Joe Speak

So you have two days off every week and you are all alone in metropolitan city like Dubai. You have 48 hours to yourselves and you are free to do anything you pretty much like – well as far as the rules allow it. The night life in Dubai is amazing to the extent I have heard about it. I have not yet had the luxury to go out and live the life to the full at the amazing pubs or discotheques yet.  My activities are pretty much diurnal. The desert heat boarding fifty two degree Celsius does not give you the luxury to go out any time you like. Still I have had braced the searing heat and went out a couple of times – once the world famous Burj Khalifa and second time to the Dubai Marina. I have seen The Burj many times in the movies. It always was so intimidating and big to watch the Burj in all those movies. Millions and millions has been spent in building the world’s tallest tower and the first impression that I had was “My gosh! Why did they make it so ugly?” The towering...

There are times when life takes an unexpected turn – for the better of for the worse. Sometimes uncertainty looms like a huge expecting cloud, ominous and dark. You feel that you are all alone and are being dragged down into the whirlpool of desperation. People deride you for your lack of strength and meekness of character. You don’t have a place to call as your own; you suddenly miss the familiarity and keeps on thrashing blindly for a handhold. You feel that all your talents has been drowned down the drain in a single day, all that you thought and held were precious vanishes into thin air. Heavy and harsh words pierce you like arrows. It hurts more when this comes from the unexpected quarters. And you cannot express your feelings as easy as you used to do. You have to face being called a quitter, and are worried all along about being wilted down under the pressure. You are not yourselves any more. The controls are handled by someone somewhere; you have to walk through the line th...

Dubai – One of the most happening cities in the world, very vibrant yet mellow, very radiant yet sleepy. Like the sides of a coin, Dubai has two faces – one that encompasses all that is modern and other that embraces the traditional. I landed in Dubai hardly a week back, and I am already missing my home. But then every body misses it I presume. The hot, arid and sandy conditions are sure to degrade some, at the same time the glitter and pompous city life draws others like fire flies. Some escape unscathed while others get grounded. Some come here for a better life, some just for the fun of it. The first thing that strikes you is the heat. The heat here is so permeating and all encompassing which kills the soul and mind. One might as well like the heat, because it follows you all the way around, and reminds you every day that you are in the middle of a desert. I am yet to see most of Dubai , but I feel there are surprises in store for me. There are so many places to explor...

MY FIRST MODEL AIRCRAFT F lying the Beech Craft baron, Lear Jet or the Bombardier CRJ700 was not enough for me, I decided to get into the building a flying machine. Though I use the demo version of a popular flight simulator for my flying lessons, there are skeptics – of course mislead, misinformed and narrow minded – who insists that anything you play on a computer needs to be a video game. I have time and again explained the nuances involved in flying an aircraft, most importantly a jet in the class of CRJ700, to these terrestrials, but in all counts have miserably failed. I took videos of difficult landings, take offs, stall-spins, and acrobatics I performed to convince these bipeds. But alas! Their adamant stand of the simulator being just another video game always prevailed. This was when I decided seriously to get into aero modeling business, though I would admit that the thought has always been there, in the back of my mind, waiting for a trigger. As the ...

Derailed! Derailed, but chugging along, no particular destination in mind. Our country is chugging along, totally losing its direction and its purpose. The great vision of men who fought and gave their lives for the freedom of this great country is getting blurred and blurred.  Rampant corruption- pernicious and permeating, starting from the great echelons of power to the lowest clog in the machinery of the government, undisciplined people, chaotic traffic system, interstate rivalry and strife, people killing each other in the name of religion, the caste system, racism, and discrimination based on ethnicity truly characterizes the modern India.  The outer shell, the shell that the politicians, the religious leaders, me and you want to project is that of prosperity, industrialization, military power, suave and savvy. But the cancer, that carves the inside hollow, day by day is being so easily covered up, so easily forgotten, that the danger of this great civilization being b...

2012 – The New Year dawned on us 13 days late. The entire world was celebrating the feast and the joy of the new year on 31 st December and we might have been the only exception in the whole beautiful world. It is a very good feeling to know that you are different from the mass, you might stick out like a sore thumb, but still you will stick out. We guys decided to celebrate our new year a little late – 13 days late in the beautiful state of Goa, the tiny state bordering the Arabian sea. We had great many plans, and we had two days. We charted carefully the best beaches in North Goa, the best in the south. We had in mind the Se Cathedral, the Old Goa, the forts, the pubs and the vibrant night life of Panaji. We landed in Goa on an evening and decided to head out to Colva beach as it was the nearest to the railway station. We checked into a small but good hotel. That night we had a candle light dinner out on the beach. It was one of the most memorable experiences that we had - the coo...

High veldts and deep jungles, a righteous but rogue Afrikaner, gold and diamond mines, accidental love and high octane action very well captured in the back drops of the Dark Continent . This summarizes the works of one my favourite author – Wilbur Smith. Though I use the common Library for borrowing novels, I bought a copy of “Those in Peril” – the latest novel by Wilbur Smith from an online book store. I was a little excited on the prospect of reading his new novel. I had in mind the vivid African landscapes, the hapless men pitted against fate and the hunting, soldiering, and chivalrous Afrikaner hero with some of his black and faithful side kicks. The story began on a ship. The fast paced story line from “As hungry as the sea” flashed through my mind. But as I read on and on, I realized with a sinking feeling that this was not what I expected. The story was a loosely put together one with a wealthy oil magnate’s daughter being captured by the Somalian pirates, and the head of th...