My boss messaged me to say “Have a good weekend.”
I really shouldn’t have rushed my reply, sending back “You tool!” instead of You too.
Pretty clear indication it’s time to leave.
You said WHAT!?
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Tag: woops
Strangely blown away – April 2015
Reading Time: 3 minutesI don’t know the cause of the strange events.
Was it the full moon (a Red Moon at that)? Or perhaps it was the fact that in the days before, I watched two trippy movies which were challenging reality. First it was all five dimensions of Interstellar, then Fight Club. (I started Inception also, though I dreamed I was too tired and couldn’t watch more than 20 mins).
I guess it begun on Thursday when Dubai was subjected to one of the worst dust storms I’ve seen in my six years here. While I was driving, visibility was down to 10-20 metres.
After work when I got home, the front courtyard immediately looked different. The little tent we bought for Owen was missing. The snake I had in there to scare the kids was now lying exposed on the concrete path.
My first thought was someone must have stolen it. Though, anyone interested in stealing kids toys had many more, and simpler opportunities. They had all been left where they were. It seemed quite clear, despite our courtyard having a 6 foot brick wall right around it, the heavy wind must have blown the tent outside.
I looked out in the street and in the neighbours’ yards, but it was nowhere to be seen. It was a shame, though I wasn’t too upset about it. The boys wouldn’t miss it for some time, and it was relatively cheap from IKEA.
The next day was Good Friday. I went to a friend’s place for an Easter BBQ. Everything was going quite well, until the lady at the end of the table turned and started choking. It was clear she was struggling, when she became quite frantic and ran off into the house. Her husband was nursing their baby, so I jumped up and grabbed the little one. And the guy chased his wife in the house, immediately starting the Heimlich Manoevre when he caught her. What a terrifying sight. After 4 or 5 seconds it seemed to do the trick. He thankfully didn’t show us the evidence, but claimed it was a 5 – 10 centimetre piece of roast lamb.
The awkwardness took a little while to leave, then the afternoon beers were flowing nicely. Before it got too late, I caught a taxi home. I focused my gaze at the passing neighborhood I could see out the taxi’s window. It minimised the sensation of the world spinning. All of a sudden though, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I quickly sat upright and squinted my eyes slightly. Outside, pinned against a small, simple wire fence was the same red, striped material of Owen’s tent. But this didn’t make sense. It was on the other side of my neighborhood – so far from my place.
Perhaps a bit forcefully, I told the taxi driver to stop right there and then. He must have thought I was needing to be sick. I opened the door and ran back to what I thought I had seen, and it was proven, I did see it. Here was the kids tent that I last saw in our place, according to Google maps, over 2 kilometres away.
I guess the shape made it climb like a hot air balloon. And perhaps it didn’t fly in a straight line, so it could have travelled even further.
Imagine if Owen was inside at the time!?
I folded it as best I could to fit it into the taxi’s back seat, and returned home. Most of the way I was still giggling in disbelief.
The next day I was keen to check I had not experienced a dream. Nope, the tent had returned – now with three skateboards inside to weigh it down.
Half companion, half trouble-maker
Reading Time: 2 minutes(An imagined real story :-))
Norm was a typical Australian bloke, with a typical Australian dog.
The dog was called Rusty. He was half companion, half trouble-maker.
It proved difficult to keep such an active, free-spirited dog under control.
He would always fall into mischief. And some mischief was clearly worse than others.
In fact, limits had been reached of late, and Norm had to give Rusty a couple of warnings for ruining people’s property and bringing home dead animals. It was a point of complaint in the community, a point of embarassment for Norm, and a point of concern for Rusty’s future.
During the day Rusty would usually be out and about. It was when he returned in the afternoon, that Norm would feel most uneasy about what Rusty had destroyed this time.
What damage has Rusty done which will need explaining, fixing, or covering up?
One particular afternoon, almost on cue to the worry that was awaking in Norm, Rusty started his return trip down his long home street. But this time, Rusty’s approach was accompanied by a loud, horrible screeching noise.
It was the sound of a large goose. An extremely distressed goose, being held against its will and being dragged slowly and surely back home.
Rusty’s natural instinct and determination patiently dragged this poor goose some unknown massive distance, with each drag only covering 30 centimetres at a time. This was despite the goose being physically larger than Rusty, and its intense flapping and distressed screaming throughout the entire ordeal.
It became clear to Norm what had happened before even seeing the crime scene of feathers Rusty was dragging from who knows where. The trail of evidence was clearly leading all the way directly to Norm’s back door, and the whole neighborhood would already know the culprit.
The noise surely alerted everyone a kilometre in any distance from his home.
The next door neighbour, Jack, came on the scene at the same time as Norm.
Norm was sweating. There’s no way he could escape from this extremely unsettling, awkward moment.
Norm had instant visions of community outrage, police reports, and Rusty’s demise.
Jack, the neighbour had a look of shock at this massive goose still struggling in the jaws of a tired yet proud Rusty. Then he walked in close to Norm’s ear and whispered, “I’ll go you halves.”
Specificity
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I was clearly under the wrong impression that the latest Microsoft releases supplied more useful error messages.
Dubai public transport “adventure”
Reading Time: 5 minutesWednesday night the boys and I decided to catch a metro after dinner to The Dubai Mall and watch the water fountain show. At 6:30pm, the decision was possibly a bit late, but the boys hadn’t been out of the apartment, and Mum wasn’t around so the boys felt like partying. In hindsight, it was a good idea to go, it was a bad idea to not drive like we did the night before.
I drove to Nakheel Harbour & Tower which is the closest metro station with car parking. It’s a bit counter-intuitive as it’s in the opposite way to our direction of travel, but there’s no closer station with a good park.
Finally, the ticket seller agreed Myles needs a card. It’s the smart card ticket for the metro. On every previous trip he didn’t need one, much to his disappointment. To say Myles was over the moon to finally get his card is an understatement.
There was something wrong with the metro on the way in. It stayed at a few of the stations way too long. We missed the 8pm show by the time we left home, driven to Nakheel, caught the metro, and got off, caught the bus to the mall. It’s amazing how long things can take, with just a few delays here and there. I couldn’t bear to turn the boys around without seeing the show, so we perservered.
I was glad we did perservere. The show was great. Lewis’s reaction was again gold – for the big water jets he’d shoot his arms up, and yell “Wow!”.
When the show finished Myles said he was hungry. I knew there was something I forgot in my bag 😐 We got some fries from fatburgers inside, and used the bathrooms, then it was time for the next water show so we got to see the 9pm one also. It’s amazing how the Dubai crowd gets bigger as the night gets more late. And it’s unsurprising why all the poor little kids are getting more and more rowdy.
The second show was better than the first, so very worthwhile to stick around – although the boys are now nearly 2 hours beyond their bedtime.
When the show finished about 10 minutes later we made our way through the dense crowd and got on the shuttle bus. It left within a couple of minutes, joy! But we knew our faith in public transport was displaced when we arrived at the Dubai Mall & Burj Khalifa station and saw the station doors shut and maybe 300 people standing outside. The odd taxi driving past was getting swarmed by a dozen or so frantic people.
We stood for 5 minutes before I made a chase game with the boys to keep them occupied. We saw the doors open, but only to let a police man come out and swing his baton at people trying to force their way in. I also saw some of the families being redirected to the other doors, so we followed. There were less people there, but the crowd was just as aggressive. The worker asked us to go yet another door to get in, which we did. By the time we reached that door the group was nearly 100 strong. The door was now open with a police man was yelling loudly in Arabic. Then I heard him say families only – so I started making my way through the mostly male crowd.
In Dubai there’s a belief that local Emiratis get preferential treatment by the police and many other agencies. That night the myth was busted. A group of local boys tried to squeeze past this policeman, and the policeman didn’t blink and swung his baton with such force to send them back and yelled some further Arabic words I imagined some pretty short translations to. Another guy trying to get through also got smashed in the face with the policeman yelling “where’s your family!”.
To avoid the same treatment, I displayed my boys like they were a premiership trophy I had just won. Myles told me afterwards apparently the intense policeman actually smiled at him as we made our way through, which was a nice touch.
Once we were on the train it was quite a relief, but the train didn’t move for some time. Finally it set off, and we were moving. A nice European guy insisted I take his seat as I was holding a sleeping Lewis at this point.
We passed my usual station of Dubai Internet City (DIC) to get to the car. I actually contemplated whether it would be quicker to get off and taxi home – and leave the car at the station. I decided against it. This became proof you should always go with your first instinct. One station later, the train was left stationary for 10 minutes. Then there was an announcement it’d be delayed by another 10 minutes. I decided to give up, and try my luck finding a taxi to get us straight home.
Many people had decided to ditch the train before me, so there was already a violent tussle on the street for taxis between those people. Instead we tried the shuttle bus which would get us back to DIC. The driver had very limited English, but it was clear he wasn’t moving for another 14 minutes. It had to be the best option. Both boys fell asleep on the way. Then we were able to cross the overpass and hail a taxi to get us back to our apartment about 5 minutes away.
I usually hate catching taxis with a passion, but it was like a lovely dream compared to the prior two metro rides and three bus rides.
When we walked into our building Myles eyes were barely open, and I was carrying Lewis who was nodding in and out of sleep.
My watch said 11:40pm as we reached the long hallway from the lift to our apartment. Although Lewis was terribly tried, he still quietly suggested “run”, referring to the normal race the three of us have to the front door. But he was happy enough with my suggestion for a cuddle.
The metro for the most part is great, but when it fails, the whole system fails. I (jokingly) suggested Myles should toss his new Nol card in the bin cause we’ll never trust catching a metro ever again. We’ll just limit our trips to times when we won’t be so inconvenienced by such delays.
The next morning we caught the metro to Nakheel Harbor & Tower to pick up our car. Against all odds the metro worked like clockwork, and my car was fine. I was half-expecting as the night before was so disastrous that my car would have been towed or something as the icing on the cake.
Woops
Reading Time: < 1 minuteI made my first faux pas today, and lived to tell the tale.
Well actually it’s my second faux pas if you count the time I was walking out of thesupermarket and inadvertently made eye contact with a prostitute, then looked curiously when I noticed she was beaming a massive, suggestive smile at me. This resulted in me doing a quick about-face, then almost running away before ducking into a different shop to escape.
And actually, it’s my third faux pas if you count my error in judgment when I thought that in my spare bathroom I had a second shower which turned out to be a jet/bidet thing. Boy did I feel silly, and dirty once I learned how wrong I was*.
But getting back to my stuffup today. It wasn’t until I got home that I realised, but it’s entirely conceivable- infact, quite likely – that I walked all the way home from the office with my fly/zipper down. I thought it was a little cooler than usual. And people were pointing and laughing at me more than usual*. Honestly though, it was quite embarassing. I know there was at least one look I received that made sense once Irealisedthe errorof myways.
D’oh.
* This was certainly exaggerated for comic effort.