Shedding weight

It all started out when American Airlines, cut out one olive from the salad served on board and saved a few hundred  thousand dollars. Emirates is now embarking on a drive to reduce the load on their aircraft, by removing all the printed material onboard their new A380 aircraft which is slated to start flying from the beginning of next month. Printed matter, like their in flight magazine – which happens to be quite informative, onboard shopping catalog, etc. All this will be replaced by digital content that can be viewed on their in flight entertainment system.

With the price of fuel going as high as the highest possible flying altitude, airlines are looking at ways to cut down their fuel consumption. This can be done only by reducing the weight and by finding ways to generate revenue en-route, onboard.  You can’t get rid of the cargo in the hold or the live ones on the deck!!

Well, that saves costs, but that also saves a lot of trees used for manufacturing paper and also cuts down on the emissions that these large birds spew out. Now, that’s definitely going to leave the skies a little more bluer.

A piece of Cheese

Ever thought that the Moon was made of cheese? Did you want to prove that it was (or wasn’t)? Why don’t you just buy a piece of Lunar Land and do just that.

Yes you can actually buy a piece of the moon at www.lunarregistry.com

An acre of Lunar land goes for 18.95$ and comes complete with parchment deed, a satellite photograph of the property and geographical information of where your property is. The site is run in alliance and is authorized by the Lunar Republic Society in accordance with the Lunar Settlement Initiative. The funds collected from sale of the land will be used to fund the resettlement project, which is slated to start by 2015.

They could have hired a better web designer to create a better page, which would definitely enhance the authenticity of the whole thing.

With the population on Planet Earth growing at a phenomenal rate, its high time we thought about new frontiers to settle ourselves.

Priceless!!

Did you know…

The twenty fils coin is smaller than the 10 fils coin. I discovered this because of a toy ATM machine my son got from the Ahli bank of Kuwait. This machine has a little card and you can deposit coins and notes. A PIN number is required to make a withdrawal and the denomination of the notes need to be entered to calculate the balance. The coins however are counted on the basis of their diameter.

Thats when I realized that the 20 fils, which is recognized as a 10 fils coin is smaller in diameter than a 10 fils coin. So you need to deposit a 20 fils coin along with a 10 fils coin and vice-versa to ensure that the balance is correct. The 20 fils is obviously higher in value and made of a ‘shinier’ alloy than the 10 fils coin, but why the difference in size…I don’t know

Has the bubble burst..?

Dubai has been in the news, quite often recently, for all the wrong reasons. Theres been a spate of bad news for the past few months now..

– Construction collapses, killing workers on the site. That could only mean bad quality, shoddy work and corruption

– A major real estate company has pulled out of a project shaking investor confidence

– Arrests of top executives of a financial company have been made on alleged corruption charges

– Property investors are no longer guaranteed a 99 year residence visa if they buy an apartment

– Construction workers go on strike

It makes one wonder. Are they slowing down? has the bubble burst? Are they paying the price for a warp speed economy? Are they shaping up? Are they coming back to reality? There are lessons to be learnt by all; from all this.