Dubai - The city that rocks 24*7

I sit in the back seat of an Audi as we are traveling down the 50 km long, Sheikh Zaid Road. The road has 6 lanes. The speed limit is around 120 kms/hour. As we are cruising down the road I notice the tall buildings. The Burj towers, the tallest building in the world, still under construction though. It stands 180 floors high. No matter where you are in Dubai, you can spot this tower. We cross other buildings like the twin towers, DIFC, MOE (The Mall of Emirates), my brother in law's office, my friend's office. I hear stories of these places. Things that fascinate me like Skii Dubai. I sit there looking out, looking at the buildings. Looking at the lit up buildings and wonder how pretty they look at that moment. And that if there was any way I could capture that moment. I open my bag and my hands fumble through the things in search of a camera, but as my luck has it, I am unable to locate my camera. Not wanting to take my eyes off this pretty sight, I stop looking for the camera and instead just sit there staring out of the window of the Audi. To add to this, the cars that I see on the road is something which again catches my interest. I see a Porsche, a BMW. I spot a hummer driving beside us. Just then something that catches my attention is the photo of this person (Sheikh). I ask who is he and i learn that he is the ruler. And that every shop, hotel or any establishment has to have the photo of the ruler. Sheikh Mohammad, is the name I am told.

As I look at all of this and as I hear the stories, I am sleep deprived since I have had a long day, a long flight. And I crave for nothing but a bed and a quilt to snuggle into. But as one part of me wants this the other still wants to stay up and not loose sight of what my eyes are witnessing. A battle that's taking place in my head. The human mind, always wanting everything and always wanting more han it can possible handle. My mind, half sleepy half excited. It becomes difficult for me to keep y eyes open any longer than now. I slowly drift away to la-la land...

86,400 seconds in a day...Idle time?

Look up the definition of the word HOBBY and this is what you will get on Wikipedia – a spare time recreational pursuit. Essentially it is what one likes to do in their spare time. One could either be fond of watching movies, dancing, playing some sport, anything. There are various types of hobbies – indoor activities, outdoor games, creative hobbies and many more. Like reading, collecting stuff, dancing would form a part of indoor hobbies. Any kind of sports or shopping, traveling etc would constitute outdoor hobbies. And creative hobbies are like cooking, pottery, knitting, glass painting, etc. It keeps one busy and occupied (meaning the same thing). I have lots of hobbies and since childhood they have been changing. At the moment I enjoy watching movies and reading, perhaps even writing. However, as a kid one of my hobbies was collecting stamps.

Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone has ever watched this movie or for that matter even heard of it. It’s called - ‘Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler’. It’s another one of my favorites. As kids, many of my friends and I had a hobby of collecting stamps. It’s very interesting to collect stamps of different places. It was a hobby which we all grew out of eventually. Then, there was this movie which was released in the late 80s. It is about a few friends and their fascinating summer adventure. Tommy, who is a stamp collector, gets one of his friends, Ralph to trade him a stamp from his father’s precious stamp collection. From fear of getting into trouble for it, he and his sister (Nancy) try to buy the stamp back from the local store; however they are handed over a stamp collection in exchange. This contains a letter from a little boy named Charles. The letter contains magical rhymes, on reciting these rhymes, the person shrinks and he/she is then able to travel around the world on various stamps to different places. During Ralph’s journey, he finds out that he needs to get to Australia since a rare collection of stamps awaits him. And what happens next is something that even I don’t recall very well and to refresh my memory I will have to watch the movie again.

It’s an amazing movie and truly hilarious, which gets you laughing all the way till the end with the dragons, kangaroos, boomerangs, stamps and postcards. The chase, the suspense, the adventures are absolutely mind blowing and will certainly sweep you off your feet. One needs to watch the movie to figure out what I am saying. If memory serves me right, it also had a sequel. Something like - ‘The Return of Tommy Tricker’. I tried really hard to find more clips of the movie but this is all I could get. Check it out…

Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller