffee drinking habits…the number of coffee shops
