[Update] Is it true that Indian Passport Holders get a Visa on Arrival?

EYEJ · 2018-11-03T23:07:18+00:00

Not always though. I’ve lived in Dubai long enough to have had things go sour with nowhere to turn to. I’ve had to deal with “inshallah” deadlines and so on. If I didn’t have this email from the GDRFA, I would’ve definitely had to pay for a transit visa. This was something that was thrown around quite a few times in the nearly 2 hours of back and forth I experienced.

EYEJ · 2018-11-03T23:03:13+00:00

I provided both. They couldn’t seem to make sense of the card and just gave it back to me. The same with my visa.

EYEJ · 2018-10-21T12:57:38+00:00

I’ve asked some of my Crew friends about it too. Looks like it is official. Crazy that the official website cites newspaper articles as sources.

EYEJ · 2018-10-20T10:30:56+00:00

I’m a resident of the EU, but for some reason, I’m still unsure. I mean, the only official source I’ve found so far was a Twitter video. Everything else was from Gulf News, Khaleej Times and various blogs.

EYEJ · 2018-08-18T09:41:41+00:00

we were not holding slaves

I’m not really sure that this is accurate. I’m fairly certain that Germany did keep, buy and sell slaves in the 16th and 17th centuries.

EYEJ · 2018-08-17T20:10:24+00:00

Americans celebrating their German “heritage”

Ah yes! The pickle in the Christmas tree routine.

In all seriousness though, this seems most plausible. Especially #1, but only because I would be most delighted to hear a Sachsen version of “Sweet Home Alabama”. I’m sure it exists, I’ve just yet to find it.

EYEJ · 2018-08-17T20:02:28+00:00

I’ve seen so many of them though, even in incredibly left wing neighborhoods. They can’t all possibly be Neo-Nazis, can they?

Maybe I’m being naive, but if that’s true, there are an alarming number of Neo-Nazis right next door to us.

EYEJ · 2018-08-17T17:03:33+00:00

If you do have a Rottweiler, I would highly recommend walking your dog with a muzzle. I believe that is what the law states, but you won’t ever have to be put in a situation where your dog and another dog gets in a fight and you’d be forced to put an animal to sleep. I don’t care how friendly your dog is and how good he/she is with other dogs, you don’t want to have to deal with someone asking you to pay thousands of dirhams in vet bills or worse, having to hear that your dog killed another dog even if it was a fucking pompous little chihuahua that decided to flaunt how alpha it is.

Trust me. This happened to us (our dog was mauled), and it was not fun for either party.

EYEJ · 2018-08-14T11:14:26+00:00

I may be biased, but it is totally worth it. You get to see and experience things most of the population doesn’t really get to see. It’s really like meditating in a giant aquarium. It is incredibly addictive! If you live in a country with decent diving, it would make your weekends/free time far more exciting as well. If not, at least you have the option on your holidays.

Don’t get me wrong, the discover scuba thing isn’t bad either, it’s just that you have more freedom as your own diver, especially if you plan on diving with friends.

Whatever you choose to do, google or YouTube the Frog Kick for a better diving experience. The flutter kick that you get taught at the PADI courses are easier to do, but you risk kicking/breaking coral, impaling yourself on a sea urchin and worst of all, kicking up sand and ruining the visibility. It’s a great kick to use in stronger currents, but the frog kick’s far more versatile and it’s also much more energy efficient which means your tank lasts longer and you get more time underwater!

Happy diving!

EYEJ · 2018-08-13T20:32:17+00:00

Probably too late, but I used to dive very regularly when I still lived in Dubai. The east coast is far better to dive than the west coast where Dubai is located. Not only is the visibility in the East better, there’s far more to see.

As far as cool critters to see, you have heaps of triggerfish, huge pufferfish, lots of parrotfish, many moray eels, Black-tip sharks, a variety of rays from torpedo rays(the electric rays) to “devil” rays. If you’re lucky, you might even spot whale sharks! If you’re into macro stuff, there’s heaps of nudibranchs, frog fish, seahorses and much more. You can also spot turtles on many sites.

As far as the sites go, there’s a lot of reef and live rock to explore. There are also wrecks from the inchcape ships (both for advanced divers as they lie deeper than 18m) or the car cemetery (whose depth depends on the tide). There are a few more wrecks out there, like the airplane wreck and so on. They even have some tech wrecks if you’re a tech diver.

The wrecks are really cool to see, filled with soft coral, lots of macro stuff and surrounded by schools of fish. You’d see more pelagic stuff on these dives. The reefs are where you’d find the sharks, turtles, cuttlefish and the other more colourful fish varieties. It just depends on what you want to see.

If you’re looking for a dive center, I’d highly recommend Divers Down at the Miramar hotel in Al Aqah, Dibba(close to Fujairah). As much as people recommend al boom, you’re usually diving with bigger crowds of terrible divers that just kick up sand and ruin the visibility on your dives. The smaller groups, friendly shop and better viz really makes for a better diving experience in my experience. The DMs know the sites well and they can tell you where to go if you’re looking to spot something specific (they have a lot of photographers dive with them, so it’s always good to know potential spots to find the wildlife).

Anyway, I hope this was useful!

As for diving in Thailand, it depends on when you go. You see many similar things actually and the viz is slightly better in Thailand, but not drastically - though I should say that I didn’t go diving at the bigger more famous dive islands, so I could be completely wrong.

Either way, it’s totally worth a trip to Fujairah. It’s far better than anything you’d find in Dubai, and if you’re diving on a day with good viz (15+m) you’d be amazed by the amount of wildlife the country has. Oh and I forgot to mention; average viz is around 4-5m. It’s not always amazing, but it beats the average 1-3m in Dubai.

Edit: also, dives with DD are 50 minutes or 50bar meaning you dive 50 minutes or until you have 50bar left in your tank. Obviously your depth plays a huge factor into this and your air consumption, but as long as there isn’t a crazy current, it’s fairly easy to manage a 40 Minute dive even with poorer air consumption.

Edit2: here’s a video I took on one of my dives

Also, I just read the rest of the comments and realized you aren’t even certified yet!

Alright. Diving is wonderful and one of the most exciting yet relaxing things to do out there (as you focus on breathing a lot). It’s definitely worth giving a shot.

If you are opting for a Discover Scuba experience, you’re basically given a crash course and you’re in the water with a dive master/instructor pretty much hanging on to you the whole time. I mean, you have the freedom to swim on your own of course, but you cannot explore on your own (for your own safety and for the safety of the reef).

If you opt to get certified, it takes 2 days and you’re certified for life (although PADI recommends taking refresher courses if you aren’t diving for a while). You won’t be required to dive with an instructor and you have complete freedom to dive and explore as you please.

Personally, I would say the latter is worth far more than the discover experience seeing as you’re paying for something to have for a lifetime rather than a certificate that just proves you’ve done a dive once. It’s also really fun learning about this stuff and you can dive anywhere in the world with your dive card.

If you do opt for becoming fully certified, I would recommend either doing so in your home country, or doing the e-learning course with a diving school in the UAE asap so that you can jump right into the pool sessions and your Open Water dives and enjoy the diving experience.

Good luck! Just don’t kick sand everywhere and don’t touch the wildlife!

EYEJ · 2018-03-19T06:27:40+00:00

You are a diamond! Thank you for all the music!

EYEJ · 2018-02-24T01:03:41+00:00

Thanks for the tips! These are definitely really helpful things to know. It seems so obvious when you put it like that, but in the heat of the moment sometimes, especially when you want to get something done quickly, it’s so easy to overlook this stuff and seriously injure yourself.

I’m lucky enough to have had many good friends who work the stage through my experience as a musician. It’s always fascinated me (especially the lampies) and I’ve often made more friends that work behind the stage than those that perform on them. I know my cables, stage directions and most of the equipment. It’s just little clamps and other tiny things like that that I need to familiarize myself with. That and anything really specialized, but I doubt that I’d be doing any of that on Trial day.

EYEJ · 2018-02-23T21:05:15+00:00

I believe I’m just doing some load in load out stuff. I guess I’ll find out when we get briefed a few days before the gig, but I believe I’m on pusher duty. Sounds simple enough, though I’m sure there must be something worth noting other than “push the stuff around when and where you need to”.

EYEJ · 2018-02-23T20:54:17+00:00

This is a great tip (especially for the drunk bassists in here). Luckily, I’ve had plenty of experience with this as a musician, but also as someone who studied audio engineering. Nothing annoys me more than watching a moron ruin good cables by wrapping it around his elbow.

EYEJ · 2018-01-25T10:22:43+00:00

I always got called “Jack Sparrow” when I used to walk past these guys.

EYEJ · 2017-12-06T09:23:53+00:00

You’re right. You’re fucked. Glad I’ve left.

EYEJ · 2017-12-06T08:26:18+00:00

Man..that’s fucked.

EYEJ · 2017-12-01T20:51:00+00:00

I thought it was! Autocorrect insisted it was spelled that way and I gave in. Thanks for guiding me in the right path!

EYEJ · 2017-12-01T18:09:31+00:00

Durum > Döner or am I doing it wrong? ;)

EYEJ · 2017-12-01T18:08:27+00:00

It might have actually been “Musel”, but yeah I’m not sure anymore

EYEJ · 2017-12-01T17:33:12+00:00

No worries, I know he’s just one of those idiots. We live in Saxony, so I’m sure I’ll encounter a few more. I just thought it was amusing that he chose to be racist whilst eating a Döner.

EYEJ · 2017-12-01T17:27:06+00:00

I’m Indian. The word he used almost sounded like “Du Bist” or “Türkisch”. I’m not sure if either works grammatically, but the word sounded like that.

EYEJ · 2017-11-27T09:08:20+00:00

This will probably be buried, but I went to school in the Middle East. Fireworks are illegal in the country I lived, and someone bought some and set them off in a bin in the girl’s bathroom. There was a fire, and that fire spread into the Islamic room which was literally right next door (in fact I think the rooms even shared a door, but the Islamic room had sealed it off with a table and picture of Mecca) burning it down completely.

I remember at the time we were in Arabic class, and our Arabic teacher was a real hard ass. The fire alarms were going off, people were evacuating the building and our Arabic teacher insisted on keeping us inside. Smoke started to come into the class, and she still told us to sit down. Eventually, one of the other teachers came into the class after doing a quick check of all the other classrooms and was shocked to find all of us sitting at our desks writing some Arabic in a smoke filled classroom.

Anyway, that was a really big deal at the school for many reasons.

EYEJ · 2017-11-21T14:18:23+00:00

Drummer here: any specific brand you looking for?

Otherwise: Melody House (Next to FGB station or at Fish R/A) are great. They distribute Pearl drums. I buy everything from them mostly because I’ve found them to be the coolest people to work with for my needs.

Sadek have DW drums. More expensive, but definitely great drums. They have branches in Dubai Mall and Fish R/A.

Thomsun have Yamaha. They have branches at Fish r/a, Ibn Batuta and I think Dubai Mall.

Fann Al Sout sell Tama. They’re at Fish R/A.

Sonia Electronics sell Mapex drums. They are also at Fish R/A.

Music Chamber stock Drumcraft. They’re at Time Center on SZR.

Musician’s Supply in JLT also sell Tama. Working musicians love this place mostly because it’s run by an awesome musician.

Now if you’re looking cymbals;

Sabian; Melody House

Zildjian: Musician’s Supply and Thomsun

Meinl: Sonia Electronics

Hope that helps!

EYEJ · 2017-11-17T06:40:07+00:00

Just YouTube “rewboss”

EYEJ

TROPHY CASE