Night Photography

One night while we had the kids here, my eldest daughter wanted to take some night time photos. We both share an interest in photography. It was seeing some of her results with a digital SLR last year that prompted me to buy one. It was nice to spend a few hours with her doing something we both enjoy.

Here's a few of the results (I'll spare you the 98 pics I took!)

Abu Dhabi Night Shots

Merry Christmas!

...to all my followers and readers! .....as my step-son reminded me, we must use the word "merry" for Christmas because it's the only time of year when it is an acceptable adjective to use!

More jobs for the boys.....

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Federal employees get 70% rise in basic pay
Kareem Shaheen and Samihah Zaman
The National - News
21 Dec 2009

Emiratis working for the federal Government will receive a 70 per cent rise in their basic salary. Yesterday’s announcement means the basic monthly salary of ministerial undersecretaries, who are at the highest grade of federal government positions,...read more...

Tech Tags: The National - News newspaper Front Page

iMac

I've bought an iMac! Having been a PC guy for last nearly 20 years, I have finally succumbed to the beauty that is an iMac! It's taking a bit of getting used to, but mostly I love it! I went with the 27" monitor which is fantastic. As long as I can continue to learn and find may way around the thing ok, I'll be fine!

Classic UAE builders…..jobs for the boys

 

Here is a scene I saw today….

One man digging. One man standing next to a pick axe, one man standing holding a wheel barrow and a fourth man (white hat) supervising. So the man with the pick axe was breaking up the ground, then the other would shovel it into the wheel barrow for it to be taken away and dumped. Then I noticed there were more “wheel barrow men”! ….

….. 3 of them in fact, each on a run to the dumping area.

We all know that manual labour here is cheap, but it is used so wastefully. It’s not the labourers fault, they are just doing what they are told to do. It’s the management that is at fault. If the labour was used more efficiently then much less would be needed. In fact, if these guys had a mechanical digger this whole job could have been done in about half an hour, instead of the 14 hours they probably put it.  This same story is repeated over and over out here in many different fields – not just in construction but also the service industries. The availability of vast resources of cheap labour means that there seems to be no drive to make processes slick and efficient. They will just throw more labour at it instead.

I guess the upside is that more people from some of the poorest parts of the Asian Sub-Continent have jobs and are able to send money home to support their families.