Rest is all just inspirational talk!
Happiness is a word that you learn for your dictation at school. It’s something close to a piece of cake and a beautiful peroxide blonde girlfriend, they say. But you can be peaceful without these. Being peace at heart is the key. We all are doing great. I mean, we all are doing really great without all these. Smile, live and die. All other junks are just inspirational talk.
Not that often a handsome man kisses a beast and turns it into a beautiful princess. It’s always the opposite- a princess kisses a frog or a beast and ‘KABOOM!-it turns into a prince. It may be due to the fact that all stories are told from a male point of view and women have to discover her man while waiting for him to arrive and rescue her from her bondage. IT’S SAD EVEN GREAT EPICS PORTRAY THIS!
Every teenage beauty queen knows. She loves it. She reads it in their eyes and revels in the aura of admiration as she passes thru the college corridor. Time slowly passes by and in the blink of an eye she becomes a mother of two. A kind hearted, understanding partner becomes her hero, her greatest asset. She loves it. Every housewife knows.
See…the whole point is that we are part of a grand joke. There is no free will. Free will is just an illusion that helps us being human. You are straddled and kept inside the four corners of life that society deems as living-you pass board exams, you get a job, get married, have kids, try all those things that supposedly make you and your dear ones happy. Believe me…you die not KNOWING.
There is a fun in being ourselves. Like time and again you wear socks to work that does not match, that you secretly throw away toilet soap before it finishes to try a new one, procrastinate paying bills and then end up paying heavy fines, forget to switch off the iron, your heart still skips a beat near a voluptuous woman/sweet talking gentle man. Only thing is that we don’t appreciate this fun that often! .
When Al Qasba was known as Qanat Al Qasba, before its repositioning, it was a secluded place where not many families visited. Even its existence was not that much known. As they drove past that big giant wheel while going to Rolla, people often wondered what sort of a place that it is. Even on Fridays its restaurants were almost vacant. I always wondered how they manage to pay salaries to these smiling faces.
Now time has changed. The new advertising campaign promoting the place “Al Qasba” as a family get together destination is showing results. This shift in positioning, balancing heritage and modernity is bringing people to the place. Al Qasba is slowly becoming a place families look forward to visit on weekends, and food festival acts as an event helping it ascertain this position.
For those who came in late, this is the festival activity schedule:
From 19th March to 28th March
Operating Hours
Weekdays 5.00pm to 12 midnight
Weekends 5.00pm to 1.00am
Cooking demonstration
Daily from 8.30pm to 9.15pm
Cooking competition
Daily from 9.30pm to 10.00pm
Cooking secrets and tips
Daily from 10.30pm
Seminars on healthy eating
21st of March, 25th of March, 20mins to 40mins duration
Ronald McDonald Show
19th and 20th March 5.00pm to 6.00pm
See it all to feel it all
Visitors are entertained by dancers and drum parades. Children will find it very exciting!
Various food items, all kinds of restaurants: Japanese, Indian, Thai, Lebanese, Arabian…
Come on, I cannot forget to mention the dancing fountain and the famous giant wheel. It’s great to see children play in these fountains…
Flower and plant display area: amazing flowers and plants at very good price. If you have a home/terrace/balcony garden, don’t miss this place.
Children/teenage fun area; Just look at the pictures to have a feel…
One good thing is that Al Qasba is near Sharjah Aquarium. So if you plan well, you can visit both the places in a single trip.
kerala real estate will find prices correcting
Last night, I had a crisis call from a real estate agent based in Kerala. It was not a regular call to an NRI inducing him to invest in a property, but rather a distress call to resell an existing house plot. He told me that this is the right time to buy as he thinks apartments and land plots are coming under great resale stress and prices are falling down in Kerala. Like anywhere else in the world, Kerala real estate is feeling the market pressures of limited liquidity. 3-4 years back, the rising land prices made it impossible for any resident Indian to purchase property in Ernakulum, Kakkanad, Trivandrum, Alleppey or any other place where real estate was booming. And then the money hungry banks and property agents turned to gulf residents and other NRI Indians, making the land prices to skyrocket. The nonresident Indians took loans from banks in their residing countries and stuffed these greedy speculators. This business model was very successful, until now. Today NRIs find it hard to raise cash sources to pay their installments. Very soon huge payment defaults will occur as they find it very hard to even sustain their normal life in their respective residing countries. Inflated prices will face the harsh market realities and tumble down; in the process hurting many speculators.
Real estate crisis and copywriter
It’s good news at last for copywriters and creative people. We advertising guys are going to inherit the world when sub-prime mortgage crisis, PUT-CALL future options, real estate bubbles and bank runs make the newspaper headlines. Copywriters, Graphic designers and art directors from advertising agencies in Moscow, Trinidad, Dubai, Sharjah, Lower Manhattan, Uzbekistan, Minnesota, Calcutta, Kerala and Algeria will benefit from this global financial real estate meltdown. This is how we are going to do it. This strategy has been discussed and finalized in a big 7 star hotel located at Eldorado by Copywriters & Ad Guys Inc. (registered in Cayman Island, Reg. No: 0909878976/NB/435/12). Creative guys secretly discussed this with all their financial wisdom and IQs above 134.9 to decide on three strategies.
1. We have decided to trade all our skills as real estate copywriters and brochure designers to raise 7689 credit default swaps (CDS). As a regulatory measure to guard against excessive risk-taking in the financial system we will thereby sub-prime all our assets in the main financial markets. This will indeed followed by three regulatory marathon races by amateur orangutans aged more than 53 yrs to have sufficient assets to meet our contractual obligations, through reserve requirements, capital requirements, and other limits on leverage. Possible Financial contagion effects will be nullified by introducing 29 new advertising agencies issuing IPOs throughout the coming year.
2. As Bank Runs (BRs) can be avoided by cash injection, the possible cash crunch in the market is coordinated with excess liquidity. All copywriters registered with Copywriters & Ad Guys Inc. will persuade printing presses around the world to print Hedge-Bonds in 6 colors (Alizarin Crimson as the special color to induce liquidity leverage). This will reduce recession by quarter 3(Q3) and bring the asset-liability mismatch to alarming rates, enabling trans border wealth creation. All financial instruments will be proportionately linked with EXIM policies and directly pegged with dollar(USD).
3. Stock Markets around the world will be induced into a PUSH strategy by PULL strategies. But if the market adopts PULL strategy first (due to Butterfly effect) they will be induced by PUSH strategies.
We creative guys are going to save the world. We are going to give back the real estate its lost glory. We copywriters and graphic designers are going to bring liquidity into the world. “Ha! you Mr. Liquidity, you can’t escape our clutches. We may not have the brain power of those Wall Street guys or the cunning nature of those four piece suit real estate guys. But here we come, BEWARE!”
My friends in Dubai are asking me about this new aquarium in Sharjah. All of them want to know more about this place so that they can make a perfect Friday family outing. I was there last week and this is all I have to say about the aquarium…
How to get there:
From Dubai first come to Al Tauwn Mall roundabout. When you are in the roundabout just keep on driving towards Sharjah/Al Qasba and you will reach another roundabout-the Al Qasba roundabout. Take left and drive straight and jump two other roundabouts. From the last roundabout just drive straight and in seconds you can see Sharjah Aquarium.
Sharjah Aquarium
Sharjah Aquarium
Lot of parking space
Kids will love it
So far, the place is neat and fresh
A place to take photographs [they won’t allow you to use flash for obvious reasons]
Only 20Dhs per adult [Other family friendly ticket rates are available]
City, it is you!
Come on, tell me. Do you get enough time to spend with your wife/ husband? How early do you wake up to reach your office on time? And how rarely you reach back on time? How hard it is for you when radio jockeys eat your brains out on every single car journey you make? How much time you waste in traffic waiting to pick your children from babysitting? Can you afford to keep a house maid now? When you are frustrated waiting for a taxi, how do you cry out? Do you people still pray together?
Tell me. Is your child studying satisfactorily? Does he/she know something better than the names of cars and four wheel drives? Are you reading your toddler some stories or you just stuff him with fried chicken and sausage? Are you worried that your 5 year old talks like an adult rather than a child and your girl child is growing faster than she should ever be?
How deep is your credit card debt? When your car’s rear tyre needs to be replaced next month, will you have that extra 550 bucks to pay? Do you have any plans for surviving your next rent renewal?
Don’t feel shame, tell me. You really hope to save on your AC bills as the winter comes, right?
Be frank! Does your family back home know how hard it is for you to meet both ends? Are you sending something back home every month? Do you have anything saved up to make your trip back home on next vacation? Can you do anything about the rising living expenses? Are you calling home at least on Fridays? Can you be a help to your ageing parents when time is ripe? [Or will they die not seeing your face?].
When was the last time you smiled at your partner? And when was the last time he/she smiled at you? How bad you miss your friends? Do you envy your better off friends when you see their smiling pictures in face book, Hi5 or Orkut?
When was the last time, someone asked you, “Are you ok”?
Dear friend, tell me, are you ok?
Denis Eugene Arackal is a Social Media Strategist, Copywriter & Blogger based in UAE & Kochi. He is the founder director of LIKED Social Media Experiments, a social media agency based in Kochi. He is a graduate in theoretical Physics and Post graduate in Advertising & Management. Father of two, husband of one. Non vegan Homo sapien.
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