Burj Dubai Not Going to Fall Over Shock Horror

It was interesting to see the piece in Arabian Business magazine this week by Editor James Bennett, who got taken up to the top of the Burj Dubai by Emaar’s Peeaars so that his photographer could snap some neat panoramics.

James’ obvious excitement at his vertiginous treat was refreshing. You spend so much time being told that this or that project is cracking, sinking, broken, over-budget and so on that it was a pleasure to read a straightforward Boy’s Own style account of what it’s like to stand on top of one of the world’s greatest ever pieces of engineering.

We’ve had them, of course: the rumours. That the rock substrate was full of caves, that there are cracks in the base, that the water levels are all screwed up. But at the end of the day, the world’s tallest building is still piling on a floor every three days. And it is now, whatever else ye say about it, the world’s tallest building.

And it hasn’t fallen over yet, either.

But then the Burj Al Arab hasn’t sunk or rusted. And the Palm Islands haven’t been washed away. And the airport terminal hasn’t blown over. And and and.

Much as we like to enjoy the vicarious thrill of the ‘They’ve come a cropper on this one, I can tell you…’ story, you have to admit that we haven’t actually seen many of the dire prophecies fulfilled. Or any, in fact.

Which perhaps makes one wonder why we continue to be so interested in, and ready to believe, these little tales of woe to come from Jim whose mate Phil knows a consultant on the first phase of the blablabla project and they’ve bought all the wrong sort of rawlplugs…

Out of Control

Oh dear. I don't seem to be able to stop myself! All sorts of naughty 'Modhesh is Evil' scenarios are unfolding in front of me!!!

It's deep in mid-summer and I need a holiday. That's my only excuse your honour...

Proof that it IS Evil!

In celebration of the 1000th member of the chucklesome Facebook Group: proof that he is, indeed, evil.

Hmmm... I can feel a meme coming on...

PARTY PARTY PARTY PARTY

Like many other people who write blogs, I started this so that I could be witty, frothy and generally entertaining. There's little doubt that blogging is, indeed, an adult version of that horrible urge that precocious children have to play the piano or show off your ability to do break dancing in the middle of mum and dad's dinner party.

But I have to hold up my hands and admit that today's post comes to you from a narrative, comedic and linguistic talent that so far eclipses my own pathetic efforts that I bring it to you unedited, unexpurgated (and un-spellchecked!). It was shared with me, for which I thank him deeply and humbly, by pal Sherif The Killer of Yellow Things... It was sent to him, genuinely, as an email...

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Who doesn’t like to celebrate! All moments can be JOYFUL moments … YOU ONLY NEED THE RIGHT TEAM TO HELP YOU CELEBRATE!!!

Summer is here and the heat has drained everyone … But why not find the time to have some fun? Enjoyment & Pleasure is what we can supply you with… from the food to lights & music … from the simplest to the most sophisticated detail … we can plan and deliver all…

- Are you preparing for your WEDDING??? With all your wedding stress do you have the time to plan??? Why not enjoy and relax, while we plan for your wedding?

- From your BACHELOR or BACHELORETTE party … to the smallest and refine detail … we are pleased to do it all for you… To make your night a memorable evening !!!

- Your wife is PREGNANT and doesn’t feel like outing, the heat, the loud music, the cigarette smoke all would be things that bother her… why not do something SPEICAL for her just because you love her… but with a clean environment… and let us take care of the simplest details for you…

- You had a FIGHT with your lover… and you think everything is collapsing around you … why go for a cliché dinner??? Wouldn’t that be something you will expect ??? why not do something extraordinary… forget about the details just have the day to re-fresh and prepare yourself for the makeup night… and we will do it all for you…

- Are you getting a DIVORCE??? Why feel sorry about it??? Enjoy it and celebrate your new beginning??? We can plan your divorce party in way that you will enjoy it even better than your wedding…

- Your wife left for the summer vacation but you are still here working and feeling LONLEY missing her HOMEMADE FOOD… why feel lonely when you can have it all even if you are left alone??? Invite a couple of friends and lets us cook for you and celebrate your loneliness …

- Your best friend doesn’t feel like celebrating his/her BIRTHDAY??? Why not to come with the right plan to make him/her enjoy what was thought it would be a boring night??? We can come up with the idea and the plan and make your friends night a memorable one…

You just past your EXAMS and you think that’s something simple??? No its not !!! its another reason to celebrate… Let us organize it for you…

We at Cateriya Catering Services do it all… from your HAPPY MOMENTS to UNFORGETABLE MEMORIES … From your WORSE DAYS to days that will only be kept as HAPPY reminiscences … We make you forget that you even went through the stress… contact us and we will take care of everything … cause you deserve to be treated like a QUEEN / KING at all times and all occasions…

If non of the above exist and IS part of your life… Than for sure you need us … we will add the spices to your life with planning an unforgettable event for you…

Rendered speechless, for once, I have no comment...

Naked

Gulf News’ report that Dubai now has a Nudist Labour Camp made me laugh until the tears ran down my face. The thought of a number of these blokes making it home from the dusty building sites and then whizzing around the stacked rabbit hutches of the labour camps like the naked bloke with the juniper bushes in The Life of Brian really appealed to me.

It really is time to go on leave, isn't it?

RTA Quote of The Year

No sooner had I finished posting up a grumpy slice of whingeing about Salik than the morning papers landed with their customary 'thud' and with them the news that the new Floating Bridge over Dubai creek was shut yesterday morning for hours, causing massive and widespread chaos and misery on the roads.

Why?

According to Dubai's RTA (Roads and Transport Authority), quoted by Gulf News: "The bridge was closed for about two hours as part of the contingency plan to conduct some technical experiments during the peak hours so as to ensure that the emergency system works effectively using the smart traffic systems."

This is the finest, rarest, premium quality doublespeak. Not even Sir Humphrey Applebey could ever have reached these heights. This obfuscatory blither is the result of the hard work of a truly brilliant team of communications professionals and I salute them all individually and collectively.

Salik Surprises

So much has been written about Dubai’s congestion charge, Salik, that it’s difficult to contemplate adding to what’s already out there without a certain sense of resignation and perhaps a touch of fear that it’s just going to be a repetition of the considerable volume of incredulity, indignation, anger and exasperated invective that has peppered so many blogs over the past couple of months. Even the media, ever-aware of the burden of governmental disapproval, has tried to reflect the broad public dislike of the scheme. Strangely, few of the people who have complained appear to have been motivated to do so by the financial impact: it has been the apparent lack of a clear objective or a well-communicated plan of any sort that has drawn much of the negative comment in both on and off-line media. The response of the RTA, to the broad public concern has, at its least helpful, been to tell the public to stow it because they’re ‘not traffic experts’. The flow of information regarding the scheme and the ‘traffic management objectives’ that we’re told about as we hold for the Salik call centre to finish ‘helping’ other callers has hardly ever been more than a grudging trickle.

I am one of those people whose mobile numbers were ‘given wrongly’: I still have the copy of the form in which my mobile number is given with perfect clarity. I corrected the error over the ‘phone last week when I got through to their call centre. Today I got an SMS telling me that my balance of Dhs 2 was insufficient and that I should top up or face a fine. Now, forgive me, but I thought that one of the ideas was that you’d get an SMS warning you that your balance was low. Apparently not.

So I went to top up. I have to confess I was a little annoyed at having to do this on the spur of the moment rather than with a couple of crossings’ notice, but never mind. The Emarat station just prior to the Garhoud toll only has one till that can take Salik top-ups because they only have one pad of Salik top up forms – a rather analogue, multipart book of slips.

I can pay my phone bill using online and telephone banking, as well as my electricity and water bill. I can pay my traffic fines and I can even renew my PO box online.

But I have to top up my Salik account by filling in a cloakroom slip? So be it. I aimed to top up with a nice Dhs250 so that I wouldn't have to do it again for a good while. So I gave the girl my Visa card. Which is when I discovered you can only pay for Salik by cash.

What a muckle-headed slice of totally incompetent daftness.

But I’m not finished by a long chalk. You see, I then drove over Garhoud to hit the tailback immediately after the bridge. Because it’s gridlocked over Maktoum and the new Floating Bridge through City Centre and up the Ittihad Road to Sharjah. Because the traffic that’s crossed Business Bay to avoid Salik joins Garhoud a couple of hundred meters after the very bridge that this Salik scheme was meant to keep clear. It’s caused worse traffic congestion in the whole Deira area than we have every seen before and THIS IS SUMMER TRAFFIC – the number of cars on the road is something like 25% less than normal.

I thought I’d get a few laughs out of Salik but I, along with a lot of other people, have stopped laughing. Come September, when the traffic levels ramp back up to their usual heaving stock car race levels, there’ll be a whole lot more people not laughing.

Someone should really start doing some explaining.

Sky - That's Better!

Sky was getting properly into the swing of things last night: lots of stories on how communities were coming together and managing to cope with the flooding disaster.

I can only hope that my profound indignation, in the spirit of a butterfly in Beijing, somehow transmitted itself to London and changed a few synapses in the mind of a senior production team member. But sadly I have to admit that it's more likely that they simply came to their senses...

Shopper's Paradise

Today's Emarat Al Youm has a news story blaring the great news that retail sales in Dubai have gone through the roof this summer, obviously thanks to the Dubai Summer Surprises festival which is headed, as over 900 Facebook Group joining (it's going to hit the 1,000 by the weekend) people know, by the infinite-eyed grinning yellow evil that is Modhesh Al Modhesh.

25% increase in shoppers shrills the page 18 headline, backed up by the picture caption, Boutiques and accessory shops had the highest share of Festival sales.

Delightfully, the huge image used to illustrate the story is that of an completely empty shop.

One can only conjecture that they had been scared away temporarily by the appearance of a hungry, ravening Modhesh...

Ainsworth 1 Sky News 0 - They're Still Getting the Tone Wrong!

Following my wee rant about Sky News and how I think they’re getting the tone of their reporting on the floods in the UK wrong, I was delighted to watch Sky’s Jeremy Thompson interviewing Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment Peter Ainsworth last night. Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m no Tory. But long-time anchor figure Bowen started to rag Ainsworth about David ‘I wash regularly, actually’ Cameron going to Africa while his constituency was underwater. And that brought Ainsworth out of his corner fighting like Tyson on crack cocaine. Ainsworth slammed Thompson for Sky’s ‘blame game’ reporting, pointed out that we all had more important things to worry about and that the community was getting itself together and didn’t need Sky carping and pointing fingers right now thank you very much.

Thompson (whom I respect, incidentally) took a huge whack to the chin. And there I was cheering a spokesperson on again…

Meanwhile, talking about the weather, as the deliciously eccentric Alison Goldfrapp tells us: “It’s a strange day, no colours no shapes”. Today we woke up to the washed out colours of a summer Shamal, everything around rendered indistinct by the whirling sand, the air thick with the fine, pale dust. It gets up your nose, in your ears, in your hair, dries your skin and enervates your spirit.

The Mistral, the Khamsin, the Scirocco – the great seasonal winds of the world. And all we get is the miserable old Shamal.

The UAE’s Shamal whips up the desert and dumps it on the cities: sand streams across the roads and visibility drops, sometimes alarmingly. Shamal is Arabic for North and, perhaps interestingly, many people in the Arab World use shamal to mean left as well as yassar (right is yemin). Quite why North is synonymous with left is a mystery to me...

The beating hot wind, stinging with sand particles, is just what you need to add to that cheery summer feeling. Mind you, it could be worse. We could be 30 feet under in water.

Which is as neat a link as you’re ever going to get on this blog.

What to do?

This most celebrated of UAE ‘Hinglish’ phrases is the ultimate in fatalism. It means, ‘You’re so screwed, you might as well just give up and stop breathing now, pal’, but is infinitely more polite as it also involves a degree of 'And it's not my fault, it's out of my hands and in those of our creator'.

It is invariably delivered with an inclination of the head and a smile. Your electricity has been cut off because of a clerical error, it’s Thursday evening and the reconnection team have all gone home for the weekend and you face at least 72 hours in the sweltering heat with no power and water through no fault of your own. You’re raging and the man from the electricity smiles at you and shakes his head, saying: “What to do?”

Pals Dom and Scott and I thought it would be a great Whisky brand for the Indian market and many a boozy evening has consequently descended into brainstorming sessions for the commercials.

Actor is sitting, cross-legged on the compacted earth, in front of the ruins of a Malabari house. There are coconut palms waving gently in the sun behind him. He’s wearing a shirt and lunghi as he addresses the camera.

“House is burning. Insurance not updated. Wife is leaving. Dowry being refundable. I am having nothing left. Even children are going back to grandmother.”

Actor grins broadly, raising glass of whisky with lots of ice cubes in to camera and inclines head in time-honoured fashion.

“What to do?”

The variations on the theme are, of course, awesome.

It was a phrase I was able to use this morning, as young Carrington was heard fuming and fulminating as he tried to struggle with his new home PC. Apparently he was having some issues with something called Windows Vista that was causing his sparkly new slice of integrated technology platform to blow raspberries, generally misbehave, lock up, whistle Dixie and on the whole refuse to come out and play. I waited until he finished his litany of driver issues and errors and then expressed my sympathy appropriately.

“Yes, I understand the severity of the situation. But what to do?”

I shall not record his response for fear it may offend the delicate ears of the genteel reader…

UK Flooding: The Spokesperson Bites Back

The recent massive flooding in the UK has been interesting for me, particularly because I’ve been able to sit here in the sweltering heat and watch how it’s been handled from a huge distance. And I have to say that the interview I watched recently between Sky News’ anchor and a complete unknown called Graham Bowskill had me cheering.

I spend quite a lot of my professional life coaching spokespeople who will be dealing with media. I spend a little bit of my time being a spokesperson talking to media, too. And so I guess, despite my pro-media approach to my work, I’m also inclined to ‘root’ for a spokesperson. Rarely have I found myself so involved in the moments of combat, because let’s face it this is a contact sport, as I was watching the Bowskill interview.

The story is simple: a huge volume of rain fell on areas in the UK again this week, forcing motorists to spend overnight in their cars on blocked motorways. Roads across the country were flooded and became impassable: whole communities have been flooded out with huge volumes of water - much of it now contaminated.

So when Sky News’ anchor starts to play the blame game and try to pin the misery of overnight stranded motorists and flooded homes on the Highways Agency, you’d expect spokesperson Graham Bowskill to stutter and witter, to try and defend his agency’s pathetic performance to the journalist who speaks for all of us.

Well, he didn’t. He spoke well, cogently and with dignity.

Now UK PR commentator The World’s Leading (Theo to his mates) has already made the point that spokespeople in the UK speak in a strange, strangled, doublespeak when they’re put on the spot. And Graham did that, for sure. But he also pointed out that his agency had issued major warnings to the media (and he didn’t say that the responsibility that the media bore was that of ensuring those warnings were taken as seriously as they were intended, but he might as well have, because the media does bear that responsibility) and that his agency had told people not to travel and his agency was trying to deal with a highly exceptional event. He went on to detail what the issues were and how his agency and its allied emergency services were reacting to meet the challenge – and he was doing that right up until the anchor, who had sensed she wasn’t going to win her moment of fame for nailing the twerp who was responsible for all our misery, cut him off while he was still trying to tell us how the services were dealing with the issue. She was wrong to have done so: and by God, I was (I swear, I was) on the edge of my chair cheering him on. Because a decent man, outlining a decent response - on all our behalves - to a totally unprecedented situation actually deserves our attention and our regard.

The fact is that Bowskill putting his strong case forward well actually played against everything that the journalist wanted – a cheap shot story angle that focused everyone’s rightful indignation and anger on the sucker being interviewed. And so he came through it all beautifully. It’s such a shame that nobody was there to point out how at odds with our common feeling at a time of crisis this style of ‘blame game’ journalism is. Because, of course, the media playing that game would never DREAM of facing public criticism that their response was inappropriate.

Several of Sky's interviews around the whole flooding disaster since have been in the same vein: alarmist and obviously ranging around and looking for someone they can pin blame on. Last night they cut an interview short with a chap who was telling them that the community had actually given up worrying and was taking it all lightly. Again, it's not what they wanted to hear and so they moved on and cut the interview.

And I do find it interesting that, as communities pull together in the face of this unprecedented disaster, Sky is just lobbing stones, being alarmist and generally plain unhelpful. It does seem to me that their tone of coverage is sharply at odds with public sentiment. I wonder if it will backfire on them...

George Bush Colon Cancer Scare: Brilliant!

Do you understand what happened here? They removed polyps from his colon. That means the simian wee bastard had a rectally inserted laproscopy procedure. They gave him 48 hours’ worth of wickedly chemical laxatives that made him shit himself clear (literally), together with a 48 hour ‘no solids’ regime. Over the past two days, he’s eaten nothing but consommé and drunk nothing but water and apple juice. He’s had to take a number of evilly effective chemical laxative doses that had him speeding at absolutely no notice to the bog to void himself in an uncontrollable frenzy of shitting an increasingly watery and uncomfortable stream of warm gleet. And then they slapped a dose of pethedine into his withered veins (Christ, but I bet that reminded him of how a bottle of Jack felt) and slid a KY-smothered fibre optic 'scope into his puckered little Texan ass.

But that’s just the beginning...

Then they pumped air into his colon to inflate it so that the cameras can see around. It’s despicably uncomfortable, like someone released a high pressure airline into your gut. People who’ve done it without the happy juice have been known to scream with the pain of it all.

And then they excised lumps of his lower gut (videotaped – I can’t WAIT for the bootleg) with a hot wire loop so that he could shit it out in a stream of post-operative blood and KY jelly, like a pretty new resident of a Texan jail taking his first crap.

No wonder he handed over to Dick Cheney. Who wants the Free World to be in the hands of a drugged up psychopath who's lost control of his bowels and is taking a royally huge instrument up his ass?

Oh. Hang on. That's pretty much situation normal, isn't it? You'd almost wonder why they bothered calling Dick at all, wouldn't you?

This is something that people in the Arab World should be told about. It will bring them a little moment of joy. Particularly the Iraqis...

The Revenge of the Rose and the Truck Road

One of the many strange and wonderful inventions to come from the mind of Michael Moorcock, one of the great novelists writing in English today, was that of the Gypsy Nation in his fantasy, The Revenge of the Rose. The Gypsy Nation was an enormous caravan of perpetually motive land leviathans that created a world-girdling road of compressed detritus, a huge pathway created from millennia of the caravan's discarded rubbish.

It was the first thing that popped into my head as we travelled down from Dibba to Sharjah: there’s a new road that snakes out through the foothills of the Hajjar mountains behind the Fujairah Cement plant, past the many crushers and quarries that now dot the landscape, and joins the Manama/Ras Al Khaimah road. And its continuation is a truck road, from Manama to just above Umm Al Qawain on the Emirates Road, that runs across the wide, rocky wadi plain and then carries on through the slowly changing landscape until it rises and falls through the red sands of the Northern desert. Dotted along the margins of this lone, straight pencil-line of blacktop is a constant litter of discarded tyres and occasional heaps of rocks that testify to delayed, and dropped, loads. And on the road itself, travelling both ways, is a constant slow-moving procession of heavy vehicles, laden with teetering loads of rock going south and empty (but still lumbering) travelling back north. It’s a nose-to-tail procession that mimics the constant grind of Moorcock’s Gypsy Nation, seemingly unstoppable, slow-moving and perpetual.

This groaning procession is the raw material that’s feeding Dubai’s frenzy of construction: the cement, stone and sand that are being poured together into the dizzying tower blocks and sea-raping palms of Dubai’s Miracle.

Isn’t it strange that they have to level mountains to build skyscrapers and demolish hills to reclaim the sea?

Road Runner and the Radar Rotters

One of the things that’s kept me so long in the UAE is the fact that it’s such a very paradoxical place: there’s never one simple answer or one simple fact, a single explanation or a unitary truth. Even better, the variety of complexities are usually deliciously oppositional.

For instance, we enjoy one of the world’s lowest crime rates and live in one of the safest environments the globe has to offer. And at the same time the number of deaths on our roads is remarkably high – traffic accidents are an everyday commonplace, so much so that, with humanity’s remarkable penchant for adaptability, we tend to accept driving past the blood-chilling wreckage of interlocked cars as a mere fact of life. Many actually slow down for a good old peek, an Eastern morbid fascination that irritates those from the West, who fidget and moan at the delays caused by the rubberneckers.

The response to a number of high profile road tragedies and the consequent growing howl of outrage from media and public was to introduce a huge number of new speed cameras. I don’t know how much radar the human body can cope with, but many of us are now being multiply irradiated daily (as well as being RFIDed by the glorious Salik system!) as the vast network of fixed and mobile radars grows. They’re springing up everywhere, particularly the mobile ones.

And the mobile ones are most fun.

It’s like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner out there, it really is. They set them up behind bushes, traffic signs, concrete blocks, dustbins or any other roadside impediment they can find. They park up on the roadside with the radar gun and flash unit in front of the bonnet, set up by the tailgate or snuck into the back of an estate car. There’s even one unit that’s a van with a circular and rectangular window cut into the back to accommodate the hardware. All it needs is a sign on the side saying 'ACME Radar Unit'...

They set up the cameras and park their, usually relatively distinctive (in the Khawaneej area you’ll find a silver estate and a sea-green metallic hatchback are the cars of choice) motors around the corner so you don’t spot ‘em. One of them has the delightful habit of parking his car on the hard shoulder and putting the camera 200 meters or so back up the road from it so that the radar catches you before you slow down in case the car is a radar unit. This is only averagely sneaky – there’s one bozo in Sharjah who likes to set up his mobile camera a hundred metres or so after one of the fixed cameras, so they get you as you speed up past the fixed one. Like I said, it’s Road Runner style stuff!

But the one that really fires me up is the joker who sets up on my way to work: the Academic City road between Khawaneej and the Al Ain road. This four-lane stretch of gently curving asphalt runs through 100% desert: there’s not a house, factory or other building on it. If ever there was a road that should carry a 120kph limit (the UAE maximum), this was it. And the limit, insanely, is 80. It’s almost impossible to drive that stretch of long desert road at 80kph. You’d go mad. They’d find you naked and running, gibbering, through the ghaf trees.

So it’s rich pickings for our evilly giggling little friend. Convention dictates that radar cameras in the UAE trigger at 20kph above the limit. So you do 101kph down the Academic City road and he’s nailed you with a Dhs200 fine.

But wickedness can bring out the best in people. UAE nationals, expats, Europeans, Indians, Pakistani truck drivers and all – I’ve watched as drivers warn others about the hidden camera, flashing hazard lights, brake lights or even putting arms out to flag down those jazzing it up in the fast lane. I have thanked and been thanked in my turn by others as people from around the world are brought together, for a few brief and human seconds, by the collective desire to save our fellow men from the predatory and unfair practices of the Radar Rotter.

The Flight From Hell

The bloke in front is a serial recliner and has knocked the bottle on my food tray over twice. The bloke next to me is a hairy-armed expansionist and eats with his elbow waving in my face or hitting me constantly. The bloke behind me spends three hours cleaning his teeth with a sloppy sucking noise every 1-3 minutes, intervals nicely randomised to create a truly Chinese (although he might have been Korean) water torture effect. It sounds like the noises naughty children make in cinemas during love scenes. It's, literally, maddening. The bloke next to him is a serial talking bore with a honking, loud, nasal voice that cuts across every other sound and constantly interrupts your reading with banalities about life in the Middle East. At one stage he actually says 'You have to understand the Arab Mentality', which is a phrase that I loathe profoundly.

But at least they don't play a Modhesh video as we start our descent to Dubai...

* Rule One: Anyone who says 'You have to understand the Arab Mentality' invariably does so in tones that suggest they do. Rule Two: They don't. There isn't one. It's just dumb racism.

Celebrating Amman

The most marvellous thing about Amman is the sunset. Like Bath, the city’s built out of a single type of light cream stone (‘Jordan stone’ is increasingly popular as a cladding material in the Emirates) and so, like Bath, it is transformed by the dying sun into a display of stunning colour and shade: sienna, umber, orange and red.

I’m staying, for a change, at The Kempinski Hotel in Amman – it’s a strange little place, although by no means unpleasant. It’s in the middle of Shmeisani, which is the central restaurant and general ‘things happening’ district of Amman: a version of Dubai’s Satwa, I guess. I’ve pretty much always stayed at the Grand Hyatt before, although I have occasionally infested the Four Seasons as well. And I’ve done a few stays at the Intercon. Once, in 1988, I stayed at the Marriott.

I’d recommend the Kempinski Amman in a mild sort of way if you’re looking for a reasonably priced short stay business hotel and you’re not too fussed about getting the Greatest Breakfast in the Middle East. As everyone in their right mind knows, this is only available at the Hatta Fort Hotel…

The Amman Kempinski gets a number of the little things right and the room rate’s pretty keen. The Grand Hyatt remains my favourite Amman hotel, though – and the new(ish) seafood restaurant there, 32 North, is stunning – if expensive. Just think landlocked Mediterranean desert country and airfreighted fresh Northern European seafood and you’ll reconcile the price gap, I’m sure.

As I’m in Amman, both literally and figuratively: some other Jordan recommendations. Eat with a noisy group of friends at Jordanian Sushi pioneer Vinaigrette, to be found at the Al Qasr Hotel (It was, until recently, the Howard Johnson Hotel – and is also home to the popular ‘Nai’ nightclub), known locally as ‘Vinny’ or experience the amazing Fakhreddine, one of the great Arab restaurants of the Levant in Amman’s romantic First Circle area of 1920s villas. If you want to get funky, do a smart-arty salad lunch at the Wild Café, the USAID sponsored joint that overlooks the archaeologically sculpted ages past of the central Citadel or even go for evening drinks at the Blue Fig in Abdoun, just because you want to get deep into Jordanian youth art culture. You could also indulge yourself in a vodka dry Martini at the Four Seasons’ wickedly expensive Square Bar which is, famously, ‘Alex’s treat’. In winter, do the same thing but do it sitting by the fireside in the downstairs lounge. The Patio, my favourite warm winter place in Amman, has sadly gone. But you can recreate its unique culinary ambience, if you like, by going here.

BTW: I always enjoy when the airport transfer driver asks the inevitable question: “Is this your first time in Amman, Seer?” Because I get to answer that no, it’s not. It’s my 58^th. Which, I suppose, means that I should try to get out more or something…

Summer Respite in Amman

The weather in Jordan is, as usual, lovely. My only regret is that I'm here to work, sans Sarah, and not indulging my favourite summer pastime driving together around the deep countryside and marvelling at the many things Jordan presents to delight the curious visitor off the beaten tourist trails.

It's busy: Petra making it to number two spot in the New Seven Wonders of the World list has apparently already had a positive impact on tourism. It's amazing how the Middle East can bounce back: less than two years ago I was here commiserating with friends and staying in an empty Grand Hyatt, its lobby boarded up after the bombings the week before. I had flown in principally because we were supporting an art exhibition, called 'Into The Light', an exhibition by a number of Jordanian artists protesting the bombing. Now the tourists are flocking to the Second Wonder of the World again.

Which is nice for people here - although visiting Petra when you have the place entirely to yourself, as we did during the US invasion of Iraq, is an amazing experience that the teeming hordes will miss...

Dubai Grumpy Surprises

How strange. This blog set out, at least in part, to be a good-natured celebration of the rich source of amusement to be derived from the quixotic and frequently barmy Emirates and as the summer gets truly underway it’s just becoming grumpy and generally arsey – the very thing I didn’t want it to be! Blame the weather. The car’s thermometer is reading anywhere from 40-48C in the sun, the humidity’s way up on the gloopy hot air scale, everyone seems to have gone home or be travelling the world except for a smattering of bachelors - and our own leave, booked around two long-anticipated weddings, is still almost a month away.

All you want to do is crawl away under a tree somewhere cool and green and read books or wander through soft, cool spring rain.

Rats.

It’s almost enough to make you complain about living in a tax-free, beach-infested sunny place with wall to wall five star hotels that’s one of the most secure places in the world, isn’t it?

Which reminds me of being at home a couple of years ago with Sarah, who was trying to explain to someone at a party or something that living in the Emirates isn't really all life in a bed of roses. For instance, you can’t just go to the restaurant down the road here and get a bottle of wine with your food, because only hotels can legally serve alcohol. “Look,” she said. “We can’t even buy a drink unless we’re in a five star hotel!”

Woopsie. That one came out wrong! They were crying for us, they really were…

Meanwhile, over 600 people have now discovered an outlet for those summer frustrations... >;0)

The Beckhams Move Out

Who on earth cares about that silly woman and her obvious publicity stunts? Is anyone in the world falling for it outside the ever-hungry British red tops and Sky (thank God we've found another filler to keep that 24 hour feed moving) TV?

I wonder what it costs to have 100+ shills turn up at LAX and behave like real paps?

If your husband was minted, and about to turn in $120 million for the coming five years' work, would you use your kids as a publicity prop, or bother tipping off the media so that you could milk the subsequent airport feeding frenzy?

What drives her? And please tell me I'm not the only person that finds naked ambition ugly when the only thing between you and ambition's all too obvious bone structure (and pouting temperament) is a couple of pounds of silicon...

There. That feels better already. How cathartic a blog can be!

LOLcats – Beware the Children of the Meme

Am I the only person in the world who thinks that the only thing less funny than the much discussed LOL Cats is being boiled to death in your own tears? I freely confess to failing to see the purpose or humour in this most pathetic of memes. Cutesy, dumbed down and with little originality or witticism, they synthesise the worst of ‘Ahhh, look at kitty!’ with a touch of ‘Who loves the naughty kitty then?’ It’s enough to make you puke.

The Web has spawned many a meme before: a meme is a shared item of cultural information, a fancy way of explaining an oft-repeated joke, catchphrase or other aphorism. Think, ‘I’m not bovvered, does my face look bovvered?’ or ‘No but yes but no but well Lara Hopkins was having it away with Dwayne Pipe behind the bikesheds and I said no way you fat slag when her sister asked if I had any blurkers cos Lara din’t have none and she wanted to go again wiv im.’

Although a number of the people that think it’s funny to do bad impersonations of Vicky Pollard usually stop at the ‘No but yes but no but’ bit, the people that like Internet memes will eternally invent new things to put on the back of ‘Yes but no but yes but’ that perpetuate the joke. Most people would get bored after three iterations of the same fundamental gag, but not the Children of the Meme. You know how there’s always some spotty little Herbert at parties that takes the joke too far? Some jerk that does the Parrot Sketch or bits out of Black Adder, then calls you Baldrick all night until you take ‘em outside and beat 'em until they stop twitching?

Well, they’re all on the Web and they’re all chuckling over the LOLcats.

The LOLcats started with a mildly amusing idea: combine a picture of a cat or two with a caption that has the cat talking like a gangster rappa. You know, picture of Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s cat with the caption: ‘Iz cuz I’m black, innit’

The gorilla of LOLcat meme stores is ‘I can haz Cheezburger’, but please don't blame me if you choose to follow the link...

Mild smile the first time, for sure. Well done, good gag, move on. But how many more variations of that gag can one put up with before involuntarily losing the contents of the upper stomach? In case you’re wondering, the answer is four. If you are a Child of the Meme, the answer is four million.

Other, I would submit marginally funnier, memes that the Web has spawned over the past few years include The Tourist of Death and All Your Base Are Belong To Us. I blame Gianni for introducing me to both of these. Thankfully, he didn't mention the LOLcats to me, otherwise I'd have deleted him from my contacts.

Meanwhile, although his relatively famous and celebrated guitar playing cats are funny, I guarantee that Joel Veitch’s Spong Monkeys will make you laugh. Joel is arguably not a well young man and needs to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, but there are few things more absurd and wildly funny in the world than the Spong Monkeys' Moon Song. Perhaps the Middle East policy of the current US administration...

The Penultimate Campaigner

A somewhat diffident young Englishman called Richard Abbott is leaving the UAE. There are a number of reasons why this is significant news, not least of which is that Richard was the editor of the region’s most famous and celebrated non-magazine, Campaign Middle East.

He is also the natural winner of the UAE leg of the William Dalrymple Lookalike Contest, but that's something else entirely.

This move does not bode well for any future that the cheeky little Haymarket licensed magazine had. Richard and team, having transferred from ITP with the title, had kept the faith for months, waiting for Motivate to gain a license to publish the magazine acquired from ITP in such mysterious circumstances. Nothing has happened since and now Richard’s leaving, it looks increasingly certain that nothing, indeed, is going to happen.

I’ll miss Campaign ME, and not just because I used to write a column in it every week (and was scheduled, to the surprise of some apparently, to write one under Motivate's aegis as well). I’ll miss it because it was an intelligent and occasionally even incisive weekly magazine about the industry in which I work and because it provided a good counterpoint and foil to the excellent Communicate.

Drinks with Richard tonight will be invariably tinged with sadness. But drinks is drinks…

PS: Iain Akerman is still at Motivate and therefore is truly the Last of the Mohicans...

And on the Pedestal These Words Appear: 'Goodyear Inflate to 30psi'

Driving down a desert road the other day, deep into the dunes on a four-lane ribbon of blacktop snaking into the distance, I saw two men sitting by the roadside in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Between them, standing up on its tread, was a large truck tyre. All around, as Samuel Taylor tells us, the sands were boundless and bare. They weren't really lone and level, because it was dune country, but you get the picture.

I’d gone another 100 metres before I realised that I had witnessed a first grade incongruity. What the hell were they doing there? How did they get there? Where were they going? What was with the tyre? I don’t need to emphasise that there was no accompanying truck for miles either way along the roadside.

I started making up explanations for their seemingly inexplicable presence in the middle of nowhere, just to amuse myself.

• They were travelling to deliver a tyre. They were cousins, but being naturally argumentative people, had got into one of those interminable wrangles over something small and daft, like who had fancied the village beauty first. Finally, the driver had had enough of their constant bickering and had ditched them both, then and there.
  
• They’d gone to sleep and had woken up to find that they’d lost a truck. All they had left was the spare tyre. Knowing that they're in big trouble, they decided to wait for the thief to bring the truck back.
  
• They were with Al Qaeda and were waiting to blow something up. This was the best they could manage. All they need now is an air line.
  
• They were members of a strange Kashmiri cargo cult and had wheeled their prize from Sharjah in order to take part in a Gnostic desert tyre-worshipping ceremony. They were consequently trying to look innocent and inconspicuous until the rest of the tyre-worshippers turned up.
  

Whatever my craziest, desert-drive fuelled fantasy was, it probably wasn’t a patch on the truth. And that truth, dear reader, will never be known.

Salik and Thanks for all the Fish

Looking at visitors to this blog (thanks for dropping by: hope you had fun), it has to be said that many are people that have been searching Google for information related to Dubai's Salik toll gate system and have been ending up here instead. So I'd like to apologise.

Sorry.

I have frequently been frivolous and lobbed stones into the whole Salik debate but genuinely have little constructive to say. That's partly because there's so little to say that is constructive. I also have little useful to tell you other than that Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) allegedly employs some 15 people in its public relations department and has apparently retained at least one, if not two or three PR agencies.

What they are all doing is a complete mystery to me. And no, it's not sour grapes because my agency’s not down home at the farm milking the RTA cash cow. The lack of information, engagement and transparency regarding the whole Salik congestion charge scheme has been remarkable by any standard.

Sure, the Salik system is working now. Sure, most of the major problems have been ironed out (well, apart from my registration SMS not appearing with my all-important account number without which I can't find out my balance or recharge my card, but we won't let that worry us, will we?). But it's the abiding sour taste that it's all left in people's mouths that I find interesting.

It honestly didn't have to be this way. A smarter, better planned and, above all, more transparent communications campaign could have resulted in a better informed public, more buy-in for the scheme (people tend to buy in to a well-put, sound argument that's been properly communicated) and less residual resentment. The investment, in care, time and money, was infinitesimal compared to the scale of the whole scheme.

I wonder if I’m the only person out there that thinks that the communications element of the whole Salik affair has been handled poorly? Somehow I don't think I am...

Laugh, and the World Punches You in the Face

You know you’re overdue leave when every small incident seems to bring that red mist down and you feel like you’re spending most of your day controlling your natural urge to strangle people. There are those among us for whom this is normal, everyday behaviour, of course. But for most of us, it comes in that last two or three weeks before flying off to pastures greener for a well-earned break being forced to eat stale Dundee cake by long-forgotten aunts.

Quick diversion to ask a perennial question. Why are you on duty when you go home, but they’re on holiday when they visit you out here?

So this time of year is a great time to catch one of those sights unique to the east-meets-west polyglot melting pot that is Dubai: that of a furious European shouting at an Indian guy who’s laughing at him.

It’s one of those facts of life here, where the world’s cultural tectonic plates rub, that different people react in different ways to different situations. The personal space of the average Brit is about three metres. For the average Malabari it’s about two millimetres. When Arab women see a cute baby, they like to fuss over it, squeeze its cheeks and give it sweets. Touch a European woman’s baby and she’ll mace you and leave you lying in the street in a heap, puking and crying. Northern Europeans queue. Nobody else bothers.

And many people from India, particularly the south it would seem, giggle when they’re nervous. It’s a natural reaction for them, particularly when people are so rude as to raise their voices. And there’s no better way to send an upset European’s temper into the stratosphere than to laugh at them when they’re shouting at you.

It always reminds me of that classic piece of that classic comedy, Fawlty Towers. O’Reilly the Irish builder has just screwed up the interior of the hotel and Basil’s fire-breathing wife Sybil is having a go at him. He laughs her off as Basil can be heard saying through gritted teeth, “Don’t laugh O’Reilly, oh please don’t laugh” and then, of course, she beats the crap out of him with an umbrella.

And so when the watchman in our building told a furious colleague that the basement parking would remain shut for another week (consigning us to another week circling the building trying to find non-existent parking spaces and then walking hundreds of yards in the sticky, hot humidity) and she started to shout, I found myself thinking of Basil Fawlty’s “Please don’t laugh!” But it was too late.

He giggled and it got twisted.

Talk to the Hand

What is it with pronunciation around here? My office is above Lal’s Supermarket. Try and tell that to anyone calling to ‘Ask your location’.

Lal's. No. Lalz. No. Laaaalssseee. No. Lalze. No. Lalllllsssss. No. Lalllllzzzzzeeeeeuuuughhhh. Not understanding.

It’s invariably a game played down to the final, desperate variation that sounds nothing like the original: “Lalluss!”

And then… Ohhhh! Lals! Why you not say Lals?

It’s also played in Arabic. Burghul. No. Burrrrgul. No. Buuuukhhuuullll. And so on.

But revenge is sweet. Good morning. Pardon? Good morniiing! Pardon?

As they say in Dubai English, I’m overdue to go on leave...

Fast Company

Sharjah’s bottled gas companies still ply their trade, operating an instant callout service with their rickety orange trucks laden with rusty yellow 100lb bombs. They took a huge hit when SEWA, the acronymically amusing Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority decided to pipe gas to the Emirate’s houses. Some of us diehards still prefer to pay the bottled gas prices rather than the wickedly expensive cost of the piped stuff. So the bottled gas companies still slip their gaudy stickers under the door and I still keep them.

The newest one arrived this weekend and I was struck by the company’s name as I added their sticker to the back of the storeroom door alongside the others that have been pasted up there over the years. A few years ago we had ‘Fast Gas’, a company whose promise was ‘Fast Delivery’. Seems like fair enough positioning to me. Then we had ‘Super Fast Gas’ who differentiated themselves with ‘Neat and Clean Cylinders’. That obviously didn’t resonate so well, because the new lot have gone back to promising ‘Quick Delivery’. But the new name caught me: neatly trumping all before them, the new kids on the block are called ‘Fast and Fast’.

You can see ‘em sitting there over a chai panjesari, older brother Akbar smoking an evil-smelling fag: ‘Good to be calling it Fast and one more thing, but what thing? Fast and good? Fast and clean? Fast and well filling?’

And then Iftikar, the bright one, suddenly banging the table: ‘What else to do? We shall be calling it Fast and FAST! That will be bloody showing them!’

I’m waiting for the next lot. My bet is they’ll be called ‘Fast and Fastest’…

And then the gas runs out halfway through cooking dinner last night. So I put in a call to Fast and Fast. I swear to God, they’re at the house within ten minutes. I can’t believe it: the first time this year I’ve been truly delighted at a service and it’s a damn local gas company. And then I see the bloke and I start laughing. It’s the same man as used to come from Superfast Gas. And, just because I was curious and asked him, yes he used to run Fast Gas before that.

Fast Company indeed…

Wot, No Posts?

No posts over the weekend. Phone company Etisalat cut off our Internet for non payment. It's a long story. Needless to say the entire episode involved the words unhelpful, process driven, automated and pillock.

Back online now.

One day someone's going to work out that great customer service is only possible when you empower your staff to take decisions so that they can go the extra mile to meet customers' needs. And when they do, my money says the last monkey to get to the typewriter will be Etisalat.

Although, strange to recount, I'm still not minded to go to du.

Would You Like Fries With That, Sir?

This has been a funny week. One of my most enjoyable jobs this week was going shopping for a private jet. It's not often (I know you'll be amazed, but it's true) that I get to do that. Not any old
private jet, either. A 37-seat private jet with cargo hold space for 150 bags is what was called for. Which was more complicated than you'd at first think...

I was truly delighted at the way people reacted to my calls. "Hi. I'm calling from Dubai and I want a sizeable private jet to pull two long-haul flights at less than a week's notice during high season."

Now you'd be forgiven for thinking that a reasonable reaction to that lot would be "Are you kidding me, mate?" but the reality was more like "Certainly Sir. We'll get onto it right away."

Most executive jets come in at under the 15 seat mark. There's actually a sizeable industry built around the sale, leasing, hiring and operations and maintenance of these little high-flying business essentials. However, the requirement for 37 pax meant an altogether larger 'plane. Most of the sub-100 seat 'planes are regional jets which can't do the long haul flight, so you're looking at something like a Boeing 737 or 757 - particularly because we also wanted cargo room for 150 bags.

For much of the week brokers were scouring the market for us while the client's team was also working on the problem (it was the client's team, grrr, that found the best solution in the end!).

The solution turned out to be an Embraer 135 LR, a long range version of the popular Brazilian regional jet that drops 13 seats to give a 37-seat (37 seats! How 'just right' could you get?) 'plane that's still got enough cargo space for the bags.

Alongside that, another client is doing a number of 'classy' events that necessitated investigating the cream of the city's private dining rooms and exclusive venues to find the very best of the lot. In a city packed to the gunwales with five star hotels, that was quite a lavish brief.

A real lalaPR week...

BTW: Shifting pop bands around the world is a pain in the arse, in case you are ever interested in going into the shifting pop bands around the world game...

Mabrouk Alan Johnston

Truly great news today, which broke at 2am so all the papers in the UAE missed it.

The slideshow of his release on Yahoo! is worth checking out - a smile that only a man who had been locked in a darkened apartment and threatened with death for four months could smile when he finally came out into the light.

A nice start to the day...

Are You Getting the Salik Message?

As predicted earlier, the SMS infrastructure that's underpinning the Salik road toll in Dubai has been providing some unscheduled summer surprises, with Gulf News reporting (one suspects a touch gleefully, if the truth be told) on the hapless punters whose mobiles have been flooded with huge quantities of SMSs originating from the Road and Transport Authority (RTA).

Now getting SMS spam is bad enough (it's still an occasional annoyance in the UAE, although nothing like the constant stream we used to get). But these people have been receiving over a hundred texts overnight! Can you imagine what it feels like to get a tsunami of SMS spam from the people behind the universally popular and well regarded road toll scheme?

I bet it had them hopping, I really do...

I still haven't got my activation message. I wonder how they're doing with that data entry? >;0)

Microsoft Gets Spanked

I have always been something of a fan of Arab News' Molouk Ba-Isa. Unremittingly grumpy, difficult and highly opinionated, her weekly technology column often informs, interests and generally amuses me. I have worked with her many times over the years and have delivered many a faintly trembling executive into her tender care. I remember one being told, by way of an introduction: "I hope Alexander briefed you about how difficult I am."

Alexander is usually too amused to say much. I've always been a sucker for a misanthrope.

But this week's column is something of a car-crash experience. I don't want to look, but I'm drawn back to it time and time again. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to communicate with Middle East markets. It should be on every international technology PR person's training curriculum. It's linked here and it ain't pretty.

Microsoft doled out a lazy press release on the Xbox 360. Molouk doled out the punishment. To be fair, she could have been a lot worse. But it's worth bearing in mind that this is pretty heavy stuff for a media environment like Saudi Arabia, where it is still rare to encounter a critical tone.

What's interesting to me is that her obvious irritation has been triggered by a thoughtless communication. A little care and this wouldn't have happened at all...

That Toll Again

Well, as predicted, the papers were indeed filled with Salik yesterday. Every front page bar one had the story of the clear roads by the toll gates and the chaos everywhere else. Gulf News dared to be different and didn't put the Salik story on its front page at all, which was a nice change. And Emirates Today splashed with 'Salik Chaos' which was an even nicer change, although the tone of the story, perhaps rather predictably, didn't quite follow through from the headline.

Nobody's got a confirmation SMS. Nobody quite knows what's happening about that (although I refer you to my earlier mathematical sleight of hand) yet. Today's papers are still rumbling and grumbling but life is settling down back to its regular rhythm.

Wait 'till they try and sneak the next set of toll gates in, though. Look out for announcements regarding the success of the Salik pilot scheme and how that success has led to a review and subsequent decision to expand it to cover other routes...

My money's on Jebel Ali, Qusais and Business Bay. Because that's where there are 'Salik 2km' signs today, put up by someone who rather jumped the gun...

Salik - A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Well, the papers should be full of this lot tomorrow. Dubai's congestion charge cuts in and it's certainly true that there's been no congestion today at the two points in the city where the toll's RFID scanners span the road.

But oh, dearie me, the picture is far from pretty almost everywhere else. Pushing thousands of cars an hour off the arterial Sheikh Zayed Road meant that the city's streets were heaving: the traffic this evening backed up past the airport, Maktoum and Satwa were rammed with punters trying to find any which way but Salik.

Even the Emarat station before the Garhoud toll had its queues: application form-waving punters ten deep as they made that last minute application for the little orange sticker. Barsha and the area around the projects was apparently misery this morning and will have been again tonight.

Some of the day's best fun was to be had on Facebook, the new forum for the Middle East's chatterers: "It’s a car park! I can’t find the logic in this!!!" says a furious Suzy, while an astonished Alisha keys, "It was also the worst road rage I've ever seen in my life!"

"With the exception of one straight stretch of road starting at Al Barsha, going through Sheikh Zayed Road, towards Garhoud Bridge, the remaining streets of Dubai have successfully, overnight, been turned into one huge parking lot," says a shocked Sherif who goes on, one suspects with a touch of irony, to say: "So worry not residents, all you need to do to grab lunch is turn off your engines wherever you are, pop out for a bite, and odds are, traffic will be at a standstill upon your return!"

While my favourite contribution of the day, from a naughty Nadim, was: "Anyone fancy helping me to take out a half page ad in the newspapers thanking RTA?"

I predicted this would be fun. And yes, I am delighted to have told you so. And I don't think it's really started in earnest yet: the best is definitely yet to come.

What larks, Pip!!

Spiderman!

Talking of Al Maha, we found this bad boy in the room when we got back from dinner. With enormous regret, because he had more right to be there than we did, a life-long arachnophobia and a deeply unsettled wife resulted in a swift spider/sandal occlusion. The Birkenstock survived.

Showed the pre-two dimensional spider photo to our guide, who couldn't name it. He thought it was similar to a species of funnel-web he'd seen in the desert. It reminded me of the chap shown below, who was lurking in our outdoor bathroom in Sri Lanka one night. I can't find anything like it online...

Anyone got any ideas?


PS: I really, really hate spiders. I'm talking about the British garden variety, not these monsters - both had a legspan over 5cm.

Fake Plastic Chicken

It's not that pal and colleague Carrington has posted up a rubber chicken for auction on Facebook. It's not that he took the trouble to photograph the damn thing. It's not even that the bird-flu resistant rubbery piece of poultry is known to form part of a massive collection of totally useless things because Carrington collects useless things.

It's the fact that the item in question has so far gathered 57 views and already attracted two offers. If this success continues, I'm going to put my Acer Promotional Stone up for auction.

(PS: I've just realised where he got the damn chicken from! Unwanted gift! I'm hurt!)