Sunday, September 13, 2009
Choo Choo!
A new metro system has just opened in Dubai.
Me looking strangely excited about the new metro system
It opened on Thursday, so really is brand-spanking new. One passenger was quoted in a Doha newspaper as saying, "I'm very impressed. It's very clean."
"Clean?"
Of course it's clean, it's new! Was this really the nicest thing they could find to say about it?!
We went along to use it on Friday. It was one whole day old...but already 3 out of 4 of the ticket machines had broken and so had the trains.
Not-so-functional ticket machines
However, they kept this a secret. They let you buy a ticket and go down to the platform until you got bored and asked where the trains were. Apparently they were sleeping.
Bored people waiting for a train
So Day One was unsuccessful.
No longer so excited about the trains
The only small issue was that they didn't tell us which stations were open. We were hoping to go to Dubai Mall, but as we whizzed by, it transpired that this one wasn't open...nor was the next....or the next...in fact the next station that was open was the Mall of the Emirates, which is about a million miles away. By the time we got there, we'd gone further than our tickets allowed us, so we had to buy a new one when we got to the other end...!
Still, despite all of this, it is very cool: The trains weave above and below the city, they're roomy, air-conditioned...and they are very clean...
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Anyone Speak Spanish?
Well done me! I've now managed to get rid of Spanish Teacher Number II. After just 6 weeks of lessons, he's 'urgently' had to dash back to Mexico. And you would too if you had to listen to me try to read every week, cheerfully murdering your beautiful language.
Rather than allowing me to read, he did attempt to get me to listen to Spanish songs first. That was a step too far though. After listening to the truly awful 'La Calle de las Sirenas' (The road of mermaids) three times, I had a full on strop that even a 2-year-old would be proud of and he never ventured there again. If you don't know the song, please don't look it up. It's the kind that even Steps would have been embarrassed of.
I would say that it was slightly optimistic, it's often hard enough to make out English lyrics. I remember a friend of mine at school singing away to UB40: 'Re-rewind' rather than 'Red, red wine'...and I only found out at a Depeche Mode concert about 4 years ago that it was 'Reach out and touch faith' rather than 'Reach out and touch space' as I'd been singing for the last 15 years or so. You'd have thought the title 'Your Own Personal Jesus' would have given me a clue...
Anyway, I'm now teacher-less, and there are only a certain number of Spanish Teachers in Qatar...and that certain number's not very big. I've just got wind of another lady who teaches Spanish and Cookery though. Excellent! I'm seeing this in a '2 birds, 1 stone' kind of way; I can't do either.
I'll let you know how it goes. If I can't cook a paella by this time next week I'll be asking for my money back...in English.
