a walk along Dubai Creek @ Burdubai

An early dinner and off to bur dubai. Thats what we did yday. There you have "Dubai Creek", a 14 km long natural sea water inlet that devides Dubai into 2 parts- Deira Dubai and Bur Dubai. 

It's a historical part of Dubai & I am listing few of its offerings to a traveller like me.

--A stroll along its banks can get you a picturesque glimpse of Dubai's trading heritage. -- THIS IS WHAT WE DID LAST EVENING.

apart from that,

--One can take a small water taxi called an abra and view the old trading port and the dhows from the water. 

--A cruise to Al-Maktoum Bridge passes many of the city's historic as well as modern landmarks. An imaginative way of seeing Dubai is to take a tour of the creek by traditional wooden dhow or cabin cruiser. Most of the major landmarks can be seen from the waterway. Daytime or evening cruises are available with food and beverages on board.

--At the inland end of the Creek is a large, shallow lagoon, now a wildlife sanctuary which has become a heaven for migrating shore birds. Some 27,000 birds have been counted here at one time during the autumn migration. The most spectacular are the many Greater Flamingos which have made the Creek their permanent home. 

I was reading all this & more about the creek here

I also must mention some terms, their meaning and significance here to begin with.

The Creek has played a major role in the economic development achieved by Dubai. Since the early days, when Dubai was a center for pearl fishing and pearl trade, Dubai's trade development was attributed to the creek.

Abras (small wooden boats) serve as taxis for those who want to cross from the Deira side to the Bur Dubai side. The journey takes around ten minutes and costs just 50 fils.

Dhow is a traditional arab sailing vessel with one or more triangular sails, called lateens. It is indigenous to the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, India, and East Africa. A larger dhow may have a crew of approximately thirty while smaller dhow have crews typically ranging around twelve. Up to the 1960s, dhows made commercial journeys between the Persian Gulf and East Africa using only sails as a means of propulsion. The freight was mostly dates and fish to East Africa and mangrove timber to the lands in the Persian Gulf. They sailed south with the monsoon in winter or early spring and back again to Arabia in late spring or early summer. 

Souk is Arabic word for a place where things are sold or exchanged. Dubai is one of the best places in the world to find a range of excellent, authentic, competitive Arab souks  GOLD & SPICE Souks are the most famous here.

This I believe is a mosque(not sure) that we saw while walking along the creek and it looked beautiful.

Soup of the Day

~~~PUMPKIN SOUP~~~

Prepared today morning and it turned out to be nice. Best thing - Its most S I M P L E. . & quick to make. Plus its healthy and nutritious. Here is what I did.

Peel, clean and cut a qtr of pumpkin into small cubes.

Pressure cook with little salt and pepper.(I waited for 3 whistles)

The pumpkin becomes so soft that one could do with just mashing it but for the proper soup texture, I preferred making a purree out of it in mixer.

(optional) dissolve a spoonful of cornflour into 1/3rd cup of milk to be used for thickening the soup.

Put little butter or oil in a pan and heat it.

Add mustard seeds & let them sputter.

Add the pumpkin pulp into it, add water to get the consistency you like and bring it to a boil.

Add salt and pepper as per taste and stir well. 

Add butter for taste (again, optional)

Garnish:

Coriander leaves

cocumber cut into thin half moon shaped slices.

Serve it hot. Infact have it too.

Inspiration: Bhabhi, who inspired me to try different soups and salads to enjoy my housewife days. Will ping her for the next tip nowwwwww..

Experience: This was my second soup attempt after coming here. First was supposed to be of spinach. But I spoiled it by using some wierd tasting look-alike of it. Picking up vegetables here is not as simple as in India. The other day, I confused lettuce to cabbage :(  YES, ME DID THAT :(

Cool Dubai and some cold..

So I finally get a Hindustan Lever Stamp (read it as leaver my dear). Thats what i was told when i was at the airport.

Yesss! I am in dubai, the land of sun and sand as some call it.

& it snowed in some parts here, the day I landed. What a cool welcome..

Let me start with my worry of packing my stuff(literally spread all over the house in mumbai) into the 20 kg baggage as i mentioned earlier. I didnt want to bring anything extra because past experience tells me that 70% of my clothes dont see the light outside my suitcase/cupboard. Sweetly enough, Mom helped by arranging for a spring balance. I removed my warm clothes, heavy punjabi suits, few more sarees and some old casuals etc and managed to come with only 5 kgs extra.

Isn't that good management? Now other side of story is that I had stuffed my laptop bag, cabin bag and purse/handbag as much as possible as they are not weighed. But my heart weakened at the mumbai immigration counter to read on a board that only 2 bags are allowed (including laptop/cabin/hand bag) so quickly filling the immigration form, I arranged max of my purse's contents into the cabin bag but where would i put the purse itself? it wasnt small enough to be put inside any other bag so i might have to leave it at the airport. Being my first international flight I was little apprehensive. I had also heard that rules are strictly followed in international airports. But I was nowhere questioned abt anything. & I landed with all my luggage intact.

I must mention this as well. Husband had expressed his devout side to my mum and asked for Tulsi plant to be sent along with me. Now would I be able to carry it? The driver suggested that I tell the authorities (incase they question) that its a medicinal herb that I am carrying. But I tell you, its a problem only when u ask someone whether you can carry or not. I packed it in a long tube like container and kept inside the check-in bag and forgot abt it. 

That too reached here safely.

On the flight, I got a window seat and kept looking down, clicking pics from there too. The view of ships in the sea through the clouds from top was captivating and strengthened the place of 'a vacation on cruise' in my wish list. & then an idea of a desert safari as soon as we crossed the Arabian sea and came over the endless deserts. 

Enjoying the beauty infrastructure of roads and buidlings we landed at 4pm. Didnt spend much time @ the airport but that was beautiful too. I found the eye test sheer waste of time though. The flight took me 2 & a half hours and the formalities at the airport took another 2 hours. The heavy laptop bag and cabin bag were being carried on all these 2 hours. So, by the time I came out and looked for Amit, I was totally tired but still was all smiling at the sight of him.

Yesss.. I have finally reached here all well :) I hope this move across the geography prove good for us in all ways.

The warm welcome by the darling husband was lovely. He afterall had been waiting to get his laundry and other things taken care of :p and now that my visa says "Housewife" as occupation, he doesnt leave a single chance to giggle over it and tease me.

We had an amazing first weekend roaming around some malls and Jumeira beach by the sun set. & Some friends from this land have just given baby news so there are plans to meet them soon.

Its gonna be fun setting up everything all over again but the cold waves have hit me hard and I have been shivering and feeling feverish for the whole of today :( 

2008, Travel- VOF (Day2)

on the way to Valley of Flowers and Hemkund!...

Day 2) Rudraprayag – Joshimath: (110 km)

This GMVN rest house in Rudraprayag has the best location, with most of the rooms facing the confluence of river Alaknanda and Mandakini. The two rivers coming here have different colour, speed & maybe depth but when they get into each other its such a source of energy and revival that I could have spent all the next 8 days here simply looking at the gushing water.

A relaxed morning in and a around the guesthouse with nature walk, yoga and sinful aaloo paranthas, and we were ready for a drive from Rudrapayag to Joshimath. While collecting some chips and cold drinks to avoid ydays mistake, we spotted beautiful ghasiyarans (ladies with bundle of grass-fodder for their domestic animals, on their backs)on the way who smiled sweetly at me and also posed for me to click them.

We must have reached half way through when at the sight of a small fall I asked Amit to stop and we all came out to chk it. It was a natural source of water called “BHEEMDHARA” at chamoli-gopeshwar and looked rather cool and refreshing in otherwise hot sunny afternoon. Walking around this place for a while was enough to set in the mood and these two guys jumped into the water that was chilling cold. M didn’t know swimming but still did not shy away from diving and pulling up some stunts in the water with the help of A. And I enjoyed talking their photos thoroughly.

After that the driver saw a signboard with “DON’T NAG HIM LET HIM DRIVE” written on it and came back on reverse gear to make sure each one of us had seen it too, so we had no choice but to quietly admire the striking beauty of Garwal hills which to me looked like covered with a smooth velvet sheet of green. Next stop was “VRIDH BADRI”. It comes under PanchBadri, 5 shrines of lord Vishnu (Vishal Badri –Badrinath being the main and biggest of all, Yogdhyan Badri, Bhavishya Badri, Vridha Badri, Adi Badri). The priest and care taker of that place narrated the significance of Vridh Badri to us, its the oldest of all and there is a small village setup around it where I played with a calf on our way back to the road which was 50 mtrs uphill.

The drive today was eventful I must admit. The next in line was a fully loaded truck whose driver for the lack of luck had lost its control and that caused a traffic jam on this narrow route. Every time he would accelerate, it would only move to slip back instead of moving up ahead. I guess the breaks were not working and after several trials he was now positioned in such a way that if he tried once more & failed, the truck would fall off the road straight down the hill. That indeed was scary and we prayed for safety of all at that point. The truck was being controlled/stopped by means of a brick behind the back tyres. Some fellow travellers got down, gave ideas and offered help to at least move the truck thus unblocking the way and easing the traffic. We moved on and it started drizzling then changing our frame of mind into something better.

We had planned that if we reach Joshimath before 6 pm, we will drive further to Govindghat which is 20 km ahead, the same day & save time. We were told that one cant travel between Joshimath and Govindghat throughout the day for safety and control related reasons. There are set timings when vehicles are allowed to go and we got to know that the latest in a day is 4.30pm. So we had to spend that night at Joshimath.

With no prior bookings, the evening was spent in looking around for a decent place to stay (GMVN was all booked.) and we did get a nice acco with geyser and parking for a very low cost. One takes these amenities for granted in the planes but as you go higher(at least in this part of the world), every bucket of hot water comes with a price tag. Tales of that and of charging your mobiles or camera later as you read on... Today before we slept, we had a sumptuous dinner at one of the two competing restaurants on the main road @ Joshimath, had a long walk back home- holding hand and umbrella simultaneously in rain, sat inside the warm cosy razai and chatted for long over our lives back home plus office, people we love and hate etc.

Here is a view from our room @ joshimath..

I will not spoil the attractiveness(if at all I could make it so, in words, for you) of this journey so far by mentioning that before sleeping I also had to buy a medicine to fight my irksome stomach that refuses to be healthy whenever I don’t get my luxurious home loo :( so I have to take special care while travelling. When we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore, we went to sleep with an alarm for 5.30am. Next day was going to be tiresome with the long trek to do.

WORD OF ADVICE – Just tell yourself that you are on vacation and relax.. Keep clicking and indulge in everything that u miss doing otherwise. If your objective is to reach the destination, you can travel by any mode but the best way to enjoy the journey is when u travel by private vehicle and if you want to drive on your own, please drive carefully!! Doing some stretching exercises in between is also recommended.

2008, Travel- VOF (kick start)

Valley of Flowers and Hemkund!

This post is about THE HIGHLIGHT of our 2008 travel. Kind of “once in a life time” for me. Its about our Trek to Valley Of Flowers, which is a national park & a spectacular paradise of wild flowers in India (Uttaranchal). To begin with, let me mention that its going to be a rather long post, unless I suffer from lack of words to describe the experience OR I decide to split it into parts for better reading. All good things come at a price and here I am talking about some gruelling trekking but then the rewards make it all worth.

I will take one day at a time, it was between 9^th Aug to 16^th Aug, 08. Here is the start, the very first day.

Day 1) Delhi to Roorkee, Haridwar, Rishikesh, Devprayag, Srinagar & finally stopping at GMVN guesthouse at Rudraprayag for night stay(Here is a view from .the room we stayed in.)

It started @ around 3.30 am (*please don’t call us crazy), with me driving from our home in Naraina till that big signal at Vikas Marg. Then I gave the controls to the **driver. A stop at “Cheetal” for a misty morning walk around the deer, feeding the rabbits and having a cup of tea, then we sped on to have breakfast at roorkee. I love the bustling serenity of Haridwar, M had a vague memory of being there as a kid and A wanted to pickup some music; so we parked the car, got out for a stroll around the ghat and nearby Haridwar market area till all 3 of us were contented. After that we only stopped for photography here and there while going in reverse Ganges flow around Rishikesh. Huge mountains, thick green vegetation, terraced farming, river full of life, refreshing pure air. These were the scenes and there were also a few land slides on those sharp bends of the road. The treat to our eyes had only begun but it was already mesmerizing. The speedometer got influenced by a sign board that read “aisi bhi kya jaldi hai”. We enjoyed each moment and did not realise that we had skipped the lunch time. When hunger pangs started striking, thought of stopping at some eatery came to the minds but there was nothing in sight. To try our luck we got down to a quiet place “Jayal resort” (I didn’t know the name then, but today while writing I was being guided by the pics we took & I zoomed in this one to find it was a resort with a name too) but there was no one to attend us at the reception. After some looking around, there came a boy telling us there is nothing available, however we can pick up the mangoes fresh from the tree at the reception :).

It was raining cats n dogs in Delhi but the sun GOD was supporting our trip with a bright shine over us here, so much so that I had to put the sun shields on all the car windows to have the AC effect intact. On such trips I am the one ensuring that nobody misses the cosiness of home, you see. Anyways, the mangoes we picked up were not ripe but I still kept them inside my small home in there and we moved on, later picking up some bhajiya n samosa’s near devprayag-srinagar route and then stopped only at our destination for the day @ Rudraprayag. Prayag means confluence of rivers. We wanted to reach Rudraprayag safely before its dark and 40 km in the Garwal hills can mean anything between 2-3 hours.

We reached there at dot six pm, nice staff, not too high rentals, but wait, we thought we lost something during movement of our bags from the car to the room. was it someone’s goggles, spectacles, cell or something else, I cant recall now. Anyways, we being tired of a really long road drive (yes, inspite of the drive being so very beautiful), we took hot water bath in turns, took short naps, read the maps for the journey ahead, relaxed watching the aarti happening in the small temple at the confluence and clicking pictures and viewing those taken during the day. We unfortunately had to keep deleting the not so best ones as we were not carrying any additional data storage and had a full week ahead where we would be tempted even more to capture every view, every moment on the camera. I regretted not carrying the extra memory card but we still managed to have around 700 pics. I couldn’t even upload them all on picasa for sharing, so there were rounds of elimination and selection with the ones we clicked.

WORD OF ADVICE – keep snacks handy, sun block n shades are recommended, travel with additional storage for ur camera and book this place in advance if u wish to spend the night at Rudraprayag(which u must) and lastly, eat at the guesthouse only as outside there is no decent eating option here.

Need help.. linking pictures?

As part of Travel 2008 series, I am writing a travelogue on a special trip, which will not be complete without linking it to lotsa pics. But I dont want to insert images in the post for that will 

• increase the size and length of the post
  
• make it difficult for me to manually do it (for lack of patience)
  
• and it will delay in loading of the page
  

I have an idea & have seen in other blogs too, that we can put pics in sites like flickr and link the text to them BUT flickr has a limit in the number of pics that can be loaded in a month. I am also not familiar with manoeuvrings in flickr. 

So I need some help in sorting this out.. pleaseeeeeeeeee give some ideas on how to do this pls...

whenever I drink

Ever since I have accompanied Mom to her endoscopy and seen the test happening live, every time I am drinking (say water) I can imagine it moving down my mouth to wherever it traverses- like the esophegus to stomach to duodenum... thank God the imagination doesnt go beyond. I am a freak! u think so?

I have done good amount of googling and you tubing on this test, including some scary looking interiors of human organs and I am grateful for the healthy state I am in [mum also has a mild problem which will be gone with 4 months of medication and timely meals etc]. Touch wood! 

:D :D & you thought I was abt to reveal of my drunken state??? some other time for sure(provided I suceed in getting drunk in the first place)..

till then, 

good health wishes to a!!

I wonder..

I have made a blog friend!! 

So far, have interacted with this friend through blog comments only but to me this is enough to feel good with. I am not asking the friend to acknowledge or to reciprocate any of my feelings.

I am just wondering about blogosphere (not sure if I spelled the term right), its a world in itself...

Unsure of my regularity in pouring out the crap here once I am with Amit(life gets busy u see, ahem ahem.. ) but I have realised that I do need at least one channel to connect online. Because when I quit orkut few months back, my love for blog reading surfaced. Thankfully. Orkut was a sheer waste of time after a point, its great to find all your old pals (school, college, neighbourhood etc etc) and I did that, but besides that nothing much. On blogs, I have read the journey of people, their point of view on n number of things under the sun and beyond, humour filled expression for simplest of feelings, the power of words in a nut shell. All this is inspiring. Dunno how but it is, for me.! 

Maybe this also speaks of an aspect of my personality.

Seeing the huge gang of blogger friends, makes me wonder how they manage it though.. as soon as they publish a post, comments start pouring in. I am serious when I say I would find it difficult to keep track of them and reply aptly to each one of their comments. 

With moderation ON, it must be really taking them good part of their time. So here is a round of applause to all those bloggers for managing their readers so well(including this new found friend of mine)

****

my phone just rang while i was wondering about all this.. what adds to my speculation is "how can he think of getting on an ironing board if he can't find anything else to reach that high point on the wall?" 

In the mid of our conversation, he mentions of the mess in the house and the need to buy some furniture n stuff including IRON BOARD. 

"But I saw one when u recently sent me our new home pictures" I said. 

Having poor luck at that moment, he quickly got caught and told me the truth. he he.. glad he has not broken his knee at least. 

There is not one but many such incidents that keep me healthy and I know he is not gonna spare me for sharing it here.

****

Sari n me = love n hate relation

Mum takes hardly 2 minutes to drape a sari(perfectly) and just about 5 sec to remove it as soon as the purpose of getting sari clad is over. When we were kids, me and Di used to criticise her pallu length or number of pleats. Not only this, we also had mum as the victim of our experiments on her hair - she has long nice hair and she used to be nice to let us do whatever we wished. But now(after marriage), I realise what it takes to put this otherwise elegant and beautiful and all that kind of attire on. While I did try wearing one at home few times during school days, I could never handle it properly.

On Teachers Day, when the highest class students are supposed pose and act as teachers, as a mark of respect and acknowledgement to them, all girls must wear sari- is the expectation. I feared sari so much that I found it easier to convince my maths teacher pleading that I can only wear a panjabi suit [sari n suit were the only dresses i saw my teachers wearing in our north India CBSE schools]. My sister on the other hand is an expert on this front, this being another point of j feeling which now has turned into admiration and inspiration.

Wearing sari on manu's thread ceremony around 2 years back, when I managed it the whole day made me excited and confident(I got many compliments that day :) ) but there still are times when I go back to being sad. Here is one such time. Once for Amit's friend's reception, I decided to test myself on my sari skills. I started with a pink sari that he had selected for me. Not much of surprise though. It took me more than an hour and finally changing into another simple blue sari that was easier to wear, to reach a satisfactory state of mind and head to the party. Husbands really have patience when it comes to waiting for their wives get ready. But when I saw the other wives there, flaunting those heavy designer sarees so effortlessly, I felt like hiding behind somewhere. I felt J, in the Delhi's Dec weather, these ladies had skimpy blouses and I was in a sweater!! Dont know what I should call myself for this now, boring, dull, whatever.. Sari therefore has always been a Big Deal for me. (MIL is so sweet. she has never made me feel that I am a bad DIL for this reason. maybe coz I never gave her a chance wearing it somehow for all those occassions like diwali, puja etc.. :D ). Its however my secret wish or desire to be able to wear it at least some times and feel great about it.

****

Having a girl child is "upshagun" as per the ma-sa of this much talked abt television serial //BALIKA VADHU\\ on colors channel. How SICK is that... 

these are my instant thoughts when i end this post while partially listening TV

****

The green dot

I have made more friends in the virtual land than real. Maybe this speaks about me as a person. I am sure it does.

When I started using internet, I wanted to read surf learn and explore everything instantly. And the journey is still on. There is just soo soo much up there. I also wanted to talk(chat actually) to different people from different origins, fields etc who were online to know more about them, how they use internet and for what purpose etc. Online dating, porn, recipes, interesting places for travel, studies, matrimony, job search & etc etc. This was not long ago, a couple of years back or more. Today you just type a word and google throws at you a list of sites of relevant information. its really a "WOW" thing. If God wanted to leave me alone on an island with one thing (husband is not an option a] he cant be considered a thing & b] i am sure he will find n join me there) then I will want that one thing to be internet and will never ever complain.

Like real world friends, they also come n go from your life; but thanks to google, when u see a green colored dot with a friend's name, there is an instant "hey!" moment when u exchange few somethings with each other and then get busy in your worlds again. A great way to remain in touch. isnt it? 

PS: The invisible mode comes handy too at times...

whats my point in writing all this at random? just a celebration of a great mode of communication at hand.. happiness lies in simplest of things, they say!

20 kg limit... phew!!!

My Mom has been behind me to sort things and decide what is really really needed to be taken along. And I dread the thought of having to dispose any of my small/comfy stuff futher especially after having done that already and that too, heavily, once when I was leaving Delhi... (Ruby, my maid must be happy to collect all my punjabi suits, t-shirts :(.. n what not) and we also went to a set of street families to distibute our winder clothes and other stuff.. The matter of concern therefore is that the Internation flight allowing 20+7 kgs whereas same airlines in domestic flight had a 30+7 kg baggage allowed.

After much of elimination and selection, I came to mumbai with a 3 8 k g checked in bag, a h e a v y cabin bag that I am sure was more than 12 kgs but didnt get checked for wgt thankfully, a s t u f f e d laptop bag, my b i g hand bag and another small carry bag which had my bamboo shoots and a glass bowl. Even though the lady at the Air India check-in counter gave me an option of bribing her(not at the counter, pls go to the loo, fold the money between paper and leave it on my table - this is what she shamelessly told me) with Rs 1000 and carry the excess, I demanded a recpt and paid the actuals. I dont know if these things happen abroad too, but it is totally shamefull.

This time, I have selected the cheapest flight so that I can compensate for the price, If I have to pay, for any excess baggage to my next destination(Dubai) but the tricky thing is to reduce the 40 odd kgs to 20 something when I know I must have added 10 more kgs with my shopping in Mumbai :(

Its going to be another painstaking exercise.. phew!!

Of bye bye and blessings!

I eagerly look for new posts by bloggers whom I follow. Its lovely, how they put their thoughts and experiences into words and some moms so passionately put down their journey of being 'mom'. Now today when I returned home after a day of running around for my ticket, forex etc etc, I read Parul's blog on salaams n namaste's and went into flash back with a smile on.

It was the day we had packed our bags in Delhi. While Amit was moving to Dubai, I had to come to mumbai for handover at office n stuff. Sumit (Amit's younger bro) had come from hostel the night before to stay with us and believe me I was wanting to stuff his bag with every little thing that I couldnt pack in our bags, reason being-disposing them or leaving it back for it to go waste wasn't agreeable to me. I guess he had come by bus or rickshaw so that while going back he could take the thunderbird (Amit's first love). Thank god! he didnt sell it off. Now, I hope to ride on it again whenever we go back to Delhi and someday fulfill my wish to photograph this 11 murty statue myself.

Ok, so I was talking of salaam namaste's n the 'flash back'. Original plan for the next day morning was that Sumit will come along on the bike and we two would go by the hired cab to airport. But at the last moment, we pataoed Sumit to bid us bye at home itself and go straight to his hostel. We convinced him that we shall call him incase we need some help and also keep him informed of our safe flights etc.. I basically wanted to save him of the trip by this short cut which meant the same as he coming to airport n saying bye.. and Amit later smiled teasingly with his mischievous remark "there goes the kabab mein haddi." He was hoping and being ambitious that he is gonna get hugs n all that when he drops me at domestic terminal.. :D. Anyways, thats not the point even though all his romantic hopes remained just that.. "hopes"....; Sumit easily agreed to the changed plan and after those final chit chats, when I slid into the car, he bent down gesturing "touching my feet".. I resisted. My good wishes are always with him, he reminds me of my brother and thats how I miss Manu lesser in his presence, so, when I resisted his bending down, he said something which I dont remember exactly. But if I am not wrong, he meant- These are customs which hold value if done on proper occassions. I think he meant that when we see each other regularly, a casual hello is fine but now we will meet only after months or longer. We 3 had been staying together (with short gaps in between) ever since I came into the family, so this was the first time we were actually getting apart. So he felt like following that custom to seek his "Bhabhi's" blessings.

I have asked him to correct me if my interpretation wasn't right.

With due respect to the customs, and thanks to the changing times, I actually dont think these gestures mean a thing. I couldn't agree more to Aneela's comment on Parul's blog which said "tameez dil may honee chahiye', if the person in question wishes me and mine well and says hi, its OK (or so I tell myself)". Having said that, I did feel nice at Sumit's reasoning (If I got that right). Such a sweet little boy that he is! Now I am not being sweet coz he is going to read it. He really is! With small gripes here n there but they exists with everyone. Who is perfect anyways? Right Sumit? What do u say..?