Ramadan with ‘Google’ !

GOOGLE – Your personal assistant this Ramadan (and for the rest of your life practically) ❤

02 June 2016 – got invited to GOOGLE HQ, Dubai for an exclusive breakfast to explore the myriad of ways Google can be our personal companion and make our lives easier everyday.

The Google team came up with a brilliant strategic competition that helped me and the influencers of Dubai learn the power of every Google application. They set up a cook off between 4 teams and Chef Bader Najeeb was the judge!

Before kicking off the competition, each team was supposed to download – Google Calendar, Google Photos, Google Translate, Google and YouTube . The aim was to cook 3 dishes that had good taste, presentation and quality with the help of all these applications  Our main backbone was a piece of paper written in German (which neither of us knew to read) and cue cards that helped us along the way.

1. Google Calendar – We had only 30 minutes + 10 minutes grace at the end to create 3 dishes. This app. helped us by constantly sending reminders that we had ‘x’ number of minutes to go.

2. Google Photos – Being bloggers we *obviously* had to/wanted to take pictures to record our experience. Best part? There was an option to render all the images into a video or animation at the end!!

3. Google Translate – Practically our backbone! Did you know if you JUST hover through a language with the help of your camera, google translate AUTOMATICALLY and simultaneously keeps translating it on the spot for you?  I didn’t!! Without this app we could NOT have proceeded with this competition.

4. Google – This powerful application was like my companion throughout the competition. I had so many questions throughout the competition (eg: how to poach an egg? how to cut an avocado? how many calories does this meal have? how do I make taboulleh?) Not only did it save my time from typing, it even SPEAKS out the answers! With just a click of a button, I can ask Google a question and it would instantly give me an accurate response.

5. YouTube – Who does not know why YouTube is not helpful? 😛 sometimes actions speak louder than words. Whenever my team was stuck, we would always resort/call out to our favourite YouTube 🙂

6. Google Maps – I admit, I am TERRIBLE in directions! Having google maps in my phone *literally* makes my world faster and easier. Being a blogger I get invited to almost every nook and corner in UAE, if it wasn’t for Google Maps, I would’ve grown old in my car 😆

My Team

We were a strong group of 3 ladies – it was myself, SanaOnFood and CoffeeCakesandRunning! We made 3 fantastic dishes that were utterly lip smacking but we didn’t quite make the cut 🙁 Our first dish had a fantastic combination; it consisted of avocado, scrambled eggs, bresaola and kale, all in a brown bread bowl – being a food blogger myself, let me tell you, it was delicious  Our second dish was a refreshing taboulleh and the last meal was a dessert! It consisted of caramelized bananas that got everyone digging in to our plate