Mystery solved

I got a Time Out Dubai magazine tied to my doorknob a week ago, in a silver bag, seemed hand delivered. I thought fine, probably everyone gets it. But there were no magazines at the other apartments, and in addition, my copy had my name on a sticky label. As I live in a temporary flat, I found it a little strange. Even stranger, this happened again yesterday. It seems that it is not a one-off introductory promotion but I have a subscription for it. Why? How? How did they learn my address?

Today I was Stumble-ing on the internet (Stumble is a Firefox extension that gives random interesting site hits, excellent if you want to do Nothing in between two Something), and as the first random hit, found this article about how to reclaim your name on the internet after posting some embarrassing facts about yourself that eats itself into Google. It says registering with LinkedIn will score immediately well on Google. Well, I do have a LinkedIn account. I performed a search on my name to see if it was true. And actually, LinkedIn was nowhere near the top. However, I noticed a strange page that apparently mentioned me and I never heard of.

This is a site where you could name which performer you wish to come and throw a concert next season in Dubai. I remember looking at it a few months ago, but I have not even fully completed the form they had.

Anyway, go to Prizes, and then click on "100x Time Out Subscription". Oh yeahhh. I am a winner.

I would have never learned without this sequence of coincidences.

The city of

There was a competition this morning on radio to find a motto for Dubai. The winners were:

• Dubai - Mall, Another Mall, and a Mall in between two Malls.
• Dubai - where indicator is an optional extra.
• Dubai - or not to buy.

There were a lot more good ones that I forgot already.

Passports

Just occurred to me that I should mention this here:

In an average country, one is expected to be the nationality of whatever country he/she was born, and is most likely to be the passport holder of that given country.

In Dubai, it is three separate questions.
- Where are you from originally?
- What nationality are you?
- What passport do you hold?

Given the large number of Lebanese with Canadian passport grew up in the USA, Indians with British passport grew up in the UAE, Iranians with Australian passport grew up in wherever, some are actually surprized that my nationality and passport are matching....

Cityscape 2007

We had the Cityscape event last week, a 3-day exhibition where developers showcase their dreams for the following year. In the shadow of the huge flashy developer's stands, pushed to the wall, engineers, architects, project managers, etc also have booths. Hence, the company I work for, also exhibited. I was manning the stand a few times, standing under a huge, meter high "engineers" text, responding to questions like :
'Can I ask what your company exactly does?'
'Hmmm, let me see... I guess we do engineering!'
but my favorites were
'We are a recruitment company and we can source all kinds of engineers for you.'
'Oh yeah? We need facade engineers.'
'Khmmm... Never heard of facade engineers..'

Back to what the developers promise for Dubai to be soon, I post some photos here. The funny thing in Dubai, that developments are not buildings any more. Not even a complex of 2-5 buildings. Developments are expected to be massive districts, whole cities. Having a shopping mall is nothing. Having 5 shopping malls with high rise buildings everywhere in between, that is something.

Parking spot taken

Yesterday night I went to Madinat Jumeirah (high grade hotels- restaurants- shopping mall- event halls complex) and wanted to park my car as usual when a security assistant came and asked me to park elsewhere.
'You cannot park here Ma'am.'
'Yeah. Why.'
'Because the wife of President Bush will park here.'
'The wife of President Bush?'
'I'm serious Ma'am, she is with Sheikha Fatima.'
'The wife of President Bush and Sheikha Fatima? What are they doing here?'
'They are doing breast cancer.'

Well, that explained.

Sick

I had been sick last week. This gives the opportunity to write about health care in Dubai.

In the past almost 3 years a saw a few doctors here, not a great amount, but enough to draw the conclusion:

Avoid doctors in Dubai.

1. Dubai has no famous medical universities, research facilities, ongoing subsidized research programmes, etc. Why would a good doctor ever come here?

2. Rather than having big huge hospitals, it is more like a big bunch of "clinics". By "clinic", do not expect a "multidisciplinary medical institute that provides out-patient care only", as one would. Expect a (1) doctor to work from his villa. If you are lucky, there will be 3 doctors!

3. Medical facilities receive no funds from the state (there are no taxes, are there?), they are pure business. All business wants to make maximum profit in Dubai, and medical ones are not exempted. In Dubai, this generally means using cheap workforce. For the medical practitioners, it translates to cheap nurses. Who cannot speak English and are in trouble with the basics of their profession.

4. As most western expat's package contain good medical insurance with full refund and large cover, doctors are not shy to prescribe three times the drugs you really need and surgeries where you do not really need.

5. As most people here, your doctor will most likely be in some other country in a few years. Who cares if all the patients complain?

6. Maybe as a result of all the above, but doctors seem to follow what you ask for. It happened to me with different doctors, if I mention a blood test or X-ray, I will get it. No consideration whether I needed it. Instead of feeling well-serviced, it really disappoints me. At the end of the day, they are the doctors, they should tell you what you really need. They loose credits.

Other uniqueness of the clinics in town that they all contain "American" "British" "German" "Canadian" in their name, although their operators or doctors mostly have nothing to do with these countries. Not that the UK proved to me any excellence in health care, but apparently people worldwide assume otherwise.

Anyway, I feel better now, I dumped my unused X-ray sheet to the trashcan, so did I dump 168 dirhams of unused medication, and crossed out a new doctor on my list. I continue my search for a proper GP next time. Or just stick with the pharmacist, who gave me a box of 8.50 dirham pill that finally cured me.

On a final note, although it is frustrating, I am not discouraged using medical service here. Being young and generally healthy my problems are most probably standard ones that do not need great experience to deal with and even a crap doctor will later or sooner figure it.

Beach experience

My friend Eszter and I went to the beach yesterday, the first time this year. Weather is definitely getting nicer, the water was just perfect, all came with a gentle breeze, just what you need to feel the greatness of life.

Floating in warm water, we discussed our favorite beach topics (how boring baby blogs are, how boring life with kids can get, etc) (oh you guessed right, none of us have kids), when someone, who btw had extraordinary big ears,- said hello in Hungarian.

He said hello in a way how a friend would, so I looked at Eszter but she nodded to show she had not known him either. Having awful face memory, I searched for a clue whether I was supposed to recognize him. It turned out he is a tourist visiting Dubai for 11 days. He, his friends, and his extraordinary big ears.

He asked if we liked Dubai, and right there the second question, he asked if there was anything else apart of big bucks keeping us here. The third question was straight in the middle, asking how much our salaries were.

Khm. I love to travel places where I know someone. I love to get know new random people at places I travel to. I love to have advices from locals and non-local residents, who can tell me everything that is not written in the tourist guides.

If I were the guy I had taken the opportunity asking for recommendations on the best beach, best local restaurant, coolest place to go, ramadan habits, discuss some local weirdness that I noticed, etc.

No, he (and his extraordinary big ears) wanted to know the salary of a total stranger instead.
I told him "So I hope you will enjoy the rest of your holiday, Dubai is a great place" and he was laughing at my face with an expression "I cannot believe this" and "she is hysterical".

I bought a book the other day. It is The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Some friends told me it is good and the new "hot one", but none of them could tell me clearly what was it about. So the audiobook version was displayed 100mm away my face on the counter at the shop where I bough something else, and suddenly I decided to check it out.

I am half way through, and have not decided yet whether it is worth to recommend or not. It is a kind of self-help book, based on positive thinking methods, telling you that all can be achieved what you want.

I realized most reasonable techniques described in the book as "ways to use The Secret" have already been applied by me in general, except I have never been thinking about them.

Some chapters are crap, like the "Imagine you make 100x more money next year and you will". Ehh. It actually takes much more than that.

But some is correct. A method that Rhonda Byrne mentions as basics to The Secret, is gratitude, to be grateful of what you already have, to say thank you and feel happy about your present situation.

Actually, I do stop time by time, have been doing it for 10+ years, look back, summarize where I am, notice the positive changes since my last summary, and feel happy about how I live and why I live. Rhonda reckons you should do it every day, I do it only occasionally, maybe every two months. Last time was about a week ago, I went to a huge building site near Abu Dhabi, which is just a piece of flat desert now, and by 2009-2010 it will be an operational district of the city. I drove through, parked at the massive big site office, walked in, and was truly happy to be part of this development.

Beach also often makes me think about rainy London and turns me truly grateful.

Back to the guy with his extraordinary big ears, he said he was working in London. He never mentioned what he does, but as Muegyetem, the name of the most famous Hungarian university did not ring a bell to him, I assume he never had the chance to enter higher education. Yet he was probably working hard and he could afford an 11-day holiday in Dubai, where there are no hostels and hotels cost a fortune. Yet he had the beach after rainy London with nice warm water and gentle breeze.

Why cannot you stop, look back, and be grateful of what you achieved? Why do you need to worry about the salaries of total strangers?

And why you are not the only Hungarian who could die for learning what other people make, in jobs totally irrelevant to your life?

Especially in India

I just had this car in front of me at a red light and found it funny.


Update.

I need to add an explanation as I talked to friends since I posted it and figured that although most of them found it funny, based on cultural background, they found it funny for all different reasons.

I heard that it is funny because "This little van wants to drive all the way through India" and because "The business owner must be from India, otherwise one could not give significance to India" (I had to disagree, most expats here are from India, there is a business sense in it.) and "Why would one deliver flowers from the desert to India, which is full of native flowers"

No, none of these. It is purely funny to me because I would have thought India is part of "anywhere". Such as Luxembourg, Chile or Iceland are part, hence they are not listed...

Humidity

Some days in Dubai are 100% humidity level days. Usually mornings, when temperature is a little lower. It feels like being in the steam room, except steam is not 75+ Celsius only around 30-35.

This morning was one of those days. I was driving to work and it seemed like winter fog in Hungary. I set the aircon to 15 Celsius and could completely fool myself that I am "driving in the snowy countryside in December back in Hungary".

To add a facade specialist's note, all the single glazing goes completely disgusting on those high humidity days. Look at this petrol station enclosure. It is moist on the outside. Sometimes restaurants and hotels think that they need a cool frameless glass door, single glazed of course, and then you need to touch the poor moist thing... very posh.


The glass is supposed to be totally clear, it is just covered with condensed vapour.

Date pie

Nah akkor most mondja' olyat amit nem lehet datolyabol fozni...

Is there anything that you cannot make out of dates?

Justifying expectations

There is a thing in Dubai, that one gets used to very quickly: most buildings have gym and swimming pool. These can range poor- to well equipped, small to large, basement to elegant rooftop location. But I am telling you, the most poorly equipped gym I saw in Dubai beats all the gyms of most London 4-5 star hotels.

I remember before I moved here I was looking for accommodation in Dubai on the Internet and noticed that many buildings feature swimming pools. That time I was reasoning that I might not need a swimming pool as I never had before, and expected those pool-less buildings be cheaper. Well, it was not the case. Those "without" buildings either do not exist or you have to compromise a lot on your comfort level and tolerance towards unpleasant neighbors and their unexpected house pets to move there.

The health club in the Dubai Marina building where I lived till this June was on the 35th floor rooftop, with fabulous view. I loved the pool and the jacuzzi, they relaxed me after stressful days. Gym - well, I am not the fanatic type, I only went 5-6 times when I hurt my spine due to lack of knowledge on what to do in a gym, and ended up in an emergency room and with a 3-month argument to get my insurance company pay my medical bills. Good thing about it that the only way I could ease my back pain was to float my body on water, so I spent an extremely pleasant 4 day sick leave in the pool area and went back to work stunningly tanned. Best sick leave ever.

So now I decided to get a personal trainer and go working out regularly. I have been doing it for 7 weeks. I hate it, you would guess if you now me, correctly.

My first personal trainer gave up on me after 10 sessions. He could not understand that I will never love working out. I lost my temper with him regularly and he transferred me to a fellow trainer. A typical session with him was as follows:
- Come on, you will like the CrossTrainer.
- I will do it but do not expect me to like it.
- So, do you like it?
- No, I hate it. Please do not ask it again, I do not like the gym but I will still come because I decided to do it.
- You will see, you will love it.
- Beleive me, I will not.
- But remember, you must have liked PE classes at high school, everyone did.
- Actually I went to special mathematics high school and we were only 6 girls and the coach let us study for physics and mathematics tests instead of useless stupid PE.
- ...So, what do you think about the Chest Press, we increased the weights, it means you started liking it.
- No, I still hate it. Increasing the weight only means that I have more reason hating it now.
And then we go home. And the following session he would ask whether I liked the gym.

The second one is less enthusiastic, that helps. His name is Roger. Every session he tells me that he wants to live in London and asks me how is it there. So every each time I tell him that it is expensive, it is a rip off, people are unfriendly and careless, all the places he could rent are very small and badly maintained, and crime rate is high. And every each session he says:
- Really?
And then we both go home, and next time he would tell me about his plans to live in London and ask me how it is there. And when I tell him, he will say:
- Really?
And guess what we speak about the session after that... Maybe next time I should tell him London is twice as cheap as Dubai, it would not make a difference. (Really?)

Well, there is a saying about sportsmen having underdeveloped brain... (Yeah, both of them are Philippinos, but let's not go back to that...)

I cannot really compare this gym to any other facilities worldwide as I always tried to avoid gyms so there is nothing to compare to. This gym is supposed to be the best here, branch of Fitness First international network. However, I do not have the feeling that the personal trainers are really professional and would have an understanding of how the body and muscles work and how each individual body are different. They just make the very same exercises with anybody, over and over. I recently heard from friends about the importance of keeping the heart rate on level, well, he never measures my hearth rate. The music in the gym is selected by the (khmm... Philippina) receptionists... they are the Brian Adams type let's sleep immediately songs. Nothing energetic or powerful that would help doing the stupid cardios. I am not sure that she realizes that she works for a gym not for a coffee shop.

This happens quite often in Dubai. You have fantastic facilities, operated by cheap and consequentially undertrained staff.

Restaurants are the same... beautiful setting, designer environment, and just dare to ask a simple question about the food.. like "is it a cream soup or a clear soup?". You are lucky if he says " I am not sure ma'am." More chance that he will not admit that he does not even understand the question or does not now anything about their food and he says
- Yes ma'am.
- Yes what?
- (imagine a very stupid looking face here)
- I tried to ask if it is was cream soup, the one that looks white, or clear?
- White ma'am, white. (wow, he caught a word)
You can bet it will be a clear soup. If not tomato based red soup.
To be fair with Philippinos, most restaurant staff are Indian.

You know, some here say they wanna leave Dubai because they just got tired of dumb people. I am not saying it is easy to take. But nothing is free. You get luxury services here in Dubai for peanuts, like manual car wash, manicure, massage, cocktail served at the beach, free valet parking, clean toilets at public pop concerts, etc And if you appreciate those - you have to appreciate the dumb people who deliver it to you. Or you can leave. Do not complain, just leave.

That is why I do not fire my personal trainer and why I tip the cleaning lady even when she folds my dirty laundry and puts it back to my wardrobe. For the record, a PT makes 2800 AED and a cleaning lady makes 800. In London a PT would take home 1800 GBP and a cleaning lady 1200 GBP. The exchange rate is 7.4. Comparing the expectations? Go and figure.

Being fat

Last weekend I managed to spend one and half days in Hungary. Yeah, not very excessive, but I guess my parents getting used to and we all enjoyed it very much.

I asked my sister to take me to Citadella to refresh my memories on one of the World's best city panoramas and also to Vorosmarty square to look at a building that I heard of and is under construction. I was taking pictures on this half-built building. There was a street musician at the corner of the building and he watched me taking pictures.

'So tell me what is soo very interesting here for (fools like) you?' he did not actually add the part in brackets but certainly suggested by the tone of his voice.

I just did not feel like explaining.

'Well, things are interesting for some people.' and I moved away.

'So you do not want to speak to me? .... You know you have a huge fat ass!! You are really fat!! Ha-ha.You should lose weight first!' he shouted after me, even when we were around the corner already.

Welcome to Hungary. Where male street musicians are fully qualified women's fashion and lifestyle advisors. Not only qualified, but so devoted to their profession that they even give free advice!

You know, I had many of these situations in Hungary before. I have almost forgotten about it, how it feels. In Dubai, it would never, never ever happen. Women are more appreciated and individual features are everyone's own business.

Update on Heathrow

This is a follow up on a previous post

This time at the first security check point at Heathrow Departures Check-In, I catched the following conversation. A woman with a relatively big, but not enormously big trolley bag tried to pass. Security person, on relaxed low tone voice:
'Excuse me, this bag might be too big for handluggage.'
'I need to keep it.'
'Ma'am, could you please come with me... measure the bag here yourself, see if it fits to the size allowance.'
'I really need to keep it.'
'Ma'am, I only try to help you.' (still relaxed and relatively kind)
'I cannot check it in, there are important items in.. blabla...'

I could see from the corner of my eyes that it is too late. An other security person hurried from the other end of the room, shouting from 30 meters distance:
'YOU CANNOT KEEP THAT BAG, CHECK IT IN, CANNOT YOU READ THE RULES'
'But I need the..the.. items....'
'YOU ARE KEEPING THE LINE UP, MOVE OUT'- and he dragged her out.

Wow, poor first security guy must have been fired that night. He was too humanitarian for this job.

I recently talked about airports with a very well-travelled Hong Kong man. We agreed that Heathrow is the worst airport. His favourite is Vancouver. I have never been there, I should check it out!

Shoes

This morning in the changing room of my gym an other woman came to me and asked:
"Excuse me, I really like your shoes. Did you buy them here or abroad?"

I mean, again, this is typical Dubai. Let's look at it again.

It happened in a gym. You have to be a member, and it was in the suburbs. Not a place where tourists would go. So we can assume everyone in the changing room was Dubai residents.

Dubai has all the big chains and designer shops. You can buy here absolutely everything.

And yet, her initial assumption is that it is more likely that I bought them abroad than here. Therefore she put the question that way.

And she could have been right. The pants I have today I got from the US, the shirt is from the UK, the scarf and the shoes UAE. And all of us in that changing room were probably wearing a similar combination.

Is there an other place on Earth where it would have happened?

Company car

I took this picture almost two years ago, but the point is still valid. Porsche Cayenne as a company car, with company logo sticker on the side doors... only in Dubai.

Little blurry, sorry, we were both in motion.

Home

There is wide literature on the internet on expatriots, third world kids, repatriating immigrants, etc. On people who lived abroad for an extended duration at one point in their life or in the majority of their life. The main argument is always about "where is Home". Some opinions say there will be no Home anymore, others say the origin country, or the parent's origin culture remains always Home. Some says - and I came to the conclusion of supporting this approach - that all those countries will be Home.

I was in the UK on business in June, and one Sunday I felt I should visit back to Bath, where I had not been since 2004, but lived there for one and half years before. One of my old time friends is still there, so I gave Joanna a call. And we had excellent good time!


The experience of going back to Bath was overwhelming. At one point, I told Joanna that I felt at home. I had the same feeling in different other cities as well. So here is a list what defines Home in my opinion.

1. Have friends in that city. Friends with common memories of the times you spent together in the city.
2. Know what is around the corner. Know the bus lines. Know at least 5 different location outlets from the same chain.
3. Have a memory of the city. Be able to say "oh, this pizza place used to be a bookshop before" or "how come they are changing the road here again, they just created this roundabout a couple of years ago".

And I am quite confident having multiple Homes.

Whenever I feel homesick, it is actually a longing for one of these places. Sometimes it is for Budapest, but most of the time it is not. When I watch some American program on TV - and this is quite frequent, as so many movies are made there - I am crying to go back to the USA. Then I smell something, that triggers memories from my childhood in Turkey. And so on.

Twice every week, I want to leave Dubai. But I know I would miss it a big time.

As most of my friends reading this blog are experienced in abroad living, please feel free to suggest items to my Home definition list.

Captivating Contrasts

This is in reference to my first ever post. There is a new short movie that I saw on Saudi TV MBC, almost at each commercial break, advertising Dubai as the City of Captivating Contrasts. Ehh. What contrast do they exactly mean? A contrast of this?


Workers waiting for their company provided lunch in Dubai Festival City construction site.


Amara Spa at Park Hyatt Dubai. Spa Teatment 1290 AED/ half day. (This picture is from the net, but I have a similar one that I took, will change later when I get my computer out of storage.)


Captivating.

Finland

Just some random photos from my Finland trip. It was actually a conference in Tampere, but I used the opportunity to also visit my friend Kati. The conference was on glass and was actually very good. I am sure it sounds equally exciting for all of you, yeah, what can be more joy than attending presentations on float glass production, glass processing, glass engineering, glass performance, glass fixing systems. Ok, so back to pictures on Finland.

Finland has lakes.
And more lakes.

Not surprizing, Kati's place is also at a lake!


This is Kati. She is on the phone with her boyfriend a lot. Ok, not always. She does not do it when Tero (the boyfriend) is around. (this is mean, I know...)


This is me with Kati. The picture was taken by Tero, hence no phone! :)


Other random observations:
I love saunas. Finnish ones. Good thing that it is quite common to have one that opens from your bathroom if you are in Finland. So of course Kati had one, hurray! What I found surprizing: it is uncommon to have a bathtub in Finland. Although it does make perfect sense, most of us (bathtub owners) very rarely or never use it. There is actually a lot of sense in Finnish home furnishing. I also love the dish dryer grill above the sink. It is like a normal cabinet, with doors, but with grill instead of shelves. Water can drain to the sink below, but dishes are concealed behind the cabinet door rather than exhibited overnight (or for days, as in my case...). But as much as I was happy with home design, looking at shop windows and people on the street, Finnish fashion seems to be a little bit out of space. Fashion items have nothing to do with current trends, and most surprizingly, the streets of Tampere are full of youngsters dressed in gothic rock punk style. I saw at least two of them every day! Did not that style die out last century?? I felt nostalgic.

Heated atmosphere at Heathrow

I have been fascinated by airports since early childhood. What attracts me is the dynamism of an airport. The different flows in motion. Flows of people, flows of luggage, flows of boxed food or boxed trash, outgoing and incoming, outgoing to different destinations and incoming from an other set of places. All these needs to be arranged, controlled and maintained simultaneously, in a very efficient way. These flows merge and cross and branch. The fine line in between chaos and order.

I think I was 6 months old when first traveled by air. We do have a family history of living abroad and traveling. My grandma loves air travel as well, she loves the part when the plane takes off. And the bigger the plane is, the more fascinating the take off is. It is all about beating gravity. It is about the 'Fuck you normal life, I am flying again!!' feeling.

So needless to say, I was very excited when I first arrived to Heathrow. It was when I moved back from the US, and due to delays, my Washington-Frankfurt-Budapest Lufthansa flight was rerouted as Washington-London-Budapest with British Airways. It was well before 9/11, in the good old times when airlines were friends and airport staff were at your service.

That excitement evaporated. These days I just hate Heathrow. I love some other airports, but I hate Heathrow. Just the whole place is unpleasant. The long walk in dark damp tunnels, parts of them are always under construction. Then the rude airport staff. Then the small waiting area. And wifi access is not free.

And all the new "necessary precautions", the multiple security screening points (to make sure by the time you put your belt and hairclip on, you can strip again), the small plastic bag for your toothpaste and eye drops, the fact they make you discard your coke, larger than 100ml perfumes, lipsticks... You might say these are not special, other airports are introducing the same rules. Oh yeah. The difference is:
Other airport staff: "Ma'am, unfortunately I will have to ask you to drink that coke before you go through the gate. I am really sorry, but this is the new rule."
Heathrow specially trained staff: (shouting)"I SAID THROW THAT BOTTLE OUT!! CANNOT YOU HEAR ME PEOPLE, OR WHAT?"
And the other difference is that some airport (like San Francisco) actually have the option that you can put your weapons of destruction, such as nail files and lipsticks into a self addressed envelope and mail them home. No, not Heathrow!

But on top of all, now they managed to introduce the most ridiculous rule, combined with especially rude treatment, beating all earlier ones. It says "Only one piece of cabin luggage is allowed." Oh yeah. When I arrived I passed by the connecting flights transfer area. Or I wanted to pass, but the scene I saw made me stop and stare. It was like in a concentration camp. Poor folks coming from different airports with eg. (scandalously!!!) a laptop bag AND a small lady's purse, oh what an offense!!! Five security staff was walking up and down the line, shouting "ONE PIECE ONLY, ONLY ONE PIECE IS ALLOWED! YOU EITHER DISCARD THE OTHER OR YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO PASS. I REPEAT BECAUSE YOU DO NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND. AS I SAID, ONLY ONE PIECE." And they indeed had huge trash cans. I saw this security guy pulling aside a scared five member family, and shouting at them, as they had 9 pieces of luggage, including small waist bags, purses, pink kid's barbie backpacks, umbrellas. Scandal!! They have to be treated as criminals for this!! Terrorist!! They try to flood the cabin with waist bags, but now these culprits are stopped!! They deserve to be shouted at!! Humiliate them!!

When I said, after being sent back 5 times to take off more clothing, even though the gate did not beep at all, so when I quietly noted "This is the world's most ridiculous airport!", the security officer shouted back "You have obviously never been to the US!". Oh, yeah.... Please advise me more.

Airport staff is not at your help any more. You are not the customer any more. You are lucky that you can enter the airport, and if you do not line up nicely, strip when instructed, let your belongings taken, follow orders, then you will face consequences. And do not you dare to complain.

Really, the only positive thing about Heathrow is that they always have HSBC ads on the walls, which I like. It is always a pair of photos, with captions, and then the same pair, with switched captions. The whole thing is about connotations. But you know what, I do not need to go to the airport to see them! They are here, click on Download to see what I mean: http://www.yourpointofview.com/hsbcads_airport.aspx

Singapore

I was often daydreaming about my post-resignation period. And what I really planned is to have two months off, and go backpacking to Japan. Maybe four months, and that would include Japan and Australia. Or six, and I can add some fun time in the US.

Back to reality, I went to Singapore for 5 (five) days. Including travel. Oh yeah, life is tough.

I picked Singapore because Singapore Airlines had a good offer. It came as a package, airfare, airport transfer, 4 star hotel, sightseeing trips. All to celebrate their 60th birthday. As I had not been there before, I though I should go for it.

To conclude my observations: Singapore is surprisingly green. Tropical plants everywhere. Do I want to live there? There are things that I would enjoy better. Like the plants. I spent a whole afternoon in the Botanical Gardens. But all in all, it does not seem to offer enough to make me move.

I put pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/akoltay/Singapore/photo#s5073967345988716546

And only after 3 weeks that I left Singapore, had I have the chance to learn the most amazing fact that I missed to notice while there: Chewing Gum is banned over there! Read it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore

Only in Singapore are they dare enough to do it.