Can you See The Little Man

As I was driving to work and on my left I thought I saw a little man bent over doing something with the bottom of a wall. It turned out to be a couple of pipes with burlap draped over it.

View From My Window

Street View - Dad & Mom's House (Daphne)

Daphne sent me the link to take a peek at what she and crew has done to Dad & Mom's house. This is really neat.

At least when I am feeling lonely for clouds and rain I can walk around Portland.

I wonder who's the guy riding around in a car taking the panoramic shots for this service?

If You Are Fat - Get Your Hair Done Here!

I love signs in Dubai.... There is no such thing as political correctness. For Example. If you have a beauty salon for ladies called IFFAT (IN)sult(ana) then you will get a lot of willibees with their hair up in a big bun.

There are so many signs like this in Dubai that you would be employed full time and breaking your ribs laughing. Look where you have the pink sign and note that the person who owns the business is IFFAT.

Can You See Garfield?

I drive through the industrial area Sharjah UAE every day and when I'm stuck in traffic (all the time) I see this image of Garfield laughing at me as I am stuck in traffic and he is enjoying his time on sombody's balcony.

So many times I pass and I notice that almost every week or so the image is getting more clear. So I decide to take a picture. This really got people upset as I stopped my car (in a traffic jam?) and took the almost perfect picture. With a 6 mega pixel camera I figured that I could at least see why he was there staring at me almost every day (except those days that I wasn't interested in looking at him) and he wasn't going away. It seems that the wires which were holding the board? onto the balcony railing caused the area around them to bleach (maybe galvanized wires?) and the board was either dirty, already painted or used as a protection base, but was in the process of changing due to climatic conditions and those wires.

So here he is.....what do you think?

Some Ombre Took The Wrong Turn Somewhere

On the way to work this morning I was very tired, almost sleeping, a little groggy because I stayed up late trying to get rich. At one of the usual impossibly jam packed round abouts, which by the way still managed to move, there was this, what can I say OMBRE. For a minute it could have been San Diego instead of Dubai but the Arabic writing told me that, yep, were still in Dubai and this Ombre was definitely in the wrong country.

Well, this is Dubai. Every Tom Dick and Jose loves their home country and that is why you see so many fricken funny names for companies.

In qatar there was a broken, trashed laundry called "Desert Storm Laundry". They named it before the 1991 Gulf War. It was funny, a little, because it looked like the laundry took a direct hit.

I didn't see where the Mexican Movers were going, but one thing was sure, they don't have my furniture, because I don't have any!

Moon Beam

I was trying to remember why I took this picture and then I remembered! The moon was stuck between two buildings. I started to take a few pictures, other people were trying to figure out what I was taking a shot of, and when they too saw it there was about a dozen or so phones pointing up into the night sky.

This only happens every 100,000 years - I made that up, but the moon was really stuck!

Green Slime

Dr. Seuz would love this place. Just yesterday one of our neighbors (near the dolphinarium) sprang a leak in their never to be used gardening irrigation system. There were these two little snake like sprinklets that looked like two little water antennas spitting out a fine spray of semi stinky treated sewer water intended for Dubai's green irrigation system.

I was so amazed at how quickly the green gook seemed to come out of nowhere. The land around this little artificial spring is desolate to say the least. Yet, here is this very very green plankton, algea or what having the time of its life.

Has it been waiting there in the soil for umpteen thousands of years...scary. What if in a few days there is nothing, but a few tracks heading towards my dolphinarium!

Watch Bird

In my apartment we have really good and smart security. The lobby guard regularly makes the lift come faster by looking into the crack of the doors, banging his hand and saying "hello hello", sometimes he blows through the crack. It at least makes you feel like he doing something as it is more interesting to watch than the other people standing around waiting for the lift too.

I don't have any pets to protect the front door but I do have a guard bird who keeps people from climbing up seven stories through my window. I wish there was a way I could feed her but if I open the window, boop she will get it in the arse.

Dangerous Loads

If I learned one thing living in the Middle East is that your very life depends on KNOWING WHAT IS GOING ON AROUND YOU! And that means keep your eye out for anything BAD to happen and any and all times.

Last year an Egyptian business man just arrived in Dubai and was being taken by cab to the hotel when....Squash...a container slid off of a flatbed and smashed him and the driver in his cab.

Today, I was at a traffic light and looked over and saw on a flatbed truck many hydraulically pressed curb stones (each weighing about 500lbs) Stacked on the flab bed without anything holding them down. Maybe the driver was thinking that he wouldn't be needing to turn anywhere, or stop suddenly!

Needless to say, I stayed away. This is only one of so many stupid things you see around these parts.

Bearded Chris

Look at me then the background...is something wrong with this picture. Nobody liked my beard. It's gone now but I managed to take a few shots.

I noticed that people left me alone more often, got out of my way or wanted to fight me, apparently for no good reason...except maybe the beard.

With a beard on, its' hard to smile. A beard does something to the muscles in your lips. I hated constantly sucking my mustache to see if it was still there, or pulling on my beard to see if it would grow faster.

Then there's the shaving thing. You try to be artistic and even up the edges, you cant see where the damn thing is with too much shaving cream. Its like snow and the grass, where is it? It never works, either the face is not even or the lighting is bad. Somebody always points out that the beard line is not right. My patent excuse is that I'm just growing it out and will be trimming it soon enough.

I guess Hitler wasn't very good at trimming his mustache, look how short it was. The Taliban dont trim theirs maybe for the same reason. The Seikhs never cut theirs, so its wrapped somewhere around their head. I noticed that about 101% of the Indians have mustaches as well as the Sunni Arabs from the Gulf. Most westerners don't and I am starting to know why.

Oh, about the background. I found that small kids wouldn't beat you up for having a beard.