first encounter with sgi-gulf...

after one month in the land of the shimmering sands, i finally made contact with the sgi-gulf. ok, maybe not first contact, coz the first contact i had with them was an sms from a wd here, asking if i’m having any trouble getting an official introduction letter from sgm. apparently, their policy is not to have any contact with anyone claiming to be a gakkai member, until they’ve received an official introduction letter from the gakkai organisation the person was from previously.


anyway, as i’ve only moved to my apartment 2 weeks back, i was only able to provide my address (and other details) to sgm for them to issue the letter. so after giving them an appropriate amount of time (2 weeks plus) to prepare the letter, i asked my ywd from kl on monday morning if they’ve e-mailed it over to the person in charge here. she replied that they’ve already e-mailed the letter, and so i sent an sms to the wd who sms-ed me earlier, asking if they’ve received it. she promptly called me up to say that they did receive, and said she would like to meet up with me in advance, before i attend my first meeting, just to go through with me the guidelines of practising here in sandland.


coincidentally, there’s a recital by a famous guitarist, jason carter, that night and she asked me if i’ll be interested to go watch him play. this artist also gave a recital during a book launch of sensei’s book "the world is yours to change" (in english and arabic) in dubai recently. so apparently this wd and her husband liked his music so much that they’re going to watch his performance that night at a place called "the fridge". but as the wd is a japanese lady, i can’t really understand her english that well and thought that the book launch was going to take place that night itself. so i agreed to go...


she asked me to go to her house in mirdiff, which is right across dubai from where i’m staying. i was rushing a bit, coz i was at ikea earlier (finally!) getting my furniture. and then the taxi driver can’t find the street she mentioned in her sms, so we had to drive around a bit looking for her house and making several calls to her for directions. she was kinda worried when we arrived, coz she was standing outside her house on the street and when she saw my taxi stop, she rushed over to scold the taxi driver! "how much are you charging her?! going round and round like that!" :D


side note: the taxi drivers here are known for doing this "trick". if they know that you’re a tourist or new in town, they’ll try to take the further route so that the meter will give a higher reading and we’ll have to pay a higher fare!


but to be fair, the directions she gave in her sms were kinda vague, and i was the one who told the taxi driver to take the wrong turning. so it’s wasn’t his fault entirely lar... kesian, kena marah by a japanese aunty! :P that taxi ride cost me 35 dirhams (about RM29.75)...


anyway, i met momo-san and her hubby, nick-san (nick is caucasian) in their lovely villa. it seems that momo-san is everyone’s "mom" in the sgi-gulf here. after a brief intro, we did the evening gongyo together and then left the house for the "venue" (which i was still thinking as the venue for the book launch!).


we drove to this industrial area, with factories and warehouses all around... and the venue, the fridge, located in one of these warehouses. and then i realized that this can’t be a book launch, coz we need to pay 50 dirhams (RM42.50) to get in!


jason carter’s recital was scheduled to begin at 8pm, but we got there quite early, at about 7.10pm due to there being not much traffic on the road that day. and apparently, there was another earlier show at the venue, which we caught half of.

people were swinging and dancing in the air! these group of performers call themselves "aerial silk" and as the name suggested, they perform their dance routine on silks hanging from the ceiling...

someone used a very bright flash to take his/her photo, and i just managed to "tumpang" the brightness... as you can see, the fridge is just a big empty warehouse with lighting and sound system for artists to showcase their arts...

then at 8pm, jason carter's slot began upstairs. as i found out, he’s not going to be playing on a guitar, but on a harp guitar! this is my first time encountering this instrument...

it has 18 strings, the top 6 being the bass, the middle set of 6 are the normal guitar strings and the bottom 6 are the treble. interesting... i couldn't wait for the show to start!

this is how a harp guitar is being played... sorry if you can't really see the artist, coz i didn't wanna block the people behind me by standing up to take a photo.

for more info about jason carter, see his website here


anyway, i met 2 more gakkai members that night at the fridge, an italian girl and also another fellow malaysian ywd! never mind that i’ve never met her in m’sia before (she’s from pj)...


so that's my brief encounter with gakkai people here. we'll be having a gosho study meet next week and there's a chanting session every monday night at momo-san's place.

more bits of dubai…

1. the people here don’t keep their appointments. they don’t come at the time they said they’ll come and they don’t bother to inform us about it! below is an sms relay between me and my colleague, regarding an event involving one of the local socialite here.

colleague: hey, not sure if you’ve heard, but the event for this evening is canceled. hope you didn’t miss your camping trip!
me: nope, on my way to camping now. event canceled due to what?
colleague: no reason given. welcome to dubai!


2. contrary to popular belief, not everything here is expensive. i bought this can of coke for only 1 dirham! that’s about RM 0.85! it’s the same price at any supermarket or vending machine. of course, if you order it in a pub/bar/restaurant, then it’s a totally different price range altogether!

3. one challenge for me here is to learn to recognise the money!

not sure if you can see the faint red circles on the top left hand corner of each note, but they’re all in arabic!

lucky thing they have it in “normal” numbers on the other side! i’m missing the 50 dirhams note here but apparently, they’re rather similar in colour to the 5 dirhams note. i’ve been warned about this by a few well-wishers already…

and here are the coins, in 3 denominations…

but we’re not as lucky with these coins, coz they’re only in arabic… the top one is 1 dirham, bottom left is 50 fils and bottom right is 25 fils.

4. one thing i find freaking expensive here is the taxi! maybe i’ve been driving for too long and have been out of touch with the market price for cabs, but i still can’t get over paying 18-25 dirhams for a one way taxi ride of about 4 km! i better not miss the 8am staff bus to the office every morning, or i’d be broke by the end of the month!


5. even though i have a spacious balcony, i can forget about sun-drying my laundry out in the open. the amount of fine sand that collects on any open surface in just one day can be really mortifying! and i’ve also given up trying to clean my balcony… no point going against the elements!


6. it’s either there’s something wrong with the taste buds of the people here, or my taste bud has gone bonkers, but i find the food served at the staff canteen are extremely salty! the salty dishes are still ok, coz we eat it with rice. but the soup are something else. they might as well call it salt soup, instead of french onion soup or fish soup or chicken cream soup or whatever soup. at first i thought it’s just salty for that day… maybe the chef has a cold and can’t taste properly. but after a few days’ of trying out the different soups served, i’ve given up having soup from the staff cafe. just stick to plain water!


that’s all for now. stay tuned for the next episode of “bits of dubai”, brought to you by “bits and pieces of me”! :P

could be dead, for all i know!

my phone's been so underutilised that if it weren't for the breather light, i'd really think that it died on me! gone are the days when i get unlimited data usage, where i receive my e-mails when i'm not sitting in front of a computer, log on to facebook when i'm bored, upload photos taken with my phone to facebook in real time, chat on msn, yahoo and gtalk on fring mobile and use the gps when i'm lost! now my phone is only used for making calls, receiving calls and texting. and that also don't happen very often nowadays... i can go for one whole week without charging my phone, whereas previously, i'd need to recharge my phone nearly everyday! seriously, after 7 freaking days, i still have about 1/4 power left! now only i know that my nokia battery can last THAT long...

sand in your ears…

and everywhere else! that’s what camping in the desert will give you… which was what i did last weekend! that’s one item off my list of things to do here. i just didn’t expect it to happen so soon! :)


anyway, this camping trip was organized by sf and a few of the malaysian airlines crew (not MAS crew, but airlines crew who are malaysian!) in dubai and abu dhabi. so all the people participating in this camp are malaysians, and all of them are from the aviation industry and their family. except for me, that is!


*warning, loooong post ahead!

sf’s car, filled to the brim!

the ooi’s came to fetch me from my office after work on thurs evening, and i spent the night at their place. we departed from dubai at 12.30pm on friday, and met up with the rest of the cars from dubai at a petrol station just outside dubai.

happy and excited to be going camping!

the only landscape for the whole journey after leaving the city of dubai behind us

after driving for about 1 hour plus, we arrived at at al falah. here, we waited for the convoy from abu dhabi.

the kids didn’t waste any time to start their adventure… here, they were searching for bugs… they were so excited when they caught a beetle! real city kids… :)

after the group from abu dhabi arrived, we continued on our journey another 1/2 hour before going into the desert…

after a bit, we had to stop to deflate the car tyres to increase the friction of the tyres on the desert sand.

deflate to about 15 psi…

our camp leader even brought along the jalur gemilang as his car marker!

after deflating the tyres, we went in search for a suitable campsite. actually our camp leader did a few trial runs before this trip and had already identified the perfect site for us, which he’d marked on his gps… such a dedicated and pro camp leader, huh?

the patterns on a sand dune caused by the wind…

this dune was right behind our camp, or more specifically, right behind my tent, acting like some sort of wind breaker. the kids loved to climb up and slide down it… don’t ask me where they get their energy. just looking at it is enough to make me pant from shortness of breath!

while the kids went to get themselves coated in fine sand, the adults started unloading the stuff from the cars and set up camp. it’s about 5pm now and everything must be up and ready before the sun sets and cloak us in total darkness!

ta-dah, my 3-men tent! but i think can 3 person will be a tight fit. probably just 2 adults comfortably. but boy, was it hard to set up… it was very very windy at the time. right after i’ve got the structure up and was about to start pegging it to the sand (which was damn difficult coz the sand was very loose!), the wind just picked my whole tent up and blew it away like a kite! i was running like mad trying to catch my tent before it got blown away further! so memalukan, i tell u! and luckily sf was thoughtful enough to buy extra pegs for me (big and long ones too!), which helped to anchor my tent safely… *phew*

after setting up camp, most of the adults drove off again for some offroad adventure in the dunes. i didn’t follow, coz i tend to get carsick easily. so i just stayed behind with a few of the wives to watch the kids. here’s sf driving off into the sunset (ok not really, they were actually driving in the opposite direction of the setting sun), the only woman driver among the offroaders…

i love this shot! doesn’t it remind u of a scene from “the kite runner”?

while waiting for the offroaders to come back, we heard some quad riders riding about near our camp. so the wife of our camp leader, ayuny, asked us to see if we could hail one down so that she could give it a go. actually i wanted to try it too, but i shy lah… :P

sun on the horizon at 6pm…

finally disappearing at 6.30pm…

it’s already getting dark in the camp. time to light up the torches…

  campsite at 6.30pm…

campsite at 6.40pm…

with night fall, it’s time to prepare the food…

as well as have a bonfire going, as temperature in the desert can drop drastically at night

we had lots of food! bbq chicken, beef & mutton, prawns & squids. and some of the wives prepared fried mihun, salad and fruits for the kids, which we all had some too while waiting for the bbq stuff to cook…

at about 9pm, after we’ve done stuffing ourselves with food and couldn’t take in anymore, it’s time for teh tarik! here, ayuny is setting up the gas stove to boil water…

and here’s me helping to stir the milo for the kids…

while at another corner of our camp, the shisha station is also being set up!

the temperature at midnight was about 22-23 deg C. at first, all of us were sitting in small groups scattered around the camp, but as the temperature kept dropping, all of us ended up sitting around the bonfire to keep warm. even the sand is cold under our feet (i’ve long since given up wearing my slippers) and i had to dig my feet into the sand to get to the warmer bits underneath.

i think i slept at about 1am that night, after going for a final pee in the desert! haha… everyone must be wondering about this. well, we just walk off with our torchlight to the other side of a dune, switch off our torchlight and do what we had to do. then when done, switch on our torchlight again to walk back to the campsite, making sure to avoid the wet patch. for me, this was a first. it felt really weird to be peeing right out in the open, under the stars! :P


and boy, there were stars alright! a sky full of stars! from horizon to horizon! and a captain among us taught us how to identify the northern star and learn where the north is from it. how cool is that?

the next morning, i woke at about 6.30am to the sounds of children playing. again, one can only marvel at their energy level! i did sleep a bit during the night. i only remembered waking up 2 or 3 times from being too cold! anyway, the sky has already lighten up when i finally decided to leave the warm confines of my tent. and the campsite was already bustling with activity…

breakfast was being prepared…

nasi lemak! what more can a malaysian ask for in the desert?

9.30am: after breakfast, it’s time to break camp before the sun got too hot…

while we were packing up, we realized that we had a visitor… a camel herder was just reclining on the sand, observing us from some way off. so we decided to show him some m’sian hospitality by offering him a plate of nasi lemak, a can of ‘zero’ coke and a box of juice…

camel herder enjoying his ‘zero’ coke… later when he came to give us back our paper plate, coke and juice, we wanted to give him more food (our leftover food) but he declined, making a gesture with his hand on his stomach showing that he’s had enough. we asked him where are his camels, but apparently he don’t speak english

after everything’s packed up and loaded into the cars, we gathered the kids around this square of sand for some “science experiment”. this was where the bonfire was and one of the guys have covered the pit up with sand. but as the bonfire had been burning for more than 12 hours, it should be very very hot down there. so if we were to pour water on it, the water should sizzle and smoke, giving off a volcano effect!

but however much water was poured on it, nothing happened! experiment failed! :D

before parting ways, we lined up the cars for a group photo. even this took a bit of time, coz first, we had to consider the direction of the sun and where we wanted to face. and secondly, it was really difficult getting the cars to go exactly where we wanted it to be! a few cars got stuck in the loose sand and had to do a few tries before we were able to line up all the cars…

leaving the desert at about 11am… yes, the desert is fenced up!

the nearest petrol station was about 30km away, so that’s how far we had to drive before we’re able to inflate the car tyres again…

all in all, this has been a super uber great experience! initially, i was of half a mind to give this a pass, coz i’ve been really tired that week due to my move to the apartment, all the cleaning, getting organized, and not to mention being a busy bee at work! luckily i didn’t, coz i’d definitely regret it!
other than a few camping newbies (me one of them!), most of the people in the group are experienced campers. they have all the camping equipments, know what to do, where to go… really the pros!


even though i don’t know anyone there, other than the ooi’s, and most of the time was just in the sidelines listening to the conversations around me, not saying nor doing much, i’ve really enjoyed this trip. so would i do it again? definitely yes! but not so soon lar… maybe in a few months time! :)



click here to watch how offroad driving looks like in the desert. or go to my fb for more photos!