Honesty

A distinguished young woman on a flight from Switzerland asked the priest beside her, " Father, may I ask a favor?" "Of course. What may I do for you?"

"Well, I bought an expensive! Electronic hair dryer that is well over the Customs limits and I'm afraid they'll confiscate it. Is there any way you could carry it through Customs for me? Under your robes perhaps?"

"I would love to help you, dear, but I must warn you: I will not lie."

"With your honest face, Father, no one will question you."

When they got to Customs, she let the priest go ahead of her. The official asked, " Father, do you have anything to declare?"

"From the top of my head down to my waist, I have nothing to declare."

The official thought this answer strange, so asked, " And what do you have to declare from your waist to the floor?"

"I have a marvelous little instrument designed to be used on a woman, but which is, to date, unused." Roaring with laughter, the official said, " Go ahead, Father - - Next!"

The Unwed Daughter

A young unmarried girl discovers that she is pregnant. Scared, She confides this ' news' to her mother. Shouting, cursing, crying, the mother says, "Who was the pig that did this to you? I want to know!"

The girl picks up the phone and makes a call.

Half an hour later a Ferrari stops in front of their house; a mature and distinguished man with gray hair and impeccably dressed in a very expensive suit steps out of it and enters the house.

He sits in the living room with the father, the mother and the Girl, and tells them: "Good morning, your daughter has informed me of the Problem. However, I can't marry her because of my personal family situation, but I'll take responsibility. If a girl is born I will bequeath her 2 retail stores, a townhouse, a beach villa and a $1 million bank account. If a boy is born, my legacy will be a couple of factories and a $2 million bank account.

If it is twins, a factory and $ million each. However, if there is a miscarriage, what do you suggest I do?"

At this point, the father, who had remained silent, places a hand firmly on the man's shoulder and tells him, "You can try again!"

Apple Announces The iPhone

Last week Apple announced the much awaited iPhone and it created some major news. So much so that Windows Vista is now a dead subject. The blogosphere was swept with iPhone news and what it is likely to deliver. Most of the experts have given a positive review. The first shipment is slated for June 2007.

As expected; Apple has introduced a bunch of features and new concepts that are completely outside the realm of accepted thought in mobile telephony.

So how is the iPhone different from its competitors? Firstly; it’s a lovely looking device that weighs about 135 grams. It’s a 3.5" Pocket PC PDA. It is very sleek, thin and not very wide. Secondly it’s innovative in the sense that it functions completely with multi-touch – It has a touch screen-based input method. It supports WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and Quadband GSM/EDGE communications. It comes with an iPod, a 2 mega pixel camera; the quality of which is supposed to be good. It has a full fledged internet surfing browser, a Visual VoiceMail, a superb SMS, advanced photo management capabilities and Google maps. It comes in two capacities of 4 and 8 GBs and is priced at $499 and $599 respectively.

Here's what it is in a nutshell:
# Specification overview Screen: 3.5-inches, 320 x 480 @ 160 PPI
# Storage: 4GB or 8GB
# GSM: Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
# Wireless: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
# Camera: 2.0 megapixels
# Battery: Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing; Up to 16 hours Audio playback
# Dimensions: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
# Weight: 4.8 ounces / 135 grams

Will it outdo the Nokia’s and Sony Eriksson’s of this world? It might not; but it is expected to have a 5% market share which is a lot. It surely will find its own niche. Don’t be surprised if it becomes another iPod.

If you wanna check out for more on the iPhone click here. It comes from Apple - It’s gotta be different.

Comparing CES - Las Vegas and GITEX - Dubai

Las Vegas in Nevada; USA was all abuzz with CES (Consumer Electronics Show) the last few days. CES is the world’s # 1 consumer electronics show. It attracts about 150,000 people for the show. Las Vegas is transformed during this period. The town was awash with chatter of all new technologies about to hit the market.

Although I have not been to Vegas and America; I was just trying to draw parallels between Las Vegas’ CES and Dubai’s GITEX (Gulf Information Technology Exhibition). The GITEX is among the world’s top 3 exhibitions for information technology related products and technologies. GITEX has 1,200 exhibitors and more than 2200 companies from 61 countries. It had around 127,000 trade visitors.

Both Dubai & Las Vegas are modern cities rising out of desert sand. Both have spectacular hotels and great architecture. Both are futuristic. Dubai has GITEX, Cityscape, and Arabian Travel Market (ATM). Vegas has CES, AHEM and the Adult Entertainment Expo. Both cities have choking traffic during such shows. During the last GITEX you could not find a parking place. The hotels were full and there are long queues for taxis.

Honestly, Las Vegas must have an advantage in terms of infrastructure with a monorail of its own. Dubai has also started its multi billion construction it’s own metro and is it is expected to be operational by mid 2009. Dubai certainly has plans to get bigger and better. Will it out pace Vegas' CES in the next few years? I doubt if it will in the near future; simply because America is the land of IT development. Moreover CES has completed it's 40th anniversary; so CES has to be bigger and better than GITEX. Dubai is just a great exhibition centre and a good organizer of such shows. The fact is newest of tech offerings first hit America and then the world. For example Apples to-be-launched iphone was showcased in CES. Advantage CES and Vegas!

India VS India: Hear Bachchan Recite the Anthem

Amitabh Bachchan - The Living Legend - The Phantom of Indian cinema recites the poem. "India Poised Anthem" is the brainchild of Times of India Group. Watch the video recited by Big B. Also check out the making of the video. It's in both English and Hindi. Read the anthem here and Click here for the video

Is Dubai Rent Cap of 7% A Great Offer?

Dubai, the city of rising prices, traffic jams, overworked people, poor public transportation, supposedly no taxes and rapid growth surprised its residents by putting a rent cap of maximum 7% increase on the annual rents in 2007.

In a city where rentals have shot by 40% to 50% in the past three years, this looks like a New Year gift. But I beg to differ with my fellow Dubai residents stand that it is a great offer. Point is that it has come in after rents have already gone up substantially. Ever since Dubai announced it’s free hold properties in 2003 rents have only been moving northwards. Not many know that more than 40-45% of Dubai residents pay half their monthly incomes for house rents. Such figures might apply only to top cities in America, Europe and Japan. After all Dubai has still not scaled to those heights in terms of economy, purchasing power or per capita income. The earning levels of the average man on the street are nowhere close to the per capita of the most advanced countries. Suffice to say that the UAE is a rapidly growing country but does not justify such astronomical rents. Rising rents have put Inflation levels well over 10%, the highest among GCC countries. The rent cap of 7% is expected to bring relief to the middle-class; but the middle-class is already squeezed to the maximum! Personally my land lord was kind enough to raise my annual rent by only 8% for the last two years. So the rent cap is not going to benefit me!

If rent cap was a gift then movie tickets have become dearer. Beginning January ’07 movie tickets will now cost AED 35 instead of AED 30. I; for one; thought AED 30 itself was higher. AED 20 would be reasonable. Movie operators contend that prices have not gone up in the past many years. But they must realize that movie tickets don’t move up every two years in any part of the world. They further say that tickets are still cheaper than in Europe or America. But I say: Is the average earning on par with the earnings in Europe or America? All that I will say is that this will give a boost to DVD hiring and sale of the new breed of LCD and Plasma televisions. Homes will become even better theatres with increased sales of home theater systems, flat panel TV’s and DVD’s. Bottom line is that some one watching three movies a month will now watch two!

Dubai is certainly becoming expensive with every passing day. Nothing comes free in Dubai. And unlike its neighboring city Abu Dhabi; Dubai is not oil rich. The Govt. needs billions to complete the projects that it has envisaged; many of which I have written on this blog. Where else will it get the money from? Where else can the Government get the finances for its umpteen ambitious projects?