A Taxi Captured Approaching Warp Speed - #198

A rare sighting of a taxi as it engages its warp drive system.

Make It So, Number One.

Taxi For One - #31

Taxi for one please... part of the Daily City Photo - Theme Day

The sturdy and generally reliable Dubai Taxi. All taxis are the Toyota Camry model. The drivers are usually from Kerala in India or from Pakistan, it appears to be the rule, perhaps the powers that be think that a Keralite is more predisposed to the streets of DXB than others...

Most are very friendly, but like anywhere they can also be new, lost or even rude... Try to have change as they don't always have the right change.

Dubai doesn't have a usual street address system so if you are going somewhere you don't know it helps to have a map or know a near by landmark.

A short journey will cost you about 10dhs (approx US$2.60) and a longer journey all the way across town of approx 30km will be about 50dhs (US$13.50).

Dubai has started to build a metro system, but this will be years away, so for now the only viable mode of public transport for a lot of people is the taxi.

I salute the Dubai Taxi Driver. A Hard Job, Done Well.





















Click the links to see the other cities participating in the Taxi Theme Day:
1 (Porto ) -2 (Albuquerque ) -3 (London ) -4 (Seattle, WA (USA) [Kim] ) -5 (Edinburgh ) -6 (Stayton, OR ) -7 (Greenville, SC ) -8 (Budapest ) -9 (Antigua Guatemala ) -10 (Alexandria, VA ) -11 (Manila ) -12 (Twin Cities ) -13 (Szentes ) -14 (Paris ) -15 (Portsmouth ) -16 (Ryde ) -17 (Sydney ) -18 (Oulu ) -19 (Singapore [keropok] ) -20 (Santiago ) -21 (Melbourne, Aust ) -22 (Dubai UAE ) -23 (Bandung (Indonesia) ) -24 (Copenhagen ) -25 (Sequim ) -26 (Singapore ) -27 (Tenerife ) -28 (Sharon, CT ) -29 (Tuzla, B&H ) -30 (Jakarta (Indonesia) ) -31 (Rotterdam ) -32 (Brussels ) -33 (Stavanger (Norway) ) -34 (Aliso Viejo, CA ) -35 (Oshawa, ON, Canada ) -36 (Vantaa, Finland ) -37 (Trier (Germany)) -38 (Newcastle upon Tyne ) -39 (Hong Kong ) -40 (Shang Hai ) -41 (Brussels ) -42 (San Diego, CA (USA) ) -43 (Sydney (Nathalie)) -

Abracadabra! Proof! - #19

In a photo, I recently mentioned the Abras of Dubai. An Abra is according to Wiki "a traditional boat made from wood used to transfer people in the Dubai creek". In reality, it's a very cheap way to cross a body of water... 2 stops, one very cheap rate...

HOW MUCH? you cry.... 50 fils (approx 15 cents) per journey... worth every cent dear chap!

How many modes of transport these days are worth every cent?

As an addendum:

The word - abracadabra

What we know for sure is that it was first recorded in a Latin medical poem, De medicina praecepta, by the Roman physician Quintus Serenus Sammonicus in the second century AD. It’s believed to have come into English via French and Latin from a Greek word abrasadabra (the change from s to c seems to have been through a confused transliteration of the Greek). Serenus Sammonicus said that to get well a sick person should wear an amulet around the neck, a piece of parchment inscribed with a triangular formula derived from the word, which acts like a funnel to drive the sickness out of the body:

A B R A C A D A B R A
A B R A C A D A B R
A B R A C A D A B
A B R A C A D A
A B R A C A D
A B R A C A
A B R A C
A B R A
A B R
A B
A


However, it seems likely that abracadabra is older and that it derives from one of the Semitic languages, though nobody can say for sure, because there is no written record before Serenus Sammonicus. For what it’s worth, here are some theories:

It’s from the Aramaic phrase avra kehdabra, meaning “I will create as I speak”.
The source is three Hebrew words, ab (father), ben (son), and ruach acadosch (holy spirit).
It’s from the Chaldean abbada ke dabra, meaning “perish like the word”.
It originated with a Gnostic sect in Alexandria called the Basilidians and was probably based on Abrasax, the name of their supreme deity (Abraxas in Latin sources).

So now we know...