Opulence is the word.
Dubai International Airport has a new terminal, and has, I believe, dedicated it completely to Emirates – its home airline. It’s my first time here, and what hits you right at first is the dazzle from all he lighting effects. Lights everywhere. Small, large, patterns, fixed, morphing – what not. Dazzling.
But I liked the old terminal better. This has the opulence, but does that necessarily translate to elegance? The new terminal is bright and shiny, and maybe just a tad too loud on the eyes. The rest of course is classical Dubai, even though I think the whole terminal is not yet fully operational.
Plus, I liked the old restrooms better. 
These new ones have narrower cubicles, and metal has been replaced by wood and a less elegant finish.
Anyhow, after spending a couple of hours at Dubai, and taking an hour long flight – after three flights in total and more than 24 hours – here I am, at Doha! One week is to be spent here, before I move to the next item on the itinerary.
The fun begins. Ciao for now!
Update: And I almost forgot. The water in the water fountain? It was warm. Heh.
I don’t like JFK International Airport. I know, I’ve only been here a couple of hours, but I don’t like what I both see and don’t see. Of the few I’ve seen, my favorite terminal is the one at Dubai, and JFK has not changed that.
I am currently at Terminal 4, where Emirates have their operations. My flight is 9 hours away (and I’ve been here two hours already) and so… let’s just say I have time to kill.
Well, things I don’t like about JFK Terminal 4:
1. When you enter the terminal, you’re greeted by the check in centers of all the airlines that operate out of this terminal, and almost nothing else – including seating areas. The idea being that the passenger will come in, do away with his checking in, and then proceed further. But nothing on that check-in level??
2. After the hypothetical passenger checks in, he can go down a level to the duty free level and the shops and the food joints, to wait his turn at the boarding gate. Well, since that’s the idea, all the escalators point down from the check in level; not one goes up. Well, what does the guy who has to wait 11 hrs for a flight do? He can’t wait at the check in level: as I said, there isn’t much there. So he comes down the escalator to the shops and the food. Well, how then does he go back up? Well, he just walks up, carrying all his baggage with him.
3. There isn’t a comfortable lounge area where you can simply laze out and maybe catch a nap or two. Nope. Not a chance. The seats are like the ones you get at shopping malls. A tree in the middle, and a round cemented area surrounding it. The idea seems to be that there will never be a passenger with a long layover who may need to sleep once in a while!!
4. Internet access is not free. Grrrrr. Learn something from good old Roanoke Regional Airport, people!! 
Seriously, I am disappointed.
P.S.:
I started this post at 2pm, and am finishing and posting it now at 7.40pm. Time here almost spent! I just wish I could have slept a bit.
I realized that there are in fact elevators. So my trip back up to the check-in level wasn’t so bad. But they should have had escalators, no?
And so I’m off. I leave today for a month of vacation and travel, and will be back in the beginning of August.
I’m at Roanoke airport right now, where I take the first of my three flights to reach my first destination – Doha. Roanoke airport is one of best airports that I’ve been to – not because it’s huge, or it has every major amenity (well, it does have free Wi-Fi which I’m using right now) – but because ROA is more akin to a bus station than an airport!
You arrive at the airport, check your bags in, get your boarding pass, take the flight of stairs and wait for security checking. All in less than 5 mins. The security check itself takes around the same time. Report to the check in counters 2 hours before your flight? Pfft… not at ROA, you don’t. You arrive whenever you want to, as long as it’s before the flight’s due to take off… and you’re fine.
So anyway, here I am. Hopefully this will be a series of posts, and hopefully they’ll be worth reading, both now, and later when the details will start slipping through my memory.
Ciao, for now!
Found this excellent blog post about global warming.
As in every other topic, the people who claim to ‘prove’ that what science says is false – need to get their facts straight.
Global warming is real. Time we took it seriously (as opposed to, for example, this).
P.S.: Also see this comment about why the El Nino would skew global temperature averages.
Found this article about the Late Dr Subhash Mukherjee, who was the pioneer of In Vitro Fertilization in India in the late 1970s, but was apparently shut down by the medical and political communities.
It is an unbelievable read in terms of how pathetic a situation can get.
Dr Subhash Mukherjee, according to the article, was the pioneer of the IVF procedure in India. (The article has a quote implying that his was the first IVF in the world, but this Wikipedia link tells me the first IVF child was born a few months before Dr Mukherjee’s procedure succeeded. Even in that case, though, he remains one of the pioneers who got the procedure going in the first place.)
However, two things went against him: his own medical fraternity, who did not believe that what he did was possible (that by itself tells a story, no? A group of scientists do not “believe” that something can or cannot be done, without caring to actually verify the procedure.), and his own state (West Bengal) government, who sought for some reason to stifle him and his efforts. He was not allowed to present his work outside of India, and was essentially ostracized from his own circles.
The weirdest part was that when the WB government put in a team to find whether his efforts were genuine, the team was headed by – a radiophysicist. (Does that mean that no one else came closer to understanding his work, or that the government simply didn’t care? Either of those cases is very wrong.)
The kicker of course was what followed. The Health Minister said he was stifled keeping in mind “public interest”; he was then transferred to the Opthalmology department – resulting of course in all his experiments coming to a screeching halt.
Well, this incident is a sorry affair by any measure, and I wonder if it would have been handled differently outside of West Bengal. We as a state, and as a state government, have this wonderful ability to kill insightful ideas and pioneering efforts.
I guess it’s one more instance of the question of how an equal society can be achieved (well, that’s what both Socialism and Communism seek, is it not?). You can either pull up the people who are below the average, and thus make everyone equal, and better, or you can push down the people who are above the average, and just make everyone equal – and feed the egos of those that are at or below the average. Which do you think the West Bengal government usually chooses to do?
I know, technically it could have happened anywhere, and yet – I wonder.
Now the West Bengal government wants to make amends – by wanting to start an institute for research on reproduction and stem cells in his name.
And they have been sitting on that project for four years now.
P.S.: The man who’s credited with starting IVF in India, Dr TC Anand Kumar, himself says after going through Dr Mukherjee’s papers that the honor should have gone to Dr Mukherjee.
Ever noticed the Rediff message boards?? They’re an unlimited source of inanities, accusations, expletives, and stupidities. (And an awesome source of entertainment once in a while when you have nothing, and I repeat nothing, to do with your time.)
Among all that, comes the first decent comment.
Wow. Rediff’s standards just fell a few notches, eh?
(Link, of course, via India Uncut.)
Commencement Speech. Steve Jobs. Stanford University, 2005.
Not for the faint hearted, this video. This one falls in the creepy category.
And yet it’s fascinating!! The myriad ways for nature to work. Here’s what happens:
1. Parasitic wasp injects eggs into unsuspecting caterpillar.
2. Larvae form inside the caterpillar.
3. Larvae grow inside the caterpillar, making sure not the touch any of the vital organs, and only drawing from the caterpillar blood for its sustenance.
4. When larvae are mature and can come out and away from the caterpillar, they release a chemical that paralyzes the caterpillar. The larvae also develop jagged teeth like formations that they use to cut their way out through the skin of the caterpillar.
5. Once free of the caterpillar, larvae form cocoon around themselves for next stage of their growth.
(It’s not over yet).
6. Chemicals that were injected into caterpillar may have contained a virus – the caterpillar’s brain is affected. Instead of foraging for food, and looking after its own survival, the caterpillar uses all its energies in protecting the wasp larvae from other predators – including other parasitic wasps that can inject eggs into the vulnerable larvae!!
7. Caterpillar uses its own silk to form an extra protective layer on top of the cocoon made by the larvae, and sticks around protecting them aggressively.
8. Caterpillar dies. From hunger. Because it never foraged for food while it protected the larvae. All its brain functions had been scrambled for just this one task, until it was too weak to continue.
Creepy? Yes. Fascinating? Very.
It’s been sunny lately. Sunny, cool, and breezy. (Of course, at other times it’s been rainy, damp and chilly, but I am not talking of those days.) To make the most of this gorgeous weather, we’ve been keeping our windows mostly open, and our ACs turned off. We’ve been saving electricity, yes, but in addition we’ve found a very pleasant surprise – at least, I have.
After so long of keeping our windows closed and only occasionally stepping out to the deck (veranda in Indian terminology), it’s a pleasant feeling to listen to the birds chirping! All kinds of birds, from all around the area. I know nothing about birds, so I have no idea what species they are, and neither have I seen – to be honest, I haven’t made much of an effort either – the birds themselves, but their sounds do carry, and it’s beautiful!
Of course, it helps that it’s spring – the middle of winter would hardly have brought out such a myriad of sounds and chirps.
Thinking about the old Hutch ad jingle in India – ‘Green grass, blue skies – it’s a beautiful world’! Nature – especially in Blacksburg – very beautiful indeed.
Really? It seems Nitish Kumar plagiarized a research paper to write a book.
Heh. Nice!
