tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76558891058207720602024-03-05T08:23:59.961+03:00Fake Plastic SouksAlexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.comBlogger1621125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-45821588200978899202020-02-01T17:25:00.001+03:002020-02-01T17:25:40.292+03:00The Triumph of the Call Centre<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHkRyDxFyKFZRBacDIQg1qoPFZdgkAa5_ze2NY8-lTzmO-AePj8PPRkA_D3df4owgBekaD1i5qtKl_hW0Jlh2OrlcsmHm172KXNr9-6YkopMMRTdpofHKOVyI47ZjfNcGuMg-jPuWzmk/s1600/Islamic+Era+Dirham+Coins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUHkRyDxFyKFZRBacDIQg1qoPFZdgkAa5_ze2NY8-lTzmO-AePj8PPRkA_D3df4owgBekaD1i5qtKl_hW0Jlh2OrlcsmHm172KXNr9-6YkopMMRTdpofHKOVyI47ZjfNcGuMg-jPuWzmk/s320/Islamic+Era+Dirham+Coins.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It is my lot to have to deal, because in some ways I live a complex life, with a number of banking institutions on a regular basis. In short, I have four banks. I know, I know, it's just worked out that way and there's nothing to be done about it. Two of them, UK based, are highly competent organisations that do the stuff you need, when you need it.<br />
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I was arguing this morning with a certain local bank from the smallest emirate, who had set out to destroy my life and otherwise poke me with sharp sticks until I explode. The manager, to resolve the frustrating situation entirely of their making, called the call centre.<br />
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This is the third occasion in recent times that someone from a bank who is facing me across a desk has called the call centre to actually, you know <i>do </i>something. Although this act in itself presages the disintermediation of the carbon-based life form in front of me (quite satisfying really, a little like being able to gesture at them with an imperious wave and have them disappear in a puff of smoke with a sort of <i>poofff</i> sound), it is something of a worry.<br />
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Call centres are the modern equivalent of Roman Triremes, enormous ships packed with slaves tethered to oars and made to work by the application of copious lashes and a kettle drum. They are staffed by interns and other marginalised segments of society (out of work actors, former travel agents and record company executives), utterly disempowered and driven only by the need to recite the scripts they have been provided with. 'Is there anything else I can help you with today?' invariably ending the call where they haven't been able to help you.<br />
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They are where customers are sent to be ignored and frustrated. They are the dregs, the bowels of the earth. They are the people we shout at when we're angry with a company (usually, but not always, a bank or a telco), who take the abuse so that their management and witless marketing teams can go on behaving as if the company is at least nodding at the idea of behaving decently and with the slightest of intentions towards fulfilling some degree of what is laughingly described by corporates as 'customer service'.<br />
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So what if these IVRs, drones, bots and under-rated call handlers become the only interface to the customer? If there's no such thing as an empowered human being you can deal with? And what, then, of the 'promise of AI' in customer service?<br />
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What if we have reduced the customer experience so much that it's not really about technology developing and reaching up to equal great customer service, but customer expectations and experience being downgraded to the point where semi-evolved technology is good enough?<br />
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What then?</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-14245067851633218632020-01-14T17:31:00.001+03:002020-01-14T19:09:02.495+03:00In Plain Sight - Five Places You Probably Didn't Know Were Even There<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The landscape of the Emirates is dotted with little bits of history: a murabaa (watch tower) speaks of a conflict between emirates or tribes here, a wall reminds us of a war there. Sometimes we find ancient ruins, millennia old, sometimes we can stumble across an Iron Age fort or two. And sometimes we can find memories so fresh they still hurt - and yet they're carved in the landscape around us. Such is history.<br />
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So here are five to watch out for - these particular examples are ancient places that speak to the distant past, but which you've probably driven by time and again without realising anything was even there. You can visit, or just take a spin on Google maps and see what there is to see from a satellite.<br />
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Most of these sites (well, all except Jebel Buhais) are fenced off, so you can't actually <i>do </i>anything once you get there, except perhaps fly a drone over and take some snaps (watch out for no fly zones), but you can impress friends by even knowing there's a <i>thing </i>there! The links in the names are Google pins...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxN64hep8Xl2dUYfxgrC7wUFXT69VAWEI3GWB-zxtqmuW-cKugbiLVUj9SvMn9Sh4SY-5FsoECEinHqdwYAIemZZmqiy9FEnWoXF5MfcDGhJxQ7eQ8WQuKw3ZYcapEOoRRYKpgWisjfQ/s1600/Muwaileh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1468" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxN64hep8Xl2dUYfxgrC7wUFXT69VAWEI3GWB-zxtqmuW-cKugbiLVUj9SvMn9Sh4SY-5FsoECEinHqdwYAIemZZmqiy9FEnWoXF5MfcDGhJxQ7eQ8WQuKw3ZYcapEOoRRYKpgWisjfQ/s320/Muwaileh.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Muwaileh</b><br />
A key Iron Age settlement, <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/7DmjpeSVKR6HWrPc8" target="_blank">Muwaileh </a></b>is an archaeological site in the middle of a residential area just off the Sharjah University City campus. It was here that researchers found evidence of Iron Age collective authority developing around water resources, of the domestication of the camel and one of a very few objects found that date back to the Emirates' virtually iron-free Iron Age - most of the metals we find from this era of the country's history are copper, bronze or precious trinkets in silver or gold.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjdeAUajw8K_3URoGOAhfJsJAqwqoJreAXEm89Az1nHP0P4pbINolCYseG7ljyZ2YqLWleLhXQHDxL7JncZFNJlo_FomVnlP8X_LlcuhAer8XqH6i53Yh4MgHXpb1tV7_Gb6752oVAaro/s1600/Al+Dur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="705" data-original-width="1253" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjdeAUajw8K_3URoGOAhfJsJAqwqoJreAXEm89Az1nHP0P4pbINolCYseG7ljyZ2YqLWleLhXQHDxL7JncZFNJlo_FomVnlP8X_LlcuhAer8XqH6i53Yh4MgHXpb1tV7_Gb6752oVAaro/s320/Al+Dur.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Ed Dur</b><br />
The site at <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/Dk8aBQdkqQnvhax99" target="_blank">Ed-Dur</a> </b>is actually an important pre-Islamic city. Ed-Dur has
been put forward as Pliny’s <i>Omana </i>‘a harbour of great importance in
Carmania’. Carmania was a Persian province under Alexander the
Great which stretched along the coast from Bandar Lengeh to Bandar Jask on the Persian shore. Ed-Dur is linked tightly to its 'sister city' of Mleiha, inland of Sharjah.<br />
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Ed Dur is most likely one you've passed many times as it's on the coastal route north of Umm Al Quwain to Ras Al Khaimah - many expats will know it as the Road To The Barracuda. It was at Ed-Dur that archaeologists found the first use of alabaster as windows, as well as extensive finds of weapons, jewellery, coins and other artefacts that point to an flourishing in an era under Hellenistic influence and a decline and fall, likely to the Sasanians in or around the 3rd Century BCE.<br />
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In its blossoming, it was a sprawling settlement greater in area than 1st Century London. One of the key finds here was a temple dedicated to the Sun God, Shamas - and the earliest surviving evidence we yet have of the written word in the land of the Emirates.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Azrk-Hnf5GgHkMTFwZFu2ZpT0tPw5-6UXRDrS2apHVHTKruh_xfWZFAO8MOgII5SUYZd6aduUKYWLeUyva673UWaeZprm5hXey80BhWbKxdelUTpX3JxkQwzbgRSW-56cJhHet83vcE/s1600/Shimal+Fort.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="642" data-original-width="1468" height="139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Azrk-Hnf5GgHkMTFwZFu2ZpT0tPw5-6UXRDrS2apHVHTKruh_xfWZFAO8MOgII5SUYZd6aduUKYWLeUyva673UWaeZprm5hXey80BhWbKxdelUTpX3JxkQwzbgRSW-56cJhHet83vcE/s320/Shimal+Fort.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Sheba's Palace (Shimal Fort)</b><br />
The area around Julfar (the precursor city to Ras Al Khaimah, but NOT 'old' Ras Al Khaimah, although the city has expanded to encompass the area of ancient Julfar) is rich in Islamic era settlements, spanning the 900s and first millennium settlement at Jazirat Al Hulayla, the <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/gM48XRUZbsGkVxMX9" target="_blank">fortress of Shimal</a></b>, dating to the 1100s (known today as Sheba’s Palace) and farms in the Wadi Haqil.<br />
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This development of agricultural resources inland of the port town is mirrored at Sohar in Oman, where at around the same time we see extensive development taking place along the Wadi Al Jizi, the route from Sohar inland to Buraimi. Here's a drone shot:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZeap2Vr-VaPXj71o7Vjyqe3Q-6hMyJo07kMsC-QLhVuyyTcnfwlZMtSRa383fz3qUm264zvU2bxXr1EhOHqqdG9rXbdmqeLuAZ7AgtfETGInQ4NysqsctziW_nr99RQcoN30LGoPDkT4/s1600/Shimal+Drone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZeap2Vr-VaPXj71o7Vjyqe3Q-6hMyJo07kMsC-QLhVuyyTcnfwlZMtSRa383fz3qUm264zvU2bxXr1EhOHqqdG9rXbdmqeLuAZ7AgtfETGInQ4NysqsctziW_nr99RQcoN30LGoPDkT4/s320/Shimal+Drone.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Shimal fort is pretty impressive, but also pretty inaccessible, sadly. Your best bet is a drone or a pretty hectic scramble around the rocky escarpment it sits on, with a fine view of the extensive plains of ghaf trees below it. The area's settled now and it would be wise to bear in mind that you're intruding on private life if you do decide to go biffing around the place.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDeoR0X5uoMCxsKyOiKOFc9-BzKEg7FA6pTc2TeYoi5rGk4PYyZA0DP1beArY6aJA6v82wx_Xn7AzGn5ygw-1OAr4p92dPMrYxRkjqDiBGd0DYkAaOt1N-9R3GQp9LLNLVuPeFS_UEpgc/s1600/Jebel+Buhais.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1277" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDeoR0X5uoMCxsKyOiKOFc9-BzKEg7FA6pTc2TeYoi5rGk4PYyZA0DP1beArY6aJA6v82wx_Xn7AzGn5ygw-1OAr4p92dPMrYxRkjqDiBGd0DYkAaOt1N-9R3GQp9LLNLVuPeFS_UEpgc/s320/Jebel+Buhais.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Jebel Buhais</b><br />
The important and extensive necropolis of <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/dvtyGyvBYwAT7KeE8" target="_blank">Buhais</a></b> encompasses burials from pretty much every pre-Islamic era with the sole - and deeply puzzling - exception of the Umm Al Nar period. Many of the burial sites here have been at least roofed over - and some key finds have been removed to Sharjah Archaeological Museum. Right in the middle of the extensive area of burials dotted across the east-facing face of the outcrop of Buhais is an Iron Age fort, first excavated by an Iraqi team in 1974. Again, a drone shot:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjZEL6osGwR5kEcWpa7ofvCMichsLjdSgJo5g-icEq5uCsou7NOJV58BF5_Zu94TUzMKw5DZ1Jhi3Dk3JcNOfU8frCY2GS2qmuSSNcCo_SWyAyUiwHT77lxJcx1X_ouF_UOVCbzfqnL2o/s1600/DJI_0149.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjZEL6osGwR5kEcWpa7ofvCMichsLjdSgJo5g-icEq5uCsou7NOJV58BF5_Zu94TUzMKw5DZ1Jhi3Dk3JcNOfU8frCY2GS2qmuSSNcCo_SWyAyUiwHT77lxJcx1X_ouF_UOVCbzfqnL2o/s320/DJI_0149.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Above: The Iron Age Fort at Buhais</span></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJskwOM1sNLRqE-P2g4cgC4gKmOHy9r1HYWrUKE6kmvGoLqnxjlR5yzBh1Yvk32Jy7O7dI47-ebuTXt-vcwCs3l6klRC3MBFzImzVZLT44RBJjG2_TyJBHri0Lrdl6_VJiBgu-YBKh8E/s1600/Al+Sufouh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="1290" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJskwOM1sNLRqE-P2g4cgC4gKmOHy9r1HYWrUKE6kmvGoLqnxjlR5yzBh1Yvk32Jy7O7dI47-ebuTXt-vcwCs3l6klRC3MBFzImzVZLT44RBJjG2_TyJBHri0Lrdl6_VJiBgu-YBKh8E/s320/Al+Sufouh.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Al Sufouh</b><br />
The<a href="https://goo.gl/maps/n4mGHJC7vEBgTism9" target="_blank"> <b>Al Sufouh Archaeological Site </b></a>is perhaps the maddest of the lot - it's bang in the centre of the residential neighbourhood inland of the Palm Jumeirah and it includes an important Umm Al Nar tomb, which you can see to the centre right of the Google image above. It's a classic shape, better seen from this drone shot of the Umm Al Nar tomb at Mleiha Archaeological Centre:<br />
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So there you have it. Just five of five hundred or more places around the Emirates where you'll find the past is hidden in plain sight.<br />
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We'll be talking about this sort of stuff on the 7th February at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, in a session where I'll be 'In conversation with Peter Hellyer' about the history of the UAE.<br />
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<b><a href="https://www.emirateslitfest.com/product/alexander-mcnabb-the-extraordinary-history-of-the-seven-sands/" target="_blank">You can, of course, buy tickets HERE!</a></b></div>
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-20910872392747752502020-01-12T17:12:00.002+03:002020-01-12T18:57:32.621+03:00Children of the Seven Sands to be at the LitFest Shock Horror<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Well, it would appear as if 5pm on Friday the 7th of February is the time to be at the Intercon Festival City.<br />
<br />
That's when I'll be joining History Ninja Peter Hellyer to talk about the history of the Emirates in general and, of course, Children of the Seven Sands in particular. The book launches, and will be in the shops from 02/02/2020 - but the LitFest session's on the 7th.<br />
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What's the plan?<br />
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Well, for a start you're going to find out there's a hell of a lot more lurking below the surface of the UAE than you ever thought. We're going to visit the Garden of Eden and poke about around Noah's Arc and biblical floods - just for starters.<br />
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We'll be wandering around ancient Sumeria and finding out about the first intercontinental human trade network, which centred around this here place where we live.<br />
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We're going to look at the death of 10,000 men in Dibba, the Arab monopoly of trade with the East and the mystical city of C14th Hormuz - a strange island out of a fantasy novel, totally without water, brilliantly flecked by minerals and built around a salt mountain; home to over 50,000 people of sophisticated tastes and cosmopolitan ideals.<br />
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We're going to steep ourselves in the blood and agony of the Portuguese conquests of Arabia and the Arab trading networks that spanned the Seven Seas, in the Arab revolt that followed and the British suppression of their local Arab trading competitors and forceful domination of the Gulf.<br />
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We're going to wander around the wild hinterland of the Emirates and meet Bedouin tribes, explore the ancient port of Julphar and examine the wars and conflicts that shaped the modern Emirates.<br />
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And we're going to play around with stories of the past - of Zayed the Great, who killed the Ruler of Sharjah in hand to hand conflict, of Abdulrahman of Al Heera, one of the stormiest and most feared - and respected figures of the Trucial Coast and of the leaders who ruled the Trucial States under British protection and in the face of plague, drought, famine and - occasionally - plenty.<br />
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We're going to learn about the British invasion and bombardment of Dubai in 1910, the battle to establish an airport in Sharjah and the wars between the Emirates of the coast. And we're going to steep ourselves in intrigue, coups and counter-coups as well as heroes and tales of derring-do. We'll learn about oil and the colourful figures who stalked the Emirates holding concessions under the noses of Rulers brought up to a lifetime's haggling in the souk and minded to drive a hard bargain.<br />
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We're going to find out that the story about the end of the pearl market in 1929 because of the cultured pearl and the Great Depression is pure bunkum - and how the whole silly tale sprang up in the first place. And we're going to find out what happens when you fire an Exocet missile at a ship carrying 400,000 tonnes of oil. And no, it doesn't explode. We're going on a journey to the past - a past you didn't know was there under your nose.<br />
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It's going to be a roller-coaster, without a doubt.<br />
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<b><a href="https://www.emirateslitfest.com/product/alexander-mcnabb-the-extraordinary-history-of-the-seven-sands/" target="_blank">This is the make a booking link right here.</a></b><br />
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That there will be drinks at the Belgian after, you can be assured.<br />
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-54549474608748926182020-01-09T17:15:00.000+03:002020-01-11T17:30:04.664+03:00Children of the Seven Sands. Who's a little smartie?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
So this is the cover of Children of the Seven Sands and I think (I could perhaps be accused of being ever so slightly biased) it's a little beauty.<br />
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So here's a big thank you to the elves and dwarves at Motivate Mansions, who sweated over making the book all really rather jolly.<br />
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The book's edited to death, although something horrible's sure to have slipped by. You've got 140,000 words to get right. The picture captions are done. It's all ready to rock and roll, basically. The cover's the last element to be settled.<br />
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And now it's just a waiting game as the NMC does its thing. Time to ponder how the hell I ended up writing a history of the Emirates in the first place, how I decided to plunge into non-fiction having had a perfectly pleasant time of it writing novels. I try not to remember the research, the tottering piles of academic papers and esoteric volumes. The cross-checking facts and all that stuff.<br />
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The acid test is around the corner now - Joe Public. Will it be enough of a narrative to be readable? Will it deliver on its promise of making the UAE's often bloody but never less than fascinating history come alive? Or will it trudge and heave, limping its way to being bookshelved halfway through?<br />
<br />
I could care less right now. I'm sitting gazing at the cover and rolling the title around in my mouth like warm brandy.<br />
<br />
Yessss....<br />
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<br /></div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-89001795372524761972020-01-06T13:15:00.000+03:002020-01-06T19:56:38.498+03:00How NOT To Use A Drone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs_rLr7kzSlr_cuwKmE7P3aA2eu5bEZGJxXSuD9CLpD3L-fpa_-zelCn3jEDBNLsUoRDtiF2Ezh5ThL6huhV7lXUQ20gaZHRD06_afkxLGlw9csRs1SdN1AFC_amOfJMwREms0ugI9Jlg/s1600/The+Iron+Age+Fort+at+Jebel+Buhais.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs_rLr7kzSlr_cuwKmE7P3aA2eu5bEZGJxXSuD9CLpD3L-fpa_-zelCn3jEDBNLsUoRDtiF2Ezh5ThL6huhV7lXUQ20gaZHRD06_afkxLGlw9csRs1SdN1AFC_amOfJMwREms0ugI9Jlg/s320/The+Iron+Age+Fort+at+Jebel+Buhais.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Iron Age Fort at Jebel Buhais, imaged by an ex-drone</i></span></div>
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I have <b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/11/droning-on-uae-drone-law-and-pleasures.html" target="_blank">posted previously</a></b> about my acquisition of a DJI Mavic Pro drone and my subsequent attempts to kill it. Pal Jane asked me the other day, from her new Italian fastness, to recommend a drone and I wholeheartedly endorsed the DJI drones (a friend has just bought the amazing DJI Mavic Mini and is astounded by its stellar performance) even as I confessed to her that I had finally managed to terminally, utterly, destroy my own Mavic that very morning.<br />
<br />
This, she said, was her concern. To spend so much money and break the thing. I pointed out how very, very hard I had tried. I am dumb, the drone is smart. Time and again, it eluded death at my hand with a cautionary '<b><a href="https://2001archive.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/cantdo.wav" target="_blank">I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that</a></b>.'<br />
<br />
The Mavic returns home if you fly it out of battery. It returns home if you fly it out of range. It refuses to fly too far or too high. It detects objects and refuses to fly into them even if you aim it straight at them at full speed. If you fly it behind a mountain so that it loses contact with the controller, it returns home automatically. If it's hit by bursts of military grade RF, it comes home. If you fly it in high winds, it warns you and asks to come home. If you try to fly it illegally, it warns you. I know, I have done all these things. And the drone has survived time after time.<br />
<br />
And then I managed it. Peak feckwit.<br />
<br />
There's something magical about the moment when you realise you have trashed nigh on a thousand pounds' worth of perfectly integrated, smart, highly autonomous technology. It's a nasty, deep-in-the-guts ache, a tingling that refuses to go away. Your mouth dries and your heart-rate flies through stratospheric. The first thing you do is denial. No way, no way that happened. I mean, that's bats. I flew it under a bridge, over a plunging waterfall, imaging the roiling torrent below.<br />
<br />
How could it have crashed? I lined it up beautifully for the flight over the waterfall. It sailed under the spans above, danced above the mad white water below. It was a perfect trajectory.<br />
<br />
It was, indeed - straight into the overhanging branches of a tree. The first rotor chopped off a branch, ripped into the green wood. The drone struggled briefly to right itself then other rotors snapped twigs and it dropped into the rushing white waters.<br />
<br />
Drone to stone in less than a second. Game over.<br />
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The only (very slight, I can tell you) good news is that I had already taken the drone shots I needed to illustrate <i>Children of the Seven Sands</i>.<br />
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The rest is just bitter, salty tears...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-56822926585768055292020-01-04T18:39:00.003+03:002020-01-04T18:39:46.862+03:00Happy New Year And All That<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju-2hZ_WjBMCE_cesPKrwTZA6Jm5fYLjFE7X844Xxl-y_SIttvcLw2W0FKAgcSFtGwMqJC3mLXXoMRAk5MioyWv8k6bp8VlQxXg3pPEaGOThLEh9rNGTGUJBooWmXtkogEgFV_JARscKM/s1600/Imperial5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="483" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju-2hZ_WjBMCE_cesPKrwTZA6Jm5fYLjFE7X844Xxl-y_SIttvcLw2W0FKAgcSFtGwMqJC3mLXXoMRAk5MioyWv8k6bp8VlQxXg3pPEaGOThLEh9rNGTGUJBooWmXtkogEgFV_JARscKM/s320/Imperial5.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">We took an A380. It's quicker...</span></i></div>
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So, here we are back 'in station' from 'leave in UK'. The coming week will involve the usual getting used to be being back home in this place which is home but not really home. As I pointed out on Twitter, I'm back where I came from but not where I started.<br />
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Over the years, that has felt increasingly odd and, a bit like a tetanus jab, it gets worse every time.<br />
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I have things to focus on, of course - work's going to be mad, I know. And then we have Project Children of the Seven Sands, which launches in under a month...<br />
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The book's currently with the UAE's National Media Council, who have to decide whether it will break the world or whether it is not so painful as to be beyond their ability to ignore its more dramatic twists and turns. There's a lot in there they could potentially object strongly to - so we're hoping they are feeling brave, generous and generally able to take a deep breath, perhaps even hold their noses, and let the whole thing go with, if not their blessing, certainly their veto withheld.<br />
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Why should they?<br />
<br />
Well, for a start it's all true. The truth may not always prevail in the world of Middle Eastern politics and culture, but the Emirates is in a funny place right now and probably more capable of facing up to the comforting and uncomfortable facts of its history than it ever before has been. This is the story, the full and unexpurgated story, of this land and its origins. Now, more than ever before, an environment prevails where that story can be told without fear of censorship or, indeed, censure.<br />
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Secondly, it's all rather wonderful. This history is rarely less than amazing, delightful and utterly counter-intuitive. I can only hope I have told it in a way that at least communicates a touch of the splendour, madness, hope and fear that is woven through a past that is magical, deadly, innocent and majestic in turns. Why would you possibly repress a past that is so colourful and magical, that gives meaning to your present and lets your people start to explore who they totally, really <i>are</i>? Is that a big claim for a book? Sure it is, and I'm happy to make it and stand by it.<br />
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And thirdly - and I make no apology for this - it's told by a friend. Now, we might be talking about a friend who's a bit loud and embarrassing and who drinks all the fruit juice before the important guest gets a look in, but you're better off with this story in the hands of a bumptious friend than an enemy - and you're certainly better off with a sympathetic interpretation of the archives than you are with a literal parroting of the British view as they recorded it - for instance.<br />
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I'm not saying by any means that I've papered over cracks or omitted inconvenient truths because I most certainly haven't - but I've given context where that is relevant and explained actions where they seem otherwise inexplicable. I've told the whole story only after I understood the entire thing myself, so that each action and event is given (I hope) the right weight in the overall scheme of things. I may not be a <i>safe </i>pair of hands, but I'm the best you're likely to get around here for a while yet.<br />
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Once we're through that, it's final covers, a quick review of the layout/page proofs and off to print in time for 02/02/2020 when we should be launching the thing.<br />
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In the meantime, there may be some promotional activity. You have been warned...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-1127106550088790212019-12-05T11:35:00.001+03:002019-12-05T11:35:28.824+03:00#SharjahSaturday - A QUICK FAQ<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Frequently Asked Questions</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">#SharjahSaturday </span></b></div>
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<b>What IS #SharjahSaturday?</b><br />
It's just a wee Twitter hashtag. I've proposed a route around Sharjah to let people see what's on their doorsteps and what they could be getting up to on the weekend instead of being cooped up in their Dubai apartments or dragging their weary butts out to yet another brunch.<br />
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We'll be a-Tweetin' as we go, no doubt. I've sort of picked things that seemed to make sense for starters, but I've not even touched Mleiha; Wasit Wetlands; Sharjah Archaeology Museum; Sharjah Car Museum; Discovery Centre; Sharjah Aquarium; Sharjah Art Museum or the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection. Let alone the conservation centres, lodges, inland or east coast places. There's a load to do in Sharjah - and that leaves another six emirates to explore afterwards...<br />
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<b>What ARE you doin' then?</b><br />
See blogs passim. Like <b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/12/sharjahsaturday-skinny.html" target="_blank">this here list with Google pins for everything...</a></b><br />
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<b>Why are you even bothering with this?</b><br />
Because I got irritated at someone whining on Twitter a while back about how pinned down and shallow they felt living in Dubai. The Emirates is a rich, colourful, glorious tapestry of amazing things - and many of these are in Sharjah. So I thought it was worth sharing.<br />
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Also, I have a book to sell.<br />
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<b>A book to sell? REALLY? Wow! Do tell MORE!</b><br />
<i>Children of the Seven Sands </i>is the Human History of the United Arab Emirates, by me and published by Motivate Publishing and launching at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2020.<br />
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It just happens to tie in nicely with Sharjah's wild, rich and often extremely bloody history. The book charts the 130,000 year-old human history of this place, from the emergence of anatomically modern man from Africa to populate earth through to the end of Eden, the discovery of metals, early societies and trading networks, the advent of Islam and the fall of the first human intercontinental trade network to the bloodthirsty Portuguese, the dominance of the British and the violent, internecine wars and vicious scrabbles for power that eventually resulted in transforming the Trucial States into the United Arab Emirates.<br />
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<b>Was that a book plug you just sneaked in?</b><br />
No, no, no, no. Of <i>course </i>not.<br />
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<b><a href="https://www.emirateslitfest.com/product/alexander-mcnabb-the-extraordinary-history-of-the-seven-sands/" target="_blank">If you want to attend the <i>Children of the Seven Sands </i>LitFest Session, the link is here. Ahem.</a></b><br />
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<b>Do I have to come/make excuses for not coming?</b><br />
No, not at all. I have no expectations here and if six people rock up, that'll be super. That's six times more people than me tweeting about things to see and do in Sharjah.<br />
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<b>Where you starting?</b><br />
Jones the Grocer - Flag Island for around about 9am. <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/KgyYp2tPgr1Hx3qv5" target="_blank">Google pin here</a></b>.<br />
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<b>Do we have to come to [insert location on the day]?</b><br />
No, you can turn up, stay as long as you like in a place, miss a place out, do whatever you want to. We happen to be wandering around in a particular order, but that's no reason why you should feel you have to. HOWEVER, if you're with me/the main group, entry to Sharjah Museums properties is FREE YES FREE. If you're not, they'll make you pony up the entrance fee. To be fair, that's usually only pennies in any case - Sharjah's a very museum friendly place.<br />
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<b>What about locations?</b><br />
Every location for #SharjahSaturday is <b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/12/sharjahsaturday-skinny.html" target="_blank">linked in this here blog post with a Google Maps pin</a></b>. Isn't that all terribly convenient???<br />
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<b>What do we need to bring?</b><br />
Just yourselves. Some money for coffee/lunch/souvenirs. Perhaps some bottled water for walking, perhaps a hat for the kids. You WILL need to book Rain Room if you want to do that. <b><a href="https://rainroom.sharjahart.org/getTicket.htm" target="_blank">The link's here for booking a slot</a></b>.<br />
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<b>Is there much walking?</b><br />
Quite a bit of wandering around, yes. The most walking will be the afternoon, but there's no rush and if you want to hop in a cab at any stage, well, why not?<br />
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<b>Where do we put the car?</b><br />
We'll drive to Mahatta from Jones, then out to the Wildlife Park - about a 30 minute drive. We'll come back to the car park outside Fen in the Sharjah Art Foundation Area, which costs pennies. I'd suggest you dump the car there and walk the rest of it.<br />
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<b>What if I have other questions?</b><br />
@alexandermcnabb or just #SharjahSaturday!<br />
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<br /></div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-70487620589093193852019-12-04T07:44:00.002+03:002019-12-05T11:29:21.763+03:00#SharjahSaturday - The Skinny<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Look on the bright side - only a couple more days to #SharjahSaturday, then I'll shut up about it.<br />
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Sharjah Museums, being wonderful chaps, have extended free access to the various museums we're visiting on the day if you're travelling with the group, which is super of them.<br />
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In the meantime, here's the plan for the day in a series of handy dandy links:<br />
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<b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/11/sharjahsaturday-weeks-ahead.html" target="_blank">9am Meet up at Jones. Do coffee, whatevs. Leave for Mahatta at around 9.45ish</a></b></div>
<b> <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/Yt2iYhzDyvChu3mJ9" target="_blank">Google Pin here to Jones on Flag Island</a></b><br />
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<b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/11/sharjahsaturday-death-that-made-mahatta.html" target="_blank">10 am Mahatta Fort</a></b></div>
<b> <a href="http://h%20mega%20mall%20-%20sharjah%20link%20to%20share/" target="_blank">Google Pin here to Mahatta Fort</a></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSGkiTfPLsiKm4FyCMa_wqY4Mg1eTxtBjCWqKUMNL6_BEzn46KoKgtjD-LvG60e9J1Bf5IEvpD-3_g6B_Ya-rzLTdJp88GwAHZJTVn9Qc7V-t7gQjTvuTD58WJT0axyiBCbhHGi0iAXJ8/s1600/Mahat1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1087" data-original-width="1600" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSGkiTfPLsiKm4FyCMa_wqY4Mg1eTxtBjCWqKUMNL6_BEzn46KoKgtjD-LvG60e9J1Bf5IEvpD-3_g6B_Ya-rzLTdJp88GwAHZJTVn9Qc7V-t7gQjTvuTD58WJT0axyiBCbhHGi0iAXJ8/s320/Mahat1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mahatta Fort in the 1990s, prior to its restoration. It was a bit of state...</span></i></div>
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<b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/11/sharjahsaturday-arabias-wildlife-centre.html" target="_blank">11am Arabia's Wildlife Centre</a></b><br />
<b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/CS5HrAX5qf3z77Wq7" target="_blank">Google Pin here to Arabia's Wildlife Centre</a></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ3sGb_F1CgwpfYH6OcMjyupWP9H4V9cdVEzJ6_eE8b44nP_RCt6ujdFhs9hcYxpsvTKUC9yNYR6CV5NvSGIY8p7nAL815zTBUERbUQk0Ke4_mqWkCHu26XtHWAG1V7W4WbEp1YsfDfhs/s1600/20170416_141917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ3sGb_F1CgwpfYH6OcMjyupWP9H4V9cdVEzJ6_eE8b44nP_RCt6ujdFhs9hcYxpsvTKUC9yNYR6CV5NvSGIY8p7nAL815zTBUERbUQk0Ke4_mqWkCHu26XtHWAG1V7W4WbEp1YsfDfhs/s320/20170416_141917.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Petting zoo at Arabia's Wildlife Centre. Featuring neece.</span></i></div>
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<b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/11/sharjahsaturday-fen-and-heart-of-sharjah.html" target="_blank">1pm Fen Café Lunch followed by the Heart of Sharjah</a></b><br />
<b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/rYimfbiTqBXSv1s49" target="_blank">Google Pin here to Fen</a></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmncur2AafpcXwUR63x8Qugy3HxvUqRwVC6iXvQmbRoyxJ4zv5dD_EdXV802yKnLTT7qebhZyksEEAlp5KJkYPFkCvwQuPuB1cwveOQiYto8OYQB_wF10obdknxyhq0nAgUkwf-OBhRQ/s1600/IMG_20190422_172511_662.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihmncur2AafpcXwUR63x8Qugy3HxvUqRwVC6iXvQmbRoyxJ4zv5dD_EdXV802yKnLTT7qebhZyksEEAlp5KJkYPFkCvwQuPuB1cwveOQiYto8OYQB_wF10obdknxyhq0nAgUkwf-OBhRQ/s320/IMG_20190422_172511_662.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Have I mentioned Fen's chocolate cake before? I have? Oh, right, then...</span></i></div>
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<b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/11/sharjahsaturday-rain-room.html" target="_blank">3pm Rain Room</a> NOTE you need to book this one! Booking link <a href="https://rainroom.sharjahart.org/getTicket.htm" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</b><br />
<b> </b><b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/XQiH3uYn3tnQGTJQ6" target="_blank">Google Pin here to Rain Room</a></b><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Rain Room. This is the bit you stay dry in. Actually, you stay dry in the wet bit, too...</span></i></div>
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<b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/11/sharjahsaturday-sharjah-museum-of.html" target="_blank">4pm Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation</a></b><br />
<b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/FqdJieVang6kGmEx5" target="_blank">Google Pin here to da museum</a></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjukG3XX1GZ7tVfiN2kMEIjgDCpMcCXBn9Vk3QUWrkpDUWrWDRMPGKXNRk_GlBYj0CgS5Iu35YcXVuQHHvwIcfnRehj-XlWuV7ojSyxqIM9kSFVX2-9y4TJfkc_75Suhi8rXAVO4T-cQp8/s1600/IMG_20170128_174923_585.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjukG3XX1GZ7tVfiN2kMEIjgDCpMcCXBn9Vk3QUWrkpDUWrWDRMPGKXNRk_GlBYj0CgS5Iu35YcXVuQHHvwIcfnRehj-XlWuV7ojSyxqIM9kSFVX2-9y4TJfkc_75Suhi8rXAVO4T-cQp8/s320/IMG_20170128_174923_585.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Museum</i>...</span></div>
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<b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2019/12/sharjahsaturday-heart-of-sharjah.html" target="_blank">5pm The Heart of Sharjah/Al Bait Hotel</a></b><br />
<b><a href="https://g.page/AlBaitSharjah?share" target="_blank">Google Pin to Al Bait Hotel</a></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvIUcc6lsiN4_UcUDGFbLbxPqH0N5TnE-jlnfdCsLQK-lXkQK6S5eVVujTxmQ0Mdh479svRYCK-BL4VLcmuh-OiMljBR8usDFPx6ZsuzJbL0_RKko3lnImf1roC_2jWBwcKF7c2292a3I/s1600/la5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvIUcc6lsiN4_UcUDGFbLbxPqH0N5TnE-jlnfdCsLQK-lXkQK6S5eVVujTxmQ0Mdh479svRYCK-BL4VLcmuh-OiMljBR8usDFPx6ZsuzJbL0_RKko3lnImf1roC_2jWBwcKF7c2292a3I/s320/la5.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The cylindrical barjeel at Al Bait is unique in the Emirates...</span></i></div>
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<b>And there we end the day!</b><br />
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<b><u>6-7pm Goodbyes/Head to Ajman</u></b><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Not clever, not funny, not mature...</span></i></div>
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-91095581861588838762019-12-03T12:10:00.001+03:002019-12-03T12:12:57.869+03:00#SharjahSaturday - The Heart of Sharjah<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Al Hisn Sharjah</span></i></div>
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Soooo, here's the scheme. Wandering back from Rain Room and the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation, we find ourselves walking past Al Hisn Sharjah - Sharjah Fort.<br />
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The old fort of Sharjah was recorded as a significant building on the coast of the Trucial States and so it would have been - the Al Qasimi stronghold of Sharjah was part of the alliance - a Federation, really - which tied Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah and many holdings on the islands and southern Persian coast together under the seafaring Huwala tribe and their rulers, the Al Qasimi.<br />
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The fort was almost entirely knocked down by the-then Ruler of Sharjah, Khaled bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, in the late 1960s. The current Ruler, HH Dr Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, rushed home from his studies in Cairo to try and stop Khaled from destroying the fort but was in time to save a single tower, called Al Qubs. Reduced from a major fortification to a effectively a single 'Murabbaa', or defensive tower, Al Qubs gave its name to the square in which it stood - Al Burj, or tower, square. It was colloquially known as 'Bank Street' in the 1990s because all of the buildings around the square, funky early 1980s jobs designed by a Spanish architect (and now much celebrated, although due, at least in part, for demolition) towering over the little burj housed banks.<br />
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Why did Khaled want to erase the fort? The reason was to lead to his untimely and tragic death - I'll tell you all about it on the day or you can read about it in (altogether now) <i>Children of the Seven Sands</i>!!!<br />
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Dr Sheikh Sultan preserved many of the original materials from the demolished fort, including window frames and other fittings, as well as a detailed plan of the old building. In the late 1990s, he started the huge restoration project, rebuilding the Sharjah Fort in a faithful reconstruction that used traditional materials and followed every line and crenelation of the old fort. And there it stands today, dungeons and family rooms alike, a fine example of an Arabian fort.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A wander down the shaded walkways of the traditional Souk Al Shanasiyah</span></i></div>
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Of course, you could skip the fort and just dive towards Al Bait - in my humble opinion one of the most beautiful hotel properties in the Emirates. Sharjah's development company Shurooq spent some Dhs 27 million transforming three old merchants' houses and a goodly lump of the 'Heart of Sharjah' traditional old town and souk areas into an achingly funky hotel that screams good taste, oozes tradition and whispers luxury, modernity and chill-out sensuality around every leaf-dappled, quietly murmuring corner. The hotel is managed by Asian uber-chill hotel chain The Chedi and it's not only insanely expensive, but blindingly gorgeous. We're planning to nip in for coffee and perhaps, management permitting, a tour of a hotel that truly stands out as unique and glorious.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Al Bait Mercedes. Rest of hotel not pictured...</span></i></div>
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And then we'll maybe take a walk through the Urban Garden as we make our way back to the car park outside Fen Café, where we'll say our farewells or perhaps plan to meet up down the road in Ajman, where evening entertainments abound - Ajman's fast-emerging hotel businesses include a number of beach-side properties along the Corniche, from the very Russian and luxurious Ajman Saray, to the seafront terrace of the Fairmont Ajman or perhaps the English-themed Outside Inn, altogether less salubrious. We're not going to the terminally funky Oberoi Al Zorah, easily Ajman's most luxurious hotel (and an outstanding property in its own right) or the Radisson Blu Ajman with its 100-foot-long sports bar but they're there for anyone adventuous enough to go looking...<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Urban Garden. Its urban. It's a garden.</span></i></div>
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See you there! Jones The Grocer, 9am, Saturday 7th December. As I've said before, come as you are, stay as long as you like, dip in, dip out, cherry pick - just don't feel you're being 'organised' - we're going to play it all very much by ear! The only thing that is constant is #SharjahSaturday on Twitter, where you can share your Sharjah joy (or pain!) with the world!!!</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-57685711921918764512019-11-28T07:46:00.000+03:002019-11-28T08:42:40.601+03:00#SharjahSaturday - The Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The flowering of Islamic science resulted not only in the translation and preservation of the knowledge of the ancients, but in a remarkable flourishing of scientific investigation, discovery and achievement. To this day, a significant amount of our scientific and mathematical vocabulary is peppered with words that have their root in Arabic, a result not only of Baghdad's remarkable Bait Al Hikmah, but of observatories and centres of knowledge in Cairo, Alexandria, Cordoba and elsewhere in the Islamic world.<br />
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Mantissa, algebra, zenith, alkaline, alchemy and alcohol all trip off the tongue, but they're all rooted in Arabic. So's the word assassin, before you get too uppity over there in the Arabic corner. Something like 60% of the stars in our modern night sky remain named in Arabic - a remarkable testament to the legacy of Islamic achievements in astronomy. This efflorescence of the sciences in the Islamic 'golden age' provided the base for the subsequent explosion of scientific thought following the dark ages in Europe, but it also underpinned the exploration of our world and the opening up of global trade networks.<br />
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As we discover in <i>Children of the Seven Sands</i> (ahem), the Arab traders of this area sailed the seven seas (the number of seas between here and China, as it happens) thanks to the navigational skills and observation of the stars that Islamic scientific discovery underpinned. It was from here that the first intercontinental trade networks were formed. The Emirates' most famous son, Ibn Majid of Julfar, left us a remarkable legacy built on the long-standing Arab navigational capability that sustained trade networks across Asia from before the C8th BCE through to the C15th and led to a virtual monopoly of the eastern trade until the Portuguese embarked on their bloody and cruel conquest of those networks in the early 1500s.<br />
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All of this and more are awaiting you at the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation. The building was originally a souk, but it turned out not to be a terribly successful one. The Museum, I am glad to be able to report, is an altogether more successful venture and provides a brilliantly put together display of the eye-opening ethnography of the Islamic world.<br />
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Which is why it's included in #SharjahSaturday, natch...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-46981025398999286212019-11-27T07:33:00.003+03:002019-11-27T07:33:47.872+03:00#SharjahSaturday - Rain Room<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Rain Room. Funky outside, funky inside.</i></span></div>
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For the purposes of #SharjahSaturday, Rain Room is a two minute walk from the end of the Irani Souq (passing the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation, which you can visit if you're too early for Rain Room or leave until afterwards if you are so minded).<br />
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I have posted about Rain Room before. <b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2018/07/rain-room-sharjah-rainroomsharjah.html" target="_blank">It's linked here for your viewing pleasure and convenience.</a></b> Having said all that, it would be folly to repeat it now.<br />
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You can't be bothered to click on the link and are wondering "What IS Rain Room?" It's an art installation or, if you prefer, a piece of experiential art. It was conceived and put together for the Sharjah Art Foundation by an insane international art collective called Random International and its permanent installation in Sharjah is unique in the world.<br />
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It's a great big underground space, all black, with an enormous rain shower in it - lit by a single lamp. You walk into the rain, hundreds of square feet of it. You walk slowly. Sensors pick up your movement and switch off the rain around you. You walk in the rain, surrounded by the sound of hissing droplets, and you are dry. Unless, of course, you have Naughty Neece Ava with you - who quickly works out how to move in order to game the sensors and get you wet.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Siiiiinging in the rain, just siiinging in the rain...</span></i></div>
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It's all a bit mad and quite, quite fun.<br />
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You need to book Rain Room online - you can't just rock up and expect to get a slot. <a href="https://rainroom.sharjahart.org/home.htm;jsessionid=A59B320FAF8ECD973D28949166878A42?locale=en" target="_blank"><b>The booking link is here.</b></a> Each session lasts 15 minutes and can accommodate 6 people. I've booked the 3.30 pm slot on the 7th December and have some spares if anyone's interested.<br />
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From there we have the option of taking in some Islamic Civilisation or a slow wander back through the souq to perhaps have a leisurely look at Al Hisn Sharjah or enjoy a coffee in the gorgeous, whispering courtyards of the Al Bait Hotel - a place I would contend is probably the finest, most beautiful hotel property in the Emirates - and if not, certainly in the top five.</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-19749240898803447672019-11-26T07:24:00.003+03:002019-11-26T07:24:54.297+03:00#SharjahSaturday - Fen and the Heart of Sharjah<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Fen's chocolate cake. This is actually <u>legal</u>.</span></i></div>
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Returning from the desert and its amazing wildlife, the idea is to drop into the achingly funky Fen Café, just behind the Iranian Mosque on the creek. Surrounded by art galleries and exhibition spaces (these are often packed with the most puzzling displays of strangenesses that have been created in the name of art, which is a thing that I do not even begin to pretend to comprehend), Fen Café is uniquely Sharjah. It's a collection of bonkers - hipster food served up in painfully 'on trend' furnishings with polished concrete and barasti surfaces all around, neatly packed up in a restored old house - part of the sprawling and visionary restoration of the 'Heart of Sharjah' - a project to restore the old town of Sharjah to its 1958 glories.<br />
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In this weather, the courtyard at Fen is a delight - shaded, filled with birdsong and often capped with a sky that can only, in all justice, be called cerulean.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sitting outside at Fen</span></i></div>
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So here we take a leisurely lunch break before setting out on a dander through the 'Heart of Sharjah', perhaps stopping off at the Bait Al Naboodah to take a look at the opulent home of Sharjah's most successful pearl trader, with its teak colonnades and breezy summer room. With homes in Paris and Bombay and customers who ranged from jewellers to Maharajahs, Al Naboodah was doing alright, thank you very much, until the pearl market tanked.<br />
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By the way, pretty every historian will tell you this happened in 1929. It didn't, it happened much earlier. And they'll all tell you it was down to a double whammy of the Great Depression and the invention of the Mikimoto pearl but that is actually <u>total</u> rubbish. The truth is totally at odds with that lazy narrative and in <i>Children of the Seven Sands</i> I not only debunk the myth, but explain what actually happened, when it happened and why. That wasn't a book plug, honest. I was just saying.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The summer room at the Bait Al Naboodah - the woodwork's all fine Indian teak...</span></i></div>
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Anyway, we'll pop into the Souk Al Arsah and then pass the gorgeous Al Bait Hotel to take a wander down the shaded walkway of the Souk Al Shanasiyah with its tea rooms and shops selling cool Emirati designer thingies and then through the Irani Souk with its <i>poor </i>stores and groceries before we pootle over to Rain Room. There's no rush, is the idea - we've plenty of time to take it all in and enjoy exploring it all...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-32172075645937464872019-11-25T07:12:00.004+03:002019-11-25T07:12:58.629+03:00#SharjahSaturday - Arabia's Wildlife Centre<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I'm wild, baby!</i></span></div>
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Our second stop on #SharjahSaturday, on the 7th December 2019, will be Arabia's Wildlife Centre. This zoological garden and animal sanctuary is about 30 minutes' drive away from our first stop, Mahatta Fort, but it's worth the journey out and we'll have the chance to point out some other things to do and places to see on the way.<br />
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The Wildlife Centre sits on the road to Dhaid, past the Bee'ah waste management complex and the little desert village of Saja'a - once the remote desert home of the fearsome Bani Qitab bedouin but now a bustling industrial area with a cement plant, cable factory and gas field as well as an extensive industrial zone.<br />
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It opened in 1999 after an expatriate lady called Marijke Jongbloed wrote to Dr Sheikh Sultan Al Qasimi and expressed her concern about the parlous state of the <i>Dhub </i>or horny-tailed lizard. Long prized by the Bedouin as an aphrodisiac, it was in danger of being hunted to death - the lizard bred in a specific place, a bowl in the Sharjah desert interior. Dr Sultan's response was a bolt out of the blue - yes, by all means protect the lizard, but why not establish a proper wildlife centre and conservancy there, as well? Jongbloed, awed at the chance she'd been given, leaped at the opportunity to built her centre.<br />
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Arabia's Wildlife Centre consists of an extensive indoor series of collections of wildlife indigenous to The Emirates - from Ruppel's Foxes to scorpions and saw-tailed vipers. There is also a neat section where larger animals roam around, gawped at by humans in glass cages. As I have said many times before, this last bit amused Jongbloed no end.<br />
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There is also the Sharjah Natural History Museum, which looks at the deep history of planetary formation, plate tectonics, dinosaurs and the Emirates' flora and fauna in general. There's also a charming little Islamic Botanical Garden, a kids' petting zoo and, although you can't visit it as such, a breeding centre for endangered wildlife.<br />
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After this, we're heading back into town to grab lunch at Funky Fen Café...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-65981854458438326422019-11-24T07:12:00.002+03:002019-11-24T12:25:28.124+03:00 #SharjahSaturday - The Death That Made Mahatta Fort<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Handley Page HP42 - in its time, a technological revolution</i></span></div>
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One of the reasons that Sharjah's Mahatta Fort is a favourite of mine is it has history - we're talking relatively recent, but nonetheless fascinating history that is little less than kaleidoscopic.<br />
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The fort was built by Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi in 1932 as part of a deal with the British Government to establish a landing strip and facilities in Sharjah to accommodate the Imperial Airways HP42 biplanes flying the 'Empire Route' from Croydon to Australia.<br />
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And it was at the centre of an epic drama that threatened to slash the most valuable link in Britain's Eastern Empire.<br />
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Now, I could tell you about the Empire Route and how it hopped across Europe to reach Alexandria and then made its way across the desert to Iraq and then Sharjah, accomplishing the journey in just four days. I could tell you about the trench that was laid across the black Jordanian and Iraqi deserts, using chains dragged behind tenders, to guide the planes. I could tell you of the desert fuel dumps, secured using lock and key against the marauding Bedouin of northern Arabia.<br />
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I could talk about the fight between the British and Persian governments that drove the necessity for an airport on the Arabian peninsula in the first place - or the desperate search for a suitable location, fighting against the clock to keep the Empire Route alive. I could sit you down and tell you about that search - about how Dibba was first investigated by a despairing Group Captain, who realised that the ground would take longer to prepare than the British had to hand as they lost their landing rights on Hengam Island. The Persians had insisted on putting their claim to the Tunbs Islands on the table before renegotiating the new agreement. The British had walked away rather than drop the Tunbs, which they saw as belonging to the Trucial States. But it left them with the urgent need to find a new landing strip.<br />
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Given a cup of cocoa or two, I'd certainly tell you the story of the HP42, a leviathan of its time, which could take up to 38 passengers (18 in the front, 20 in the back - all 1st class) up into the skies, flying at 100 miles per hour. Of how the dazzling advances in technology made the British flying boats redundant and favoured the long-range HP42. Or indeed of how the Rulers of the Trucial States resisted the British push to establish landing rights - of how Ras Al Khaimah put armed guards out to stop the British establishing a refuelling base and how Dubai refused to allow passengers from the flying boats to land.<br />
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I could most certainly tell you the story of Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi, dispossessed as a young man and exiled to Dubai before his triumphant return to Rule over Sharjah. Of the fight between his powerful father-in-law and the Ruler of Sharjah, Khalid, who had stolen Sultan's inheritance. And I could tell you about the war that erupted for control of Kalba, ruled by a slave called Barut on behalf of his Al Qasimi overlord. Because the Imperial Airways backup strip was laid in Kalba and in order to do this, the British recognised the tiny east coast township as being a Trucial State in its own right. At one time, Kalba was the seventh emirate.<br />
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But I'm not going to. You're going to have to buy the book for that. What I AM going to tell you about is how it took the death of a man to close the negotiations that were taking place against the clock as the British faced the breaking of the air route that connected their Empire to the East.<br />
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Hugh Biscoe was the British Political Resident in the Gulf, a life-long administrator in the government of Bombay who had little to no experience of the Arab world and who did not himself speak Arabic. Having gained Sultan bin Saqr's approval to establish a landing ground at Sharjah, a coup given that the British were desperate to find an alternative to Hengam before the clock ran out on their agreement with the Persian government, in May 1932 Biscoe found to his astonishment that Sultan bin Saqr had changed his mind and would no longer permit the airfield to be built.<br />
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There was no more time. The Empire Route was in danger of being shut down.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Empire Route. Imagine, it'd take you about 2 weeks to fly all the way - at 100 mph!</span></i></div>
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Biscoe called in a flight of Westland Wapitis - at the time fearsome, noisy fighting machines that would undoubtedly have struck the fear of God into the hearts of anyone in Arabia - to reinforce his point. He had no time to spare and couldn't afford to mess around. He pressed anyone he could rally to support his cause, including Sultan bin Saqr's domineering father-in-law, to no avail.<br />
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Turning the screw even further, Biscoe now brought the British Navy, the traditional tool of British policy enforcement in the Trucial States, to bear. The pressure on Sultan bin Saqr to sign the deal was intense, but so was the local opposition. Biscoe finally resolved to sail to Sharjah and hammer out his deal with the reluctant ruler. On the way, he picked up the <span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Political Agent to Kuwait, Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Dickson. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Biscoe had long suspected the British Residency Agent in Sharjah, </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Isa bin Abdullatif Al Serkal, of machinations against the airport deal. Al Serkal, whose role as British Agent made him one of the most powerful men on the coast, would see his influence wane considerably if the British established a direct presence. Biscoe thought Dickson, a fluent Arabic speaker with enormous experience in Arab affairs, would provide, let us say, a more dependable translation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In the early hours of the 19th July 1932, the day of his intended </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">arrival in Sharjah, sailing across the Gulf aboard </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">HMS
</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Bideford</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, Sir Hugh Vincent Biscoe KBE, His Britannic Majesty’s Political
Resident in the Arabian Gulf, suffered a heart attack and promptly died.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dickson barely hesitated. He had Biscoe buried at sea and, no sooner had the body wrapped in its Union Jack slid into the warm waters of the Gulf, but Dickson had cabled London to get permission to finalise the airport deal himself. London was desperate - yes, the more experienced Dickson was to proceed to Sharjah and try to get the deal done as soon as possible. On any terms.</span><br />
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The rest, as they say, is history...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-38047301634206087642019-11-22T12:39:00.001+03:002019-11-22T12:40:39.840+03:00#SharjahSaturday - The Weeks Ahead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here's your Second Reminder. Next week I'll post more detail about each of our intended locations.<br />
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The idea is you can come along and join us at any point and leave at any point. You can come along for the whole ride, or just follow the #SharjahSaturday hashtag on Twitter and pop by when you fancy. Your choice, entirely.<br />
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There's a ton more to see and do in and around Sharjah - let alone the emirates' east coast blandishments. But we'll save those for another time, hey?<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Plan </span></b></div>
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<b>9am - Jones</b></div>
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Meet at Jones The Grocer, Flag Island. Head to Mahatta Fort.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">It was a close run thing at one time - the airport WAS going to be built in Dibba!</span></i></div>
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<b>10am - </b><b>Mahatta Fort</b></div>
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Faithfully restored, Sharjah's Mahatta Fort was built by Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi in 1932 and leased to the British government as a 'safe house' for overnighting travellers on the British Imperial Airways route from Croydon to Canberra. It houses a collection of the early 'planes flown by 'Gulf Aviation' (Gulf Air to you, mate) as well as a VC10 flight deck you can sit in. For anyone willing to listen, I'll be sharing the 'backstory' to Mahatta - including how it took a good man to die in order to get the agreement to build the fort signed.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Who you lookin' at, punk?</i></span></div>
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<b>11am - </b><b>Arabia's Wildlife Centre</b></div>
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Just off the Sharjah/Dhaid highway, you'll find this gem - the Sharjah Natural History Museum, the Islamic Botanical Garden, a petting zoo and Arabia's Wildlife Centre, a zoological park designed so that - in part - the humans are caged and the animals are free outdoors. </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Fen being funky, neeces being cheeky...</i></span></div>
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<b>1pm</b></div>
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<b>Lunch at Fen Café</b><br />
So funky it'll make your knee joints ache, Fen is Sharjah's home grown art cafe, a vision in smoothed concrete and chilled out ambience with a good dose of hipster menu and a chocolate cake that sits somewhere above lead on the periodic table.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Al Naboodah was a Sharjah pearl merchant so rich he had houses in Bombay and Paris...</span></i></div>
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<b>2-3pm</b><br />
<b>The Heart of Sharjah</b><br />
We'll take a leisurely wander through the Heart of Sharjah, visiting the Bait Al Naboodah and walking along the Souk Al Shanasiyah to reach Rain Room at around 3-3.30ish. Those folks who actually want to experience the amazing sensation of walking through a rain shower in a dark cavern without actually getting wet will have to book for themselves. Visits are every 15 minutes for groups of no more than 6 and you <b><a href="https://rainroom.sharjahart.org/home.htm" style="color: #436590; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">book online here</a></b>.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Islamic Civilisation? Check. Museum? Check. Sharjah? Check.</span></i></div>
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<b>4pm</b></div>
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<b>Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation </b></div>
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A rather wonderful collection of Islamic innovation, history and artefacts housed in what used to be a not terribly successful souq but which is now a thoroughly successful museum!</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sharjah Fort. When I first got here it had been demolished and only one small tower remained...</span></i></div>
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<b>5pm</b></div>
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<b>Al Hisn Sharjah/Souq Al Arsah/Coffee at Al Bait Hotel</b></div>
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Sharjah Fort was totally and faithfully rebuilt by the current Ruler of Sharjah after its almost total destruction in the late 1960s and has some interesting displays in it, apart from its interest as a big, traditional forty thing. The Souq Al Arsah - a faithful reconstruction of the traditional souk - backs onto the uber-luxurious, Chedi-run Al Bait Hotel, a Dhs 27 million conversion of three traditional old merchants' houses in the centre of Sharjah.<br />
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<b>7pm</b></div>
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<b>Wave goodbyes/head for Ajman</b></div>
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-49394544562432522232019-11-20T07:12:00.001+03:002019-11-20T07:14:00.777+03:00Something for the Weekend? The Green Planet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Neece holding cockroach at Green Planet. This is the expensive way to do it. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>For the same experience at zero cost, pop the nearest drain head and scoop your hand in. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>No, no, please it's nothing. You're welcome...</i></span></div>
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Okay, let me be quite clear about this - this one's pricey, but it's worth it. To be fair, we're a bit spoiled on the general cost of a thing to do with the kids front - look at parks and attractions in the UK and you're straight into second mortgage territory right there. So if this sets you back Dhs 840 for a family of four, that's sort of fine, right?<br />
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<b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/NB7Cv8qr1eQHM8oZ7" target="_blank">The Green Planet by Meraas</a></b> (they're a property developer or, if you prefer, lifestyle-shaping dream enabler) is a largish but otherwise relatively unprepossessing building to the north of Satwa, near enough to the Coka Cola Arena. Inside is a tropical rainforest. And it's pretty cool as indoor rainforests go.<br />
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Now, before you get all sniffy about fake rainforests, let me just remind you that one of the most amazing tourist attractions in Cornwall, UK, is the Eden Project, a series of biomes contained in double-skinned, climate-controlled domes. And, like the Eden Project, Green Planet is a great platform for teaching kids about the world and some of its most brilliant nature.<br />
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There are 3,000 species of thing in Green Planet, from cockroaches you can handle (or, in my case, not handle the sight of, let alone touch) to sloths you can sloth at. There's a bat cave and a bit of outback and loads of little tactile experiences and things to do, see, handle, touch and generally gawp at. The whole journey starts at the top of the rainforest canopy (Green Planet is built around a massive 'tree') and then wends its way down past waterfalls and tree houses, rope bridges and walkways. There are monkeys and parrots, dazzling birds and slithery snakes, fish (including - cue dramatic sounds - piranhas) and insects everywhere.<br />
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We went with the neeces and a magnificent, royally entertaining time was had by all. Ellen wants to be a vet, so she was holding snakes and letting cockroaches run over her hand and doing all manner of other animally stuff that normal people would flip out over and that kids can, well, <i>do</i>.<br />
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If you want to make a real day out of it, maybe do lunch somewhere in City Walk and then nip over to the Dubai Frame for an afternoon treat...<br />
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-58591083297732580652019-11-19T08:10:00.003+03:002019-11-19T08:10:55.235+03:00Ten Wildlife Reserves to Visit in the Emirates<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wildlife. Rawr.</span></i></div>
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Many, many years ago I interviewed a lady called <b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2008/03/joke.html" target="_blank">Marijke Joengbloed</a></b>. She was the archetypal Expat Expert - a woman who had landed in Al Ain sometime in the dusty, distant past and who had turned her curiosity about the Emirates' natural history into becoming something of a centre of expertise. Like many before her, because Marijke <i>cared </i>about this stuff - and nobody else did - she became the de facto expert on the UAE's flora and fauna - as others became experts on the history, archaeology and ethnography of the place. The only people who seemed to care were the amateurs - the 'experts' had no expertise to offer. They'd never even <i>been</i> here.<br />
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Of course, the Bedouin knew every track in the sand, every shrub and tree, but nobody was asking them and now it's too late (I'm currently reading Aida Kanafani's 'Aesthetics and Ritual in the United Arab Emirates' from 1979, which you'll be hard pressed to find a copy of anywhere - it's a fascinating snapshot of life before, well, <i>now</i>).<br />
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The Emirates was, literally, uncharted territory - even when I arrived here, blinking, in the late 1980s.<br />
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Marijke was a big lady in every way and when I interviewed her back in the '90s, she was cradling a little pink baby hedgehog in her arm, nursing it with a pipette of milk. I discovered that there are actually three species of hedgehog in the Emirates - I had been amazed to find there was even one. I posted about it - and her role in the establishment of <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/2CBUYcFH4ykc6FS86" target="_blank">Arabia's Wildlife Centre in Sharjah</a></b> - <b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2008/03/joke.html" target="_blank">over here</a></b>.<br />
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These days, we not only have a wealth of knowledge about the biodiversity and wildlife of the Emirates, we have active conservation projects in place. Some of these are eminently visitable and many make for great weekend explorations.<br />
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Of them all, the centre that Marijke established remains the most brilliant and diverse place to visit, with an Islamic Garden, Natural History Museum, a petting zoo for the kids and the centre itself. It's so good, we're going there on #SharjahSaturday...<br />
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<b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/uomrPcBTbptaVWBf6" target="_blank">Marmoom and Al Qudra Lakes</a></b> are a great winter visit, with walks around the man-made lakes rewarded with all sorts of wildlife - including a huge amount of birds. There are a range of recreational facilities around here (with funky eats provided by the traileropolis of Last Exit) and, of course, the desert luxury of the Bab Al Shams hotel is just around the corner. Although there's no visitor centre at the <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/29ZvPwRXqqwHocCs8" target="_blank"><b>Ras Al Khor Nature Reserve</b></a>, there's a viewing point where you can look out for the plentiful flamingoes and other birds - but if you want a bird-spotter's paradise, head north of Sharjah to the award-winning and thoroughly delightful <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/9k7W5iWt8iiHDf567" target="_blank">Wasit Wetland Centre</a>, </b>where you can whistle at Fulvous Whistling Ducks among others.<br />
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Heading inland, you can make for the desert village of Nazwa and the Al Ghaf Conservation Reserve, intended to preserve important desert populations of the UAE's national tree, the Ghaf (or <i>prosopis cineraria</i> to you, mate). Again, no visitor centres here (although some lovely drives) but close by you'll find <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/56szZ8K1MGZQ13qh9" target="_blank">Badayer</a></b>, the homeplace of the Dune Formerly Known As Big Red and home to numerous dune buggy rental joints as well as the brand new (and achingly cool) Badayer Oasis, a 21-room hotel with 10 tents built on a desert theme, developed by Sharjah's Shurooq. If achingly funky desert hotels is your thing, I'd heartily recommend taking a look at <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/pVmnCSH5PqNNPoVm8" target="_blank"><b>Al Maha</b></a>, which is at the centre of the extensive Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, itself home to herds of gazelles and Arabian oryx. I have to note, we haven't been back since it was managed by Emirates - it's now a Marriott, but the property itself is utterly gorgeous, with each tented 'chalet' equipped with its own infinity pool overlooking the desert. Quite, quite magical.<br />
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Exploring the mountains, you can spend some time walking around (or driving around) the fertile wadis of <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/7sBbnoDp8CPneVC96" target="_blank">Wadi Helo</a>, </b>a protected nature reserve you'll likely pass through on your way to visiting the <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/r8Qw3ZtMJPJxZpS7A" target="_blank">Al Hefaiyah Mountain Conservation Centre</a></b>. Here you'll find over 30 species of Arabian wildlife, including that tartiest of all big cats, the endangered (in the UAE likely extinct in the wild) Arabian Leopard. Just over the road from Al Hefaiyah, you'll find the Kalba Birds of Prey Centre which features a fierce collection of avian predators who'd all rip your eyes out as soon as look at you. They do stuff like flying demonstrations here. While you're in Kalba, you might like to stay at Shurooq's glamping retreat near to the <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/XV6YjPfdMwiney818" target="_blank">Kalba Nature Reserve</a>. </b>If you do and you fancy something to get up to next day, you'd do worse than visit the UNESCO listed biosphere reserve at <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/8xLzWPJsPi95scGi9" target="_blank">Wadi Wurayah</a>, </b>inland of Bidya in Fujairah - although I have to confess last time I went it wasn't open to the public, the Radisson Blu website suggests very strongly that is no longer the case. Just in case it is, and to be sure to be sure of my ten reserves, you can go south and take a hike around the <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/tZmwLbZe29xHLai69" target="_blank">Al Wathba Wetland Reserve</a></b> in Abu Dhabi.<br />
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There are actually loads of wildlife reserves and parks dotted around the UAE and they all provide a pleasant wander in these cool winter months...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-71918081057327825962019-11-18T06:27:00.000+03:002019-11-18T06:27:33.967+03:00Is the Emirates the Safest Place on Earth?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Seen in Mirdif City Centre...</i></span></div>
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Now, I'm the first to admit that I've drunk the Kool Aid. I reckon that most expats in their first couple of years are ambivalent about this place, those that make it to five years are generally going to be pretty much in favour of it all. Get to ten years, buy a villa in the Ranches or whatever expat ghetto suits you best, and you're probably raving about how marvellous it all is - despite your Shiny perhaps being a tiny little bit less sparkly than you were promised. It's a Shiny, after all, and that's shiny enough for most people.<br />
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We perhaps tend to forget sometimes how, far from Shiny, home was grimy. Rain, tax, tea, in that order. That's why we're here, no?<br />
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I admire those that came out here with a game plan. Two years, five years, once you've got that deposit on a flat in Richmond or a sixteen bedroom mansion in Leicester or whatever it was that you wanted to get done, you've done it and gone back. That's great, but it was never for us. We just liked the place and we meandered - we never had an objective, as such. A vague idea that we'd go home one day, perhaps, but that was as concrete as anything got.<br />
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I remember saying to Sarah just after we arrived that we'd been £1,000 in debt every month in the UK and now that we'd been in the Emirates a while, we'd bought the household things we needed (and could never afford back home) and had a thousand quid in hand. If we did a year here and went home a thousand quid better off, we'd have done a year in the sun and have £2,000 more than when we arrived. That, I said, would be just as true if we did 25 years and went home two thousand quid better off. And it is, at that.<br />
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I'm very well aware that there are those who don't - for whom the Emirates hasn't been as kind or who have just found themselves out of step with the whole place. There are people who have found themselves trapped in a job they've hated, been bilked by a dodgy employer or who have just generally hated it and everything it stands for. There are those who have left here and re-cast their old home in the sun as a horrible, empty place (funnily enough, many who have done that seemed happy enough when they were here).<br />
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But, clearly, over 25 years later something's keeping us here - we like it, very much so in fact. Is that a bad thing?<br />
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One of the very many things I like about here is the sense of personal security. I've got used to keeping my wallet in my back pocket, to leaving the car open as I nip into the shop - to having loose change in the little pot thing by the handbrake (I'm reliably informed I wouldn't have a side window if I did that in the UK - I still find that hard to believe, but you tend to listen to the locals).<br />
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Walking past charity collection boxes in the malls stuffed with notes and noticing that a) they're not chained down and b) they're still there two seconds later, one is occasionally reminded that the crime rate here is so low as to be almost negligible. Sarah's safe out walking alone or with a friend, day or night. You forget that until you have to wise up when you're on holiday back in Europe. Until you hear the horror stories.<br />
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The photo above was taken <i>in a jewellery shop</i> in Mirdif City Centre. Even being as used as we are to the safety and security of here, we found it was an amusing 'where else in the world?' moment...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-68577163352197647772019-11-17T06:42:00.000+03:002019-11-17T06:42:32.931+03:00Into The Light - Remembering the 2005 Amman Bombings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The names of the 57 victims of the 2005 Amman bombing remembered </i></span></div>
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We have got into the habit of collecting a poster from all the places we visit and there's a very big, very white wall in our villa which is hung with many of these. It's full now, so we've started using the floor. <i>So </i>Bohemian, dahling.<br />
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Two of special significance (I've mentioned 'em before) come from an exhibition held in Amman to protest the 2005 Amman Bombings. One of the sponsors of the show was the PR company wot I used to work for, Spot On PR, which was one of very many reasons I was deeply proud of said company.<br />
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Our Jordan office was in the Zara Centre, connected to the Grand Hyatt Amman - one of the three hotels targeted by Al Qaeda/Daesh in the attack. We had organised a large number of, often very large scale, events there over the years and we knew the staff of the hotel very well indeed. A great number of them were cut down by the bomb, a 'dirty bomb' packed with nails and ball bearings, which ricocheted around the stone-walled lobby lounge in an evil fusillade of high speed projectiles that tore through flesh and smashed glass and furniture.<br />
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A friend was at the front desk in the lobby at the time of the blast, thankfully for her it was set in a dogleg away from the main lobby and she watched the glass walled entrance of the hotel shatter as the concussion wave and deadly hail of projectiles passed her by. She was entirely unharmed by the whole thing.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">The bomb scythed through them, an awful parabola of
concussing violence, bodies flung against the screaming living, glass flying
and tearing cloth, biting flesh. The bar in pieces, bottles smashed. Drink streamed
down the broken wood.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">The force hit
me, shards flying in the air, tossed me back against the wall. I saw Aisha’s
hair thrown up in a surreal halo as she jerked backwards and hit the bar with a
sickening force that distorted her fine features.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Faux beams
falling, a woman crawling towards me as I staggered to my feet, deafened. An
awful silence, mouths open, soundless screaming. A man walking, his hands to
his ears and blood running down his face like rain, the falling drops
spattering on the dusty floor in a steady flow like a broken gutter. I felt
wetness on my cheek, saw the blood on my fingers. Aisha. <i>Aish.</i></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">A woman lay on
the floor, her head thrown back and her eyes impossibly wide, her hair fanned
out on the wooden boards, her hips jerking obscenely, nostrils flared. The iron
tang of blood.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Dust, coughing,
thick dust. Ring a ring of roses. I turned, alone. Small fires as the drapes
burned up, smoke and dust, choking me. Silence as I turned, gaping, torn flesh
around me, open wounds, tangled limbs and open mouths, dresses torn and dead
eyes blurring as I turned around, brown flesh, white flesh, red flesh. Brown,
white, red. Children playing and mother calling us in from the sun for tea. A
pocket full of posies. Whirling madness. Choking smoke and stillness, except
for a single dark figure, spinning in the middle of the deadly tableau.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Aisha. Aisha. Aisha.</span></i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">I’m somewhere
white and beautiful, the breeze caressing my skin and she calls out, answering
me as I come to a standstill, screaming her name as I double up in pain.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">The olive trees
are her courtiers, the olive princess.</span></blockquote>
I actually first wrote <i>Olives - A Violent Romance </i>in 2004*, and the idea of a bombing in an Amman hotel back then was inconceivable. Despite being in a very tough neighbourhood indeed, Amman had been a peaceful haven for decades. When the actual bombings happened, I never thought of my fictional bombing for a second - it was later, much later, that I went back to that manuscript and saw the bomb I had imagined and made the connection to the one that actually took place.<br />
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When I checked into the Grand Hyatt on my trip to attend the show, the week after the bombings, I was one of sixteen guests in the 311-room hotel. The lobby had been completely blocked off with plasterboard. Behind it was wreckage and dark bloodstains - the cleanup and reconstruction hadn't even started. There was a gift-wrapped book waiting for me in my room and I thought it was a 'Thanks for being a brave little guest' present. It wasn't - it was to mark my 40th stay in the hotel. I hadn't been counting, but the Grand Hyatt team had.<br />
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I added my stays in other hotels and started keeping track myself. Now, when I land in Jordan and the airport pick-up asks the inevitable, 'Is this your first time in Jordan, <i>Seer</i>?' I can happily tell them, 'No, it's my 74th.'<br />
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It does tend to rather take the wind out of their sails, bless 'em...<br />
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<i>*Oh, God. 19 years ago!</i></div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-60373984283671291332019-11-15T11:45:00.000+03:002019-12-04T17:51:10.941+03:00#SharjahSaturday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoSs2XbcDVhKEsBXAzeVnzOUUEyXdxwy1I2LcmnkO7NRfTT7JzMfYu3RM-PJmCUaFA6gqvia6W2_V8A_dP3hyEJ9DWDEXVaVq0W3B2FauJXLooKKmgKr6ep__WXew1xK63-CPxMxZiQKA/s1600/Al+Hisn+Sharjah+3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoSs2XbcDVhKEsBXAzeVnzOUUEyXdxwy1I2LcmnkO7NRfTT7JzMfYu3RM-PJmCUaFA6gqvia6W2_V8A_dP3hyEJ9DWDEXVaVq0W3B2FauJXLooKKmgKr6ep__WXew1xK63-CPxMxZiQKA/s320/Al+Hisn+Sharjah+3.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Al Hisn Sharjah</span></i></div>
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Here it is, folks, the news you've all been waiting for. We're going to find out what's happening in the Cultured Emirate - Sharjah!!!<br />
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#SharjahSaturday started on Twitter as a result of my infamous rant about the fact that the Emirates is packed with things to do, places to go, stuff to see and an amazingly rich culture, heritage and diversity of locations. I'm still finding new stuff after over 32 years here and simply can't understand anyone sitting on their hands (particularly, not that I'm nagging, you understand, in Dubai) and moaning that there's nothing to do here - or that there's no depth, no culture, no bla bla bla.</div>
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So here's the skinny. On Saturday the 7th December, we're going to go to Sharjah (I'm cheating, I'll already be there) and we're going to spend the day together having fun. And then in the evening, decent folk can go home or perhaps find a restaurant for dinner while the naughty kids are going to go to Ajman and play. Not too hard, it's a school night, but enough to see some of what's <i>there</i>.</div>
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As anyone wot remembers the joys of GeekFest will recall, I have an instinctive horror of organisation. So #SharjahSaturday is UNorganised. You're welcome to come along for the whole thing, drop in at one or another of the destinations or just pop by and say 'Hi', as you please. The idea is that if you follow the hashtag, #SharjahSaturday you can see where we've got to and what we're doing.</div>
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The idea's to get a taste for what's there, so we're not necessarily hanging around and wringing the last ounce out of each location - we're finding them, taking a wander around and moving on! If people like, I'll play tour guide and share some of the history and pageantry of Sharjah's more than colouful past - and if not, I'll happily shut up!</div>
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Please note, in the nicest possible way, it doesn't matter to me if 6 or 60 turn up so don't go feeling obligated to confirm or whatever. If it works out for you on the day, it'll be lovely to see you. If not, you can follow the hashtag and have a vicarious day out!!!<br />
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Do feel free to bring the kids, BTW...<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">The Plan </span></b></div>
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<b>9am</b></div>
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Meet at Jones The Grocer, Flag Island.</div>
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Here we gather, do coffee and stuff before heading at around 9.45 to Mahatta Fort, via Al Hisn Sharjah.</div>
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<b>10am</b></div>
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<b>Mahatta Fort</b></div>
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This delightful little museum celebrates the first airport in the Emirates, built in 1932 by the Ruler of Sharjah to house travellers on the Empire Route from Croydon to Australia on enormous Handley Page HP42 biplanes - 18 of them on a full flight! At about 10.30 we're going to head for Arabia's Wildlife Centre.</div>
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<b>11am</b></div>
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<b>Arabia's Wildlife Centre</b></div>
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Just off the Sharjah/Dhaid highway, you'll find this gem - the Sharjah Natural History Museum, the Islamic Garden, a petting zoo and Arabia's Wildlife Centre, a zoo designed so that - in part - the humans are caged and the animals are free outdoors. I met its designer once and she, a fervent environmentalist, was delighted by that. At around 12.30 we'll head back into town, passing by the Discovery Centre and Sharjah Car Museum.</div>
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<b>1pm</b></div>
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<b>Lunch at Fen Café</b><br />
So funky it'll make your knee joints ache, Fen is Sharjah's home grown art cafe, a vision in smoothed concrete and chilled out ambience with a good dose of hipster menu and a chocolate cake that sits somewhere above lead on the periodic table.<br />
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<b>2-3pm</b><br />
<b>Heart of Sharjah</b><br />
We'll take a wander through the Heart of Sharjah, the Bait Al Naboodah and the Souk Al Shanasiyah to reach Rain Room at around 3-3.30ish. Those folks who actually want to experience the amazing sensation of walking through a rain shower in a dark cavern without actually getting wet will have to book for themselves. Visits are every 15 minutes for groups of no more than 6 and you <b><a href="https://rainroom.sharjahart.org/home.htm" target="_blank">book online here</a></b>.<br />
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<b>4pm</b><br />
<b>Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation </b><br />
A rather wonderful collection of Islamic innovation, history and artefacts housed in what used to be a not terribly successful souq but which is now a thoroughly successful museum!<br />
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<b>5pm</b><br />
<b>Al Hisn Sharjah/Souq Al Arsah/Coffee at Al Bait Hotel</b><br />
Sharjah Fort was totally and faithfully rebuilt by the current Ruler of Sharjah after its almost total destruction in the late 1960s. The Souq Al Arsah backs the uber-luxurious, Chedi-run Al Bait Hotel, a Dhs 27 million conversion of three traditional old merchants' houses in the centre of Sharjah into a hotel that is so gorgeous it makes Pat Mustard look unattractive.<br />
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<b>7pm</b><br />
<b>Wave goodbyes/head for Ajman</b><br />
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Sounds like fun? Join us at Jones at 9am on Saturday the 7th December, then!</div>
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-27669942945747858872019-11-13T07:45:00.001+03:002019-11-13T17:54:24.578+03:00Something for the Weekend? A Friday Brunch in Sharjah!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The 'Heart of Sharjah'</span></i></div>
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Friday brunches have become something of a tradition in the Emirates although I have to confess, it's a delight we usually avoid these days - the Paul Smith shirts and Coast dresses sloshing about with a surfeit of cheap hooch and plates of sweaty salmon, prawns and houmus is really not our thing.<br />
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An alternative, which I'd highly recommend, is brunch at Sharjah's <b><a href="https://www.radissonhotels.com/en-us/hotels/radisson-blu-resort-sharjah" target="_blank">Radisson Blu</a></b> - it's alcohol-free, which is a plus point for anyone who'd rather avoid the stuff on a Friday afternoon (or who just generally avoids the stuff) and it comes with a pass to the pool and beach thrown in so you can turn up (no traffic on a Friday, folks!), brunch to your heart's content and then flop down to the poolside and crash on a sunbed while the kids try to kill each other in the pools. There are three of these, by the way, as well as a beach.</div>
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If you're up for it, an overnight there right now will cost Dhs 279 a room which is hardly going to break the bank. The brunch package is Dhs 120 for adults and Dhs 60 for kids, which is basically your Friday sorted right there. The restaurant is surrounded by the UAE's original hotel indoor garden, waterfalls, koi carp and all and the food's excellent.</div>
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You're also all set to explore the Souk Al Shanasiyah at the Heart of Sharjah, the Al Naboodah house and the city's divers other museums (the museum of Islamic Civilisation is a short walk away), art galleries and attractions (the urban garden is lovely, Fen Café makes one of the world's most shockingly good chocolate cakes) as well as booking a 15 minute slot at <b><a href="https://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2018/07/rain-room-sharjah-rainroomsharjah.html" target="_blank">Rain Room</a></b>, taking a tour around Sharjah Aquarium or maybe tootling across town to explore the Wasit Wetland Centre. There are plenty more things to do/explore, too, including loads for kids - the rides and things at Al Montaza Park, the Discovery Centre and the Car Museum come immediately to mind, but there's plenty more where they came from.</div>
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You're basically looking at a whole weekend break with loads to see and do for a couple for the price of one of those Dubai 'bubbly brunches' for one. I mean, what's not to love?</div>
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-67185110447942118482019-11-12T07:49:00.003+03:002019-11-12T07:49:48.858+03:00The Dutch East India Company's Place in the History of the Emirates<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We went to stay with friends over the summer - they had lived here in the Emirates but returned to Holland, being Dutch as they is. Andre and Sonja live in Brouwershaven, in Zeeland. It's a funny little place, at one time an important mercantile (and, as the name attests, brewing) centre but now a sleepy, pleasant sort of small town with a marina and assorted leisure facilities and camp sites. Because it was once a bustling port, it has a church sized out of all proportion to the town's current scale, a huge cathedral-like construction. And inside it, on the floor, I found this gravestone from the 1700s, carved with a Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship.<br />
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In our time wandering around the Netherlands, I kept coming up against references to the Company and Holland's colonial past. I found brass cannon inscribed in Arabic and maps of the Gulf drawn by early Dutch cartographers. In Amsterdam we spent a happy hour or so wandering around a reconstructed VOC ship. It seemed as if everywhere I went, there was a reminder of the VOC and its links with the Gulf - and the story of how European powers smashed the great Arab monopoly of eastern trade that forms such an important part of the Emirates' past.<br />
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While it's most closely associated these days with South Africa and Indonesia, the VOC was actually very much involved in commerce with India and the Arabian Gulf - the VOC comes from the company's Dutch name, <i>Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie</i>. Dutch is an insane language that I confess to finding as unpronounceable as I am shamed at how the Dutch all speak impeccable English.<br />
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In the late 1500s, the Dutch went to war against Spain and its ally Portugal. This triggered a series of Dutch moves against Portugal's very successful eastern trade network over the next century and saw Portugal's trading stations throughout the east fall into Dutch hands. Although the focus of Dutch expansionism was the 'Far East', the VOC nevertheless established 'factories' in the Gulf, particularly at Gombroon (Bandar Abbas), Bandar Kong and, further up the Gulf, Kharg Island.<br />
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You'll see a lot of references to these 'factories' - established at various times by the Portuguese, French, Dutch and English. They're not manufacturing plants, but trading posts. And each successive eastwards wave of European expansion (or, if you prefer, Empire) would see all sorts of skulduggery practiced in order to suppress rival influence and trade - from the co-option and coercion of local leaders and populaces to outright warfare against colonial rivals and locals alike.<br />
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Having weakened the Portuguese stranglehold on the great Arab trade networks of (and monopoly of trade with) the east, the Dutch then went to war with the British in the late 1600s. The result was a flourishing of the British East India Company at Dutch expense - much as the VOC had flourished at Portuguese expense. Over the next century, the Dutch would see their influence and trading links with the East wane as the sun rose over the British Empire.<br />
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Which is why, as we enter the late 1700s, it was the Brits in the Gulf and their government in Bombay who found themselves arrayed against the local maritime force - the fearsome Huwala and Qawasim. Which is, as they say, another story...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-61515896288275541862019-11-11T06:57:00.002+03:002019-11-11T09:49:53.789+03:00Droning On: UAE Drone Law and the Pleasures of Flight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Jebel Mleiha</i></span></div>
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Squelching through a muddy field packed with incurious sheep to once again recover the stupid toy drone I was trying to fly, I finally resolved to go for this all or nothing. It was almost impossible to control the daft wee thing and even the vaguest puff of wind would send it away beyond the trees before I could land it. Fed up with wandering around the countryside trying to find my little plastic Chinese gadget time after time, and with a vague notion of imaging the archaeological sites of the UAE from the air, I decided to buy a DJI Mavic - a <i>serious</i> drone.<br />
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Now this was no small decision. We are talking about a very expensive piece of kit indeed, here. But the more I read about it, the more I resolved to take the plunge. One short Christmas later, I had me a Mavic Pro. I'll try not to rant and rave about it too much but the Mavic unquestionably stands as the most brilliantly integrated item of technology I have ever owned or used. We're talking a highly manoeuvrable 30 kph utterly stable 4K steadycam on a gimble, if you don't mind.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sheba's Palace - a Pre-Islamic Fort in Shimal, RAK</span></i></div>
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The Mavic does what it's supposed to and is very, very good at stopping idiots like me from breaking it. Believe me, I have tried to do for it in every murderous way imaginable. The Mavic just flashes its LEDs at me and refuses to do the thing that the stupid with the controller is asking it to do. Fly it out of range? It comes home automatically. Run out of battery while 400 feet up over a mountainside? It flies home while it still has enough power in reserve. Drive it at full speed into a wall? It just goes 'Umm, no.' Smash it with enough RF to burn out a Dalek? It auto-returns and lands safely all by itself.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wadi Suq era burial - Shimal, RAK</span></i></div>
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Clearly, before parting company with such a terrifying amount of money, I had looked up how to certify a drone in the Emirates. The UAE drone legislation is basically very sensible indeed (it's <b><a href="https://www.gcaa.gov.ae/en/pages/UASRegistration.aspx" target="_blank">linked here</a></b>) and you are asked merely to fill in an online form with your and the drone's details (<b><a href="https://eservices.gcaa.gov.ae/Drone/UnmannedAircraftRegistration.aspx" target="_blank">linked here</a></b>) and hey presto, you're registered. The UAE drone/UAV law covers mostly basic, common sense usage of a drone. The use of camera drones is permitted in the UAE, but with the usual caveats that apply to the Emirates' attitudes to personal privacy and space. Photography near military sites, ports, hotels or family areas is most definitely a nono - with or without a drone. It has ever been thus.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Murabbaa, or watchtower, Falaj Al Mualla</i></span></div>
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There's an app 'My Drone Hub', which you can download and this has an interactive map of fly/no fly zones. These have a tendency to change (quite a lot of the east coast seaboard recently became 'no fly'), so it's worth looking up your location before you fly. The Mavic, of course, has a better idea of where it is supposed to fly/not fly than I do in any case, being a great deal smarter than its owner.<br />
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Yes, I realise this sets the bar quite low, thank you.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Unexcavated area at Mleiha</span></i></div>
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Basically, as with other UAE drone regulation stuff, the fly/no fly zones broadly make sense. There's an almost blanket ban of Abu Dhabi, and the Omani border no fly zone has been widened (the Omanis aren't terribly 'drone friendly'), which has put areas such as Jebel Hafit and Thuqeibah beyond reach, which is sad. But many other areas of interest (to me, at least) remain accessible.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Shamash Temple, Ed-Dur, UAQ</span></i></div>
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So now I can get aerial images of my various sites (forts, burials, wadis, oases, the lot) and have a lot of fun flying around in the process. It's worth every (sigh) penny, believe me. I'm aiming to go back to the UK on leave, so I took the 20 question multiple choice test that has just been introduced there and registered as a UK operator, too. I got one question wrong (you have to get 16/20 to pass, so it wasn't such a bad flub) - which was about drone etiquette in the snow. I haven't, I must confess, had much experience of that - well, at least not yet...<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A little bit of Ireland! :)</span></i></div>
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-9756921726067856132019-11-10T07:00:00.000+03:002019-11-10T18:56:12.362+03:00Ed-Dur and the Mysteries of the Ancient World<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The site of Ed-Dur. Nothing to see here, folks. Move on, move on...</span></i></div>
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In the heady days of the building boom, back in the early 'noughties', Dubai property company Emaar started developing the coastal area north of Umm Al Quwain, flattening a great swathe of land and building a posh little sales centre on a curve in the road north to Ras Al Khaimah. It had magnificent views out over the mangroves. Across the road was a ramshackle cold store and a tiny mosque. The place is called Al Dour.<br />
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The scheme came to little in the end. The building boom turned into a bust and only a couple of hundred houses were actually constructed. They're still there today, a tiny gated community at the end of a wee drive from the main road, hoarding blocking the views either side of you (it always reminds me of the final scenes from Terry Gilliam's surreal and brilliant <i>Brazil</i>) until you emerge into a small carbon copy of Arabian Ranches.<br />
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Off the main road connecting these little beige 'dare to dream' wonders and the sales centre, to the right uphill just before you hit the curve as the road snakes past the mangroves to your left, you'll find a little brown sign to the 'Ed-Dur Archaeological Site'. If you drive on the sandy track up there, you'll find yourself looking at a expanse of shrubby desert fenced off from prying eyes and, behind the fence, a few clapboard buildings that look like a tatty little labour camp.<br />
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I'd not recommend this one as a day trip, because you'll see no more than I have just described.<br />
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And yet beyond that fence lies one of the most remarkable and mysterious sites in the UAE - an early Pre-Islamic city sprawled across some 800 hectares. Blossoming from the 3rd Century BCE onwards, Ed-Dur is closely linked with Mleiha inland - the two settlements are joined by the great wadi that snakes inland from here through the oasis towns of Falaj Al Mualla and Dhaid. Coins found here at Ed-Dur were minted using coin moulds found at Mleiha, animal burials at the two cities follow a similar rite - while human burials speak of rituals associated with Parthian northern Iraq.<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Part of the excavated temple complex at Ed-Dur, slowly being washed away...</span></i></div>
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Ed-Dur was a significant city with links to India, Persia, Mesopotamia, the Levant and Yemen. It was home to a vast variety of mudbrick and other constructions, from fortifications to houses and temples. It is here that we see alabaster sheets used as glass in windows and it is here that we find ceramics from Mesopotamia, Iran and India as well as Roman glass, all dated to the 1st Century BCE. The temple complex unearthed here contained an Aramaic inscription, one of the earliest finds of writing we have from the area (the others are, of course, from Mleiha), thought to have been the name of an early sun god, <i>Shams </i>(Himyarite) <i>or Shamash </i>(Akkadian).<br />
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Ed-Dur has been put forward as Pliny’s <i>Omana</i>, ‘a harbour of great importance in Carmania’. Carmania was a Persian province under Alexander the Great which stretched along the coast from Bandar Lengeh to Bandar Jask. Alexander never quite managed to invade Arabia, despite having expressed a clear interest in doing just that - sending his Admiral, <span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nearchos</span>, to explore the seas from India to Basra. Nearchos never made landfall on the Arabian side of the Gulf and Alexander died before he could add southeastern Arabia to his list of conquests.<br />
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Ed-Dur still has many secrets to tell us. Hellenistic era coins found here celebrate 'Abiel', although we have no idea who Abiel was - similar coins have been found in hoards in Bahrain but in a location dating them to some 300 years before the coins at Ed-Dur. These 'Tetra Drachma' were the coins minted at Mleiha - Abiel seems to have lived on in coinage for a great deal longer than in life.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Hellenistic Tetra Drachma found at Ed-Dur</i></span></div>
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Both Mleiha and Ed-Dur seem to have declined in the first two centuries of what we now call the 'Common Era' and then they likely fell to the invasion of the Sasanians. Ed-Dur was never to recover and provided archaeologists with a remarkable trove of finds (some of which you'll find on display at Umm Al Quwain's eclectic and pleasant little museum). Changes in sea levels and the silting of the coast here have meant that the maritime centre and former port of Ed-Dur is today a good few hundred metres from the sea it used to serve.<br />
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Today, the excavated temple and other buildings stand scandalously exposed to the elements, literally washing away with every rainy season that lashes the site. Unprotected and neglected, the entire area of Ed-Dur (imagine an archaeological centre like Mleiha established here - what a marvel!) is fenced off, a sad testament to the overlooked heritage of the Emirates.<br />
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So next time you're hoying off to the Barracuda, look out for the brown sign before the corner by the sales centre and spare a thought for the still-hidden mysteries of the ancient city of Ed-Dur...</div>
Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7655889105820772060.post-1888667118920259372019-11-08T09:43:00.000+03:002019-11-08T09:43:02.294+03:00Visit the Mleiha Archaeological Centre<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>The stunning Mleiha Archaeological Centre - the only such centre in the Emirates, sadly...</i></span></div>
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I was rabbiting on about the amazing archaeological site of Faya-1 and the emergence of anatomically modern humankind (Homo Sapiens, as you ask) from Africa to populate the world yesterday and so I thought it appropriate to tell you how and why you can go there and take the kids, granny, your visiting parents or the school with you. You could do it today, actually - just bundle 'em all in the car and nip out there for a wander around and a funky lunch at the glorious café there!<br />
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Faya-1 is part of the remarkable spread of human history you'll find preserved and, uniquely, celebrated at the <b><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/Zn6Abkxa1YhXBjCw7" target="_blank">Mleiha Archaeological Centre</a></b> in Sharjah. It's a bit of a schlep - about an hour's drive from Dubai, but it's brilliantly worthwhile - nowhere else in the Arabian Gulf will you see such a spread of human history in such a small area. And the Mleiha Archaeological Centre is, while glorious in its own small way, sadly just as unique.</div>
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The settlement, city, site of Mleiha is as central to the human history of the Emirates as it is central to the whole country. It's the motherlode, pure and simple.</div>
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Not only do we have the finds at Faya-1 to date the emergence of humans from Africa to populate the world, but we have a gloriously preserved 4,500 year-old <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm_Al_Nar_culture" target="_blank">Umm Al Nar</a></b> tomb on display at the Centre. Here you'll also find evidence of human occupation - and inhumation - at Jebel Buhais, just down the road. Jebel Buhais, a huge necropolis, stretches from the Neolithic to the Iron Age in its scope - although, oddly, lacks any evidence of Umm Al Nar occupation. It's an enormously important site which has been yielding new clues about the history of the Emirates since 1974, when an Iraqi team first started exploring the area. Buhais stands as the earliest radiometrically dated inland burial site in the Emirates. Beat that!</div>
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Mleiha not only contains a museum and a guide to the many sites spread around the area - from Faya-1 and Buhais through to the Iron Age and Pre-Islamic forts and settlements of Mleiha, but it has a funky café (beetroot hummus in Mleiha? Check! Super coffee and hipster cakes? Check!) and offers a series of adventures from dune buggy tours through to nighttime desert barbecues and camping experiences. Opened in 2016, master-planned by Shurooq - Sharjah's development authority , the place has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site - and quite rightly so, too.</div>
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Nearby, you'll find the achingly contemporary, chiq and just generally cool <b><a href="https://al-faya-lodge.hotels-sharjah-uae.com/en/" target="_blank">Al Faya Lodge</a></b>, which offers reasonably priced and totes chilled (See this? Huh? Down with the kids or WHAT?) overnight accommodation. Or you can simply plan to trek out to Mleiha and do lunch there before heading to the east coast of the Emirates and the many beach hotels therein - just in time for check-in.</div>
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I reckon you'll want to read up on it first, so you can answer the kids' questions. What you'll need is a dramatic, accessible and fun human history of the Emirates that tells the story as the amazing epic that it truly is.*</div>
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2/2/2020. You'll just have to wait... ;)<br />
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<i>*NO, that WASN'T a book plug! It WASN'T! It was a responsibly sourced reference to a future resource. That's all! Now, move on, people...</i></div>
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Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14141884153180374138noreply@blogger.com0