Wednesday, April 25, 2007

UAE - Justice

Attempt murder - three months
Beat up your wife - six months
Molest a child - one year
Steal from charity - one year
Drink, drive, kill - one year
Slash four women - two years
Torture your maid - three years
Rape a woman - three years

Smoke cannabis outside the UAE - four years

Abu Dhabi: A teenager who smoked a cigarette containing hashish while he was in Egypt will serve four years in jail followed by deportation, the Federal Supreme Court has confirmed.

The boy, 18, an Egyptian identified as E.M., smoked a cigarette containing hashish with his friends in Egypt. He smoked it one day before he flew to the UAE.


via [Secret Dubai Diary]

Thursday, April 05, 2007

السلام عليكم

Finally I completed my Arabic classes. I missed only one class out of 40..... That is an achievement in itself compared to others (the people I know)

Now don't ask me what I learnt... Ask me what I didn't..... I never came to understand how a language could be so complex and so nice at the same time... Somedays I just felt like running away from the class... and on some other days it was a cultural awakening...

So when I came out of the last class... I tried to recall the ordeals I went through for past 2 months... Rushing from office or site to the class and then dinner at odd places and then trying to convincing the taxi's to drop me to nowhere and coming home at midnight and sleeping the moment you hit the bed... and waking up next day late for office and this cycle continued for nearly 2 months....

In case anybody wondered what is the status of my Arabic.. For now i can try to read and my chances of getting it right is around 60%.... I can speak a little....Can surely tell "No it was not me"..... Have decided to give up trying to write Arabic.... It's just not working out...
At the end of the day even though I might not be able to speak Arabic, I am happy to have know abt this culture and a lot more exists to it than just the common notion that the entire stuff is around their religion....

Ma' Salama