Mega Model

On the way to Liwa it is only a short detour to Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan al Nahyan's or the Rainbow Sheikh's car museum. I can clearly remember Jermey Clarksons Motor World some 10 years ago and being in awe at the collection that the Sheikh had put together.  As you drive through the desert the first thing you notice is the top a pyramid glistening in the distance. Not what you might expect in the UAE but certainly not surprising for this country. It turns out this pyramid houses the car museum.  Checking in the UAE off-road guide it is suppose to be open 7 days a week – but when our convoy of cars arrived it was decidedly closed. Carol (a British expat who has been here for 17 years) used her jedi mind trick and powers of persuasion on a bored looking Indian chap to let us in. To be honest he would never have been able to disappoint the children we had along for the ride. We were kindly let in and basically had our own private tour of the car museum. It was just great. Here is the largest pick-up truck in the world which actually contains a house and even is able to be driven short distances, 17 more images after the break...

The Power wagon pick-up truck is not the only vehicle that the Rainbow Sheikh has enlarged.  In 2009 he turned his attention to the WWII American Willys Jeep and soon a monster Jeep of truly humongous proportions appeared.  The jeep is four times larger than a standard Willys Jeep.

 We can get a true size of the scale of this jeep when an ordinary guy stands next to it, or even the Sheikh himself with a standard Jeep parked alongside for extra comparison...I hope the hand-brake is on!

The Jeep is apparently a working motorized model and indeed stands as the worlds largest working model Willys Jeep.  By the look of the compression on the tires I would suggest that its got some weight too and is not just a big plastic kit. Indeed the jeep has been fabricated from metal with not a single piece of plastic in sight.

The Jeep was built from the ground up and all the parts were specially constructed and fabricated for it, including the tires.  Money being absolutely no object for the Billionaire Sheikh, he can of course build any fantasy he desires and he often does!

This construction is perhaps the greatest ever tribute to the Willys Jeep and if you happen to be visiting Saudi Arabia then it may be worth while checking this Jeep out at the Emirates National Auto Museum.  Don't forget to take your camera with you! You can also visit The Rainbow Sheikhs  online museum at www.enam.ae

 And for me the signature vehicle the huge globe trailer

Emirates National Auto Museum - To the south of Abu Dhabi city, around 45 km away is the ‘Pyramid’ which houses 200 cars belonging to HH . Here what attracts visitors is the collection of off-road vehicles and classic American cars, the Sheikh’s Mercedes rainbow collection and world’s largest truck, all at one place. Many of the collections were featured in the BBC television programme Top gear, so don’t miss the chance to see these star attractions.

 The visitors who make a beeline to Abu Dhabi are increasing year by year. And many among them are repeat visitors. The visitors find this place intriguing and fascinating and the place is luxurious with man made wonders with attractions of nature, and find something new in their each visit. They fall in love with the culture and the great hospitality of the people .

Public Booths inJapan

Public phones are outdated due to cellular phones so the phone booths were converted to Aquariums in Osaka, Japan.

Yas Marina Hotel , Abu Dhabi

The Yas hotel is a 500-room, 85,000-square-meter complex which consists of two twelve story hotel towers, one set within the race circuit and another placed in the Marina itself, linked together by a monocoque steel and glass bridge and Grid Shell structure that both cross above and over the Yas Marina Circuit F1 race track.

The Largest Man-Made Marina In The World

The vision of Dubai Marina is to create an awe-inspiring city-within-a city that delights residents with its cosmopolitan, free-spirited atmosphere and unique, invigorating lifestyle. It will be an urban centre on the water, comparable to the most exclusive waterfront developments in the world's leading cities. Dubai Marina is unlike anywhere else in Dubai, the Middle East and even the world.

Yas Marina Hotel , Abu Dhabi

The Yas hotel is a 500-room, 85,000-square-meter complex which consists of two twelve story hotel towers, one set within the race circuit and another placed in the Marina itself, linked together by a monocoque steel and glass bridge and Grid Shell structure that both cross above and over the Yas Marina Circuit F1 race track.

Louvre Museum Paris

The Louvre, originally a royal palace but now the world's most famous museum. Some of the museum's most famous works of art are the Mona Lisa and the Venus of Milo.The Louvre Museum is one of the largest and most important museums in the world. It is housed in the expansive Louvre Palace, situated in the 1st arrondissement, at the heart of Paris.

Pearl River Necklace

Dutch NL Architects’ newest bridge is part of their proposal to connect Hong Kong with the mainland of China. The bridge’s dynamic twisted form is a great resolution to the differencesin driving styles, namely that in Hong Kong, people drive on the left side of the road and in the mainland China, they drive on the right side.

MIRACULOUS UNIVERSE: Dubai Arch Bridge

MIRACULOUS UNIVERSE: Dubai Arch Bridge: In the Summer of 2008, the Dubai government announced the earmark of $817 million on building the world’s largest arch bridge.The bridge ...

Dubai Arch Bridge

In the Summer of 2008, the Dubai government announced the earmark of $817 million on building the world’s largest arch bridge.The bridge will be 670 feet tall and one mile in length and is scheduled to be completed sometime in 2012.

Writing Malayalam on Wikipedia, just like with pen and paper

Lakshmi Valsalakumari is an IT professional who wants to expand her horizons. She attended the recent Wikimedia Developers Camp in Bangalore and had this story to tell:

Lakshmi with Santhosh Thottingal, the lead developer of Wikimedia’s font and keyboard tools
I have been an Information Technology professional working with well-known software organizations over the last 15 years. While IT has been keeping me busy, productive and happy, I have also all along harbored an interest in history and the humanities. I have recently decided to pursue these interests full-time, joining a research program at the Centre of Exact Humanities, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India.
With my recent shift into academics and research, I have been referencing Wikipedia quite a bit in the last two to three months, and I have been amazed at the sheer magnitude of information found on it. While I have been reading the Wikipedia pages extensively, I had never yet considered editing it, not even in English, the language I reference Wikipedia most in, and the one I use most on computers.


Editing and contributing content in Malayalam, my mother tongue, had not really occurred to me either—Malayalam being a language I hardly used on my computers—until I attended the Bangalore Wikimedia Dev Camp.
I have tried typing Malayalam using my regular browser, but I have not been very happy with the effect. This was not the way I liked to see Malayalam written and rendered, so I had not made any further efforts to write Malayalam online. At the camp, I met Santhosh and Manoj—avid Malayalam Wikipedia contributors—and they persuaded me to give it another shot.
The first step was to download the Meera Unicode font for Malayalam, then to change my default browser to one of those that can render Meera well (I tried out Google Chrome; Firefox was even better, I was told), and then to try out typing Malayalam using the regular English keyboard.
I liked what I saw. When I typed the suggested key combinations, even complicated Malayalam letter combinations were being rendered the way I would have written them using pen and paper. I tried more and more combinations—ta, tha, tta, Ta, tma, thra, tya, zha—and was pleased with the effect. This was fun!

 Soon, I was creating my first article. I noticed that on the main Wikipedia page, an article on Barcelona mentioned Catalonia as a red link, meaning that no further information was available in the Malayalam Wikipedia on it, whereas there was plenty of information on the same subject in the English Wikipedia. Manoj guided me through the steps as I created my first page in the Malayalam Wikipedia, copied the template information over from the English article and saved the heading, trying to get it right in Malayalam. I viewed my saved efforts, and with a sense of achievement, I went to grab a coffee.
Back online with my coffee, I was surprised to find a message on the article Talk page—someone had already posted a comment on the page I had just saved, chiding me for the lack of content and references. “This will drive away people from Wikipedia,” the post read. “Please ensure I get enough content on the page!”
Man, that was fast! I had no idea people were watching and following Wikipedia edits this closely. Manoj encouraged me to type more, so I returned to my effort. While I was getting comfortable with the typing, I was still grappling for suitable words in Malayalam for the content I was reading in English. Manoj suggested Olam, an online dictionary, and sure enough, I was able to find several of the Malayalam equivalents I was searching for.
And so, I typed on. Again, to my surprise, I found people editing the content and giving helpful suggestions even as I was still typing—one person told me to leave native names as such and not translate those, and another formatted some of the changes. By the end of the day, I had posted a decent amount of info, although there remained much more to be added.
I was happy with my day’s work. I had never imagined that using Malayalam on my computer and editing the Malyalam Wikipedia content would be such a pleasant and enjoyable experience, one that I was actually looking forward to!
Another point I must mention here is the sheer volume of Malayalam content that I have started seeing online, on Wikipedia pages and elsewhere. This must be due to the attention paid to this field of languages, literature and culture online by movements like Wikimedia. In 2005, I remember searching online for a well-known Malayalam lullaby Omanathingalkkidavo by Irayimman Thampi, but could not find anything. I had then resorted to the memories of my immediate relatives to try and pen the forgotten lyrics. Now, when I search for the same, the amount of material that comes up on that lullaby is amazing!
My heart-felt appreciation to Wikipedia and all its online community members who have made all of this possible. I hope to be part of this movement myself and do my bit toward furthering easy availability of multi-lingual content online.

Lakshmi Valsalakumari

The Wikimedia Language Engineering team is developing technologies that make it possible to speakers of all languages to contribute to Wikipedia in their language as easily and naturally as possible. Lakshmi’s story is an example of how these technologies enable people to develop reference and educational content that makes Wikipedia useful to people in the whole world. These technologies are deployed in Wikipedias in most languages of India, and more languages and projects are being added all the time.

World's Fastest Boat

       Earthrace is a 78 foot alternative fuel powered wave-piercing trimaran; part of a project to break the world record for circumnavigating the globe in a powerboat and to do so using only renewable fuels.The boat's engines are powered completely by a biodiesel fuel source. This fuel is derived mainly from animal fat, soybeans, or other forms of biodiesel fuel.

Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

     The Marina Bay Sands is situated within a quick walk to the city centre and features a golf course, a tour desk and an outdoor pool.The Marina Bay Sands offers many services including a 24 hour reception, conference room(s), a sauna and a restaurant serving Chinese dishes. In addition to a business centre and a free airport shuttle, the hotel features meeting rooms, a kids club and a city centre shuttle service.

River On Bridge

     The Pont du Sart Aqueduct is a navigable aqueduct that carries the Centrumkanaal (channel in western Belgium) over the crossroads between N55 and N535 road near the town of Houdeng-Goegnies. This concrete building is 498 meters (1,600 ft) long and 46 meters (150 ft) wide. Pont du Sart Aqueduct weighs 65,000 tons and is supported by 28 concrete columns, three meters (10 ft) in diameter.