Till now it had been all car travels in Dubai either to office and on weekends because my friend was there who took me in car wherever we wanted to go. But after moving to Bur Dubai and with my friend going to India on vacation, I am exploring the public transport options. The situation is not so different from our Indian State transport services, except that here RTA (Road Transport Authority) has a good customer service (only) through a call center, who gives details about the routes and bus numbers when called. Along with this difference are other aspects like - a flat Dhs. 2/- for anywhere in Dubai, the standard of bus - Air conditioned, closed and infact thats the disadvantage because of the perspiration inside a closed space. Other than that there is no difference - same unpredictable timings of the bus arrival like in Chennai and even a checker doing the ticket checking in the mid way. However these bus travels take me back to the simple days of mine in Coimbatore and I am really enjoying waiting, 50 minute travel in the bus, so I am not complaining. I should have tried this much before itself and this is the only regret.
You can know more about the Buses in Dubai from their corporate website for Road and Transport Authority - www.rta.ae. Thanks to the bus travel, I have been able to take up reading again. Currently I am (re)reading Sujatha's "Kolaiyuthirkaalam". After seeing the pathetic attempt of making the Late. Sujatha's classic "Pirivom Santhippom" as a feature film called "Anandha Thandavam", I desperately wanted to read the "Pirivom Santhippom" again to erase the images of "Anandha Thandavam" that comes whenever I think of Raghu and Madhu, the lead characters of PS. So last week I carried the books along with me and am about to complete the book for the second time, after coming here. Also since the bus travel reminds a lot & takes me to Coimbatore days, I feel a sense of happiness while going to office past few days. I realised how much I miss and long for the simple days of Coimbatore and that thought itself makes me homesick. When I am going to Coimbatore???????
Of late I am getting my share of entertainment with the videos of my (new born) niece Dhanya and interviews of my favourite movie celebrities (read as Prithviraj, Vidya Balan, Meera Jasmine and Sathyan Anthikad) downloaded from the YouTube. Thanks to an addon (for Mozilla only) called SoThink Web video downloader, which sits quitely on the Toolbar of Mozilla Firefox and blinks whenever any flash video is available on the loaded page. So after opening the webpage with the desired video, this addon 'alerts' with a blink and once you click that, it automatically downloads the video file in the 'flv' format. To view this flv format, there are many 'FLV Players' available, but my personal favourite is the Adobe Media Player, installable (not downloadable) from the Adobe Site. Try this and you'll bless me for an useful tip. I can't keep my eyes off from Dhanya Kutti, who is in US and thanks to YouTube, I am able to get the updates of her growing up.
{oshits} readers had read this blog on my bus travel experiences.
