I feel alive again...

Woohoo! I feel like I'm back to my old self today, finally...These past couple of weeks have been rather hectic, between the longest workweek I've had in a while, getting sick, and trying to spend time with my best friend who's visiting Dubai (and who I haven't seen in over 2 years!).

Tonight, I am going to the Shakira concert. I don't particularly love Shakira (and her voice can becoming annoying after a while)...but I don't hate her either...so I'm looking forward to just having a good time and dancing my hips off :)

And I'm also looking forward to no longer hearing Shakira ads and songs on the radio. I mean, I understand that Mirage Promotions needs to promote the concert, but enough is enough! Radio, TV, newspapers, magazine covers....UGH!

Anyway, back to tonight. After the concert, we're going clubbing to celebrate my friend M.'s birthday (a few days early, but hey, it's never too early to start celebrating, right?).

I'll let you know how the concert went....I know I've been neglecting my blog lately, but hopefully, that's about to change!

I hate itptickets.com

I've bought tickets on itptickets.com a couple of times already, and never ran into any problems with the website.

A couple of days ago, I wanted to buy tickets to the Russell Peters show in Dubai. Now for those of you who don't know Russell Peters, he's a Canadian stand-up comedian of Indian origin, and he's really funny. You can watch part of his act here.

Anyway, so Russell had a first show planned on March 11, which sold out within hours of tickets going on sale. I had completely forgotten about the show that day and did not buy any tickets. So when I was told that the show had sold out, I was disappointed.

Then, my brother tells me that a second show was added, and that tickets would go on sale at midnight that night. That was a couple of days ago.

So at 11:45, I was ready. I had my laptop in front of me, my credit card ready, I had logged in to itptickets.com, and I was refreshing the page every 5 minutes to make sure I'd be one of the first to buy my tickets.

At 12 o'clock, things went awry. The website started messing up, and it was extremely slow. I tried several times to purchase my tickets but couldn't get through to the payment page. I was trying to get front section tickets, but after 20 minutes of pointless tries, I get a message saying that front section tickets were sold out.

Okay, fine. Let's try back section tickets then. Again, I try, and try, and try some more. Finally, another 20 minutes later, as I was about to fall asleep on my laptop, I succeed in getting to the payment page. Hurrah!

I enter my credit card info, and proceed with the payment. I get a black message box informing me to wait while my credit card is verified, and that if I do not get a confirmation message, I should contact a person from ITP, and that I should NOT attempt to send the order through again.

I knew deep down that my purchase did not go through. But I decided to go to bed that night, with a glimmer of hope that the next day, I would be pleasantly surprised.

So the very next morning, I called ITP ticket's infoline. I call, and call, and call again, and all I get is a voice saying "all our representatives are currently busy, please leave a message and we will call you back"... only to be followed by another message saying "sorry, our mailbox is currently full".

Hmm...Finally, by around 2PM, I manage to speak to a human being. He very grudgingly takes my name and phone number, and says that he will investigate if my payment went through and will call me back.

No news.

I decide to call again today, and after several tries, I manage to speak to someone (I think it was the same grumpy person I spoke to the first time), and this time he confirms that my payment did not go through, and that I did not get any tickets.

He said that 8000 people were trying to access the site that day, and there were 1800 tickets on sale only.

He also said that they were trying to book a 3rd show, but that they were awaiting confirmation from Russell Peters, to see if he could do it. And that they would contact me if this was the case.

Anyway, I know that it's not all ITP's fault, and that the number of people trying to access their website at the same time would have wreaked havoc on any website, not just theirs...but still...I really really wanted some Russell Peters tickets :(

Discoveries

I've finally discovered a yoga place right next to my work...and I am soooooo happy! It's really convenient because it's a 5-minute drive away, and the classes are interesting. The timings are a bit off though, so either I'll have to start leaving work earlier than usual, or wait for the later classes to begin...we'll see... But all I can say is, boy am I out of shape. There was some serious muscle pain after the first couple of classes!

I've also recently discovered Facebook, an online community which allows you to find and link up to friends all over the world. Now, I haven't used Facebook to its full potential yet (adding pictures and messages etc.), but it has satisfied my never-ending need of always finding people I know in common with other people I know...I can now play my own version of 6 degrees of separation online! Love it!

And finally, I've discovered that some people can be condescending, stupid, rude, mean and unprofessional, despite them having no seemingly obvious reason to be this way. And that I have yet to learn how to deal with these people. Any thoughts or advice? (I can't adopt my typical "avoidance" strategy, as these are people I need to interact with on a daily basis...so what do I do?)

Cirque du Soleil

We finally watched Cirque du Soleil's Quidam yesterday. Overall, the show was good. The music was great, the acts were impressive, and the art direction and costumes were stunning.

But this was not the best Cirque show I have seen. I have had the chance to see 2 other live Cirque shows (Varekai and Dralion), and Dralion was by far a better show.

But still, I am glad I got to see this one. The Dhs 400 ticket price for decent seats is a bit steep (something like Dhs 250 would have been more reasonable), and just like when Moryarti went to the Cirque, we were surrounded by crying, screaming children (and infants! Why would someone bring an infant to the Cirque du Soleil, I just don't understand!), and people walking in and out. I guess we should have chosen an 8 o'clock show rather than the 4 o'clock one, but the 4 o'clock show had better seats.

The show is still around for a couple of weeks, so if you get the chance to go see it, I highly recommend you do so. The show is a must-see, if only for its uniqueness when it comes to circuses.

There's so much more to see...

Apparently, I've only visited 7% of the countries in the world...

Create your own visited country map, by clicking here.

Harry Potter and....

The name of the 7th and final Harry Potter book has been revealed. I'm not a die-hard Harry fan, I've only read the 1st book, and I have seen 2 (or maybe 3? Don't remember) of the movies.

But I do like author J.K Rowling's website though. It's entertaining and interactive...and for those of you who have the patience, you can discover the name of the new book yourselves by clicking through her website...

Here's the first hint: click on the eraser....and then....well, I'll leave it up to you to discover the rest. You need to click around the the page to reveal items, one after the other.

If all else fails, the clues (and the name of new book) can be found here.

For when you have nothing to do at work....

....or if you're chilling at home on a Saturday afternoon, here are 2 cool, time-wasting and frustrating links:

http://us.mms.com/us/dark/index.jsp

I am still missing around 4 of them, despite my best efforts to search the net (can anyone guess what the green M&M with the purple dress is?)

And here's another one:

http://www.freestuffhotdeals.com/hacker/1.html

See how far you can go...I got to the halfway mark, then had to give up. But I have all the answers now :)

Enjoy!