12th Asia-Pacific Conference on Giftedness cum Children and Youth Summit in Dubai (Part 1)

(P6 is quite busy and I will publish the post in parts)

12 July 2012, Thursday

This summer holiday, I took part in the 12th Asia-Pacific Conference on Giftedness cum the Children and Youth Summit. My dad, Miss Wong, Miss Cheung, seven students and parents from my school took part in it too. The event was held in Dubai, UAE.

On the midnight of the twelve of July, the Hong Kong group including Dad and I boarded an Emirates luxury plane while Grandma saw us off. The air hostesses’ dress was special because there was a white scarf hanging on their hat similar to traditional Islamic dressing. During the comfortable flight, I watched the movie Alvin 3 which was best, the funny Adventure Time, Sherlock Holmes and played the Bejeweled 2 TV game. I also slept for three hours because our trip would start once we arrived there at four a.m. Dubai time. I enjoyed the flight but the in-flight meal was not very delicious.

When we landed at the Dubai International Airport, which have been voted the best airport in the Middle East, we walked through the counters to do the formalities. I noticed a novel sight that the Dubai custom officers wore in white from head to toe. It didn’t look like the usual uniform. Afterwards, we waited for the other Hong Kong group flying a later Cathay Pacific flight. It seemed that we had waited for them for half day long and I was bored to death. The huge airport was off-white with many dozens of wide pillars across the hall. Dad pushed me on a luggage trolley exploring the airport. We stopped by an unusual escalator which ran a long straight way before going up to a train station. I was interested and tried it. When I finished trying it, my classmate Jasen ran into us. He was bored too, so we played a game braking the luggage trolley. Since I sat on big soft luggage cases on the trolley, I called my trolley a luxury car. There were almost no shops around except for the souvenir and fast food shops.

At last, the other group arrived. We met a local guide and left the airport. The outside temperature was not very hot because it was only morning. But it was late afternoon to me since I had spent many hours awaken since the overnight flight. On the way to our first stop, Abu Dhabi which is UAE’s capital city, I was magnetized by the buildings because every building was exceedingly attractive. The buildings which caught my attention most were a twisted skyscraper and a leaning tower. The guide was busy introducing the city to us on the journey.

After a two hours’ drive we arrived at Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, UAE’s largest mosque. The bright sunlight almost blinded me and hot breeze blew to my face when I got off the bus. It was extraordinarily hot as if I were in an oven! The big mosque was pure white with big and small domes decorating its top. On top of the biggest dome, there was a pretty golden moon statue. I stepped in the gorgeous mosque and the inside was cool and shady.

I took off my hat, sunglasses and shoes. As for the ladies, they needed to wear khimars. The first thing I did was going bare-feet to the air-conditioned gents. I walked by a room for Muslims to wash their feet. The gents was not smelly and was the cleanest and most beautiful I had ever seen. There was a vast square in the middle of the mosque under the scorching sun. Then, we walked all the way to the praying hall. At first, I thought the floor must be burning but to my surprise, it was icy cold.

 

 

 

 

In the big splendid air-conditioned hall, I saw large fancy chandeliers hanging from the high celling. Surrounded by ninety nine Arabic phrases on a wall was a bigger phrase. They were the different names of Islam’s god, Allah. On the soft vast green carpet with fancy pattern paved on the colossal floor sat children listening to adults. They had to be Muslims. Then, Dad asked the guide about Islam and he told me that the mosque’s green colour was representing hope, pure white and gold for milk and honey in the heaven. Dad also said that the times shown on the flower-shaped clocks was the daily times for Muslims to pray when visitors were not allowed to enter the mosque. After some photos, we left the beautiful mosque.

It was extremely cool as I opened all the air-conditioner vents over my head on the coach. By lunchtime, we dined at Burger King with my classmates in the big Marina Mall. Jasen’s dad bought a pair of Adidas shoes because his shoes were melted a bit under the hot sun. It was quite funny because I had never heard such a thing. I only ate a few fries for the reason of my eye inflammation. After lunch, I watched Tom & Jerry at a screen instead of going to the sight-seeing tower behind the mall because there was not much time.

In the afternoon, we said goodbye to the entrance's fountain which spitted water high noisily and headed to the world’s biggest indoor theme park, Ferrari World on Yas Island. On the large Yas island, except the construction of Universal Studio, I first saw nothing but sand and grasses. Finally, I saw the triangular Ferrari World topped with a bright Ferrari red roof was glinting under the shining sun. The immense glass building was surrounded by some verdurous trees.

With excitement, we followed my classmate Adrian who has found information about the kid’s section of Ferrari world. However, we were too high and couldn't play almost all the games. Luckily, we tried Carousel which had Ferraris and motorcycles on the round platform. I thought I could drive there. Although the platform only turned around slowly, making me disappointed, Dad took photos of me pretending I was driving speedy. The motorcycles were more fun.

We also played Junior GP. Before the ride, we watched a brief cartoon about safety in a small room that looked like a pit stop. I sat in the car on the track beside the stands. The car was small and I bumped my head. When the game began, I was on the lead but crashed before going into the tunnel. I pushed my car impatiently. Junior GP was fun except the mishaps before the race: a girl crashed and staffers had to push her all the way back. Also, there was a spoiled boy didn’t want to go. I was angry and moved my body and steering wheel making the car run.

After Junior GP, we strolled around the kids’ section finding rides to play. Dad and I also explored the Family’s section. On our way, we saw the G force in the middle of the park that lifted people up and dropped them down slowly. I thought it was not as exciting as I wished. We played Ferrari remote-control toy cars and Dad took photos of me standing beside some cool old to modern Ferraris. Then, we tried a wind generator. The wind generator was situated in a room producing five levels of wind. There was a control panel on which one had to press the button to go from one level to the next while following the body gestures illustrated on the panel. The fifth level wind was quite strong but the pushing force was not.

There was less than an hour before the time for our visit was up. So the two of us hurried to find rides worth playing. It was mere luck that we bumped into the ride called Speed of Magic. There was a long queue and we had to wait for roughly 20 minutes. When it was our turn, dad thought that it was a roller-coaster. But it was actually a 4-dimensional adventure ride which was much more fun. I found the high speed adventure process fascinating. I had never tried such an exciting thing before.

Speed of Magic

However, the most exciting part was yet to come. On our way out from the Speed of Magic, we came across Miss Wong who cued us to try the main ride of the Thrill section, Fiorano GT Challenge. It was the replica of a Ferrari F430 Spider and used carriages of four individual seats to bring people around the rails. There were the general and advanced rails. Guess which one we tried? The general one.

I was a bit worried and hesitated at first. But there was no time to lose, and my classmate Jameson who was leading the way was shouting to us to give it a try. And I was glad that we did. Dad and I jumped into the seats of the last carriage which was a yellow Spider. There was also the red one. As the roller-coaster swished along the rail, I kept yelling, "Don't ever be like this!" It was great fun!

Before leaving, we viewed the famous world's fastest roller-coaster Formula Rossa. It was madly fast and the rail was really long. The starting section was especially fast, which shot the carriages off like a bullet.

Fiorano GT Challenge

Formula Rossa

The long day did not yet come to an end for we still made a brief visit to the Burj Khalifa afterwards, the world's tallest building. I watched the musical fountain for a bit of time and had dinner with Adrian's family at a restaurant serving Italian and Japanese cuisines in the world’s biggest mall, Dubai Mall. I liked the spaghetti marinated in an orange-colour sauce and the strawberry milkshake best. Dad had fish salami and a special Dubai cucumber drink. I can’t really remember the cucumber drink’s special taste but it was just sour and a bit sweet. I took several pieces of cucumber from different dishes and decorated dad's glass with them on the rim.

Finally, after the meal, we were whisked to the hotel through the road flanked by the brightly lit fabulous skyscrapers which were mostly duplicated in pairs. The city was beautiful but the only regret was that it was still unbearably sultry at night. We arrived at the hotel quite late that night but the sleep was well.

Amazing Activities Meeting One

Amazing Activities is one of the Day A activities. We had our first meeting last Tuesday. At the moment we entered the 5A classroom, I noticed that there was an image of a instruction booklet projected on the board.  As soon as I was curious what it was about, the teacher introduced that it was about how to plant a fish. "Plant a fish?" A big question mark sprang to my mind.

After the introduction, we divided ourselves into several groups. Then the teacher handed out to each group a small plastic cup of soil, a cup of water and a camcorder.  I fixed my eyes at the soil and felt excited. Immediately, we poured the soil into the water and started setting up the camcorder to take time-lapsed footage of the soil in water. However, our group's camcorder broke down. So we could only do the watching until the school ended. But nothing happened because the teacher said that the fish would hatch only in two hours. Our meeting was too short for it. Did the fish hatch the following day? Make a guess.

The clue is that we were delighted in the morning.