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 ;)

A reason to thank Etisalat

Ever since I came back from Pakistan end of October - things havent been the same primarily for the reason that I'd gotten engaged as well as what might appear to be a case of love at first sight. Its a lovely experience to be in love and its even better when you're in love with the one you're set up to marry. Yeah I'm the traditional Pakistani Munda - I let my folks have the final say in these matters. And frankly I'm glad about it Alhamdulillah :).

However one thing which is kinda hard to get over is the exorbitant phone rates to call Pakistan. My better half to be for some reason hasnt access to a PC at teh moment [ pretty weird Php guy engaged to a lady who lives offline the internet - well matches are made in heaven I believe]. 2.66 Dirhams per minute is the peak rate and off peak rates are around 1.88 dirhams. Which means that a measly 25 dirham calling card hardly gives you around 12 minutes of talk time - and considering that chatting with your better half to be can take well more than just 12 minutes you can understand where my phone charges have been going lately. Plus add to teh fact that voip is banned here only restricts my options even further. The super giant Etisalat has us covered and theres nothing we can do to bypass it :(

However just when I thought I would probably have to move out of my room and pitch a tent on Emirates road to save up enough cash to meet up for my phone charges I get an sms from Etisalat a couple weeks ago with a special offer to call Pakistan for 0.99 AED a minute upon subscription. I was like WOW I LOVE YOU GOD!!!! So I call up the helpdesk and confirm that is this true or has someone played a nasty trick on me and to my utter joy and shock I find out it is. The only downside is that its only available till the 30 of November so that means me and my fiancee just have a few more days to enjoy long night chataways. Although its still costly its nevertheless waaaay better than dishing out 2.6 times the amount. Although my phone usage has increased dramatically over the last few days - infact I dished out 700 bucks over the weekend alone - the fact that you talk much more for what you're spending really makes up for it.

So in all the chaos and rising expenditures there seems to be hope after all. And I would like to take this opportunity to say a big:

"THANK YOU ETISALAT YOU REALLY MADE MY DAY"

:and would really really appreciate if these sms offers would come by every now and then in whihc case I woudl probably say something like this:

"THANK YOU ETISALAT AGAIN! YOU REALLY MADE MY DAY AGAIN!"

Although Etisalat has a few offers such as favorite country plan and favorite number plans - the charges are still way beyond my budget to take advantage off plus they all seem to come with strings attached. Guess it serves to read the fine print - if only the one buck a minute offer could be permanent in some way...I'd gladly pay a monthly fee for it as would many Pakistani expatriates provided the fees don't stretch out into triple digits.

Reminds me gotta get back to work...

Ah I found an abandoned blog - wait a sec its mine!?!?!?

Man this is just one of those days when you all of a sudden come across this blog that hasn't been update din a while - a while as in lets say around 2 years to say the least. And you're thinking to yourself that - why are there such irresponsible people out there who just host a blog and waste a perfectly good url that could be used for a perfectly good blog. When all of a sudden it dawns upon you that 'OMG ITS MY BLOG!?!??!?'.

After wondering how to make up for 2 years of wasted posts and all and moreover after going through that dread fully mundane and cheap introductory post I had put up - it made sense to me to get back on the blogging track. Why has it taken me so long to get back on track here. Well I have no idea but I guess I wasn't very much sure of what to write up and post. Or maybe I had just started a blog just for the heck of it - but whatever the reason thats no point to shirk ones responsibility. Being an avid writer I should have known better.

Ok thats enough self criticism for now - everyone get back home and visit back again cos I should be getting back on the blogging bandwagon.

Signing out for now