AOB March and April 2008
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The opinions expressed on these pages are entirely personal unless they are credited; you may not agree with all, or anything, that I write. So please use the feedback page to respond, comment or berate me.
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An Occasional Blog
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Thailand Blogs Bangkok Pundit - politics Bangkok Metblogs - city life Thai-blogs.com - rather serious
2bangkok.com
- not really a blog but always
up to date on Bangkok news
BKKOK.com
Dubai Blogs Hong Kong Blogs A Big White Guy in Hong Kong - self explanatory Ordinary Gweilo Hemlock's Diary. And people think I am opinionated - try this! SimonWorld - Hong Kong commentary and great links to other Asian blogs EastSouthWestNorth - commentary Glutter.org - Greater China democracy news and many great links Hong Kong Hustle In China Danwei - media and advertising news from China
Shanghai Diaries - self
explanatory
In Macau My Olive Tree - Macau blog
In Singapore: Xiaxue - self-confessed mean, bitchy, sex goddess who says "wah" a lot! Mr Brown - colourful commentary from Singapore
Asia Travel Circle of Asia a useful commercial site Tales of Asia perspective and commentary on Cambodia and Thailand and other Asian travels Visit Laos a useful guide on getting to and traveling in Laos. Smart Travel Asia useful tips and destination guides. Maybe too up market.
Aviation Amadeus (airline schedules) Airline meals - see it b4 you eat it !
Airliners
- aviation forum, trip reports and pix
archive Planenation - commercial aviation news Airchive - a web museum of commercial aviation.
News The Guardian - UK
China sites
Bangkok info sites
Worthy Sites Rconversation - from Rebecca MacKinnon, ex-TV reporter-turned-blogger.
Fun Sites
Useful Sites
Technology Ideas
Author
Robert Scott lives and works in Dubai; born in England I have since lived in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok. I am very happily engaged to Tai.
If you want to know more you only need to ask! ask.
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27 April 2008 Welcome home hon. Tai is back from London - I feel bad about not being at the airport to collect her. One of the problems of a 7.30 start at work is that it can be hard to meet the morning arrivals. Up to 36C in Dubai today - almost 100F. It is beginning to get warm. I spent yesterday at work until about 7pm. And Friday was quiet. Tai was on the afternoon departure to Heathrow. I did watch "Martian Child" on DVD. Cute movie. And by the end everyone is happy. Things do work out as long as you want them to; as long as you make the effort and as long as you always tell the people you love how much they mean to you. 24 April 2008 Rumours from Durban in South Africa are that Emirates will announce
flights to this city for 2008. In South Africa the provincial Minister of
Finance and Economic Development, Zweli Mkhize, finally said what everyone
had been whispering, that Emirates would be flying direct to Durban - and
that it will happen this year. 2009 I suspect. Tai has a Karachi turnaround today. We are both tired this week. Sadly we wont get this weekend together as she has to go to London. ******************* This is fun - follow this link for some fun photoshopped versions of the Burj Al Arab hotel. 23 April 2008 Not feeling great today - struggling to shake off a flu bug. Was home alone last night. We were both tired. But have not been sleeping well. Work has been a bit crazy this week; but this is not the place to tell you all about that. 20 April 2008 Alex is 11 today !! Amazing. He has been with me and in my thoughts every day for each of those years and is a very special part of my life. Tai meanwhile is on her way to Birmingham this morning. Her first visit to the city where I was born. They stay very centrally so she will get a look at the new Birmingham city centre - which is apparently very different from when I lived there. 19 April 2008 Came back to Dubai this morning on Etihad's morning flight out of Bangkok to Abu Dhabi. Flight was full. Food was dire. We had a busy day yesterday arranging wedding invitations and photographers. Possibly too busy as we were tired by evening. 16 April 2008 I dont like Hanoi - and to be honest with the little holiday that we have I would be happier on a beach or somewhere green and quiet. This is a noisy, unattractive city. ********************** Meanwhile back in Thailand a total of 677 road accidents occurred on
Tuesday, killing 47 people and injuring 677 others. Crazy. 15 April 2008 Up far to early after a bad night's sleep for the 6.45am to Hanoi. It is six years since I was last here and everyone has acquired a motorbike to replace the old bicycle. With every motorbike comes a new horn. And the noise in the city is incessant! 14 April 2008 Am I a lousy father? I try to call Alex from Dubai whenever I can. We saw him in HKG two months ago and this weekend brought him to BKK for Songkran. A holiday that he always enjoys. But I always feel that it is not enough of me for him. He arrived in Friday with a bandage on his arm. He did not know how he had hurt himself but his mother reported that it was infected. It actually looked to be healing; there was no irritation. So we just let it heal over the weekend rather than take him to the hospital to be checked. And then I get this not in email " I take it that you have never seen an infected wound? Alex's arm is festering with a growing lesion. The dried scaly bit is not indication of healing, it is dried up pus." Guess I will hear what the HKG doctor says tomorrow. *********************** A total of 76 people were killed and 1,103 others were injured in road
accidents on Sunday, the third day of the 7-dangerous-day of Songkran
festival, the Road Safety Monitoring Centre announced Monday. ************************ Songkran is fun for a day - but by day 2 I am less enthusiastic. It is hard to leave your room without fear of being drenched or covered in white powder. There are now larger crowds on the pavements throwing water and powder over passing motobikes. Someone help me understand why people do that. Too dangerous. Huge crowds on Silom tonight. It would take just one fight to turn that into a riot or a stampede. The road is best avoided for another 24 hours. 13 April 2008 Bob Geldof is not a George W Bush fan. But he is fair. And one area where Bush has not got enough recognition is for his Africa policy. Geldof wrote this piece for Time magazine and it is worth a read. ************************** Good to be in BKK for the New Year. We were at Chatuchak market today and everyone was in a good mood there. Maybe that is not true by the end of the day as everyone tries to dry off. There was plenty of water being sprayed or thrown around. But other than one idiot it was all very good natured. 12 April 2008 From a pilots website: "Dubai sucks the life out of you." Sad but I know what the writer means. We are now in Bangkok for the New Year celebrations. Fairly dreadful flight from Abu Dhabi on Thursday night. No sleep at all. Did watch the movie "PS: I love you." Pleasant movie - reminded me of Truly Madly Deepy, but without the emotional punch. 9 April 2008 Another office move - my third office in our building in 9 months. This one is a bit too quiet. Tai left for BKK last night on Etihad. A nice evening's drive to Abu Dhabi and back. We will be in BKK for Songkran, the Thai new year. ******************* I feel sorry for the staff of OASIS - by all accounts they were doing a great job and providing a quality service at discount prices. Trouble is the service was at a cost and the airline was bleeding money at an unsalvageable rate. ******************** One new way of getting to South East Asia on the cheap:
Low-cost carrier Air Arabia has announced
the launch of daily flights between Sharjah, UAE, and Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia in a joint venture with FlyYeti.com. *********************** One of the world’s
largest shopping and entertainment destinations, The Dubai Mall, will
open on August 28, Emaar Malls Group has announced. Just don't expect too
much to be open in the mall on opening day! Sebastian Coe on the BBC tonite optimistically called the Olympics "the largest non political gathering in the world" - which misses everything that China is seeking to achieve in the summer Olympics. It is entirely about politics to the Chinese. Of course Britain can ill afford to upset China as England is hosting the 2012 Olympics. But I am with the protesters. China will use the Olympics to deliver a message. Maybe it is time they heard the message as well. 4 April 2008 Had a couple of strange nights - it was my turn to sleep by 8.30pm last night. Woke at 10.30pm thinking that it was the middle of the night. Tai has airport standby at 1am tonite so that breaks up another weekend. Comes with the territory! Means being asleep by 8pm for a few hours before heading to the airport. 2 April 2008 Feel thoroughly depressed this morning. Too much work and not enough to enjoy. Tai was sleeping by 8.30pm last night. We are both tired this week. ********************* Best of the April Fool's stories was the BBC's discovery of flying penguins! ********************* Emirates is now flying to its 100th destination with a daily flight to Cape Town. 1 April 2008 Busy, busy at work. Tai came home on the morning of the 30th and it is good to be able to spend some time together. All Fools Day today. 3 months into the year already. Seems like we just had Christmas. 30 March 2008 From 7Days newspaper this morning. "Thousands of people were left seething yesterday after being forced to queue for hours to get into the Dubai World Cup. Doors to the sold out event opened at 2pm but thousands of racegoers were still queuing outside at 7pm as security staff frisked each person waiting to get in. Some people, who had all paid dhs180 for a ticket, said they had to stay in line for up to three hours and complained that no-one told them why they had to wait to get in." It was a complete shambles. 29 March 2008 EK has moved all its Trans Tasman flights around for the day - 406 to AKL became 419 to SYD and becomes 413 to DXB - so all is well and Tai will be home in the morning! Meanwhile I worked all day yesterday and will be back in the office this morning. What a way to spend the weekend. Another night with only a few hours sleep. ********************* German Transport Ministry's has ruled not to allocate new landing slots to Emirates at Berlin until 2011 and at Stuttgart until 2016. The existing bilateral agreement restricts EK to four German destinations - Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf. Presumably this is all about protecting Lufthansa. 28 March 2008 Between them BA and BAA have made a complete disaster of the new terminal 5 opening at Heathrow. This new terminal took 20 years to build - the new terminal three at Beijing 3 years and similar for the new Shanghai terminal. Both HKG and BKK had problems when they opened new airports - but they were opening brand new airports - not as simple as a new terminal at an existing airport. Heads should roll - starting with Willie Walsh. Trouble is even if he is fired the settlement will mean he never needs to work again. And then the BAA near monoploy needs to be broken apart. BAA operates Stansted and Gatwick in addition to Heathrow. Day 1 was a sorry saga: Luggage check-ins axed. Bags lost. Escalators paralysed. 34 flights cancelled. Day 2 - over 80 flights cancelled. There are profuse apologies on the BA website but a look at the BAA Heathrow website and it looks like business as normal. Not even a whisper of delays or problems. ******************** Thomson Corp and Reuters expressed confidence that the Canadian group's
£7.8bn ($15.7bn) bid for the UK financial data group would pay off in
spite of turbulent markets as shareholders overwhelmingly approved the
deal yesterday. Tai is heading back from Christchurch to Sydney today. At least she is ob her way home - but not until the end of the weekend....seems so far away. 26 March 2008 A wonderful English language page from the Thai tourist police! I must remember to "where safety chute while boarding the ship" ************************ Dubai as a cultural hub - forgive me but the following announcement from the local news agency is something of a dream: it is a bit short on details of what this means and how it can be done. Dubai: His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice
President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on Wednesday
launched the Dubai Creek Cultural project, which aims to turn the city
into a global cultural platform. A cultural hub requires among other things an active media - yet
the latest Freedom House report ranks the
UAE 137 out of 196 states worldwide in terms of freedom of the press. Tai was called out from airport standby to go away for 5 nights to Sydney and Christchurch. For some reason that has left me feeling unusually sad this morning. ******************** Meanwhile here is George Bush with an Easter Bunny !
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24 March 2008 The doctor's recommendation yesterday was three days or rest. I wish. I am off to Doha tonight. Tai meanwhile has a 7am airport standby tomorrow morning. There are so many flights at that time that she could go anywhere !Fingers crossed that Tai will be in Dubai for Saturday and the Dubai World Cup - the major social event of the Dubai year! More on that later ! 22 March 2008 Tai was called out of airport standby for the overnight turnaround to Trivandrum. Coincidentally this was one of her two supernumerary flights after her abinitio graduation! It will be a long night for her. And a long sleep on Saturday. It is a very quiet day today! ************************** Rumours of high staff turnover continue at EK. But it really is not a major issues - other than the training needs. In the year to March EK received over 66,000 cabin crew applications and selected and employed 3,000. That is just one in every 20 applications is being accepted. 21 March 2008 4am and I cant sleep. Woke up at 2am thinking about work. This is not healthy. *************************** It was Tai's business class graduation yesterday. Her graduation as a new EK recruit seems so recent - but was almost 16 months ago. It was a good day and I was so proud of her as she was called up onto the stage, The graduation ceremony is no fun anymore. There are so song and dance shows by the graduates. There are some boringly repetitive speeches and the video of the crew in the training center is now at the end of the ceremony and is woefully short. The whole event lacked the atmosphere of the earlier graduations. Then and now - the top picture is March 2008 and the second picture is November 2006!
Same chair - same smile !! There is no time for a day off. She is on airport standby tonight (Friday) - an overnight turnaround looks likely. ****************************** We had dinner last night outside at Olives restaurant at the "One and Only Royal Mirage Hotel" - it really is a very attractive, quiet, rather exclusive hotel by Palm Jumeirah. The restaurant is casual and relaxed. ******************************** At the beginning of 2006, the US dollar was worth 41.05 baht. It is currently worth about 31.00 baht. At the beginning of 2006, the US dollar was worth 41.05 baht. It is currently worth about 31.00 baht. 18 March 2008 Secret Dubai Diary, one of the emirate's most popular blogs, has been banned in the UAE in a move that has upset the many thousands of its readers. The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has decided to block secretdubai.blogspot.com, calling it, “a web site for slander, defamation and vilification against Dubai. 17 March 2008 Have not felt well for a few days - just a bout of flu but it is hard to shake off and leaves me feeling drained. Tai meanwhile is on her business class upgrade course - a mere 99.5% in her first exam last Thursday. Not bad given that 2 out of 10 on the course failed. *************************** The weekend was spend in a typical Dubai way - at work; in the supermarket and having a late lunch at the beach on Saturday. 14 March 2008 Blocked in the UAE....www.mediathai.net This must be to stop me seeing a picture of Mr. T's gik - Lydia. ****************** A day trip to Bahrain yesterday - I have not been there since my first year with Reuters in 1985. There is much that is new there and a great deal of reclamation. But as we drove around there is still farming land; dhow builders and what looked like lobster nets for the fishing fleet. The people are friendly; the traffic is horrible and the government offices appear closed by 2.30pm. Our flight was on a Netjets Dassault Falcon. Very comfortable. *************** There is a crew satisfaction survey going around Emirates at the moment; comments are apparently anonymous though not everyone believes that - and as with many organisations there no no great expectation of change. One of the questions on the survey is "Would you recommend Emirates?" One set of comments on a web site indicates some of the issues confronting EK: "It depends on your priorities. The other question is how much of this is simply consistent with any Dubai based company and how much if it is specific to Emirates. The labour laws (or lack of) apply to any company here. 11 March 2008 It is an early morning - 1.30am trip to the airport to take Tai for a Hyderabad turnaround. Do you think there might be a place called Hyderagood - maybe in a parallel universe!? ***************** The big news last night was that the last episode of Songkhram Nangfah was on teh Thai Global TV network. Rin got her divorce and got engaged to her nice captain. Shirley got beaten up by the bad guy's mother and sister - they seem a most unpleasant family. Tai says Shirley got what she deserved but there is nothing attractive about watching a pregnant woman (however miserable she is) get beaten and left alone. I found that part of the show must unpleasant. It was a strange show - part slapstick comedy, part romance, part gratutious violence. And no crew scenes in the final episode. SO teh uniform scandal was played down by focusing on scenes away from the airline and crew activities. ******************** For those of us who have to endure driving in Dubai the following rules of the road have recently been published and will sound sadly familiar: top 20 driving rules in Dubai1. There are only two speeds on Dubai roads - too fast and stationary.
8 March 2008 I read the following new post in one of the aviation websites used by aircrew and people that follow the industry: this entry (made today) is alarming: "Am I the only captain in the airline who feels really - and I mean
REALLY - uncomfortable at the thought of taking my mandatory rest in the
(far) aft torpedo tube with some of our latest recruits manning the fort a
very long way away from where I am forced to go? EK has had some
potentially distrastrous incidents in the past, and on every occasion to
date, the company has been extremely lucky in having someone on the flight
deck who's rescued the situation with flying skills over and above what
the company seems to expect from us now with their utterly ridiculous
"automation always" policy. In my opinion, it's just a matter of time and
we'll see an EK tail on page 1 of the world's newspapers for all the wrong
reasons." The crew rest area on the 777 for technical and cabin crew is at the rear of the plane. Early designs used the same cabin set up as the 747-400 with the pilot rest area at the back of the cockpit. There is one fact that is clear. With a growing pilot shortage and such a fast growing airline Emirates is having to cast the net wider to recruit and is hiring pilots with fewer flying hours and less experience than in the past. *********************** Another rumour has large numbers (300??) Korean crew leaving EK to join their national carrier. Must be the better uniform ! 7 March 2008 Tai is in Glasgow - called out this morning from standby which means that she is gone for the Dubai weekend; as she comes back late night tomorrow. Did not sleep much last night. Slept for a while at Millennium and came back to Falcon at midnight - and awake since ! Very quiet day - bought some shoes and went to Carrefour. Not very exciting. And then spent the evening trying to find some space in my wardrobe. Did buy three suits, a jacket, trousers and shirts from Versaces tailor in Bangkok. Jut no where to store them. ************************ We went to see Celine Dion on Wednesday night; their is a report on the today page. It was a cold evening; standing room only and the show was forgettable. 5 March 2008 I woke up this morning and for two minutes felt wonderful; sleeping peacefully next to me is the most wonderful person in my world. And then I started to think about work! 3 March 2008 I did remember to call my mother last night - coincidentally it was mother's day - i guess that is something that i should have known before I called. ****************** Tai is on her way back at last - after another bad night yesterday at BKK - three flights and all full - she is taking the long way home; via Kuala Lumpur but it is a light load from KL so she had no problem getting a seat. It will be good to have her home. And its almost 11.00pm and I am still at work. 2 March 2008 It has been a long day - a little sleep on last night's flight - and then a long day at work. I wish it was more fun to go back. I had to leave Tai in Bangkok for the night. Both EK flights last night were packed so very few standby seats were available. 1 March 2008 Sirocco is a very nice place to have a glass of wine. Shame about the vertigo inducing bill of Baht 1,700 for two small classes. That's over US$50. Criminal. And the service. Slow! ******************* Last day of vacation - as ever there is not enough time in Bangkok - and it would be easy to stay here for longer.
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