What the .......

In common with a lot of In-flight magazines in the US there is an advertising feature where the “allegedly” best Doctors in a US city are listed; the article says they were voted for by their peers.
The “best” Doctors is each city is honored with a full page photograph ......

The above photograph is of Dr John R Miklos who advertises himself as a “cosmetic Gynaecologist” I just don’t know what to make of this, it just seems wrong on so many levels!!!!

· You would have thought he might have might have concentrated his medical training in an area that was some use to humanity; I can’t see him taking a sabbatical to Africa to offer medical assistance. I am sure his mother runs around telling everyone what her son does!

· It shows the absolute vanity of some people in America.

· Should this be in an in-flight magazine?

Annoying cash points in Canada

The cash points in Montreal and I assume other parts of Canada are specific to Visa and Mastercard, if you have a Visa Debit you have to search out another machine, I hope his never happens in the UK

Lazy Sunday in Toronto

The requirement for a Saturday night stay to reduce the price of the ticket by £1000 meant I got a lazy Sunday in Toronto. I chose to take the boat over to the Toronto Island Park as the weather was nice. There are three differnet ferrys so you can take whichever one you want. they dont check the return ticket on the assumption that you must have taken the ferry to get there.

The park is an urban park with the twist that it is located in lake Ontario just off the Toronto waterfront.

they positivly encourage people to enjoy themselves


The wildlife is great, and you can walk all over the Island

the views back to Toronto are stunning, after about three pleasant hours I cought the ferry back and walked along the bayshore for a while before eating "Al Fresco" in another couple of months everyone will be in hibernation as the temperatures will have dropped to -20C.

Mercury in retrograde

I don’t normally read my horoscope but I was on the train on the way to Heathrow for yet another trip and picked up a copy of the previous days Metro newspaper. My horoscope said that Mercury was in retrograde and it was not a good time to travel.

Thinking nothing of it I left the train to catch the Piccadilly line to Heathrow. The line had engineering work for the weekend and was closed from Acton Town, quickly re planning my journey I took the Circle line to Paddington for the Heathrow Express, there was disruption on this. When I finally got the Heathrow I ignored the Heathrow Express as it goes to T5 and I wanted T4, I took the Heathrow connect which departed 20 minutes later and is the slower train, it was then I discovered that they have changed the timetable and all the trains go to T5, there is a connecting shuttle train to T4 from Heathrow central. The connecting train did not run for 20 minutes and I arrived in T4 29 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart.

Having hand baggage only I made the flight by the skin of my teeth. The connection in Paris was fine but we left an hour late and I only had a 90 minute connection in Montreal for my final flight of the day to Toronto. We arrived at the gate in Montreal 30 minutes before my connection was due, I managed to clear customs in record time and arrived at the West jet check in desk 15 minutes before the flight departure but being a great airline they accepted me because I only had hand baggage. I ran to the gate and arrived 5 minutes before the flight was due to depart. Once I was on board I realised that I had left my suit jacket and coat at the security check point. I finally made it to my final destination sans coat which was never handed in.

Fortunately the weather has been good on the trip but it feels odd to be making my way round Canada and the USA in shirt sleeves. Next time I will believe my horoscope

Dubai

During the sandpit trip we called in at Dubai for 12 hours of crew rest, I spent the time in the Hotel but I took these photos on the approach to the airport.

The above is part of "the world" the reclamation project where you can buy a "country" and build a house on it. this project was started at the height of the Dubai boom and whilst it is complete there are no houses on it. it is without doubt an amazing vanity project just like Dubai its self. There is some concern, which I share, about what it has done to the eco system on the seabed of the Gulf.

As we were flying directly over it, I cannot be certain which bit of “the world” I have photographed. I think we were flying “south” over “Africa” and the picture is of the “Far East” and “Australia”

Dubai still has a ship repair industry, but its not the sort of thing that Dubai is proud of as it does not represent their new image.

The QE2 now resides in Dubai, it was supposed to be the center piece of a new area of Dubai but the “bust” in the enviable boom and bust came before the area around the Queen could be developed, it appears to sit forlornly on its own I don’t know what if anything it is used for. I expect it may well just be rotting away slowly.

Yet another example of the “bust” there are large areas where the road infrastructure has been built and then abandoned, although I did not take a photograph the area round the hotel in the Silicon Oasis was littered with abandoned construction sites and tower cranes. At the height of the bust Dubai was cancelling 1500 work permits a day for South Asian construction workers. The “bust” in Dubai came quickly and there is evidence of this everywhere you look.

The National sport of the UAE is camel racing. The races take place on a Friday morning after prayers. The jockeys’ used to be children who were attached to the camels saddle by Velcro, there was a bit of an outcry about this a few years ago and they have now developed a radio controlled robot jockey that is controlled by trainer from a 4WD vehicle that runs alongside the track. The Camel “stables” are in the desert outside Dubai, this is the first time I have seen them.

Also out in the desert are the bits of Dubai they don’t talk about, This Picture is of some of the "labour camps" where the South Asians live. The labour is "imported" on contracts. Often the workers don’t get home for a year or more and are expected to work 6 day weeks of 12 hours or more a day with just the Friday off. They are bussed into and out of Dubai every day. South Asians flock to the Middle East where wages are tax free and much better than back home. The down side is that there are virtually no employment laws and no employee protection. If they can’t work or there is no work then their visa is cancelled and they are sent home.

And finally the bit of Dubai that they want you to see and everyone talks about, this is the downtown area which is quite impressive in a “Las Vegas” sort of way. Personally as you might have guessed I prefer the old fashioned Arabia which has a culture of it’s own. There is no need to try and mimic the west, the Middle East has so much of it’s own to offer. Dubai has destroyed its own history and having realised this has built a “Dubailand” theme park based on its own history. I kid you not!

The Sandpit

I haven’t done a trip to “the sandpit” for some years; “the sandpit” is generic slang for the Middle East within elements of the military. On this occasion I was acting as a loadmaster on the aircraft, this role requires me to complete the balance calculations on the aircraft. We started out from the UK with a couple of hundred troops going back to Afghanistan after two weeks leave. A commercial aircraft takes the troops to an airbase in the Sandpit where they transfer to a military aircraft for the final leg into Afghanistan. The military aircraft then returns to the airbase with the troops that are coming “out of theatre” These troops then either fly back to the UK direct or via a stop at a “warm” location for a 24 hour decompression which is an opportunity to have a beer or 20 with the other troops.

below photos are some I took as we passed down the gulf and at the airbase.

The desert comes down to the sea, it is reall quite dramatic, you can often see single roads that appear to come from nowhere and go nowhere.




as you fly down the gulf you see the Oil tankers mored off shore, they dont even need to dock to pick up the oil, they just moor up to a jetty with a hose and pump the stuff onto the tanker.


this is one of the ramps at the base, all transport aircraft. the troops deploy for several months at a time and rarely leave the Base or get a day off.