November 24, 2006
The pink copy goes to the lady...
The motorcycle traffic police arrived on scene about twenty minutes later from the Garoud Station and observed the position of the ML350 and the M, had a chuckle between them, and then spoke in Arabic in soft and tender tones to the Black-abaya-clad lady who, when first stepping out of 50% tinted darkness . inadvertently revealed her Henna’ed ankle, a silver, diamond-studded anklet, five of her perfectly pedicured, flesh-painted, white tipped toenails, and one of her extremely fashionable, minimalist-in-form, four-inch-heeled straps-free, sandal-stiletto affairs that looked very dainty and very feminine but at the same time, as though it could hold up a tower in a strong wind. And Mike, naturally, marveled at the perfectly engineered Arabic-lady, foot-form thus in post-graunch haste unwittingly, whimsically, revealed before vaulting himself, almost automatically, into another foray of English language cusses such the likes even a former British naval officer would cringe at having to aurally endure lucky for any former British officers that might have been in the vicinity, Mike expelled the cusses this time with clenched teeth and lower volume, remembering suddenly that his top was down, out of respect for the lady who had just gotten out of the ML350, the fender of which still wedged its bulging intention firmly against the bumper of the “M”. It was after all a classic 2007 Infinity “M”, full-insurance coverage aside. The police gave the Sheikha the pink copy of the report and gave Mike the white copy. She was the guilty one. Had the police heard any one of mikes many profanations, the pink copy, just as night turns itself into day, surely, would have been his to take home.
Mike was in the midst of moving Raww Baww Tii Kii LLC HQ to its new location in Festival City Dubai. Why festival city, many people outright asked the owner, Mike. Not one being able to resist the pull of doing business WITH pleasure 100% of the time, Mike had told everyone who asked that he felt it was just the natural progression of Raww Baww Tii Kii’s original vision since its inception in 2007 “Fun Moving, Moving Fun”. Festival City deemed itself: “a unique and eclectic destination transforming the upper reaches of the historic Dubai Creek.” A true all-in-one destination, Dubai Festival City seamlessly blended hospitality, entertainment, business and residential in one superb setting. This was the Middle East’s largest, privately funded mixed-use real estate development. Revitalising the down-town soul of Dubai, this waterfront ‘city-within-a-city’ provided a safe, relaxed, friendly and exclusive setting for residents and visitors alike. From Riviera-style scenery and lush green landscapes to iconic towers and luxury hotels, Dubai Festival City claimed itself to be: “all you can image in one place.”
The logistics involved in moving a 5000 employee, Multi-national Mechatronics research and development organization like Raww Baww Tii Kii in a two week window brought forth the best in those responsible to Mike for making it happen just so.
Mike was in the midst of moving Raww Baww Tii Kii LLC HQ to its new location in Festival City Dubai. Why festival city, many people outright asked the owner, Mike. Not one being able to resist the pull of doing business WITH pleasure 100% of the time, Mike had told everyone who asked that he felt it was just the natural progression of Raww Baww Tii Kii’s original vision since its inception in 2007 “Fun Moving, Moving Fun”. Festival City deemed itself: “a unique and eclectic destination transforming the upper reaches of the historic Dubai Creek.” A true all-in-one destination, Dubai Festival City seamlessly blended hospitality, entertainment, business and residential in one superb setting. This was the Middle East’s largest, privately funded mixed-use real estate development. Revitalising the down-town soul of Dubai, this waterfront ‘city-within-a-city’ provided a safe, relaxed, friendly and exclusive setting for residents and visitors alike. From Riviera-style scenery and lush green landscapes to iconic towers and luxury hotels, Dubai Festival City claimed itself to be: “all you can image in one place.”
The logistics involved in moving a 5000 employee, Multi-national Mechatronics research and development organization like Raww Baww Tii Kii in a two week window brought forth the best in those responsible to Mike for making it happen just so.
November 23, 2006
Mike and the Mechatronics
The year was 2027. The future was now. Michael Strathmore lived in this time. He had no one to turn to, no where to run, by the time he turned 30 and so began a life of solitude funded, mostly, by a rather badly misplaced inheritance bequeathed to him by the passing of a very rich uncle in the business of micro-upping efficiencies and improvements to assembly processes by automation who, after equal apportioning most of his vast estate amongst the family members immediate, had no heirs left to give his vast amounts of money to, gave the rest, to his sole surviving nephew, Mike. Mike deemed himself extremely fortunate and not even a little bit guilty to be thought of as somehow worthy enough to receive such a vast sum at such a time in his life.
Mike’s latest game and the deepest, surely, of his multiple passions, was Mechatronic engineering and he was at the top of his game. He had sensed that economically the world’s center would shift. It did and Mike, being one who easily became bored with his personal advancement in the field of Mechatronic engineering, decided to buy himself rraw baww tii kii LLC, a dynamic, leading company in the Mechatronics industry, which had recently moved to the center of the new world economy, Dubai, UAE.
Raw baw ti ki’s bread and butter came in the form of a massive Dubai Road Transport Authority grant wherewith which to germinate citizens ideas for solving Dubai’s chronic and critical traffic issues. From jams to chock-a-blocks, from rush-hour parking lots to rubber neckers causing tailbacks, this grant was given almost in desperation to Raw baw ti ki LLC in the RTA’s attempts to finally curb the tiring daily mess RTA had made of its own transportation infrastructure.
Solving a traffic problem was not Micheal’s idea of a good time in the workplace. No, he would have rather been doing exactly what he had been given license to do by now owning and operating Raw baw ti ki. That was basically to spawn the new age of personal transport in this ripe for transportational revolution atmosphere. He was driven to this sort of a mandate by fate it would seem for in his passion he found reason finally to give to a community that had given so much to him already in the past years of dwelling in the centre of it all. If it weren’t for the daily raunch of traffic issues, Dubai would be a perfect place to live, thought our man Mike.
One day in November, in the cool 26 degrees of evening winter air in Dubai, on the road that lead to the new, new Garhoud 36-lane bridge while sitting stock still, with the top down, "ready to go", in his convertible, 8-cylinder, 365 hp Infinity “M” classic from the year 2007, in the regular 16:15 chock-a-block, jammed, parking lot style traffic, behind a china great wall pickup truck (A Toyota-like form stamped from toy tin and run by 60 hampsters all blowing blue smoke out the 7/8 inch exhaust pipe straight into mike’s eyes nose and mouth, Mike momentarily lost control of his mental faculties and decided to escape.
Maybe it was the fumes. Maybe it was the cool 26 degree breeze blowing through his close cropped top. Maybe it was his need to escape that very moment from feeling the need to depress fully, the gas pedal of the Infinity “M” and unlease the full fury of 365 horses right up the dog gone 7/8 inch tail pipe of China great wall truck with six persons of at least three different East Asian nationalities in front of him. What ever the motivation was, Mike decided to simply escape his current traffic reality by imagining him self simply, to be elsewhere. Fully and completely, mike escaped from that impulse, lucky for him, lucky for the great wall in front of him, lucky for the three kilometer tail back just snaking around the edge of the Dubai World Trade Center round about snaking. Yes so very lucky. And mike began to day dream help hailed on by the blue smoke blown on down the pipe by sixty of the Great Wall’s wee hamsters.
He dreamed right there and then of how and what could be more satisfying than ridding oneself of the need to remain trapped by an inefficient and strangulating infrastructure when, by gooly and by gosh one could render with a few twists of coat hanger ingenuity a dreamy solution to the problem of being a sitting duck amidst a waiting crowd of idling hamsters. “Toss the infrastructure!” he thought blithely to himself, being brought back to reality by a fleeting thought of what his wfe might think of his crazy idea. Then just as fleeting, the meandering Mike-mode was in full swing. His silent rationalizing, analytical monologue began again, as it had day after day after day while being repetedly strangulated along with ten thousand other driver car combinations down in this same spot in the infrastructure that demanded so much of its users but gave so dang little every day.
“The time is ripe for this.” He thought again to himself. “Surely the time is ripe for this thing that I have in my head. Rid ourselves of this bloody inefficient infrastructure that’s what’s gotta happen!” Dubai RTA simply can not see and plan and build infrastructure upon infrastructure and expect that this huge, seething mass of too many cars per minute will NOT but bottle neck if the infrastructure is flawed at the outset!” Feeling quite smug with him self for having condemned this day yet again in one, self-righteous, selfish sentence, yet another whole bleeding sector of the Entity that governed him, Mike and mind meandered on. “What if we focused wholly on the vehicle rather than the silly infrastructure?” And in this moment of truth Mike’s eyes lit up a smile began in the corners of his crooked left side slightly down mouth and became a wide grin and he yelped: “Eureeka!!! I’ve found it!!!” just for the hell of it, really, he’d always wanted to do that.
Just then, an ML 350 van/car/truck/4by4/grocery getter with 50% black tinted windows revealing nothing but seeming blackness with Dubai plate number A44 edged the bloody corner of his bloody fender just a few millimeters in front of the Infinity M’s Bumper just as the Hamster-powered great wall moved ahead. Mike’s foot moved before his brain had a chance to tell it not to and GRAUNCH! There he was. In the middle of 10,000 trapped souls. 18 lanes on either side of him an ML 350’s Fender copulating unceremoniously the M’s bumper. Mike resorted to English language profanity at high volume for about a minute, for it was the only outlet he had at this point.
Continued in tomorrow’s edition of Might Mike and his Magubious Murano. I know, I know, there’s narry a mention yet of any sort of a Murano but hang tight me wee ones and you’ll begin to see where the tale will wag ya to. Tally ho!
Mike’s latest game and the deepest, surely, of his multiple passions, was Mechatronic engineering and he was at the top of his game. He had sensed that economically the world’s center would shift. It did and Mike, being one who easily became bored with his personal advancement in the field of Mechatronic engineering, decided to buy himself rraw baww tii kii LLC, a dynamic, leading company in the Mechatronics industry, which had recently moved to the center of the new world economy, Dubai, UAE.
Raw baw ti ki’s bread and butter came in the form of a massive Dubai Road Transport Authority grant wherewith which to germinate citizens ideas for solving Dubai’s chronic and critical traffic issues. From jams to chock-a-blocks, from rush-hour parking lots to rubber neckers causing tailbacks, this grant was given almost in desperation to Raw baw ti ki LLC in the RTA’s attempts to finally curb the tiring daily mess RTA had made of its own transportation infrastructure.
Solving a traffic problem was not Micheal’s idea of a good time in the workplace. No, he would have rather been doing exactly what he had been given license to do by now owning and operating Raw baw ti ki. That was basically to spawn the new age of personal transport in this ripe for transportational revolution atmosphere. He was driven to this sort of a mandate by fate it would seem for in his passion he found reason finally to give to a community that had given so much to him already in the past years of dwelling in the centre of it all. If it weren’t for the daily raunch of traffic issues, Dubai would be a perfect place to live, thought our man Mike.
One day in November, in the cool 26 degrees of evening winter air in Dubai, on the road that lead to the new, new Garhoud 36-lane bridge while sitting stock still, with the top down, "ready to go", in his convertible, 8-cylinder, 365 hp Infinity “M” classic from the year 2007, in the regular 16:15 chock-a-block, jammed, parking lot style traffic, behind a china great wall pickup truck (A Toyota-like form stamped from toy tin and run by 60 hampsters all blowing blue smoke out the 7/8 inch exhaust pipe straight into mike’s eyes nose and mouth, Mike momentarily lost control of his mental faculties and decided to escape.
Maybe it was the fumes. Maybe it was the cool 26 degree breeze blowing through his close cropped top. Maybe it was his need to escape that very moment from feeling the need to depress fully, the gas pedal of the Infinity “M” and unlease the full fury of 365 horses right up the dog gone 7/8 inch tail pipe of China great wall truck with six persons of at least three different East Asian nationalities in front of him. What ever the motivation was, Mike decided to simply escape his current traffic reality by imagining him self simply, to be elsewhere. Fully and completely, mike escaped from that impulse, lucky for him, lucky for the great wall in front of him, lucky for the three kilometer tail back just snaking around the edge of the Dubai World Trade Center round about snaking. Yes so very lucky. And mike began to day dream help hailed on by the blue smoke blown on down the pipe by sixty of the Great Wall’s wee hamsters.
He dreamed right there and then of how and what could be more satisfying than ridding oneself of the need to remain trapped by an inefficient and strangulating infrastructure when, by gooly and by gosh one could render with a few twists of coat hanger ingenuity a dreamy solution to the problem of being a sitting duck amidst a waiting crowd of idling hamsters. “Toss the infrastructure!” he thought blithely to himself, being brought back to reality by a fleeting thought of what his wfe might think of his crazy idea. Then just as fleeting, the meandering Mike-mode was in full swing. His silent rationalizing, analytical monologue began again, as it had day after day after day while being repetedly strangulated along with ten thousand other driver car combinations down in this same spot in the infrastructure that demanded so much of its users but gave so dang little every day.
“The time is ripe for this.” He thought again to himself. “Surely the time is ripe for this thing that I have in my head. Rid ourselves of this bloody inefficient infrastructure that’s what’s gotta happen!” Dubai RTA simply can not see and plan and build infrastructure upon infrastructure and expect that this huge, seething mass of too many cars per minute will NOT but bottle neck if the infrastructure is flawed at the outset!” Feeling quite smug with him self for having condemned this day yet again in one, self-righteous, selfish sentence, yet another whole bleeding sector of the Entity that governed him, Mike and mind meandered on. “What if we focused wholly on the vehicle rather than the silly infrastructure?” And in this moment of truth Mike’s eyes lit up a smile began in the corners of his crooked left side slightly down mouth and became a wide grin and he yelped: “Eureeka!!! I’ve found it!!!” just for the hell of it, really, he’d always wanted to do that.
Just then, an ML 350 van/car/truck/4by4/grocery getter with 50% black tinted windows revealing nothing but seeming blackness with Dubai plate number A44 edged the bloody corner of his bloody fender just a few millimeters in front of the Infinity M’s Bumper just as the Hamster-powered great wall moved ahead. Mike’s foot moved before his brain had a chance to tell it not to and GRAUNCH! There he was. In the middle of 10,000 trapped souls. 18 lanes on either side of him an ML 350’s Fender copulating unceremoniously the M’s bumper. Mike resorted to English language profanity at high volume for about a minute, for it was the only outlet he had at this point.
Continued in tomorrow’s edition of Might Mike and his Magubious Murano. I know, I know, there’s narry a mention yet of any sort of a Murano but hang tight me wee ones and you’ll begin to see where the tale will wag ya to. Tally ho!
November 04, 2006
Lunar, baby!
And so it is a game of life in the spaces between. And I have survived the weekend of waiting to this hour at least. Not having heard a wit about things. I feel odd.
Like I have a brain full of ideas ready to record and yet no access to them now because of the torpor filling my spaces in between life; it seems to take snuffing pleasure in settling on and surrounding every synapse I lay claim to have provided a path for in the confined, winding pathways of that which floats in cranial fluid beneath my noggin.
The spaces in between, when torpor settles, are hard to navigate, and torpor, though quick to disappear, like fog in the morning sun, it still hangs in the interim hours, the hours that will end up costing us the most. For instance, in the interim hours we drive to work, in the morning in the settled fog, and have not the time to sit outside the yellow line, engine idling waiting til 10:00 AM when the sun methodically burns a visibility factor through the veil. No, we drive, squinting, our nerves on high alert, the coffee well within reach, so as not to, even for one second, miss the chance of serving to the left or right of a looming Semi’s rear end. So it is when the torpor fills the spaces in between.
Oh it will lift. There is no doubt in everyone’s mind that it will lift, but by the clock struck eight we all don’t wait for the sun’s rays to alleviate at only 10:08, no. We all don’t wait.
I feel odd. As though not knowing what lies ahead need not be thought of or planned for at this stage. How does one plan a skillful avoidance of the Semi’s sudden looming rear end in fog when it has firmly settled?! Wait til 10:00? No way, just merrily drive away - not only today, but yesterday and last week Monday. This is the game of life we play even when odd feelings come our way and the moon so bright in its fullness tonight brushes away the sweat of angst, and even squeals of delight. With a single beam it razes the shimmering tide and draws in to it’s pale, lucid luminescence, the portending dwellers of Um Suquiem, the augers of Al Satwa, the blue ribbon jurists of Jumeirah and… every dweller of the spaces in between.
There we dwell. There we live. There we feel odd, brains full of ideas ready to record and yet no access to them now because of today’s torpor; and of tomorrow’s foggy quota of the same, sure to filled. Perhaps I’ll wait till 10:00 then.
Like I have a brain full of ideas ready to record and yet no access to them now because of the torpor filling my spaces in between life; it seems to take snuffing pleasure in settling on and surrounding every synapse I lay claim to have provided a path for in the confined, winding pathways of that which floats in cranial fluid beneath my noggin.
The spaces in between, when torpor settles, are hard to navigate, and torpor, though quick to disappear, like fog in the morning sun, it still hangs in the interim hours, the hours that will end up costing us the most. For instance, in the interim hours we drive to work, in the morning in the settled fog, and have not the time to sit outside the yellow line, engine idling waiting til 10:00 AM when the sun methodically burns a visibility factor through the veil. No, we drive, squinting, our nerves on high alert, the coffee well within reach, so as not to, even for one second, miss the chance of serving to the left or right of a looming Semi’s rear end. So it is when the torpor fills the spaces in between.
Oh it will lift. There is no doubt in everyone’s mind that it will lift, but by the clock struck eight we all don’t wait for the sun’s rays to alleviate at only 10:08, no. We all don’t wait.
I feel odd. As though not knowing what lies ahead need not be thought of or planned for at this stage. How does one plan a skillful avoidance of the Semi’s sudden looming rear end in fog when it has firmly settled?! Wait til 10:00? No way, just merrily drive away - not only today, but yesterday and last week Monday. This is the game of life we play even when odd feelings come our way and the moon so bright in its fullness tonight brushes away the sweat of angst, and even squeals of delight. With a single beam it razes the shimmering tide and draws in to it’s pale, lucid luminescence, the portending dwellers of Um Suquiem, the augers of Al Satwa, the blue ribbon jurists of Jumeirah and… every dweller of the spaces in between.
There we dwell. There we live. There we feel odd, brains full of ideas ready to record and yet no access to them now because of today’s torpor; and of tomorrow’s foggy quota of the same, sure to filled. Perhaps I’ll wait till 10:00 then.
