’tis getting hot-ter in here… so take off (uh uh)

There is a typical suspicion of  all negative-event-monitoring-official agencies in the region. Naturally. The built-in GCC-ian deafult settings to always see a rosy picture, even if false, is so overriding as to be numbing sometimes.

So, naturally, seeing the heat-mini-boom the last couple of days, Fujairah officially announcing a recorded temperature of 50.2 celcius, and the local official mercury levels still not rising above 50 celcius has naturally raised concerns.

For my part, I officially lay these two questions on the table:

- Will the govt. officially announce the temperature if it measures it to be above 50 celcius?

- What abnormal ‘measures’ shall be taken countrywide in such a case?

Obviously, I’m not expecting the Ministry of Interior to come commenting on my blog!

In the meantime, another juicy tidbit offered up from our car’s thermo:

Maybe we can set a panic threshold realtive to my car’s thermometer.

-FK

Rise of the Clones

Whilst enjoying the sunny weather on a jaywalking jaunt through the environs of Wadi Kabir, I passed by the Toyota camp mosque that is there. Expecting to find a shortcut through the parking lot of the same, I stumbled upon a cache of spit-shiny 1985/1990 model toyota 4WDs.

I saw them from afar, went inside the lot, looked around for security, inspected the vehicles, their cleanliness, their having no sunshade or any protection from the sun. I even went ahead and peeked into one to see if I could discern signs of them being in regular use, but no. Either they were being driven by ghosts or the Omani drivers driving them were oh-so-clean as to be freaky.

And y’know, I made a point of driving by that mosque twice that week… they were still there and still untouched as always. For all I know they are still there.

Do they get up at night and move about, returning to mere cars in the mornings?

Hmm…

-FK

Dodge the Dodge

I’m impressed. Not that such a thing exists, it sure does, but that Kuwait is actually going to use it!

Basically the idea is to have two number-plate-recognizing cameras on a police car. The cameras scan number plates, query the head office database, get details and raise alerts of something amiss is found! It is capable of 50 scans per second. Sounds good. I’m assuming after that the policeman turns on the nitro boost, guns the engine and floors his vehicle, follows the offender’s, car, flashing lights and blaring horns and pulls the guy/gal over and books him/her, poor thing.

Something after 6 months, the policemen keep the camera off since they are instructed by the HQ as the DB cannot keep up with the flood of inquiries; tired of following every person, cannot decide who to follow in case of multiple results and are tired of the crappy WAP/3G/WAN/EDGE/GPRS/Radio data connection speeds that makes the HQ DB return replies to queries that were send an hour ago.

And kudos points to the Kuwaiti police for having the 2009 5.7-l Dodge Chargers!!!!

-FK