Singapore!

After spending the weekend in Hong Kong, I flew over to Singapore where I spent a week taking in the sites, culture and people. I had a fabulous experience in Singapore, the people, food, and scenery was extraordinary. The people of Singapore are comprised of three main ethnicities: Chinese, Indian and Malay. The business language is English (British), which everyone speaks with an accent and has been jokingly referred to as “Singlish”. The reason people have an accent is due to the fact they do speak their native tongue at home and only speak English to communicate with other nationalities or in the workplace.

The three words I would use to describe my Singapore experience are food, shopping and cleanliness.

I had no problems finding Halal places to eat since there are many Malay cuisines which observe the Halal dietary restriction. I had a chance to eat Korean BBQ, Nasi Lemak and Nasi Goring, the latter two dishes are Indonesian/Malay. At the site where I was working, I even ate roti at lunch, something that people avoid at workplaces in North America.

The people of Singapore love to shop. It is an industrialized country and people work extremely hard for their living, sometimes too hard, according to the local taxi drivers. You can usually get a pulse of a nation through its taxi drivers.

Singapore is an extremely clean country; a common perception of Singapore in the West. Spitting and chewing gum is banned in public. In-fact, you cannot buy gum in the country unless you need it for medical reasons. A fruit called Durian is banned in public due to its extreme smell.

Singapore is an expensive place to live. The majority (80%) of the people live in flats, only the elite can afford houses. Foreign cars are almost 2-3 times the price found in North America and the government does not allow cars older than 10 years on the road.

Other places of note that I visited was the Night Safari, Singapore Harbour (Clark quay), and Little India (it really felt like India). I did not take my usual number of pictures since I spent most of my time with colleagues from work, but I was still able to sneak in a few. You can check them out here.

Hong Kong!

I had a chance to visit one of the most unique places in the world a few weeks ago… Hong Kong! If I had three words to describe my Hong Kong experience, I would use: skyline, shopping, and efficiency.

Hong Kong is considered the “Manhattan” of Asia because of its numerous high rise buildings and skillful hard-working group of citizens. The skyline is spectacular, especially at night when the buildings light up the sky with neon lights. In-fact, 4 of the 15 tallest skyscrapers exist in Hong Kong. The population of Hong Kong is just under seven million in an area of 1092 square KM, close to the size of New York city (786 sq km). The limited land capacity and large population has caused the government to build on mountains and ocean water.

Hong Kong is a free port with goods from across the world that are not subject to export taxes. This makes it an ideal place for shopping, especially with a strong Canadian dollar. The moment that you exit out of the airport, you are greeted with flyers about shopping in Hong Kong. I spent an entire day shopping, moving from shop to shop in one of the most efficient subways in the world. The people in Hong Kong do not like to wait for anything – 2 minute wait for a subway is 2 minutes too long. Even the escalators move extremely fast compared to the usual speed in North America. Paying for items with cash will get you an annoyed look from the merchant because with a swipe of the Octopus card (prepaid cash card supported by almost all vendors) you will be quickly on your way.

Hong Kong is a unique place in the world and wish I had spent more time, however, in this short time period I still took my share of pictures.

Why Canadians hate Toronto?

I spent the last two weeks in Western Canada where I got a chance to visit Banff, the Rocky Mountains between Alberta and British Columbia, and finally Vancouver. It is one of the most beautiful parts of the world, and unfortunately many Canadians are unaware of the natural beauty in our own country.

The people in Western Canada are proud Canadians. In fact, I found they show their patriotism more openly than Canadians in Toronto. I am not saying that Torontorians are not proud Canadians, it’s the massive diversity in Toronto which reduces the amount of open patriotism.

One common theme among Western Canadians is the hatred for Torontorians. A perception exists among Westerners that Torontorians are arrogant and don’t respect other cities in Canada, although Quebec is the exception since the Quebecois feel inferior to all Canadians ;-) The anger stems from the fact that the majority of the high paying jobs are in Toronto, scheduling of television shows do not take into account the time difference, and the major sports league with the exception of hockey are in Toronto. Western Canadians cheer for their local hockey teams and cheer against Toronto. There was a general happiness when the Toronto Maple Leafs failed to make the playoffs this year, although Torontorians cheer for other Canadian teams.

As a fellow Torontorian, I did not take this hatred to heart because I do think there is some truth to the arrogance perception. However, if you ask someone outside Canada to name a city in Canada, you know that Toronto would be at the top of the list … so sometimes you have to call it how it is. Like it or not, we are the main economical city in this country, but the question is for how long … hello Alberta.

My seven wonders of the world

A global poll conducted by newwonder.com released its seven wonders of the world last week. Many of the sites chosen came as no surprise, such as the Great Wall of China and Taj Mahal. However, many famous sites were left off the list, such as the Eiffel tower in Paris, and the Acropolis in Greece. It is a very subjective poll and very difficult to get a consensus among any group of people, since we have our biases in taste and experience. Unfortunately, none of the Canadian sites were nominated as finalists for this poll, but this disappointment did not stop the CBC to conduct a poll of their seven wonders of Canada, which can be found here. The winner was The Sibley Peninsula, or the Sleeping Giant as it's known in Thunder Bay.

I believe it is hard to choose the seven wonders by looking at pictures, to appreciate the beauty of this world, you have to see it for yourself. I have had a unique opportunity to travel the world and have complied The Ozzies - top seven wonders of the world

Honourable mention

-Rocky mountains, Niagara Falls, and Empire state building

Top seven

7.	Petrona Twin Towers - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
6.	The CN tower - Toronto, Canada
5.	The Opera house - Sydney, Australia
4.	Eiffel tower - Paris, France
3.	Great wall of China - Beijing, China
2.	The Prophets mosque - Medina, Saudi Arabia
1.	The Kabah - Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Incroyable!

I had an opportunity a few weeks ago to travel to Paris, France for a conference (Yes, I am extremely lucky and blessed). It was a bit awkward viewing the sites of the city since Paris is known as a romantic city and visiting sights individually, for some reason, did not feel as romantic ;-)



As always, I like to examine random items of interest rather than focus on the touristy things, so below are my highlights:

• I had major language issues, my grade 9 French was insufficient. Communicating with someone where you don’t have a common language is funny, both parties end up speaking in their own language without progress.
• The subway doors do not open automatically; I found this out the hard way.
• Very diverse country, many people of African and Arab descent.
• Smoking is quite common indoors and difficult to cope with especially coming from a city where public smoking is banned.
• The listed price always includes taxes, and discounts are listed with negative signs, i.e. -20%.
  
• The basement and ground floors are not labeled as B and G respectively in buildings or hotels. The French use 0 for the ground level and -1 for the basement. See explanation here.
• The Swiss have their own check-in line when passing through immigration.

• The exit sign … why is the guy running?

• The public washrooms are typically not free, although the one below was free.

As always, you can check out my pictures here.

The opportunity

If there was one word that I could use to describe my Hajj experience, it would be patience.

patience pat-ience noun

The capacity of enduring hardship or inconvenience without complaint.

In-fact, the Arabs even have a hand gesture to represent the word, which people in North America may confuse with the "how much you want" hand gesture.



The Hajj patience was a quality that I lacked. I would complain about many things. When the food is not on time, the bus arrives late, air conditioning is too high, or heating is not high enough. However, I quickly learned that if I wanted to complete Hajj that I would need to develop the Hajj patience. So, what is the Hajj patience? well, consider the following:

• In the apartments we stayed, the water would finish every two hours and the elevators did not work most of the time, so I always had to take the stairs to my 6th floor.
• The government buses that transported pilgrims from Jeddah to Mecca, and Mecca to Medina would take at least five times the time it normally takes.
• Our flight to and from Jeddah end-to-end took one day and a half.

I hope these incidents do not discourage one from going to Hajj because everyone will face trials. For each trail, you need the Hajj patience and understand the ultimate goal that you are there to do, which is completing the rituals of Hajj in a safe-manner.

There was one moment in my trip that stood out for me. I was sitting at the harem in Mecca waiting for the prayer to start. I greeted an elderly man sitting next to me and started a conversation (conversation actually occurred in Urdu).

Ozair: Is this your first Hajj?
Elderly man: Yes
Ozair: Did you come with your family?
Elderly man: Nope, my kids could only afford to send me. I have been awaiting my chance to go for Hajj
Ozair: Why?
Elderly man: In Pakistan, pilgrims wishing to perform Hajj are put into a lottery system, where names are drawn to select the people who will go.
Ozair: Oh wow, so Allah has invited you to his house this year.
Elderly man: Yes (man started to cry)

At that moment, I realized that Hajj is not only a trial, but an opportunity to have the chance to pray at the most sacred place for Muslims. This man waited patiently his whole life for this opportunity, I was fortunate enough to go the first year that I made the intention. I just hope that all Muslims, around the world have the opportunity that I did.

An experience of a lifetime

By the grace of God, I just had the fortunate opportunity to perform the holy pilgrimage, also know as Hajj. Hajj is one of the 5 pillars of Islam and is the requirement of every healthy Muslim who can afford it. Unlike, some of the other trips that I have taken this year, Hajj is no vacation. It consists of a series of trials; from rituals, overwhelming crowds, to government complexities. However, there are no words that can describe the feeling of being able to pray in the sacred places (haraam) of Makkah and Medina and performing the pilgrimage.

Makkah is a situated on a valley between mountains. In the center of Makkah is the Kaabah, God’s house, where all Muslims around the world face for prayers. It is estimated that close to 1 million people can pray in this mosque. One of the largest challenges of the pilgrimage is dealing with the crowds. Makkah is a city that never sleeps, people roaming the streets at any time during the day, you can think of it as daytime New York City without subway systems.

This pilgrimage saw the largest crowd ever; most people estimate the attendance between 3-4 million. The majority of pilgrims are from Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Turkey. There are usually 1.6 million visa’s issued to international visitors; however, many locals attend every year too. This year saw the most important day of Hajj – Arafat occurring on Friday (jumaah) – the holiest day of the week, and deemed even more sacred. It is also known as Hajj Akbar.

To give you an idea of how crowded it was during the pilgrimage, consider the following:

• I am doing tawaaf (circling of the kabaa) and it is time for prayer. However, it is physically impossible to pray because there are too many people that you cannot perform the actions of prayer.
• To get a spot to pray inside the haraam in Makkah, you need to arrive 1-2 hours in advance. For Jumaah, you need to arrive 3 hours early.

For each trial that you encounter during Hajj, there are those golden moments that you will never forget:

• A father and son are changing into their ihram (clothing to be wore during Hajj) and the son drops his ihram into a puddle of water. The father takes his son’s ihram and wears it, giving his dry ihram to his son.
• A blind man performing tawaaf
• A man walking to stone the pillars representing Satan with both his legs amputated.

Hajj is one of the mostrewarding and challenging experiences of my life. Now that I am home and have had a chance to reflect, I can fully appreciate the tasks that I completed and the gratefulness of being able to arrive back safely. It has been an uplifting spiritual experience and hope to continue this momentum for the rest of my life. I hope to give some further insight into my experience in upcoming posts.

Beijing

This year has probably been one of my most blessed years. I have been given the opportunity to travel to many great places in this world. I will now add Beijing, China to that list. I just spent a little over a week in Beijing, China, where I had a chance to visit many unique places, meet interesting people, and learn about Chinese life and culture. I planned on blogging in Beijing, but the higher-ups at the Chinese government decided to censor my blog, in-fact no blogs on blogspot were accessible. I have lots to talk about on my journey to Beijing, and will not mention it all in this post. So, watch out in the near future for posts on Bargaining in China, Muslims in China, and Driving in China. In the meantime, I shall leave you with my pictures and some interesting happenings during my trip.

• Visited Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City or Palace Museum, Temple of heaven, Great Wall of China, and the Niujie mosque. Check out my pictures here.
• My tour guide got a call from the Chinese government congratulating him on being single … LOL
• Spitting is quite common with the locals.
• The cars have the right-of-way in China, not legally, but if you want to survive.
• Visited the Nuijie mosque, a blend of Islamic and Chinese traditions. It was built in 996 AD. Beijing is home to 250,000 Muslims, most of them living in the area near this mosque.
• Bargaining is quite common in China. The sales people will do anything to get your attention. For example, “Hello sir, you are quite handsome”, “Here, loookay, loookay”.
• Chinese people thought I was from India and were impressed that my English was so good.

Down under

Last week I had a unique opportunity to spend a week and a half on the other side of the world in Sydney, Australia. It was an exceptional experience in talking with local Aussies and seeing the sites of the city, especially the Sydney harbour, which is quite gorgeous.

There were quite a lot of touristy things I did and captured with my camera. You can check out my photos here. Also, instead of listing the places that I visited. You can check out my itinerary here.

The most interesting part of my trip is identifying the unique parts of Aussie life as compared to my life in Toronto, Canada. Below are my observations:

Aussie slang

• 'You have done well' is good job
• 'G Day mate' is hello
• 'No worries' is thank you
• The word bloke is used to refer to a guy and shelia is used for a girl

Restaraunt etiquette

• I tried ordering a medium coffee with cream and sugar and could not be understood. Aussies do not put cream in their coffee, instead they put milk and they call it a flat white.
• Restaurants are not pushy to have you leave once you are done eating. In-fact, most places you have to go to the cashier and pay.
• No need to tip servers, since they are generally paid well enough to make a decent living.

Misc

• The Australian currency system does not consist of pennies and listed prices already include the sales tax. The amount in cents is always a multiple of 5.
• The Matrix movie was filmed in Sydney.

Random

• David Suzuki was on my flight to Sydney. He is doing a book tour across Australia.
• I was surprised to hear that students from the Philippines and India in Australia had heard of the University of Waterloo and their strong reputation for Computer Science and Engineering.

Tourist Athlete

Last week I was fortunate enough to spend three days in Vancouver, BC and two days in Whistler, BC. These two cities without a doubt are the most beautiful places I have ever visited. It is good reason that these cities were chosen as the location for the 2010 Winter Olympic games. There is so much I could talk about, but will just mention some points briefly.

Good

Weather: I was fortunate enough that it did not rain at all during the week. The weather and air quality is amazing. Imagine a light fan following you around the city with a nice breeze, that is how I felt.

Scenery: Spectacular mountains as you enter the city and a gorgeous waterfront. I had the chance to take a ferry to Vancouver Island from Vancouver and toured around Victoria, BC.

Bad

Homeless people: Vancouver has a serious homeless problem. It is a lot more evident than Toronto. If you ever visit, avoid East Hasting street, people are openly doing drugs, although there is a police station across the street from them.

Real Estate: The most expensive place to live in Canada.

Random

As I waited for my ferry from Vancouver Island to Vancouver, I ran into a friend from Waterloo also on vacation with his family. Talk about small world and coincidence. I will leave it to my readers to guess that person.

Pictures

My panoramic pictures that I assembled (click on picture to view full image):

• View of Rocky Mountains half-way up Whistler mountain

• View of Rocky Mountains at top of Whistler mountain

• View of Rocky Mountains from Vancouver beach

Driving and not flying

A huge winter storm hit parts of the Northeast United States and unfortunately I was caught in the middle of this storm. I am in Boston this week on business and was planning to come back home tonight (Friday). The weather forecasts were predicting a huge snow storm that was supposed to dump over 25 cm of snow ending early afternoon. I had a flight for Friday evening, so I thought that perhaps my flight would eventually depart from Boston Logan airport tonight.

I left the customer site at lunch to head to the airport. I knew that traffic would be heavy, but I never would have expected the driving conditions could be so bad. The snow plows did not clean the highways that I was driving on, neither were there any lights on the highways. It was total white-out conditions, I could not see anything.

The snow was coming down so fast that my car windows were covered with snow and my wind shield wipers could not move because of the amount of snow. I had to stop on the shoulder and clean the snow off my car, but a few minutes later, the snow was back on my car windows.

I even saw a lightning flash during my drive, at first I did not think that lighting could occur in a snow storm, but later I read in the news that a flight was forced to land because it was struck by lighting on the runway.

As I arrived at the airport, not surprisingly my flight was cancelled. Everyone at the airport was rushing to get on the next available flight. The earliest flight I could get was tomorrow (Saturday), so I needed a hotel to stay at for the night. Luckily, I was able to get a hotel room; all of the rooms were close to selling out. However, the room rates were extremely pricey. All of the hotels were charging extremely high rates, knowing travelers did not have many options.

Today was quite a frightening experience; I was driving alone in a city where I did not know anyone nor the surroundings around the city. I was lucky to have arrived safely at the airport. Today is definitely a day where I am counting my blessings.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Carmen Sandiego was a fictional character on an education television series that taught Geography to kids. It was a television show that I watched with enjoyment growing up in my youth. This show taught me a lot about Geography and sparked my interest to learn more about the World. I always wanted to travel the World to discover the beauty that exists.

I have been fortunate enough through work to get an opportunity to travel to various cities. This summer, I spent a week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Although, I traveled alone, I was still able to gather enough courage to go out and experience the culture, food and monuments in Malaysia. You can check out my photos to get an idea of some of my experiences in Malaysia.

Two new technologies, Google Maps and Google Earth make it easier to view maps and satellite images of the world. Mapping Web sites have been around the Internet for a few years, but have been limited in terms of their user interface. Google maps allows you to drag maps around without having to reload the Web page. Some of my favorite pictures that I found are: Statue of Liberty, Eiffel tower, and the Mosque of the Prophet S.A.W.

Google maps mashups is a popular technology that allows Web sites to take advantage of Google maps for their own use. If you are looking to rent or sell a place in Toronto, this Web site allows you to see all of the available rentals available in Toronto using Google maps.

Technology enables us to see the World from the comforts of our computer. However, it obviously does not match the experience of physically being there. There is so much more in the World that I would like to see. I am always searching for travel partners, if your interested, send me your resume so I can determine if you are a suitable travel partner .

The Art of Bargaining

I visited Battery park in Manhattan last week searching for some bargains. I was never the best negotiator of deals, usually settling for the advertised price. So, I instead observed my friends as they bargained with the street vendors for some fake designer goods. Here was the conversation that occurred.

Friend: How much for that item.
Street vendor: $45
Friend: $45 ? ... I will give you $20.
Street vendor: No mon, I cannot do that, you crazy man.
Friend: I talked to the vendor a few stalls down and he was giving me that same item for $20.
Street vendor: Brutha, I cannot do that deal.
Friend: That's fine, I will just go to the other vendor and purchase it.
Street vendor: aight, aight, give me $20.

The three lessons that I learned from this conversation were:

1) Starting bargaining at half the initial price and work up.
2) Use the "The other vendor is giving me that same item for that price" line .
3) Act like you have nothing to lose, the vendor is the one who is losing the sale.

Use this advice at your own risk, don't be spamming me if it doesn't work.

Vacation Withdrawal

The worst thing about a vacation is that it needs to end, but indeed all good things in life come to and end, so did my vacation. It was a wonderful break from the daily routines in life mainly the driving, waking up early and working.
I had the priviledge of visiting the wonderful cities of Boston and New York. Thanks to Bilal and Omair for their helpful travel ideas.

Boston is a wonderful city, I compare it to Quebec City except the English version. I was even able to pick up the Boston accent, which is basically not pronouncing the letter "r" in any words. In Boston, I did the whole museum scene, visiting the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Science and Museum of Natural History. I also realized how cool animals are when I visited the New England Aquarium, thereafter, for some odd reason I had the urge to eat them so I ate seafood at the Seafood Legal restaurant in Quincy square. My favorite part of the trip was visiting historic Fenway park. It is an amazing baseball stadium with so much history (Offically became a Red Sox's fan). The last day in Boston I spent visiting Harvard university and MIT, where I chatted up with the smart rich students. Although, I still think that going to a Canadian university for your undergrad is the best value for higher education in the world.

Manhattan, New York is quite a remarkable city, many famous landmarks and interesting people. I learned that New Yorkers are quite open about their problems. Random people would start complaining to me about their in-laws. I just nod and listen, hoping they would leave me alone and not kidnap me. I visited the typical tourist spots in Manhattan such as Times Square, where I was almost dragged into the street show that was right next to a taping of a Bollywood movie. I tried walking into Radio city music hall without paying, but was denied. I posed as an investment banker on Wall street, but decided instead to chill out and eat Gyro's from a halal street vendor across from the New York stock exchange. I was able to practice my bargaining skills which every desi has inherited from their parents at Battery park. Other sites of note that I visited were the Chrysler building, World Trade center memorial, Central park, Ed Sullivan theatre, Statue of liberty, Empire state building, UN headquarter and The Producers Broadway show.

It has been tough to get back to work this week, as I miss being on vacation. Work is very different from vacation, as taking pictures of people writing code at work is not much of a tourist attraction.