Children of the Seven Sands: the Reveal.

The simple life of the Trucial States in the 1950s - A display at Ajman Museum...

As those of you that know me will by now have realised, there may be some book promoting going on around here for a while.

Suffer.

The good news is that this book is a bit, well, different. I try and make all my books different, but this one is differenter.

For a start, it's not a novel, a work of fiction, like the last six. It's 140,000 words of total fact. It's a very big book that tells a very big story indeed.

It's a roller-coaster ride of a tale that has never been told before in one place. And I kid you not.

Everything in it is not only true, but 100% verifiably so. It's meticulously researched and draws from archaeology, academic papers, ancient manuscripts, rare and forgotten books, archives aplenty and reputable, published (and many unpublished) sources. It draws together a story that tells of incredible innovation, of daring and courage - and of human perseverance.

If it doesn't make you draw breath and gasp at the sheer, blinding hugeness of what you didn't know, I'll refund you without quibble. Many of you are aware of my 'no refunds' policy. I'm willing to waive it for this one.

Children of the Seven Sands, set to be published in February next year by UAE-based publisher Motivate Publishing, is the human history of the United Arab Emirates. It's a 130,000 year-old tale that has, quite literally, never been shared before. And I guarantee you, it'll blow you away.

Bloody, gruesome, dramatic, vicious, honourable, glorious, brilliant, deceitful, noble, brave, bonkers and just plain splendorous, the history of the UAE is a wide-screen panorama of a narrative which has carried me away like a bewildered ant clinging to a log adrift in a winter wadi in spate - and I am going to delight in sharing it with you - here on the blog, but also in the book itself. You'd never believe the half of it - you'll never believe it's sitting here right under your noses. And it's all around you, even today.

It's a story I've set out to share with all its depth and vigour, charm and brio - it's a series of remarkable ups and downs, upsets and triumphs. It will challenge everything you thought you knew about UAE history but also quite a few unusual and unknown snippets of European and Indian history, too.

I kid you not - and I'm not overdoing it. I sent the final manuscript off to the publishers today and I can tell you that every single page contains something you didn't know, something that will challenge what you thought about this place and something that'll make you think about here in a totally new light.

Am I over promising? Let's see - but this, ladies and gentlemen, is what has been keeping me so very quiet as of late...

Dubai Traffic On The Increase. Whoopee.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The car dealers are rubbing their hands, gleefully cackling and singing 'happy days are here again' in their broken, wheezing voices. As miserable a bunch of avaricious hunchbacks as you'll find, the saggy-skinned troglodytes in suits are hearing the sound of tills ringing and they have pronounced the sound To Be Good.

It is within the pages of the mighty Gulf News today we are told that Dubai has increased new vehicle registrations by 10% year on year. That's presumably a sign that we're seeing a 10% increase in vehicles on the road - a total of 1,240,931 vehicles were registered with the RTA this year. Car dealers in Dubai and Sharjah have apparently told the newspaper of increases in new car sales of up to 40% and anticipate a continued strong growth trend.

Even Gulf News made the connection. That means more cars on the road which means more traffic which means more congestion which means more jostling with aggressive dolts in lines of glittering metal blowing out billowing clouds of choking fumes and general bloody misery.

One place there are less cars to be found than last year, incidentally, is the Sharjah/Dubai highway. Although it still gets gummy here and there, the traffic volumes are undoubtedly down as traffic concentrates instead on choking Al Wahda street because everyone's trying to leave at Al Khan and hoy off over to the 311 (The road formerly known as the Emirates Road but now renamed the Mohammed Bin Zayed Road) to avoid shelling out Dhs4. I am constantly amazed at what lengths people will go to in order to save Dhs4 - including spending Dhs5 in extra petrol.

So Salik (the name of Dubai's traffic toll system and Arabic for 'clear') has lived up to its name. Who knew?

The question is whether the expansion of the UAE's road infrastructure will keep pace with the expansion in traffic. There's a new arterial motorway planned to link the 311 down to Abu Dhabi, while a new road system around the Trade Centre Roundabout - started before the bust and now completed by Italian company Salini, which has somehow managed to ride out the recession and its significant exposure to Dubai - is opening this week. The conversion of the National Paints Car Park into a functional road appears to be nearing completion, too - it'll be interesting to see if any number of new lanes can bring clarity to what was the UAE's most notorious traffic bottleneck.

Meanwhile, property prices in Dubai rose by more than anywhere else in the world, according to a piece in The National, which identifies a 28.5% rise in the first nine months of the year.

Oh, joy. Groundhog day.

Salmon Fishing In The Emirates

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So it's official. A company is to develop an on-shore salmon farm in Western Abu Dhabi, chilling sea water and using 'recirculating aquaculture' techniques to farm the fish in tanks cooled to 13 celsius. Reuters reports on the story here.

The 500,000 square metre farm is to be developed in two phases at a cost of a tad over $27 million and will produce 4,000 tonnes of fish a year in its final phase.

They're looking at a UAE market of around 1,000 tonnes of salmon a year, currently airfreighted here from Norway and Ireland at a cost of something like $4-5 per kilo. Other gulf countries will take up the rest of the crop.

The company behind the scheme, Abu Dhabi fish farming and production company 'Asmak', isn't kidding. It already has major farming operations in the Gulf, with farms in Saudi Arabia and the UAE currently producing over 2,000 tonnes of fish a year - and a processing, distribution and 'value-added products' business.

There are major concerns about the health risks associated with consuming farmed salmon, particularly given the diet farmed fish are fed and the way it introduces toxins into the fish which we, in turn, consume. The furore really kicked off ten years ago with a scary study by Albany University which recommended eating very little farmed salmon indeed to avoid increased risk of cancer. There has been huge debate recently in Norway following advice issued to pregnant mothers to avoid eating farmed salmon - which brings the Norwegians in line with UK health advice, incidentally.

I give you this link to the story in the Shetland News. I love the Shetland News strapline "Great is the truth and it shall prevail".

Some of the media round here could do with a touch of that...

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what Asmak intends to feed its fishies. Shame none of the local media covering the story asked... but then they just hacked the Reuters piece into make-up.

Neologist Nomenclature

(Photo credit: Frank Kehren)

If you searched 'Neologist nomenclature' and you're for real, I apologise. I just wasted your time.

Hot on the heels of the news Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority is to commence a mega-project to name some 22,000 of the city's streets comes Abu Dhabi's pledge to do the very same thing. The two cities have long had a street numbering system in place, but now we're going to get real road names.

As eny fule no, navigation in the Gulf has traditionally been a matter of using landmarks. I recall with delight the early days of my life tramping around the region and discovering I was to spend my day looking for 'the red office building to the right of French Corner, just down Talateen Street from the big Pepsi hoarding' and similar locations. I spent many a joyous hour in Riyadh's insane traffic (back then, they'd shove you from behind into a roundabout if you hesitated in joining the choking stream), perplexed and deeply lost. This is also, incidentally, frequently how I pass my time in Abu Dhabi, the words 'don't worry, it's really easy to find' instantly plunging icy shards of horror into my soul.

Those popular landmarks were to lend their names to roundabouts and roads, areas even. So Dubai, for instance, gained 'Bank Street', 'Budgie Roundabout', 'Chicago Beach', 'Fish Roundabout' and the like. Sharjah got 'Mothercat', 'Flying Saucer' and - of course - 'National Paints'.

Now they're all going to be renamed. Sharjah already renamed all its roundabouts as squares years ago, to the perplexity of many. And it already has street names, each more impenetrable than the last. This has also been the case in Riyadh, where long-standing roads such as 'Pepsi Cola' and 'Airport' have been renamed with dignitaries' full names. The joy of finding out you actually wanted Abdulaziz bin Sultan bin Abdulrahman Al Saud street when you finally made your way to Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman bin Sultan Al Saud street was always a marvel to behold.

And so, I fear, it will be in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The usual pandering will take place and we'll start with Prominent People With Long Names. Then great historical figures - the usual astrologers, mathematicians, travellers (hands up who wants to live in Ibn Battuta Street, then?) and transmuters of lead to gold. Then they'll get desperate and start using desert animals and the like. If I know Dubai, there'll be an auction to let companies sponsor a street name.

I can't keep up. I'm already having issues remembering what I'm supposed to call the Emirates Road these days, let alone Diyafah street and, of course, remembering it's now the Al Fahidi Cultural Neighbourhood. Like many others, I suspect, I'll likely keep directing people using the Emarat before Satwa Bus Station rather than whatever new name gets slapped on the street our office building is on.

Why they don't use the 'popular' names, I'll never know. Although I always thought 'Budgie Roundabout' disrespectful - especially with the descriptor popularly appended...

Abu Dhabi Bans Silly String

(Photo credit: mikecogh)

One of my favourite jokes of all time is that people in Dubai don't understand the Flintstones, while Abu Dhabi do.

Sorry, silly string brought that to mind. And you won't be finding much of it around on December 2nd in Abu Dhabi, because it's been banned - along with 'unofficial' car parades, car painting and a range of other popular national day activities.

The warnings come nice and early, but then reports are already tumbling in about car decoration workshops doing Dhs20,000 makeovers in preparation for the UAE's 42nd National Day which takes place on the aforementioned 2nd December. If Dubai gets Expo 2020, the result due in on November 27th, they're going to completely lose the head all across that weekend.

I've said before that the UAE is the only place in the Middle East where the people take to the streets to celebrate their country, and that they most certainly do. It's a happy time and a time to go wombat crazy and generally make like it's mardi gras, but police around the Emirates have had enough and over the past couple of years have moved to regulate a celebration that at times looks as if it could border on hysteria.

So no changing the colour of your car, obscuring your number plate, having your windscreen tinted with pictures of the UAE's leaders or the flag, no tinting the driver side windows, no hanging out of cars or over-stuffing cars and no, and I'd like to make this quite clear, no silly string.

If you breaks the rules, it's a Dhs1,000 fine and 12 black points. And Abu Dhabi police have set aside a special area for impounded cars on the day. Presumably other emirates' police forces will enforce similar rules, although I haven't seen any announcements.

Sharjah Corniche will doubtless once again be packed and there, I am sure, you will find silly string.

Manaa - Abu Dhabi Names And Shames

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council has launched a new portal called 'Manaa' which lists the products it has recalled from the Abu Dhabi market because of safety concerns - over 15,000 items have been taken off the shelves in the last year.

The story ran on national news agency WAM and, therefore, in all the papers.

It's a remarkable move in its own quiet little way - it's unusual to see acceptance of a 'name and shame' strategy around here and this website certainly does that. Each nonconformant product is identified with a photograph and its brand name, product number and batch number. Categorised into product types, the archive of recalled products is searchable and a search through the database quickly reveals a number of surprises.

The first surprise is in the electrical appliances category. There's a huge dominance of Chinese products for a start, sort of what you'd expect, but there are also some major brands featured, including Moulinex and Kenwood. Added to that, a number of locally known brands are prominent, too, with multiple product recalls from Elekta, Geepas, Nikai and Aftron. Nearly every supermarket in the country will sell you Oshtraco socket strips and electrical accessories, and yet they've had recalls too. Who knew?

Some of the reasons for recalling products can seem a bit obtuse. The Aftron AFGSM1800 contact grill (sounds more like a mobile to me!) was withdrawn because "The temperature rise beyond the standard limit" and an Elekta fan withdrawn because "Fan blade is accessible with the test finger which may cut the users fingers when running." Another Elekta fan didn't make the grade because "The temperature rose beyond the standard limit of motor winding by resistance method the and ball pressure test of speed selector insulation did not comply."

I'm sure it didn't...

Perhaps amusingly, one of the recalled brands of socket strip was 'Terminator'.

But the real surprise comes when you dig into the archive beyond the electrical appliances and children's toys categories. Because beyond these, the cupboard is bare. Not a thing. All the other categories are empty, including vehicle tires,vehicle parts, containers and packaging, cigarette fuel, lighter, firework and chemicals and cosmetics. Presumably these have yet to be regulated.

The scheme, albeit young, is a good one and great news for consumers. The Council is a relatively new body with a huge job ahead of it - and, from the website, appears to be implementing a rounded standards, regulation and conformity system for product safety. For instance, it only announced its electrical appliances certification initiative in January this year. So we can presumably look forward to the database being further populated as that work continues.

The Council appears to have a remit to cover Abu Dhabi emirate only rather than being a Federal body - however a chat with Abdalla Muami on Twitter clarifies that ADQCC liaises with Federal bodies on non-conforming products, which would mean, presumably, that products Abu Dhabi finds unsafe are withdrawn from all markets.

However, now you can actually check for yourself before buying stuff thanks to the database!

The E-dirham - One Of The UAE's Best Kept Secrets?

Visa (Photo credit: DeclanTM)

The UAE federal government has quietly retired the old e-dirham card and replaced it with a spangly new card that is compatible with the Visa network. That means it's effectively a pre-paid Visa card and you can use it anywhere you'd use a conventional Visa card - shops, online and so on.


I'm not going to go into the considerable amount of pain I went through to discover this because it would be as tedious to read as it was to go through the process of discovery. Suffice it to say I was applying for an ISBN number for my Middle East edition of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and found myself holding an out of date e-dirham card with the need to get the new one. Note not all government departments are 'up to speed' on the new card - the National Media Council, for instance, took its fee for my 'permission to print' from an old, also known as 'G1', e-dirham card.

You can get the new 'G2' e-dirham from any branch of National Bank of Abu Dhabi. Just rock up and ask for it and, seven dirhams later, you're holding your own piece of pre-paid Visa. I got mine from the Ministry of Economy office which is on the fourth floor of the Etisalat building in Bur Dubai. There's no application process as such to obtain the card - just flash the cash and pocket the fantastic plastic!

Now you can use any NBAD branch ATM machine to charge the card (using cash) once ONLY. A second charge-up requires you to register the card. This takes ten minutes at any NBAD branch (including five minutes for the fragrant lady with an itchy shayla to get the IT wallah to fix her printer's paper jam) and requires a National ID card or passport and filling out a simple form. The process is instantaneous and now you are free to charge the card up and off you go! Their branches are all listed (as PDF's, oddly) at this here handy link.

This is great news for anyone who couldn't otherwise get a credit card or who doesn't trust themselves with one/want to pay the bank's stupid fees. You can, for instance, give yourself a few hundred dirhams 'splurge' money a month and know you can never overdo it. What's more, you've now got a safe online spending card that'll never expose you to any significant risk of fraud - and all for a once-only charge of seven dirhams - no more outrageous annual fees!

The odd thing is how little coverage there has been of this in local media...

The Times They Are A-Changin'

The Man Who Fell to Earth (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This isn't really a book post, it just starts like one, so bear with me.

I've just heard that Beirut - An Explosive Thriller has been passed by the National Media Council in Abu Dhabi and I therefore have permission to print the book in the UAE. Many of my friends overseas have a hard time understanding why anyone would need permission to print a book and, in fact, have drawn parallels between this and the control of information by the Church in the dark ages.

The fact of the matter is it's something of a Catch22.In the Middle East it is generally assumed that the national media is controlled by the government and therefore speaks with the same voice. It isn't until you have a fully deregulated environment that you can afford to drop the regulation, and yet a fully deregulated environment is almost impossible to conceive here.

What has changed, however - and to a remarkable degree for someone who remembers how it was in the 1980s - is the lightness of the touch on the tiller. I remember Lawrence of Arabia being banned in the UAE and now a digitally enhanced recut of David Lean's seminal (if sometimes fanciful) film is showing at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. I once had a DVD of Nicholas Roeg's 1970s art-house movie The Man Who Fell To Earth confiscated by the Ministry of Information in Dubai (and replaced in my Amazon sleeve by a booklet about finding the path to God). Today, bookshops in the UAE are selling EL James' books.

I'm not sure about selling 50 Shades of Grey and its two sibling titles in the UAE, to be honest. While I'm all for freedom of choice and expression, it rather flies in the face of a censored Internet and certainly is not in line with the cultural and moral environment here. I mean, we're asked to dress decently in malls and public places here. You sort of get the feeling that someone, somewhere hasn't understood it - that it has somehow flown under the radar. There was a period some years ago when one prominent bookseller in the UAE was selling George Bataille's scabrous work of porn, 'The story of the eye', much to colleagues' glee. It did not, of course, last.

Magic Menon (explained in this early blog post although I first mentioned the solvent abusing Black Marker Gang here.) must have retired now, too. It's hard to go on putting black pen on pages when they're iPad apps.The Ministry of Information is certainly no more. The dark offices where I was once brought in to be censured as a magazine publisher, all big desks and locked bookcases full of Jackie Collins novels, are now the friendly corridors of the National Media Council. I thought I was pushing it with Beirut - An Explosive Thriller - there was already quite a bit of controversy regarding the morality, or otherwise, of Olives - A Violent Romance. Beirut has a lot more contentious stuff in it. My reader in Abu Dhabi (He's much too jocular and friendly a chap to call a censor) did note the number of f-bombs, but explained he understood 'this is the British style'.

But when you've got 50 shades in tottering stacks in the malls, I suppose I'm pretty safe. Although I personally think it's only a matter of time before someone picks that book up and decides a light hand on the tiller is one thing, but enough is enough.

The Quietest Office

Image via CrunchBase

Apple has an office in the UAE. Operating out of Abu Dhabi media zone TwoFour54, it would appear to be something of a 'best kept secret'.

Where was the fanfare? The dancing girls? The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowds? Companies typically waste no time at all in trumpeting office openings - look at the fuss Facebook and LinkedIn are making.

Tech website itp.net ran a couple of speculative stories on Apple opening a UAE office back in 2010 - one based on channel rumours of an office opening 'this year' and one quoting distributor Arab Business Machines (ABM) on how the opening wouldn't materially affect their business. And that's it. Nothing else. no announcements, no interviews. No Tim Cooks talking about commitment to the Middle East. Silence.

The only reason it came to light at all is that I mentioned on the weekly Unwired radio show yesterday that Apple had famously never opened a point of presence in the Middle East. In all these years, Apple has provided highly capable Arabic language support (it was very early to market with Mac Arabic language support for the burgeoning desktop publishing market, which it dominated in the Middle East) but never actually been here as such. A listener texted in 'not so' and so I asked Twitter.

The result was surprising. Not only did people come out of the woodwork with affirmatives, but one former journalist at The National even pinpointed the office building at TwoFour54 and mentioned that he'd been asked to desist from following up his story. Apple itself doesn't list out any worldwide offices on its website but does identify Apple UAE in its map of training centres.

So there we have it. Apple is actually here on our doorstep. They're just being very, very quiet about it...

Justice For Natalie

Sometimes a cause comes to light that you just can't ignore. Natalie Creane's is one such. For two years her family have been fighting in the UAE's courts to get Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace Hotel to admit liability for the injury she sustained when staying in one of their rooms. According to her family:

"After going to the Emirates Palace Hotel for a weekend break, Natalie opened the door to the wardrobe in her hotel room to put shoes in the bottom. A loose wooden panel high up in the wardrobe fell, hitting her on the front of the head. A member of the hotel’s staff found Natalie unconscious in the room.

Rather than call an ambulance, the hotel’s duty manager took her to hospital by car. It soon became clear that Natalie was very unwell. With no prior history of such problems, she began to suffer from violent seizures. The Emirates Palace Hotel referred the family to its insurance company. After talks with the company broke down, the family was faced with the hotel’s lawyers. Forced to take their case to court, a full two years after the accident, the family is still fighting for justice now – four years on."

The injury was a serious one, Natalie's family say the appalling seizures and a range of related conditions have seen her in four comas with a totally shot immune system and over twenty visits to intensive care. Right now she's on a ventilator in Rashid Hospital and in desperate need of specialist treatment her family can't afford any more - four years after the accident, they've spent all they have.

She is a very sick woman indeed.

The luxurious 'seven star' Emirates Palace Hotel, which is managed by the Swiss/German multinational Kempinski Hotels, has apparently consistently refused liability and the family say the hotel's legal team has 'aggressively' fought their attempt to take the issue to court, appealing against expert opinion that has favoured the family's case. That court battle has arguably cost Natalie dear - and the family is now finally so desperate they've decided to take it public. The family is scrupulous to point out that the legal system and judges in the case have been fair and professional. But time is running out for Natalie...

This is the Facebook page, 'Justice for Natalie'.

There's also a petition for her at Care2.

Could I suggest you go there and add your voice? If you can give help, expertise or do anything to help her cause (for instance publicity), you'd be showing a great deal more humanity than any wealthy international hotel management organisation that would stand by and watch this happen to a young woman in the name of liability.

National Day

Image via WikipediaEveryone's going potty about National Day and the lads have been busily decorating their cars - already the streets are littered with Landcruisers with red, white and black feather boas decorating them nose to tail, Altimas covered in UAE flag stickers and FJ Cruisers with pictures of Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Khalifa all over them. The street lights have the mandatory LED light strings in green, white and blue (because black lights don't work, people) and billboards are shouting out 'Kulluna Khalifa'! ('We are all Khalifa' after Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the President of the UAE)

Abu Dhabi police have issued an order forbidding people to completely cover their car windows with flags or to hang out of cars, sit on the doors or roofs or in other ways behave madly. It's very brave of them, but I can't help feeling that there's a touch of the Canutes to their effort - tomorrow is going to be one great parade as an outbreak of festivity, national pride and car culture come together like the Dead Sea closing after Moses and that lot nipped through.

I love the story of the formation of the Emirates: the transition from the Trucial States (back in 1853 the Brits made them all sign up to stop bashing each other and raiding unsuspecting passing dhows, hence 'trucial') to the UAE was accomplished in less than two years after a Brit in a bowler hat landed at Sharjah Airport with the news in his briefcase that Her Majesty's Britannic Government had (finally) realised the game was up, the Empire was no more and we were generally doing a Pontius Pilate on every obligation East of Suez.

This gave these guys a couple of years to define the constitution, acceptable system of governance, administration and identity of a modern nation state. They hadn't really been, errr, trained for it. The remarkable figures of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum were to play a critical role in forging the United Arab Emirates out of the messy and time consuming negotiations that at one time or another involved Oman, Qatar and Bahrain too.

Let's not forget that there was precious little infrastructure in place and that only a few short years before, people here were still living in barasti houses - the ruler of Ajman didn't quit the old fort (now the museum) until 1967, there were still tribes and Dubai was a small town centered around Bastakia, Shindaga and the souk of Deira. It wasn't until the late 1950s that Sheikh Rashid started a programme of development and modernisation that included dredging Dubai Creek so that larger boats could come in, leading eventually to the visionary (people at the time thought quite mad) project to create Port Rashid. These men transitioned from being semi-nomadic tribal leaders to the heads of a modern nation state. Their achievements were truly remarkable.

I have some old video footage of Sheikh Rashid, a man that used to take 5am tours around his city as it was being built, in true Arabian Nights style. He's sitting negotiating with some rather stuffy looking Brits and his expression is magical, a sort of 'Yeah, right lads' look on him as if he knows what they're up to. He probably did, too. This is the man that built the Dubai World Trade Centre when there was no world trade here, who blew a letter F in the desert so big you can see it from space - this was to become Jebel Ali Free Zone, another of his projects that had people at the time shaking their heads and saying that the Sheikh had lost the head. I've got video of the blowing up of the desert, too - blokes with mad sideburns and really, really wide collars presiding over the Wile E Coyote style plunger and then BOOM.

The complexity of negotiations to hammer a federation out of these disparate coastal Sheikhdoms was horrendous - land negotiations alone were a huge problem, let alone the different vested interests, rivalries and claims everyone had to settle. It was all made worse by the fact that the dirty deed had been done by a Labour government - and the Tories had hinted strongly that they'd undo it. So the Trucial chappies didn't get down to it as seriously as they might right up until it became clear that the Tories were as full of it as the average backed-up septic tank.

The result has been the Federation of states that make up the UAE - clockwise: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain Ras Al Khaimah (which didn't sign up 'till a year after the others, holding out for better representation at the Federal level, apparently) and Fujairah. All have coastal and inland holdings, dating back to when the tribes would winter by the sea but escape to the mountains and oases in the unbearable heat of summer) all have territory nested in each other (Go to Hatta, the inland town of Dubai, and you'll cross Sharjah, Ajman and Oman on your way) because the territorial division was done along the lines of tribal affiliations and all have totally separate police forces, municipalities and, in the main, public services. And yet all are part of one country and one nation.

The result is often quixotic at best - but it works, somehow. Eventually. Mostly.

So what if they struggle at times to get things like the legal system to work properly? They defined a nation in two years and built it in (so far) 39 - an infrastructure that is still, of course, being built out in breathtaking, if sometimes slightly crass, style. The Brits were decimalising and worrying about Europe when the UAE was being born. I was personally involved in making my first ginger beer plants and hating girls at the time. I have since, by the way, continued to like ginger beer and considerably improved my opinion of girls. But I can't claim to have built a nation...

So here's a National Day toast: good luck to them, warts and all. We're here because it's better than there, after all, aren't we?

Mind you, take a look at the lads all hooning around tomorrow and spare a thought for quite how bonkers they're all going to go for the 40th National Day next year. That I have to see! :)

(UAE National Day is celebrated tomorrow, the 2nd December)

WOMAD

ADACH 2 WOMAD!

Yayyyyy!

According to today's thunderous Gulf News (650g), WOMAD is coming to the Emirates! A three day world music festival will take place in Abu Dhabi in April, put together by the organisation to promote 'world' music set up by the rather talented Mr. Peter Gabriel. WOMAD (World of Music and Dance) has been breaking new artists from around the world, and particularly its more far-flung locales, for something like 26 years now. Everyone always goes on about how it discovered Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Youssou D'Nour, but I've always been more of an Afro Celt Sound Machine fan, myself.

The National adds that the festival will start with a gig at Al Ain's Al Jahili Fort but, like GN, gives no dates for the 3-day festival.

This is a real coup for the chaps and chapesses over at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) and should be a truly fantastic event. We await dates and acts - but this is potentially a great platform for the region's more 'traditional' musicians, as well as artistes like Toufiq Faroukh and even possibly bands from the region such as Arab/rock fusion outfit Blend...

PS: Anyone interested in WOMAD and the gigs can log into www.womad.org and get on the mailing list or wander around in the forums and bibble about music and stuff.