February - 9 months left till my big fat Pakistani wedding and the clocks ticking...

So its like three months since I've come back from Pakistan and hats like three months towards my target of accumulating sume mula for my wedding at the end of the year. So far I've managed to secure just one payment from a shabby freelance work which just about paid off one weeks of phone bills and letter postages. My bank accounst already reeling and contains just half a salary - and already I'm beginning to wonder how the hell am I gonna come up with the cash and stabilize my income to get wedded off in time for the wedding.

In the last post I pretty much chalked out a basic idea of how much it would cost to live on a decent basis as a couple in Ras Al Khaimah - note this pretty much applies just to Ras Al Khaimah and that too in exceptional cases as if you consier the expenditures in Dubai and Abu Dhabi - the rents alone would eat away at 155 percent of your earnings.

The good news is that after getting my DSL account all set up I've managed to net in a few good projects to work on so I guess my freelancing streak is about to kick off. The main aim right now is to ensure that I get paid on time and that projects come and get completed in quick succession. But at the same time I do now feel concerned on how far will freelancing take you - maybe I'm worrying too early for this but hey its worth thinking about right now that well its great for a quick buck, you learn lots of new things, make great contacts, your portfolio gets updated, you can work at your own pace and the best thing of all is that you get paid for it.

Hmmm maybe I'm worrying too much and for all the wrong reasons at teh wrong time - its no fun being a worry wart. Right now as I look at what I had initially thought of I might have to consider resetting my exorbitant ambitions and getting back to teh real world. Right now I have just 9 months in hand to make around atleast 30 000 Dirhams in cash. Ok it may not seem too much for those with five digit salaries but consider this that my salary is just 5000 and scratch 2000 which goes to support my folsk in Pakistan and 1500 of my personal spending if I really pinch my pennies. That leaves me with a surplus of 1500 which in nice montsh acucmulates to just a mere total of 13 500 dirhams. Not bad though but I still need to make 16 500 more on that. In 9 months that amounts to a rough average of around I would say 2000 a month surplus. Which is quite manageable provided I do get freelance jobs at that rate. That would account to like one portal

It really dawns upon me that i've seriously wasted a lot of time ever since I started work here - thats a whole lot of potential wasted in lazing and worrying for all the wrong reasons. Serves me right for taking work too easy. I remember running out of a great job around 3 to 4 years ago from Emirates Towers. The pay was excellanta for a beginner and plus it was a grea company however the reason I ran off was jut because it didnt suit my timings and my lazy self to work overtime. Now after having worked my rear end off at 12 hour timings I'm beginning to understand the follies of my ways - well enough complaining - the point remains is that now after learning how to survive on minimal food and a few hours of sleep - I've understood the idea of living to work. But hey its pays off... ok so the utter mindlessness of my rantings seem to imply I'm falling asleep so in that case I'll be signing off for now....

Bad start to the new year - plus failing your driving test before even driving - how about that!

Ok back from the hiatus thats plagued me ever since my last post - ok so its been a month but things have gotten real slow lately and all for the wrong reasons. After appluyin for a Shamil connection from Etisalat - my application got canceled for the reason that there wasnt any available telephone socket on the vicinity of my residence which could be used for the connection. Not to say they didnt inform me - I take myself to blame for the reason that I didnt worry about the situation as I should have and instead relied on another totally useless moronic roommate of mine to go ahead and install a telephone socket - which he obviousy didnt do resulting in my application being canceled due to non fulfilment of technical requirements.

Anyway so I spend like the first couple of weeks of the new year trying to re submit my application plus catch up on some driving classes. In the mean time though RAK has been going through a deluge of mammoth proportions lately - the worst update is when my favorite shoes got totally ruined whilst trying to wade past the canals that used to be roads here in Ras Al Khaimah. To top it all those were the shoes I wore on my engagement :'( and also the same shoes I wore all this time I would take driving lessons. Ok now that might sound stupid that you cant drive in a nother pair of shoes but then again everyone has a lucky rabbits foot or lucky shoes in this case.

The rain succeeded in delaying my driving test from the original dat eof 14th of January to just this morning - woo hoo good for me I thought then - NOT. I've just come back now from the driving test center after having failed in teh most humliating and possibly silliest of ways possible ever in history of driving tests here in RAK. Lets see where did I go wrong - despite my attempts to sit first of all and show I was confident enough even though I was a neurotic mess. But hey a pathan beats me to i - seemed he had the C thing or was perhaps a bigger neurotic mess than me - especially when he tried to shift teh car in reverse whilst still in the first gear - so the tester makes short work of him and he's failed before he even gets the car out of the parking spot. Made me think to myself "hey I can't possibly be that dumb so don't fret this would be easy" - something tells me I thought too soon and waddle my way to the driving seat put the car in reverse and swerve in the most outrageously wrong direction only to have the tester grimace menacingly at me hollering out I had forgotten to turn on the backlight double indicators. STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID me - I must have rendered a whole new high on the really dumb driving bloopers meter at the RAK police department though. I must hav ehardly been in the ar for 15 seconds - 15 darn seconds of trauma and dire humiliation. But I'll be a man and take it in stride although its killing me to think how stupid I could have been in the first place. Well guess that means I'm not driving a car on the main roads anytiem sooner now.

Well the month hasnt been all that bad - I finally DID get internet connection set up at my pad - whoopie as well as fished in a few freelance projects. Plus a 20 percent increment in my salary which is all the more helpful in my marriage and settling down program. Although with the way prices are escalating here and nationwide - supporting a wife and even living in anything bigger than a 10 by 8 box is getting to be more of a luxury now. By doing the simple mathematics the numbers keep adding up with no respite :(.

To sum things up in brief in order to live in a more or less decent manner one would have to keep in mind the following basic costs on a monthly level:

2000 for a small house and that is if you're lucky and the landlord has no plans on hiking the rents outrageously for a while
500 for electricity bills and water
500 atleast for telephone bills - hey my fiancee likes to talk on the phone man
200 for internet
600 for food and supplies at home
500 for weekend outings (man I am being really cheap here)
1000 for buying stuff of interest clothes, make up, gifts, books, movies (God I am a penny pincher)
1000 for car maintenance and fuel costs(well since I dont have a licence just yet this would be replaced by travel costs)

The grand total of all that so far equals 6300 bucks.. just 1300 above my current salary - no question of savings included and Man i have not even included the odd trip to teh doctor or the sudden bout of flu or fever - hey we're all humans and people get sick. Plus if the washing machines broken and needs to get fixed...oh yeah almost forgot to set aside 2000 for sending back home...

If you've noticed the main point of concern is the household rental costs which are quote unpredictable in this part of the world - so if the landlord suddenly gets a hankering to add a few thousand to the rent - there goes all the budget down the drain...

Makes you really wonder that how much can a man earn for his family and himself so theres no risk of being deprived of a basic necessity due to escalating costs. The figure itself appears to be anything but static...

Well guess thats called raising the bar - 2009 has been up to a bad start though - maybe I should stop being so pessimistic and think that hey the worst has already happened so cheer up...

Busy Busy Busy - so much to do and so little time

Ok so far I've managed to secure a driving test appointment on the 14th of January and side by side now have to juggle between two humongous web applications - add to that the fact that we're now recruiting new people - woo hoo makes me now INCHARGE of someone :D. And plus add to that random freelance jobs I need to work at home from and how could I forget my gym sessions and driving classes...

This is the perfect definition of not having time to do . I heard that if you work hard in your youth you'll enjoy yourselves when you're too old to work. I guess someone forgot to mention provided you don't kill yourself in the process.

Its times like this Im beginning to understand how much time I've wasted earlier on and not taking serious anumber of things that I should have worried about earlier - like career advancement, personal advancement, health and other stuff.

Guess its time to rise - if you want to live the high life you might as well start adjusting yourself.

Back to the office after National Day

December 2 was a breeze if I do say so myself. Breeze in the sense that it was quite cold and considering that theres not much to do here in Ras Al Khaimah pretty boring as well. The local authorities had set up a competition for who would have decorated his car the best for national day and we got to see some pretty interesting and uh not so interesting designs from enthusiastic Emiratis.

Even saw some weirdos who went so far as to plaster their entire car windows with printed stickers - therefore severely inhibiting visibility whilst driving. If you ask me although I'm just under training - isnt the whole object of having windows in teh car is so that you can see where you're going or whose coming at you?????? Well the local police sure had their hands full rounding up the zealous patriots one after the other and must have made quite a good fortune in fines issued. The only ones who were happy in all this - must have been the automobile accessories dealers who really roped in big money over the weekend for decorating cars. Hey so what if your customers get caught by the law enforcement authorities - its their problem :)

Anyway I managed to reschedule my driving classes in the mid afternoons - and since its thursday I shoudl plan on going to Dubai for the wekeend -but from the look of the weqather outside again - I'm afraid that we're in for a nother downpour. Man I just hope the weather doesn't dampen my plans for this weekend.

Speaking of which my 1 buck a minute call offer to Pakistan has ended and now I'm desperately trying to save up on cash and look for alternative ways to communicate with my better half to be. For all I've spent on phone bills I could have bought and couriered her a laptop. Ah anyway alls fair in love and...

Driving Classes... and missing a lot of them.

Its almost a month since I came back from my vacations and so far I've just managed to attend a few driving classes. At this rate it'll take me years to get my driving license and until then there seems little chance of being able to buy my own 4WD. But I guess I find it hard to wake up at around dawn - thats the only free time I have for driving lessons and considering that the days are a lot shorter in winter theres little chance of going for driving classes after work.

And even after I've had my fiancee personally tell me to go for driving classes. Man I am one lazy prick - laziness pretty much seems to have taken the better of me in a number of occasions but its not worth putting your career on the line for.

How not to apply for a job in Dubai!

I hate Saturdays as its the first day of the working week here - but anyway I just happened to come across an interesting post on a popular blog which I thought would be worthy to share. Having tried a number of ways to look for a job in my initial job hunting days I'm quite glad I wasnt stupid or simply insane enough to do what transpired in the email correspondence between a potential employer and a ravenous certified bozo 'applying' for a job [emphasis on applying]:

http://www.chrisdiclerico.com/2006/12/17/how-not-to-get-a-job/

The silence after the storm and my first Wi Fi experience..

Ok so I didn't go to Dubai on the week end - hey it was raining like crazy plus teh fact that mybrother was already busy moving furniture since he's shifting to a new apartment after his landlord got rouse of how much higher he could raise the rent and the thought of spending my weekend hauling furniture around didnt seem very pliable to risk travelling in the unhospitable weather conditions that prevailed - I decided to sit back and spend some time to myself.

Ever since I got engaged life has started to look a whole lot different - and I've started to enjoy the things in life that I never thought meant much. Its amazing what love can do to a fella. My fiancee once said that she really enjoyed getting wet in teh rain - although its something I found fun I never really did try it out much and thought i'd avail the oppertunity. I must have been the only nutcrack walking teh flooded streets of RAK with nothing but my sony walkman accompanying me getting drenched in the downpour and quite frankly I loved it. Although the occassional bolt of lightening and thurderclap did send my adrenaline shooting every second and then but despite that - it was incredibly theurupetic perhaps due to the fact that someone I love enjoyed it.

I did manage to take some pics while I was out there - although its pretty hard to take a pic and try to keep your camera dry at the same time though.

Incredible scenes

You know this actually is the main Muntasir Road

Anyone got a raft?

You can't believe how my fiancee freaked out when I told her how I enjoyed running in the rain. :D

Well that was thursday evening. Right now I was in the mood to try out some coffee at starbucks when my fiancee chats and tells me she's not drinking coffee anymore until we get married - aw aint that sweet. But again out of chivalry I couldn't bear to consider gulping down mugs of decaf whilst my better half would spend chilli nights in Lahore - so I pretty much echoed in what she had to say - no coffee till next year thats when we would insha Allah get married. You can't imagine how she freaked when she heard that - ah love makes you do crazy stuff now and then.

So now Im at starbucks checking my email and gulping down - NOT COFFEE - but hot chocolate - hey its not technically coffee but again doesn't seem nice to make use of the facilities and secure a table for nothing. I must have to agree - the Wi Fi facilites here are just out of this world. Although the rate is pretty high - 10 dirhams per hour and add to that atleast 40 bucks of Hot chocolate and a Hallumi wrap its an expensive investment but hey its a great way to kill time and get on track.

Anyway below is a picture of my laptop and my trusty mug just before I logged in.

I must be one idiot I've spent almost all my first hour in writing this post - ah well its the first time anyway. Kudos to Etisalat for the great wi fi experience.

DESERT STORM!?!?!?

Just when you think you need the first chance to rush outta the office for the weekend a co worker comes up to open the window to reveal chaos unleash itself upon the city. As if out of no where Ras Al Khaimah is in the midst of a powerful desert storm - although its 2 pm afternoon the sky is darkened as though its mid evening.

It looks pretty grim outside and the roaring thunder and lightening doesn't add to the hospitability either.



Yep this is the view from my office window and theres really a lot underneath the rising dust


Considering that this picture is taken at 2 pm in the afternoon - its quite intimidating.


Gulf News has done a report on showers that struck Dubai last night. I guess it was a matter of time before we saw similar bad weather right here in RAK. For now I'm just waiting until the storm lulls. And to add to my issues - I missed lunch :(.

Roundcubemail to IlohaMail

I really hate it when you're working for quite a while one some really amazing code and all of a sudden on account of a few 'minor' glitches like browser incompatibility issues etc - your boss decides its best to scrap whatever you've been working on and go back to the drawing board. After spending over a year integrating roundcubemail into our collaboration software - I return from my vacations to find out that theres issues with the code. Not to be totally cynical but we have had issues with roundcube mail for a while now - especially since I've had to tweak it over a hundred times in places and with every new browser update something needed to be fixed for the program to work.

The only reason we even considered it was because of the ajaxified interface - but again I guess it goes to show that all that glitters is not gold. So I'm back now to integrating Ilohamail and its not very pretty considering that 100 percent of teh code is hardwired into the roundcubemail. Its kinda like hardwiring spare parts from a Mercedes Compressor into a Go Kart. Although roundcubemails code is very robust - the problem which we faced was largely on teh user interface issue. Slow loading times as well as the fact that the visual cues were often misleading and more often than not updating and upcoming glitches were a day to day problem.

I won't blame roundcube mail for these issues though - just guess it was more an issue with resorting to hacks and workarounds rather than infiltrating the core of the program. But again although I had tried my best to minimize any disruption of normal program flow during development it wasnt enough I guess. The problems could have been non programmatic - might have been a faulty server or just a bad day but in the end it didn't matter much so Im back to square one. Although integrating a simple webclient like ilohamail is a tad bit easier - it comes with its own set of complications involved.

Guess it goes to show that no matter how far someone goes in life - if you realise you made a wrong turn its never too late to turn back and find your way. Speaking of which its the weekend and I should be heading out in a while to Dubai...signing off till Saturday y'all ;)