Welcome to rascott.com
This is a
personal site that reflects my interests in news,
current affairs, aviation and travel.
email me:
robert@rascott.com
rascott.com
Home Page
Photo Albums
My photographs have been moved off this site and are now stored on Picasa. They
were simply taking up too much space on my web host.
Please use
this link to see my list of photo albums.
Some
Useful links:
Information:
World Time
Clock
Exchange Rates
Journalism:
ForeignPolicy
Nationsonline.org
Project Syndicate
Amnesty International
Reporters w/o borders
The Guardian
BBC World News
CNN Asia
Bangkok Post
Daylife.com - news
Gulf News
Arabian Business
World News
WSJ - Asia
SCMP
Good causes:
Sister
Joan - Bangkok
Regional Info:
BKK Magazine
HK Magazine
In
Singapore Magazine
TimeOut Dubai
Back in the UK:
Newton Ferrers
And for fun:
EarthCam
History
BBC Archive
National Media
Museum
The British Library
Imperial War Museum
There are many other links on my AOB blog page.
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An Occasional Blog
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Dubai based Airine bloggers
TampaxTowers Egypt Thailand Blogs Thai-blogs.com - rather serious
2bangkok.com
-
not really a blog but always up to date on Bangkok news
Thai
Girl The exotic adventures of a literary
sexagenarian.
Thai Films
Asia Unbound - CFR
Dubai Blogs
dxbae
- picture blog - also Gerald Donovan
The Gulf Blog
Grumpy
Goat Arabic affairs blogs
The Arabist
Hong Kong Blogs
Hong
Kong Outdoors In China: Danwei - media and advertising news from China
Shanghaiist.com
Hong Kong Cinemagic
Chinageeks
In Singapore: Xiaxue - self-confessed mean, bitchy, sex goddess who says "wah" a lot!
Mr Brown
- colourful commentary from Singapore
In Burma:
In Canada:
Media:
Tabloid
Watch (UK) Aviation: Amadeus (airline schedules) Airline meals - see it b4 you eat it!
Airliners
- aviation forum, trip reports and pix
archive Planenation - commercial aviation news Airchive - a web museum of commercial aviation.
CrankyFlier - mainly US commentary
Sharjah -
1937
KPAE - Paine Field Blog
Johnny Jet News: The Guardian - UK
Arabian
Business Bangkok info sites: Worthy Sites:
Rconversation - from Rebecca
MacKinnon, ex-TV reporter-turned-blogger.
Golf Sites:
Cricket sites:
Alternative
Cricket Almanac
Other Sports
Fun Sites:
Fun signs
Cooking
Technology Ideas:
Stuff -
gadgets
TNooz - Travel Tech
ViralBlog
Photography
The Rest:
Black
Flamingo - recipes and life (no golf!)
Previous months:
May -June 2012
Nov - Dec 2011
Nov - Dec 2010
Nov - Dec 2009
Nov - Dec 2008
Nov - Dec 2007
Nov - Dec 2006
Nov - Dec 2005
Nov - Dec 2004
Author
Robert Scott lives and works in Dubai; born in England I have since lived in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok. I am very happily married to Tai.
If you want to know more you only need to ask! ask.
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28 February 2013
Etihad Airways has
agreed to buy three pairs of slots at London Heathrow airport from Indian
carrier Jet Airways for $70 million. I want to be in Canada.....no specific reason - was playing some Blue Rodeo and feeling homesick. 26 February 2013 Happy birthday honey!
************************************ 25 February 2013
Good news for EK main
fleet crews: especially Japanese crew: From 1June 2013 - EK318/319 DXB NRT
DXB changes from A388 to B77W. This changes coincides with the start of
daily DXB HND operations, which will likely impact the demand for NRT
flights. The Narita A388 has so far not yet be reallocated elsewhere in
the network. The B77W change seems to be permanent as it has been loaded
through Winter 2013. EK143/144 is scheduled to return to a B77W in 01FEB14. 20 February 2013 Emirates is full of surprises this week - first it was Clark in the Philippines and now a proposed Dubai-Milan-New York.
Emirates has requested
slots for a new Dubai – Milan Malpensa – New York JFK Three Class Boeing
777-300ER service to commence on 1st October 2013. Schedules are set to
be: Emirates watchers had expected an extra JFK flight to be routed through Manchester. Milan already has three flights a day - it may well be that if this flight does start in October then the breakfast terminator flight to MXP would cease to operate.
******************************* 18 February 2013
Note to myself: The
Canadian Consulate has moved and is now located on the 19th floor of the
Jumeirah Emirates Towers (Business Tower) on Shaikh Zayed Road. Bored. Don't seem to have any reason to leave the apartment.
*************************************** In fairness at least their staff advertisements are written in decent English. And that is rare. 14 February 2013 Happy Valentines Day.
************************************ 12 February 2013 My new TV addiction - “House of Cards is a political drama television series developed for American television by Beau Willimon for the streaming network Netflix. The series stars Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, a ruthless politician with his eye on the top job in Washington, D.C. It is an adaptation of the previous BBC miniseries of the same name.” The UK series was based upon Micheal Dodds book - his anti-her was Francis Urquart.
*************************** 11 February 2013
Low cost carrier,
Flydubai, is introducing two routes in Pakistan. From March 13, the
carrier will operate three times a week to Sialkot and from March 14,
three times a week to Multan.
Too close: An asteroid
measuring 150km is set to fly past the earth on Friday 15 February.
*********************** There will be no school fee increases for the 2013/14 academic year, Dubai's Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) has revealed. The announcement comes in line with the release of the annual Education Cost Index (ECI), calculated by the Dubai Statistics Centre at -1 percent. ECI is affected by the consumer price index and specifically addresses the costs of running a school, including salaries, rent, and utilities. The KHDA said the ECI of -1 percent means that fees will remain unchanged for the 2013/14 academic year. 8 February 2013 This could be the most depressing tweet of the day - "After week in DC discussing US Mideast policy, my sense is the WH has no vision or plan on any of major issues, only crisis mgmt+containmemt" - Emile Hokayem - Middle East analyst at International Institute for Strategic Studies.
************************** Apparently Thunderbirds - the tv series - is to be remade - this time using CGI - not puppets....hope they stick to the spirit of the original series...
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***************************** So you can register on the web site - but you cannot buy tickets....hopeless.
******************************* 4 February 2013 Being a football fan is a problem when you want to buy tickets to see a game - thought I should try and go to Watford v Crystal Palace on Friday night - you have to register online to buy a ticket - so I tried to do that and got the following message - "Unfortunately, this time you don't have the correct privileges on your account to purchase tickets for this match. Why not return to ticket home and try another match?" I have no idea what that means but it is of no use to me whatsoever.
************************ 3 February 2013 Stephen Gallacher wins the Dubai Desert Classic by three shots from Richard Sterne.
*********************** 2 February 2013 In and out of the Nuffield Hospital in Plymouth for a couple of days taking my mother in for surgery to remove a synovial cyst. This has trapped a nerve on her back for some weeks and has caused paid all down her right side. The MRI revealed the cyst - which is completely benign but its location against the spine causes all the problems. Surgery went well....
***********************
Dale Steyn took six for
eight in 8.1 overs as Pakistan failed to match their previous low - 53
against Australia in Sharjah in 2002/03. 31 January 2013
David Beckham has
joined French football team Paris St-Germain, and he has announced that he
will be donating his salary to charity. Inspired.
************************
"One day a florist went
to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the
barber replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you. I’m doing community
service this week.’ The florist was pleased and left the shop. When the
barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a ‘thank you’
card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door. 30 January 2013
On 21 January
2013 an Etihad Airways Airbus A330-200, registration A6-EYF performing
flight EY-1A from Munich to Frankfurt/Main (Germany), was on final
approach to Frankfurt's runway 25L when all three airspeed indications
(left, right, standby) were lost. The crew was able to continue for a safe
landing on runway 25L about 2 minutes later. Possibility - pitot tubes freezing over. It is not clear how they monitored their landing speeds - though there is talk that an iPhone GPS app was used! 29 January 2013 I am confused - Europe (the French) go to war in Mali but ignore Syria. Intervention in Libya required UN approval. But there appears to be no such requirement in Mali. The Russians and Chinese have blocked any intervention in Syria. Not a word of protest about Mali. Am I missing something? Anyone who thinks this has a simple quick ending has been woefully misled. This is just scene 1 of the first act.
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*************************** This appeared on Instagram today - offering 40,000 tickets to Dubai and gaining 33,000 followers immediately.
Lots of questions on twitter to known social media managers at Emirates - such as "Saw many #emiratespromotion posts on Instagram today. Is it legit? cc @JohnSaydam @arun4" All this seems to have led to a bit of a panic at EK with a cry for help to two staff members at Instagram from @arun4 - "@jayzombie @@dantoffey Hi, I work in social media at Emirates Airline, Dubai. Need your assistance. Could you please follow me? Thank you." An airline cannot afford to give away 40,000 tickets. So it is almost certainly spam - someone imitating EK or worse - someone in EK drumming up publicity. If the latter - and the ticket commitment is not honoured - they should be fired. Misleading and unethicial. What EK should have done is issue a very fast denial of responsibility for the account and the promotion. But as always when something goes wrong at EK the first response is a prolonged silence.....
The EK response came 13
hours after the call for help to Instagram - with @arun4 tweeting : "The #emiratespromotion
on Instagram is a fake. Emirates Airline is only on Facebook, G+ & YouTube
for now. #socialmedia" and the following response on Facebook: "To all our
fans, Emirates has three official social media channels which are:
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29 January 2013 -
continued It is shocking - Doi Inthanon was 40 baht for a Thai and 400 baht for foreigners. Try charging foreigners 10x more than a Brit to enter a park or attraction in the UK.
************************** Interesting choice of words - Assad is a dictator - other non elected rulers across the region are leaders.
*************************** It did not go quite as planned. Thursday - first night - late lunch of Chinatown wontons (dismal!) and dinner was a takeaway from M&S at Bond Street - we were tired. Friday was spent wandering around the East End - the regeneration of that part of London is one of the stories of the last 15 years. We went to Canary Wharf. Canary Wharf continues to grow. It is like a North American downtown in the middle of London. All the major service industry companies are there and it was busy. Then across to Greenwich, Cutty Sark for lunch (more bad Chinese food!) and then took the Emirates Airline from close to the O2 at Greenwich over to nowhere town on the north shore. We took the Docklands Light Rail up to Stratford. You cannot see the Olympic Stadium and Park which are all under renovation until the summer. That seems to me to be a mistake losing much of the Games momentum and goodwill from last year and creating a building site not a great sports facility. But the Westfield Mall was packed. It is big. Where did all these people go before the mall opened? Dinner at Pizza Express close to our hotel. Saturday was meant to be an exploring day - though Tai was underwhelmed by walking from St Pancras through to Fleet Street and up to St Pauls. Fleet Street is dead; killed off in part by the success of Canary Wharf. Reuters old 85 Fleet Street building now faded and grey. We walked across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern by when I was feeling terrible. Soon all I wanted was to get back to the hotel and pass out. The north-south cross rail got us from Blackfriars to St Pancras. And the rest of the day and night was misery. I cannot remember when I was last that sick. Sorry hon. London did not quite work out as planned. 28 January 2013
EK is holding an open
day in Plymouth - Emirates Airline, is holding a Cabin Crew Open Day 9am
on January 30, at the Copthorne Hotel Plymouth, Armada Way, Plymouth, PL1
1AR. Should I go !?
***************************** Me: Full marks. That is terrifically British (just so long as you don't boast about it to anyone) 23 January 2013 This is probably a good call by Qatar Airways - and follows on from its Rangoon/Yangon service launched last year. Qatar Airways plans to launch flights between Phnom Penh and Doha on February 24.
******************************
******************************* 22 January 2013 A very happy 80th birthday to my mother.
********************************** "We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great." "We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."
"For our journey is not
complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living
equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers
and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are
truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be
equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to
wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. It was good. Sombre. Providing a link from the past to call fro changes to the present to ensure the future. It was a call for tolerance, equality, fairness. And who can argue with that.
And one passing thought
on twitter - "Imagining the drag queens and gay kids rioting at Stonewall
in 1969 being told that one day a President would remember them in an
inaugural." Heading to London on EK001....which would be great except for the fact that: We flew into Dubai from Bangkok last night - home about 10.30pm....bed at 1am. Woken at 3am by a call from Emirates call centre - no idea why they were calling as I thought it was the alarm going off and I simply cancelled the call. Alarm did go off at 5am. Way too early. We are sitting near the back of Economy of the A380. Every time the toilets are flushed it sounds like Vesuvius is erupting. Add to that a crew that closes every drawer or locker by banging then closed. So no rest on this flight - and there are still 5 hours to go. And it is snowing in London and I have a four hour drive to do.
*********************************** Played some golf on Friday - went down the river with Tai and one of our EK friends for lunch on Friday afternoon and caught up with Ian (ex Dubai and now in Singapore) on Friday evening - Oskar's bistro has some good food and some good looking people. However, the band in Spasso suck. Big time. It was like a retro night fever nightmare. Amazingly the place is still quite busy. Despite a Baht800 (two drinks) cover charge. Criminal. 17 January 2013 Note to Scarlett restaurant at the Pullman G in Bangokk:
"Just finished dinner
at Scarlett. 15 January 2013 Hello from Chiang Mai. This is a very nice time of the year to be here. Warm and sunny by day and cooler in the evening. 11 January 2013 And they gave this guy a knighthood: a police report was issued today and is summarised in the Guardian...
"Jimmy Savile abused
children across six decades at 14 hospitals including Great Ormond Street
and a children's hospice, according to a police report. Just shameful - but what is worse is the number of people who must have either known or been concerned and who did nothing. Emirates rumours: New routes will be announced by end of January - to Miami, Boston, Stockholm and Brussels. Later on in the year they will announce Taipei, Chengdu and possibly Malaga in Spain. 8 January 2013 Emirates Airline said on Monday that it was planning to add a fifth daily flight to Bangkok at the end of the first quarter of 2013. The new flight will be operated by 3-class A332 and will switch to 3-class B77W from 1st September 2013. EK376 will depart Dubai at 03:40 hrs and arrive in Bangkok at 13:00 hrs. The return flight, EK377, will depart at 15:25 hrs the same day and arrive at Dubai International Airport at 18:30 hrs.
The 31st March will
also mark the start of the airline’s fourth daily service between Kuala
Lumpur and Dubai, while a third daily Manila service started on 1st
January and a third daily
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Bizarre: "His Highness
Dr Shaikh Sultan Bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler
of Sharjah, has ordered that two flights will transport Emiratis from
Sharjah Airport to Bahrain, to support their national football team in its
match against Bahrain's team.
************************* But - find a cycling lane on any Dubai road - no chance. Even in Business Bay - where the roads are only being laid now and where there would have been the perfect opportunity to create cycle lanes.... 5 January 2013 Pegasus Airlines has a new route from Istanbul to Dubai which offers some interesting connections into Turkey and acrosss Europe - book far enough in advace and Dubai to Izmir return is less than US$300 including taxes and a 20kg babbage allowance. Meals and seat selection cost extra.
***************************** 4 January 2013 The National reports today that : "The pyrotechnics of the Downtown Dubai New Year's Eve Gala attracted a record 1.7 million visitors, according to its organisers, Emaar Properties." How on earth do they know that - it is nothing more than a random stab at a number - and is in fact probably double the real figure....
******************************* 2 January 2013 Where will this end - Veteran comic Jim Davidson has been arrested by cops probing the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal - was it a right of passage for every 70s tv personality?? Just depressing.
******************************* Well done The National
********************************* 1 January 2013 Notes from tributes to CMJ today: "CMJ enjoyed telling the story of when he heard that he had been made President of the M.C.C . He said to his wife Judy "Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, imagine that I would one day be President of the greatest cricket club in the world?" To which Judy replied "I'm sorry to break the news to you Christopher but you don't really feature at all in my wildest dreams!"."
********************************* Why, why, why? What was wrong with Emirates Rd - which did what it says - its links all the Emirates of the UAE.
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