Al Ain zoo covers around 850 hectares and around 4000 mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians call it their home. They enjoy big spaces and make their kingdoms out of it.
One of the animals that took my heart was the regal lion. I caught the lion resting on a rock which is the highest place in it’s kingdom as if to say I’m the king. The lioness is resting under one step from him.
For an instance I thought the lion could come to contact with the visitors since there was no boundary. But as I observed the place there is a deep watercourse surrounding its territory.
There are some other African animals like Scimitar-horned Oryx, Wildebeests, Zebras, Giraffes and Gazelles living in peace.
Al Qubrah is a massive mosque situated in Oman where tourists stop by to have a glimpse of this beautiful place. Unfortunately we couldn’t have a look inside as the time is limited and there are so many places to visit within two days time.
We couldn’t make the trip to lot of places as planned since there was a delay in UAE-Oman border for exit visas.
Tip: If you’re planning to visit Oman from Dubai better to enter through Fujairah where you can avoid unnecessary delays.
Labels: Photography
Looking foward to spread my wings again with a new hobby. This is one of my first photos taken from Canon 400D camera with 20-200mm lens. I always wanted to take a photo of a bird flying. I really love flora and fauna but here, where I live now I hardly see such beauty. I'm so happy with my first photo.
Labels: Photography
Last few days I was reading about positive thinking and I really thought positively. Even before reading this I like positive thinking. But now I'm fed up with writing in this blog. Because I can't write good English as some people says. I'm never gonna write again. Thanks for those who appreciated my writing.
Cheers
Although we are far apart from Sri Lanka and missed some activities we also celebrated Avurudu in some way. Last Friday we participated in a New Year festival organized by “Pawura Kala Kawaya”. One of our friends’ (Nilanga) is the secretary of Pawura Kala Kawaya” and he invited us to come to Safa Park Avurudu festival. Early in the morning we went there with the milk rice we prepared to be distributed among guests. Although we expected few people to be present, about 6000 people were present.
There were numerous activities for both children and adults like blow and blast balloons, Break the pot, Eating buns, draw the eye of the elephant, Eating curd, passing eggs, running events, tug of war, last but not the least Selecting Avurudu kumara and kumariya. I also participated in 50m running, but I couldn’t win. I’m not sad for not being able to win, but I am happy for the time we spent there. One of our friends’ (Asker) won male 50m running and we all wished him. We could have won tug and war also but unfortunately we lost one before the last game.
We returned home discussing how best to celebrate the New Year day. In my next post I’ll write how we celebrated it.
Despite burning from the sun I managed to take few shots of our team playing cricket.
We have won one match against QS cricket team and having that pride in mind we played this match as well. But unfortunately we lost this match owing to many reasons. But however we learnt our lessons that day and thought to practice well for the next match and never to underestimate the opposite team.
This Friday we have been invited to cheer QS cricket team playing in Ajman. Transpotation and food will be provided by them. We are eager to cheer them and visit this part of UAE as we have not gone that far.
“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else;
And for everything you gain you lose something else.
It is about your out look towards life; you can either regret or rejoice.”
Search engines are a very important source of quality traffic for web based companies. But if your site is not ranked high enough on the search engines (e.g. after the third page of the search result), none of that traffic will come to you. Another great way to attract targeted traffic is through Pay-Per-Click Search Engines.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of preparing your website so that search engines can better understand its content and/or purpose. To get listed correctly in the search engines each page of your site needs to be optimized. Your site must be focused on the content, products, or services you provide. Keywords used in the content are very important to have a high rank in search engines.
Use specific keyword phrases,
- in the domain name
- in the file name
- in the Title tag
- in the Meta description tag
- in the Meta keyword tag or in the image alt attributes
- in an H1 (or any H) tag
- as the first words on the page
- in bold and/or italics or a different color
- multiple times in the first paragraph or twice on the page
- in the copy in every single spot on the page where it might possibly make sense to use it, and
- in all the hyperlinks pointing to a page.
Google is one such search engine in which most users do keywords searching. But there is something you need to keep in mind. Google is constantly changing their ranking criteria because of search engine spam. If you put the same keyword phrase in many of those spots, you might very well trigger a spam filter which is not good for the long run of your site. Therefore the best advice I can give you is to do your SEO without any particular formula in mind.
Google’s PageRank algorithm tests to see how often a web page is updated and the length of time between changes in content. Access the below URL to read more on page rankings.
http://www.highrankings.com/linkpopularity
In order to make your site crawler friendly you need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML links in the main navigation on every page which link to the top-level pages of your site.
Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site. Sitemap does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.
I have been blessed to attend a seminar on FISH! philosophy which is evolved from a fish market story. I hope you have seen the video of the fish market, how those people enjoy their work life and make the customers happy as well. If you haven't seen the video perhaps you can meet these people in Seattle fish market. This is a real story and they are still there. During the lunch time people go to this market to see how they sell fish. It's very amazing to watch and I'm sure you will be stressed free from your busy work lives to hear their songs and jokes.
Fish! philosophy is based on 4 factors which are very easy to implement in our day today work life.
:: Be there
Hope you'll have a happy and stressed free work life.
For more information please visit http://fishphilosophy.com
There will be new lady members joining this event to situate a women association. Earlier I was the only female member among 14 other male members. Last time we went to Mamzar, I videoed them playing beach volleyball and having a bath in the sea. I'm looking forward to have more fun again in the beach.
Labels: Diary
Fireworks of Dubai Shopping Festival
This is one of the pictures taken at Dubai Creek
George W. Bush arrived in Dubai and he was warmly welcomed. This was the first ever visit of a sitting US president to UAE. Due to his arrival some roads were closed for security reasons and there were huge traffic jams. My colleagues were cursing him for causing much traffic.
Solution
But lately all the cursing turned to a blessing after a text message from office when we were returning home. Due to some road closure and expected congestion it was declared a public holiday in Dubai. That was a surprise holiday, after havoc for most of the people who were caught in the traffic for hours. Fortunately I was able to come home without getting caught to much traffic jams.
Result
We spent our holiday in our friends' place also known as "Maha Gedara". We all got together and gave a lunch for one of our friend's parents who visited Dubai. The lunch came out well although the chief cook was not present (He got married in January and enjoying holidays in SL). Most of us learned to cook after coming to Dubai. We were able to have this lunch coz of US president's visit, so I call it a blessing in disguise. :)
We were called "Al Baraha Gang" which is comprised of 15 members (all are boys except me) for now and rapidly growing with new members joining after the marriage. Three of my friends went back to SL to get married and they are due to come back with their new brides in February. We are in the process of organizing nice events for couples who are starting new lives in Dubai.
Labels: Diary
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you-Nobody-too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd banish us-you know!
How dreary-to be-Somebody!
How public-like a Frog-
To tell your name-the livelong June
To an admiring Bog!
By Emily Dickinson
Labels: poem
It was New Year's Eve in Dubai. To my surprise I heard people screeching, howling and clattering metals outside at exactly 12 midnight. I had a peek through the window. People were on the road dancing and they stopped vehicles heading towards them. There was such a loud noise emanating from horns of vehicles and voices of people. Despite of this drama, there were magnificent fireworks displayed on the sky, which is the only thing to be happy about being here in Dubai. Then after a while people on higher buildings were throwing water at the innocent people walking on the road or driving, passing their flats.
I hope for peace and serenity throughout 2008 without noise pollution and unfortunate incidents.
Labels: Diary