Talking Of Books. Again. Well, Do I Ever Talk Of Anything Else?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Following from the delights of co-hosting Dubai Eye Radio's 'Talking of Books' show a couple of weeks ago, they've been potty enough to ask me back for the coming Saturday's literary extravaganza , in which I'll be their 'book champion'. Basically, I get to spend an hour talking about a book I'm particularly passionate about. Previous book champions have talked enthusiastically about brilliant novels such as Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy, for instance.

We have two problems with this. One is there's no way I'm going to limit myself to just one book. The other is I'm of the humble opinion that an hour's too long to spend talking about a single book, anyway. Especially when there are so many wonderful things out there to talk about. It's sort of like 'desert island books' and I'm not coming along with just one of the things in my satchel. I mean, I've got a Kindle. I can carry thousands of books with me!

So I'm going to try and talk about four. And you, dear reader, as a fully paid-up subscriber to this blog, get a sneak preview. Are you not the lucky one?

Tove Jansson - The True Deceiver
I discovered Tove Jansson when we were in Helsinki last year. I had met her Moomins as a kid and loved 'em, but I hadn't known about her adult fiction. The first thing I read was her Summer Book, a collection of vignettes of an old lady and her granddaughter summering on an island (Finland has a great many islands). Lying on a mossy knoll on Suomenlinna reading her timeless prose is a lovely way to spend a sunny Helsinki afternoon, I can assure you. The book's magical, redolent of the sea and season, effortlessly imagined and gloriously rich. The True Deceiver is another kettle of herring altogether - dark, relentless and burdened down with the perma-dark pressure of the winter snow deadening everything and making men go mad. It's a horrible book, all the more oppressive for its humanity.

Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet
This is one of my favourite books of all time. It's so very lush, filled with colours and scents, characters and the sweeping brilliance of a writer gorging on life. He was a twat as a human being, but God could Durrell write. It's actually four books, written as an interlinear: each book tells the same story from a different perspective (of them all, only the fourth nods to the concept of the passage of time) and it's only when you've read all four you get the full picture. That's a remarkable scope to set yourself as a writer and yet Durrell pulls it off without ever seeming to get out of breath. It's set in Alexandria between the wars and plays with love, gnosticism, betrayal, adultery, poetry and death in equal measures.

John Le Carré - The Honourable Schoolboy
I thunk a lot about this one. It was always going to be a Le Carré, but which one? I happen to think this is his cleverest and also so typical of his work. I think he's massively underrated as a literary figure because he writes 'spy thrillers' rather than literary fiction. I would never hesitate to sit down and re-read any of his books as a reader and I do try (and fail) not to get too distracted by my admiration of him as a writer. But gosh, he's good. He's also dark, devastatingly observed and wilfully cruel and bleak.

Now we're in trouble. I've glibly plumped for the first three and I had William Gibson's Neuromancer down as the fourth but hang on a second is that really what I want? It's pretty important, this fourth book. I mean, what about Mervyn Peake's brilliant Gormenghast trilogy? Well, mostly brilliant. Sort of 2/3 brilliant and 1/3 insane. But I love it and it's stayed with me through re-read after re-read.

What about non-fiction? Fisk's furious polemic, The Great War For Civilisation, the grim necronomicon written by a man who's met the skinny fellow from the village with a scythe too often? Or Dawkin's astonishing The Selfish Gene? Samir Kassir's Beirut, a book I have spent so long with - a sort of old companion. Oh cripes, I'm in trouble. Dalrymple's From The Holy Mountain should be in there, but maybe the solution lies in sticking to fiction?

Michael Moorcock's bawdy The Brothel In Rosenstrasse is one of my favourite lifelong books and Moorcock has been massively influential for me, but let's face it - this one's out because this is Dubai radio and the book's a tad, well, ripe. Oh noes! Iain Banks! I've got all of his books (including two as proofs, thanks LitFest team!), I positively lionised the man. The Crow Road, or maybe The Player of Games.

Oh, lawks.

What about Hunter Thompson? Forget Fear And Loathing, It's The Curse of Lono (I have the Taschen - lavish!) - or The Rum Diaries for me. Argh! Louis De Bernières! The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, just to be awkward, but to be honest Birds Without Wings is the one that knocked me cold. Umberto Eco! The Name of the Rose, easily his finest (and least insanely complex - everything else is pretty much unreadable piffle) novel.

And I enjoy Alan Furst, have always loved Somerset Maugham since I was a kid - let alone Evelyn Waugh - and recently have been lapping up novel after novel by Martin Cruz Smith starting, of course, with Gorky Park, which pal Phillipa Fioretti made me read by taking a guinea pig hostage and threatening to put out its eyes with a knitting needle. These RomCom authors are tougher than they look, I can tell you.

I'm in trouble, aren't I?

But - thank God, I finally get hit by the revelation - we're in Dubai, so there can only be one outcome. It's JG Ballard. And for the show - although any one of Ballard's does it for me (Vermillion Sands or The Crystal World are money well spent, but so is Crash and pretty much anything he's written) - it's Super Cannes. Hyper-planned wealthy expat community in sparkling enclave conceals dark, murderous sex and drugs underbelly should go down very nicely in a studio next to the Dubai Beige cul-de-sacs of Arabian Ranches...

So we're talking of books on Dubai Eye Radio (103.8FM anywhere in the United Arab Emirates or www.dubaieye1038.com for streaming) on Saturday from 10am. I'm on from 11 (8am UK time) and if I'm speaking with unusually defined pace and gravitas it's because I was at the Ardal O'Hanlon gig the night before.

If you know what I mean.

PS. I know. I posted. Life's busy and I'm taking things one at a time. 

PPS: Do feel free to leave your book suggestions in the comments. I'm constantly on the lookout for a good read. If you nominate your own book, the guinea pig gets it. Kapisch?

PPPS: Friday - Had a major wobble today and I'm going with Fisk instead of JG Ballard.

Kinder's 'Next Face' Gender Bender

That's not a girl - it's a boy with some badly Photoshopped hair extensions. What an odd thing to do to a chocolate packet! What an odd thing to do, indeed, to a child. If they're going to take those kinds of liberties, would you want your child to be the 'next face of Kinder chocolate'?

I'd never have noticed but for The Niece From Heaven and a visit to the Mirdif City Centre shopping mall, where we discovered a promo display in the central court being staged by Kinder. There were chocolate themed things to climb on and play with and TNFH was immediately drawn in, being something of a Kinder fangirl.

There was a photographer with a studio portrait flash setup - the promo was themed 'Do you want your kid to be the next face of Kinder chocolate?' - and he was listlessly snapping children, surrounded by screaming kids clambering on plastic chocolate shapes. We stood off, laughing cruelly at him and imagining the office all picking on Elie and volunteering him for the Kinder promo job.

Once your child has been snapped by Elie, you're sent to the collection point to pick up your very own Kinder chocolate box with your kid's face on it. A put-upon individual takes the snap from Elie and Photoshops it onto a packet background. He does this, incidentally, very badly. This is then printed out, guillotined, folded and glued to make a paper packet wrapper which is then handed to you. TNFH's face had been squished to fit - for some reason rather than scaled - so we eventually came away with a grainy, fat faced version of her on a light card wrapper. Her mum, who had braved the jostling queue of proud mums and dads and their little princes and princesses, looked like she had been hit by a hurricane. Apparently the enter your kid for the competition mechanism wasn't working, so the picture didn't matter anyway.

It was only the fact the display featured packets with a small boy in a blue shirt on it that made me pause when TNFH's chocolate stash was raided a couple of nights later. Lo and behold, on the packet was a small girl in a blue shirt.

The promo made much of Kinder's premise that more milk than chocolate is what made Kinder a good thing - "plus milk minus cocoa" is the line. My interest in Kinder much aroused by the photoshoppery, I took a look at the ingredients. Because plus milk means it's good for your child, right?

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dearie me.

Milk chocolate (40%) (Sugar, milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, emulsifiers: lecithin (soy), flavouring: vanillin), sugar, skimmed milk powder, vegetable fat (palm), anhydrous milkfat, emulsifiers: lecithin (soy), flavouring: vanillin, total milk constituents 33% total cocoa solids 13%, solids in milk chocolate: cocoa 32%, milk fat free 17%, milk fat 6%

Palm oil. Lovely. Plus milk minus cocoa plus cheap, egregious saturated fat...

Down Home On The Farm in Dubai

 

It reminded me of the scene in Terry Gilliam's brilliant 'Brazil' where our hapless hero and his heroine are driving into the sunset down a road lined with advertising hoardings. We had turned off the Emirates Road into the Al Barari development only to find ourselves surrounded by a wall of verdant greenery. The road all the way to The Farm café/restaurant is like a drive through a tropical paradise, albeit one only a few feet thick - on the other side lies desert strewn with rubbish and 'project on hold' construction sites. We continued down the paradise alley to the restaurant's car park and wandered in to the achingly chic white and wood of The Farm - itself surrounded by a veneer of lush gardens and water park, all fenced in from the outside - a sort of canvas backdrop you almost feel will tear if you put your hand out and push against it.

We were late to the party, for sure - everyone who's anyone has already 'discovered' The Farm, but we needed the Niece From Heaven and family coming out to give us the impetus to plan an eating out in Dubai, having previously forsworn the city's pricey dining pleasures. You need to book well ahead, the place is popular without a doubt - and for somewhere as out of the way as that to be popular says something, no?

We arrived on time for our booking - they had called the day before to confirm this and also SMSed confirmation. The table wasn't ready. There was a little confusion, we were a largish party of seven adults a baby and TNFH but soon sorted out. I handed back the stained napkin sitting under my cutlery to the waiter and we settled down to...

Oh horrors. It's only a bloody iPad menu. I won't repeat my previously stated views regarding this crime against commonsense. Actually, stuff it, I will. It's lunacy. In this case, it's made even worse by iPad stands that are too worn to stand up reliably. The application is better structured than the last one I came across, but still and all that. A bloody iPad. And yes, when the bill came, I did realise who was paying for the 'sledgehammer to crack a walnut' technology.

The menu is tempting, for all the iPaddery. There's a full-on Thai menu and a mixture of salad things and bigger offerings. I played with the idea of lamb shank and bailed at the last minute which turned out to be a mistake.

We had a baby. We had asked for a baby chair when we had booked. We asked again when we arrived. We asked when we got to the table. We asked twice more. Eventually an Ikea baby chair pitched up. We'd likely have been faster nipping out to buy it. Juggling a baby and an iPad menu that won't stand up is not, by the way, for the faint hearted.

Tomato tatin as a starter. Gorgeous, salty goaty cheesy tapenadey and tomatoey. It came before the drinks we'd ordered. Starter finished, the drinks turned up. My peach iced tea was precisely what it said on the box and much enjoyed. I'd have enjoyed it more, likely ordered a second, if it had come before the food. Others had the spiced jumbo prawns or had decided to share plates of bruschetta. All were making oo and aa sounds.

Yeah, clearly hated that one. Loathed it. Yuk. 

But we did have to look at the debris for an aching age...

Done, we looked at those plates for aeons. They were taken just as the main courses arrived - in fact, they waited for the table to be cleared before they could serve them. I had the beef papaya salad, very nice and appealing to the eye, if perhaps a little light on the protein. But that was my fault - I knew I was up for a solid chunk of lamb shank, so no salad was going to hit the spot. Others had the couscous halloumi salad, the corn-fed chicken, the salmon. Much pleasure was derived from this food. We had coffee, which was nice. We paid the stiffish bill (around Dhs140 per head, two couples having shared starters and most had salad mains), had a wander around the garden for obligatory tourist selfies and went for a drive to discover the other side of the green Reality Wall before heading for home.

I'd go back, for sure. The Farm has lovely food, a nice 'feel' to the place and a beautiful, if metaphorically loaded, setting - but the service was pretty shambolic. I broke my rule about never taking photos of my food for Instagram again. Which could be said to be a compliment.

April 8th Loometh For Windows XP Users...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On April the 8th Microsoft will end support for Windows XP and Office 2013.

A lot of people are still using Windows XP and for good reason. And it's not just because they like the Teletubbies' home field on their desktop. The old adage 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' applies in spades - Windows XP was perfectly functional and the iteration of Windows that followed it, the infamous Windows Vista was not terribly functional. Those of us who made the leap and upgraded slavishly to the new new thing almost immediately regretted rushing in where angels fear to tread.

Vista sucked. We were consigned to long, aching pauses as we watched that coruscating blue wheel rotating smugly on the screen we so desperately wanted to be Bill Gates' face. We learned to loathe the smug gits who'd held out and weren't going through our pain. And I'm not even going to talk about what happened next.

Nobody needs to be reminded of the Windows 7 Launch Party. Although if anyone can explain how this ultimate example of gibbering incompetence dressed up as a marketing stunt conceived by a four year old raccoon whose brain has been eaten by vampire slugs hasn't been deleted, I would be grateful.

Now The Ones We Left Behind are being told to upgrade to Windows 8 or face annihilation and exile to The Great Unsupported. I got a spammy mailer from Microsoft Saudi Arabia claiming if I don't upgrade I could face loss of data, lack of connectivity and limited access as well as lack of hardware and software support. It's all a bit of a scare tactic, but XP is now becoming long in the tooth and hasn't seen a service pack since April 2008. Which means XP's been effectively staked out and waiting to die for six years.

The person I feel sorry for in all of this is my mum. She's 87 and she's not about to learn Windows 8.0 so she can shop online (Tesco's online shopping has been a life saver for her) and Skype family and friends. Nice one, Microsoft. Thanks.

I'm buying her an iPad instead. One tiny user, a squillionth of that gargantuan user base. But yet another human story behind the migration away from MS' platform.

The Trams Are Coming! Switch Off Your Mobiles!

 (Photo credit: Gerard Stolk (vers le Midi-Carême))

According to Emirates 24x7 today, you will have to switch off your mobile when in the proximate area of a tram when the new Al Sufouh tramline opens for business.

Why? How are they going to make that work? Will the new trams explode near a mobile signal? Or perhaps it might affect their navigation systems in some way.

It all sounds very odd. But then, that's Emirates 24x7 for you...

The Road Oop North - National Paints Opens Up

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sorry, second post about traffic in a week, but we took the Mohammed Bin Zayed Road north from Dubai to Ajman yesterday - the day the northern section of the National Paints Widening project opened - and what a glorious ride it was. Not a queue in sight. Five lanes of blissful blacktop all the way over the top and down the other side. Even the Grand Old Duke Of York would have fitting his men on this one.

Perhaps a little hesitancy as traffic encountered the new section, likely a lot to do with the lack of road markings (they clearly couldn't wait to get this sucker opened up), but nothing like the miles of choking misery that usually mark the northern approach to the infamous painty bridge.

Apparently the southern section will open within two weeks. It's going to be fascinating to see what this does to Sharjah's traffic - as I pointed out the other day, it will likely transform a whole range of Sharjah's flows and dependencies, including the daily torrent of those fleeing to the 611 and therefore congestion on the Airport, Middle and Mileiha roads.

Finally you CAN get to Ras Al Khaimah from Dubai in 45 minutes. But poor National Paints. Infamous no more, they'll have to start advertising now...

The Childish Game Of Number Plates

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sarah and I for some time now have been playing a most diverting and totally childish game - number plate spotting. It's remarkable how seriously a 'good number' is taken here in the Emirates - landline, PO Box, mobile, number plate. All of these should reflect a chap's status and so, ideally, be in single figures or failing that all the same digit or otherwise auspicious. A palindrome is always good...

Car license plates in the UAE consist of a single letter and then a number. A pilot with A 777 is therefore top banana, while H 71534 is a complete duffer altogether. Clearly, a number like 25 denotes super-star status and we have actually seen one such number plate pull a massive wheelspin in front of police officers who initially started towards their bikes then saw the plate and just shrugged it off.

You'll often see the swankier breed of car on the UAE's roads sporting 30503 or 12121 and we have taken to giggling at those who have just missed the mark, for instance a Lambo with a 24749 plate has us laughing and doing 'You had one job...' impersonations.

Yeah, it probably is time we went home...

Anyway, The National today reports on the latest number plate auction in Dubai, where a bunch of two-digit plates are expected to fetch Dhs250,000 (about $68,500). That's not the whole story, though - the RTA has published a list of the plates it's got up for grabs this time around (it's by no means their first auction, the boys at the RTA have been making pin money this way for years) and we can see that Dhs 3,000 ($822) gets you a relatively unexciting H33311 while upping the ante a bit to Dhs 40,000 ($10,950) will net you 0 50005 which is a pretty neat plate, all things considered. Start getting serioo with the amount you're prepared to shell out, and you start seeing real results: Dhs 120,000 (almost $33,000) could see you sporting three figure plates, in this case M 202 or N 707.

Although I must confess, neither of those really 'do it' for me.

If you're keen on holding the clean end of the stick, you can go for I 98, L 51 or N 34. Those are the biggies. The full list of plates, just in case you're interested, is linked here. Personally, I think the Dhs40k for 0 50005 is the best deal. Anyway, happy bidding!

Topless Butlers In Dubai. Oo eer.

Gulf News (Photo credit: J . R .)

Gulf News has finally learned its lesson from the mighty Daily Mail (the world's leading news website, the Mail pulls something like 100 million views a month) and has harnessed the public shock horror story.

Residents, we are told, are in shock to learn that a Dubai event management company is offering topless butlers. Although the story does not contain a quote from a resident saying 'I am shocked at this news', which you'd have thought would be sort of essential to standing up a 'residents in shock' headline, the news would certainly provoke shock in many quarters of our rainbow society. I have to confess my own eyebrows went on a little trip up my forehead when I saw it.

Basically, you can have two young chaps decorating your event clad in collars, cuffs and swimwear. It's Dhs500 per chap per hour (minimum two chaps for two hours). We can only assume they are fit and hearty young things, rather than pot-bellied, flaccid old men the colour of old brie.

But this is Dubai. Generally tolerant in the extreme, but nevertheless a conservative Muslim society, surely this sort of thing flies in the face of society's values. When GN's reporter called Dubai's Department of Commerce and Tourism Marketing, doubtless hoping for a stentorian condemnation of the silly scheme (I know I would have been, it would have elevated the story to 'Dubai government slams sleazy servant scheme'), she got a 'what people do behind their own doors is their own affair', which pretty neatly sums up how Dubai treats much of what we get up to. As long as you're not causing problems for others, you're generally the beneficiary of that famous 'laissez faire' attitude.

It's funny, but I swear the longer you live here the more you are likely to walk up to that half-naked nymphet in the shopping mall and ask her if she understands where she is. Similarly, I can't help feeling topless butlers is a bit, well, off.

What do you think?

Uber Provides Your GeekFest Ride

Limo app company Uber is offering you Dhs100 off your first Uber ride to GeekFest Dubai REUNION at Burj Park this evening. How about that?

GeekFest Dubai REUNION

The time has come, the walrus said...

Saadia Zahid was the reason GeekFest ever started happening. She was running Dubai's uber-funky workplace/hangout The Shelter at the time and we had a coffee to talk about doing something together back in 2009. We weren't sure, just that, well you know, something.

That something turned, in time, into GeekFest. And for a while, in the heyday of social media's initial impact on Dubai society (and, of course, in time in Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Jeddah), we played around with the whole non-event - an UNorganised gathering of people with no rules, no restrictions, No Logo and no gatekeepers. Just people, smart people, who wanted to be together and share stuff they were just WAY too interested in to be considered normal - geeks, in short.

But Saadia left Dubai for New York and although GeekFest sort of survived her, it didn't survive the demise of The Shelter as it was - that was the straw that made the camel throw up its hooves and give up the ghost. It simply wasn't as fun anymore and I had always said if it became a burden or too important, I'd chuck in the towel. And so I did.

But then Saadia came back to Dubai. And lo, she got in touch. And she said "I'm involved in this whole container city retail thingy concept park gig as part of DSF. I've got a sound stage, food, seating, areas. Fancy doing a GeekFest?"

And I ummed and aahed. But she bullied me. I swear she did. So...

Wednesday January 29th at 7pm, at Market OTB (Out Of the Box) will mark GeekFest Dubai REUNION. A return to all the fun and sheer lack of structure that made GeekFest, for me at least, so attractive.

Market OTB is running from 23rd January to the 1st February at the Burj Park, the island by the 'dancing fountain' in the shadow of the Burj Khalifa and is a market run out of refurbished shipping containers, dedicated to sustainable independent retail in the sort of direction of food, fashion and lifestyle. It's got a sound stage, bands, cafes and other funky stuff. It should be a pretty cool venue for GeekFest REUNION.

What's the skinny? It goes something like this:

JAY WUD PLAYS GEEKFEST

Okay, so we've been conspiring merrily with the team at Red Bull and they're coming to play at GeekFest REUNION and bringing Jay Wud to play a free gig from 9pm. For those of you who haven't heard of Jay, his band opened for Guns And Roses in Abu Dhabi last year and you can hear his music using this here handy link.

It's high energy stuff and I for one am looking forward to this enormously. I've been envious of that crowd over in Beirut ever since I sat in Gemayze's Angry Monkey quaffing 961 and listening to a live gig at GeekFest Beirut. Now we're quits, Beirut Geeks!

The Red Bull Wings team will be at GeekFest too. Geeks with wings! Whatever next?

GEEKTALKS CONFIRMED SHOCK HORROR

From 8-9pm we have four talks and they'll be kept to a tight time schedule by a bunch of metalheads waiting to come on stage, so we've at last found an appropriate replacement to the timekeeping discipline introduced by Monsignor R. Bumfrey!

The talks are:

8pm Money For Nothing
So you've got nothing but a great idea. How are you going to raise the cash you need to make it work? Not the banks, they're useless. We all know that. From VCs? They'll take all your equity for pennies. What about crowdfunding? Or better, what about crowdfunding backed by equity participation? Eureeca.com is the first equity crowdfunding platform offering a global solution. People give you money, you give them equity. Eureeca's speaker explains how it works - and how it's already worked for young UAE startups who needed cash to make that idea a reality.

8.15pm How Google broke search. And what that means to you.
Getting ranked by search engine Google is about the right keywords and building lots of links, right? Wrong. That used to work, but now it's last year's thing - because Google just broke search - the giant's new hummingbird search algorithm changes the game and means engagement and quality content matter more than links from loads of sites. Lee Mancini is CEO of search consultancy Sekari and he'll be explaining what's going on and how you can fix your broken search results.

8.30pm Social change and sameness
The [sameness] project is a Dubai-based social initiative that facilitates moments of sameness. The "sameness" is in understanding that we are all worth the same amount in our humanity, and the "project" comes through the on-the-ground initiatives like Water for Workers, The Conversation Chair, and We've Got Your Back, that bring the sameness to life. Jonny and Fiona from the sameness project will be explaining what it is, how it works and why diversity backwards is the way forwards.

8.45pm Make money at home doing what you like
It's the perennial promise of freelancing, isn't it? And while there's undoubtedly opportunity and need out there, we've also got unprofessional clients, rip-off merchants and the like. So how can you promote a freelance community of talented people willing to exchange skills with employers who need resources and talent now - and keep that community protected and the wheels of commerce in smooth motion? It's a big ask and Nabbesh CEO LouLou Khazen is doing the asking - backed by winning du's The Entrepreneur and a $100,000 investment round using none other than eureeca.

TECHNOCASES

3D Printers UNLEASHED
The wild men from Jackys will be showing LIVE and IN THE FLESH the sexiest printers since someone said 'Can we print Hovis?' and someone else said, 'Sure'...

Green Gadgets
Heard of The Change Initiative? They're green. They're so green you'd be greenly envious of their greenness if you were a Martian. And they've got gadgets. Oh yeah. Fancy the idea of a recycled cardboard boombox, say? This is something you wouldn't want to miss, then...

Lenovo
Will be showcasing cool mobile stuff, including their buzz-inspiring VibeX mobile handsets and super-lightweight clamshelly things!!!

GAMEFEST MADNESS!

We've got an Oculus Rift and we're gonna use it! This is a hyper-cool virtual reality headset the drooling gamer goons lovely chaps from t-break are bringing to GameFest. It's apparently the latest in puke-inducing immersive gaming gadgets. Apparently there are not only brain-spinning demos to play with but also @MrNexyMedia will be demoing his game in-development, so we're talking cutting edge beta type experience things here!!!

There'll also be a PS3 multiplayer area where people can make complete goons of themselves - always a popular element of GeekFest.

COLLECTING OLD NOTEBOOK PCs

You got an old laptop you don't use any more? Clean it up and bring it along and we'll make sure it gets sent to Sri Lanka where poor young medical students from rural areas simply don't have access to their own machines to use in studying for their exams. I got involved in this after finding out about one such student, then we uncovered another four. Now we have a distribution system set up thanks to a philanthropically minded doctor in Kandy and we can use more machines. So bring that old PC down to GeekFest and we'll make sure it gets a useful - and potentially life-saving - second life. Alternatively, you can always bring those old machines to The Archive and ask for Bethany or Sarah.

FOOD, DRINK, ARRANGEMENTS. STUFF.

There are cafés, there is seating, there is a soundstage (hence Jay and the boys) and stuff aplenty. There is a hospitality area we're not quite sure what to do with yet, but rest assured someone will come up with something.

My books will be on sale there. Clearly.

WEBSITE

Thanks to @AqeelFikree, GeekFest now has a website! Check out GeekFestME.com!

GETTING THERE

Here's the PDF map or you can use Google Maps like so. GeekFest will start, as usual, when you get there (if you come!) but about 7pmish is a guideline if you want to know what time to arrive late after. The talks will start around 8ish.

There's no registration, no age limit, no height restriction or any other form of organisation. If you'd like to come along, you're splendidly welcome. If you'd like to perform a plate spinning act or share your collection of left-handed Manga comics or old Adobe Acrobat SKUs get in touch with @alexandermcnabb or @saadia and we'll give you some space and power or whatever you need.

This may well be fun, people...

Emirates ID To Function As Bank Card? Oh Horrors...

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There's no end to the things you can do with a smart card and the Emirates ID card is no exception. Gulf News reports today, in all seriosity, on a banking executive from Noor Bank who has commented on the announcement, made apparently on December 31st, that the Emirates ID card will be integrated with bank cards to create a single, seamless customer service experience paradigm excellence luminance entity.

Given my UAE bank has over the years managed to screw up every single service it offers, from failing to make transfers through to issuing cards, from honouring cheques through to failing to call me before blocking Visa transactions and so on through a litany of incompetence and befuddling idiocy, the very idea of integrating such a bunch of hooning nitwits with my biometric identity chills me to the marrow.

And while it may sound attractive to pool a range of services into a single smart card, the practicality of it all is that the more things you load onto a single transactional device, the more shocking the consequence of that device's failure are. It's a little like passwords - we're constantly told by security experts that we shouldn't have a single password for every service we use. Similarly, a single card with multiple functions is inherently less secure and more prone to visits from Mr Cockup.

Added to that, the ID card now requires renewal every two years, which would mean that you forsake access to your bank account for the period between expiry and renewal. And - as we all full well know - when you for some reason fall off the rails and become an exception to the system for some reason, you could well find yourself bereft not only of identity but funds as well.

This whole integration thing comes hot on the heels of the recent ATM outage in the UAE, where customers from at least two banks found themselves unable to withdraw money from ATMs but - in many cases - found their accounts debited by the amount of the failed withdrawals.

The executive quoted by GN apparently "Admitted that there could be certain issues". You can sing that, buddy...

UAE Anti-Smoking Law. Genius Or Just A Fag?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The UAE is to implement a smoking law banning tobacco advertisements, smoking in schools, universities and places of worship and smoking in cars with kids of less than 12 years of age. Oh, and making under-age smoking illegal with a fine of up to Dhs10,000.

The National reports on the story today. The implementation of the Federal law is to take place on January 21st. Strangely, the law itself dates back to 2009 - but crafting regulations, by-laws and compliance with many shades of red tape have delayed its implementation.

There's no tax on cigarettes in the UAE, so a pack costs less than £1. Something like 40% of teens in the UAE smoke.

There's no effective ban on smoking in public places (offices, restaurants and other outlets), despite early talk of the by-laws to the Federal smoking law including such provisions. The Ministry of Health has, according to The National's piece, just 'prepared a draft resolution to ban smoking in the ministry’s hospitals, primary health centres and specialised treatment centres.'

So despite that early sabre-rattling, there's to be no UAE blanket ban on smoking in public. It would appear that whatever the intentions of the law originally were, the process of negotiating its implementation have drawn many of its teeth. Does the implementation go far enough? Well, if you believe smoking is a bad thing, no it doesn't.

I speak as someone who used to smoke for England. I chugged my way through about sixty a day until finally coming to the realisation that I was manipulating the people around me so that I could be sure of finding myself in a situation where I could smoke. I didn't like that in myself. But I did promise myself I'd never become one of those rabidly anti-smoking ex-smokers.

It's a promise I'm finding increasingly hard to keep, to be honest with you. I gave up the fags back in 2001 and find it harder each day to remember why I ever thought what I was doing to myself was anything other than insane and suicidal.

Which is why I'm mildly horrified to realise I don't think the implementation of the law on 21st January is enough. A UK/Ireland style blanket ban of smoking in all public places is what is required, not a range of halfway house resolutions.

If the me from before 2001 could hear me now, he'd kick my arse...

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.

Duck Up: Florentijn Hofman, Dubai And The Giant Rubber Duck That Never Was

This Is The Real Duck (Photo credit: See-ming Lee 李思明 SML)

Dubai used to be famous for attracting tribute bands. You'd hear announcements like 'Riverdance is coming to Dubai!' and get all excited before finding out it was actually 'Riverdancers: The Tribute', consisting of two wee girls and a couple of tired blokes clacking away in a weary parody of the massive Oirish spectacle that awed the world.

There was even a joke about it. A bloke goes home on leave only to be accused down at his local of living somewhere lacking in night life and gigs. "We've got gigs!" he contends. "Quo played Dubai last month!"
"What Status Quo?"
"No, State Is Quo. It's a tribute act."
"Who else, then?"
"The Stones!"
"The Rolling Stones?"
"No, the Roly Polying Stones. They're bigger."
And so on until he finally, with exasperation, cries out, "And Duran Duran!"
"What, the Her Name Is Rio people?"
"Yeah, them."

That, of course, was then - the UAE has seen plenty of headlining acts since and the days of the tribute band have gone. Or have they? Because this week we've seen a new first for the City That Likes To Set Guinness Book of Records World Records - a tribute duck. It's not the actual duck, but a copy of it. Because there is actually an actual duck - the work of Dutch installation artist Florentijn Hofman.

Eagle-eyed (award winning!) blogger and culture wonk Hind Mezaina first caught the whiff of sulphur surrounding the announcement, by the UAE franchisee of car washing company Geowash, that Hofman's globally famous duck was going to be coming to the UAE. Geowash had apparently been bandying it about that this was that duck as opposed to a tribute duck, but quickly backed down when questioned. It was a tad late - local media had already announced the event in the usual breathless tones.

The 18 metre duck that set sail on Dubai Creek to coincide with the UAE's 42nd national day was, in fact, an imitation duck made in China. Or, if you prefer, a tribute duck. Hofman's reportedly hopping mad that someone nicked his idea - and rightly so: his giant yellow duckie has been raising smiles around the world for months now and it's clearly a unique and original concept.

7Days gleefully led today on the fake duck farrago, something of a PR disaster for Geowash which had apparently thought up the duck stunt as a way of raising awareness of water scarcity. The company's Facebook page is quick to link to post-'clarification' stories about the duck, but omits to mention earlier stories that clearly state the Dubai duck is Hofman's Duck. In fact, one link to 'The National' actually links to Gulf News - because The National's story mentions the original dubious provenance. Mind you, Geowash also blithely makes use on its Facebook page of images of Donald and Daffy Duck - trademarked properties of Disney and Warner Brothers respectively. One can only presume they do so under license as they would understand, as a franchise business, the value of intellectual prop...

Oh, never mind...

Rent Hike Pain. We Are SO Back, Baby

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today's The National reports on a 50% increase in Dubai landlord/tenant cases going to law on the back of rental increases that have topped as much as 40% year on year.

Sure enough, the news that we're back in the property-flipping, mega-development real estate boomtastic jetstream has filtered down to landlords, who have had to deal with a good five lean years as Dubai's over-heated 2008 rental prices dropped like a stone circling a black hole, resulting in a market awash with a glut of unwanted housing.

Nowadays, we're looking at undersupply of rental property - I've come across several people who've actually found it hard to find a flat, particularly at reasonable prices. And the news that we're back has prompted landlords to take the fast boat to rent increase paradise and just evict their current tenants at the end of their one-year contract.

Except you can't do that anymore - there's a pesky property law in place now and what's more it's actually being enforced. Dubai's got a sparkly new property tribunal which means wronged tenants (and, yes, wronged landlords) can take their case to law quickly and get a settlement - and in the meantime property regulator RERA hears cases.

That law has two fascinating clauses. The first relates to the RERA rental calculator, a basket of average prices which is used to calculate permissible increases in rent for landlords, the 'average similar rent'.

Decree No. 2 of 2011 on rentals in Dubai states that increases in rent are allowed as follows:

Up to 25% below the average similar rent = no increase. 26-35% = 5% maximum increase. 36-45% = 10% increase. 46-54% = 15% increase and 55% less than the average similar rent = 20% maximum increase.

In other words, even if your property rental price is less than half the RERA calculated market average (which is itself often less than market 'asking prices'), your landlord can only increase the rental by 20%

Ah, but he can just chuck you out at the end of your rental in any case. Well, actually, no he can't.

Dubai's property law states a landlord must give a tenant 12 months' notice to vacate a property AND have good reason to do so. The usual canard is that he's moving himself or his family back in. Fine, but the law actually states he has to prove he has no suitable other property for this purpose AND if he does re-let the property, the original tenant is due compensation.

So there's actually pretty comprehensive protection in place for tenants - and it seems more and more are actually taking to seeking recourse. You'd have thought landlords would be aware of the law and take care to work within this very clear framework, but the lure of those rental increases appears to be a strong one and they're trying it on.

They're much less likely to do so when people are clearly aware of the law and their rights within it, of course.

Posting People's Pictures Online Could Carry A Fine Or Even Jail Time

United Arab Emirates (Photo credit: saraab™)

The National newspaper today confirms what has long been an odd quirk here in the UAE has indeed been taken to its (inevitable) online conclusion - publishing (posting) pictures of people without their consent is against the law here - and, as a criminal case, could result in a hefty fine or prison time.

It's always been the case that you actually needed written consent before publishing somebody's photo in the UAE. That we often shortcut this requirement - as so many legal requirements are shortcut in a society which rubs along very nicely with a mainly 'laissez faire' attitude - does not mean it does not exist. As with so many aspects of life here, when things go wrong, the law comes into play and suddenly what seemed a forgotten piece of legislation becomes very real indeed.

Now it's been confirmed in words of one syllable that the online equivalent of the offline phrase 'publish' which is, of course, 'post' also carries the same weight. In short, you post an image on Facebook, Twitter or the like and you are open to criminal prosecution. Not a civil case, you understand, a criminal one.

Lt Col Salah Al Ghoul, Head of the bureau for law respect at the Ministry told The National: "Article 24 of the cybercrimes law stipulates that anyone who uses an information network to infringe upon someone else’s privacy shall be punished by a minimum prison sentence of six months and/or a fine of between Dh150,000 and Dh500,000."

You can consider an image to include video and, presumably, audio. So if you see a gentleman beating a hapless-looking chap around the head with his agal, you have 500,000 great reasons to pass by rather than film the incident and post it on YouTube.

That has always been the case here - as some of the more liberally grey-haired on Twitter pointed out when that particular video was put up. You can, literally, defame someone with the truth in the UAE.

Protecting decent folks' privacy or obviating social justice? You tell me...

UAE Petrol Retailers Are Breaking The Law It Seems

(Photo credit: 401(K) 2013)

A report in today's Gulf News quotes Omar Bu Shahab, CEO of the Commercial Compliance and Consumer Protection Division (CCCP) in the Department of Economic Development in Dubai as saying that charging 2% fees on credit and debit card transactions is a violation of consumer protection law.

While he was commenting on an attempt by a GEMS school to levy a 2% processing fee on credit and debit card transactions, his clarification also applies to Emarat and EPPCO/ENOC service stations, which charge the fee on credit card transactions for fuel. This surcharge appears to have been the resolution of a spat between the credit card companies and the fuel distributors dating back to 2007 - and the early days of this here very blog. The story from way back then is suitably linked 'ere. Basically, the retailers (not ADNOC, you'll note) have always charged extra for credit card purchases, in violation of the card issuers' agreements and when the card companies kicked off, the retailers just stopped taking credit cards. They've recently started again, but with a Dhs2 'service fee' on any transaction for fuel up to Dhs100. In short, 2%...

“Retailers who are charging extra fees on the credit card or debt card payments are violating the consumer protection law and will be subject to penalties,” Mr Bu Shahab told the newspaper that tells it like it is.*

So it'll be interesting to hear what the petrol companies say when the media come calling, won't it?

*Well, sometimes.

HSBC Dubai Drooling Incompetence Special

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's been a while, hasn't it? Things have been pretty quiet on the HSBC bank Dubai front. Nothing screwed up, nothing frustrating. We've actually been managing the hideous complexities of money in/money out without putting out the welcome mat to Mr Cockup. This long period of tranquility has, however, merely been a ruse to lull us into a false sense of security, presumably to ensure that when the diabolical blow came, its impact would be more sorely felt.

So you log into internet banking with a user ID and then enter a memorable piece of information and the six digit code generated by your HSBC secure key gadget. The memorable piece of information consists of a number of pre-set daft questions like who's your favourite dog or name the fifteenth star out from Betelgeuse if you're travelling clockwise around Orion's Belt. Logging on yesterday, Sarah found the system had simply stopped letting her in at this stage of the process. No error message or any other indication that something was up, the screen just refreshed and took her back to its initial state. We checked and double checked, she was typing everything properly but it simply wasn't working.

The fear that gripped me was immediate and overwhelming. I started to gabble at her. Try standing on your head. Drink a glass of water. Anything but force me to call their call centre. But it was clear there was nothing else for it. My hand shaking, I made the call.

The usual appalling IP line, the usual strongly accented CallBot on the other end of it. Perhaps we had been mis-typing the memorable information. Had we forgotten it? It was perhaps a network problem. How the hell can typing an ID into a webpage be a network problem? You might as well blame the state of our custard. Go on, try that. It's a custard problem. Makes as much sense, doesn't it?

A number of calls follow, an hour of frustration and walking through the same script with a number of different people. Reset your memorable information, that'll do it. Okay, off we go to do that. We decide to re-enter the same memorable information as that's what Sarah's been using these last few years and she remembers it.

No. You can't do that. You can't have new memorable information that's the same as the old memorable information. So we're inputting the memorable information correctly then. Do we accept this? Yes, sir, I understand. You clearly have a custard problem and the solution is to reset your memorable information and password. Wearily, we reset the memorable information and password. Still doesn't work.

Someone at HSBC has been watching The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. You know, the scene where they give Judy Dench a job humanising the call centre people who spam the UK with constant double glazing cold calls. The CallBots are now programmed to say human-like things such as 'How are you today Mr Alexander?'

Given I have just spent twenty minutes being poked with sharp sticks by your witless colleagues and am in a state of fundamental frustration being denied access to my bank account for no apparent reason, how do you think I am today, you artless, bloated drone?

Some things never change, though. There's that same insistence on assuming you are the issue, not HSBC. 'So you appear to have forgotten your memorable information, Mr Alexander.' is part of the affirmation phase of the script. Because of the appalling quality of the line, it becomes 'Snarble afquack I am pooble pickled aardvark goosp fellate.' and has to be repeated a number of times as does, cathartically, my response that I have forgotten nothing the problem is entirely of their making and if the Americans needed any help in making their government even more broken than it currently is all they'd have to do is call into HSBC and ask for assistance with the simplest of issues.

At one state someone suggests using another browser. It's insane. A form is refusing to populate and verify correctly input information and the solution is to use another browser? After protesting, we do. Same issue. And then, three hours of forehead-slapping frustration later, someone else suggests using another PC. Which, against all possible sense works. Why? Because Sarah's downloaded a browser plug-in from some educational company a couple of days ago and HSBC's security has detected it, doesn't like it and so won't let you past its log-in screen.

No error message, no hint why it's not working. Nobody telling the call centre that a failed log-in at this stage could be triggered by another level of unseen security that blocks certain classes of browser add-in. No note anywhere on the system that log-in issues could be caused by untrusted add-ins. So the CallBots just lead you through the reset password script until you explode like a frog with a compressed air line up its backside.

Every time I fly through Heathrow, I see the HSBC ads all over the airport - you know the ones that talk about the future of the world being understood by HSBC? It's got to the point where Sarah has to restrain me, marching me ranting past the offending drivel before security pick me up.

Why not change? Because I am constantly assured the others are just as woeful. If anyone wants to earnestly recommend their UAE based bank to me in the comments, I certainly will. Up until now, nobody has ever been able to make such an unqualified recommendation. Which is, let's face it, pretty tragic...

The Dubai Canal - Is The Archive Doomed?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Work on canal to start within weeks", Gulf News gushes this morning. Signed off last year as a slightly less fancy version, but now with an added crescent, the Dubai Canal project links the Business Bay waterway system out to the Gulf at what is now Jumeirah Beach Park. The canal will cut into the park and also into the margins of nearby Safa Park, one of the oldest and most established areas of calm and relaxation in a city famed for having little time for such things as it embarks on the much more important pursuit of making money.

The mega-project, for that is what these sorts of things are called, is up from last year's announced Dhs1.5 billion price tag and currently stands at Dhs2 billion. That buys a 'sprawling' (according to GN) 80,000 square metres waterfront walkway and leisure area around the canal, four hotels and 450 restaurants. With six kilometres of beachfront and a three kilometre canal, the development is also, and this is the part that chilled me to the bone on the instant, going to 'transform' Safa Park into an 'integrated leisure destination'.

An integrated leisure destination. And just what is it right now? A muddy field? It's lovely right now, is what it is. It's peaceful, charming and relaxing. It doesn't need to be transformed, believe me.

Now many will know that Safa Park is home to a little building, a transformed toilet block in fact, called The Archive. It is a place of which I am immensely fond. It's a lovely idea, a community artspace, café and a growing collection of books on Islamic and Arab architecture, design and art. It sits in the tranquility of Safa Park's green sward, the path to it often takes you past playing schoolchildren or groups of leotard-clad women doing tai-chi. It's a very nice place indeed.

With the passing of The Pavilion (it's being turned into a sales showcase for one of Emaar's new mega-projects, apparently), The Archive is the only free wi-fi welcome to come here and work and meet or do coffee or whatever floats your boat space left in this part of town. And I have the horrible feeling that transforming Safa into an 'integrated leisure destination' isn't going to include leaving some scrubby little 1970s toilet block sitting there to clutter up the views of the 50,000 metre shopping mall.

The designs for the new canal show a much-changed Safa park, with the current lakes giving way to a single lake close to entrance five, extensive replanting and new walkways throughout. Few of the current buildings seem to form part of the new scheme. They might just leave The Archive as it is - irritatingly, Gulf News has slapped a label over its location in its 'infographic', so it's hard to tell. The Archive might be replaced by a new, more modern building with all sorts of facilities. Might. But I can't say it looks good from where I'm standing.

Whatever the outcome, the whole area is going to be a building site for the coming three years. Now the weather's cooling, The Archive comes into its tranquil own. I'll be spending as much time down there while I still can...

We Is Own Your House

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Umm, excuse me? What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm grilling smoked mackerel using a portable barbecue in your living room. I would have thought that's obvious."
"I can see what you're actually doing, I suppose what I meant was why are you doing it in my property? Get out!"
"Well, it's not actually your property."
"Yes it is, I rent it from you."
"So we have the right to nip in and make sure things are shipshape. If you read today's Gulf News, you'll see that Dubai Municipality has confirmed that developers are regarded as the owners of the buildings. So I have the right to conduct inspections to see if you're running a private business from it, such as offering tuition."
"Okay, but that doesn't give you the right to grill smoked mackerel in my living room at half past eight in the morning!"
"Not explicitly, but we're establishing a precedent, see?"
"Get out now or I'll clobber you!"
"Now now, no need for that. I found the mackerel in your freezer by the way."
"So theft, now? What's that another precedent?"
"Look, let's be fair about this. Here's Dhs50 for the mackerel."
"Thanks, but you can still get out."
"Actually, I'm repossessing your house. Come on, lads! Get the women and kids out before we start moving the furniture!"
"What the hell gives you the right to do that?"
"You were conducting a business in your house. You're not allowed to do that. I thought that was clear."
"What business?"
"Selling mackerel. That fish was priced at Dhs35 and you sold it to me for Dhs50 which is a Dhs15 profit, so it's a business transaction. Sorry, matey."
"That's outrageous!"
"Well, I'll tell you what, I'll let it go with a Dhs2,000 fine. Because you've got an honest face."
"A Dhs2,000 fine for accepting Dhs50 from a mackerel grilling bastard who invaded my home?"
"Sound grasp of the facts, I see. Cash or cheque?"