Official. I Sympathise With Gulf News

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In reporting the recent 'incident' at Dubai's Burj Khalifa today, Gulf News appears to have gone as far as it felt it could. In the face of unhelpful and possibly even mendacious statements made on behalf of the tower's developer and management company, Emaar, the newspaper has managed to collate a number of eyewitness reports of something having taken place that went way beyond the 'routine maintenance' that we are being expected to believe has closed the observation deck on the tower.

The official statement, quoted by Gulf News is: "Due to unexpected high traffic, the observation deck experience at the Burj Khalifa, At the Top, has been temporarily closed for maintenance and upgrade. Technical issues with the power supply are being worked on by the main and sub-contractors and the public will be informed upon completion."

Gulf News reports eyewitnesses as hearing a 'really loud noise and what looked like smoke or dust coming out from one of the elevator doors' and paramedics being called to the scene. That's hardly the stuff of 'maintenance and upgrade' is it?

Once again, I suspect we are about to see an attempt at obfuscation result in widespread media coverage - the eyewitness reports are stacking up and now social media interest is also perking up quite nicely. GN's story was enough to raise some very real question marks - and now people are going to start looking for answers. They're not going to have to look very far, either.

Cometh the lift, cometh the hour

What would appear to be a substantial part of Dubai's community appears to believe that, if you are on the ground floor, you call a lift by pressing the down arrow. This is, if you stop to think about it, quite logical. If you are on the ground floor and the building is three stories high (as is our office building), then the lift is three times more likely to be up than down. So you press down to call it down.

No?

In life's game of chance, of course, it is always possible that the lift is in the basement. In which case, pressing the up button will improve the odds significantly. Now you have supplemented your three in four chance of bringing the lift to you with a one in four chance of bringing it up. It's a dead cert that the lift is in the bag!

This is the reason why I often find the lift door opening in the basement, revealing a sea of puzzled faces. "Why?" They seem to be saying, "Why are we here?"

A question that I tend to relate to. Particularly when the lift arrives too full to accommodate one slightly irascible addition. I even, on one occasion when overdue leave, put the question to the assembled company. I am ashamed to admit I shouted it. But they just stared silently and large-eyed back at me until the doors closed and took them away.

But this is not the end of the story. Because lifts are not the smartest of devices. A lift, when it has been called to go down using the down button and then arrives at the basement, not unnaturally believes that it has fulfilled its purpose in life. And so whatever floor you have selected before the lift arrived at the basement is therefore cancelled, waiting for the next satisfied customer to select a floor. This often means that travelling, say, to the third floor from the basement, the people who were already in the lift when it arrived in the basement end up missing their intended floor on the way up, too. I am sure there are people who have spent the whole day in the lift, wondering how come their floor never seems to appear.

When you add to this the fatal attraction of the comb, you start to understand how it's so hard to get a lift in so many of Dubai's buildings.

Many lifts have mirrored back walls. And that would be fine except for the fact that many people can't look at a mirror for more than a few milliseconds without suffering from the sudden urge to whip a comb out of their back pockets and tidy their coiffure. This urge is deeply seated at a Pavlovian, even genetic level and far stronger than the urge to select a destination. I once shared a lift with a gentleman who noticed a spot and subsequently happily went about squeezing it, to the intense discomfort of those around him.

A colleague cracked some time ago and posted 'How to use a lift' posters next to all the lifts in the building. This was a noble, if ultimately futile, gesture. Any fule no that you press 'down' to call the lift down to you, after all.

They'd better have upwards of 50 lifts in the Burj Dubai. You could be stuck for days waiting for a lift otherwise...

Headline of the Year

This has to be headline of the year. Today's Gulf News:

Do not watch TV while driving, police warn motorists

Isn't that simply brilliant? According to GN, the place where the real news happens, Dubai Police have warned residents that television screens in the front of cars are 'hazardous and distract motorists'.

Wait for the followup warning stories: Do not run carrying scissors. Do not set fire to own hair. Do not jump off tall buildings.

Back to Life: Back to Unreality

Watched Chaos on the plane back. Jason Statham. I can’t quite believe that I’ve an appetite for Jason Statham films but I do: even the mad, badly scripted Transporter in which Statham does a strange mid-Atlantic accent that doesn’t quite patch over his Cockney roots. I only ever watch films on the ‘plane (bar the occasional DVD buy): I’d be furious if I’d paid to see most of the crap I’ve watched. If I’d paid to see Shrek III, for instance, I’d have been at the box office demanding a refund with threats.
Talking of threats: why do UK immigration and security have those signs that say their staff have the right to work in a safe environment and if they’re presented with foul or abusive language and threatening behaviour you’ll be in for the high jump? I’m suffering from the deep seated need to enter the UK next time wearing a sign that says: “I have the right not to have to deal with overbearing, officious, brusque, superior and downright rude tossers and to react negatively if I am presented with such situations.”
I wonder if anyone would bother reading it…
Back to airline movies. I caught the end of the Nicholas Cage one about him being able to tell the future. It wasn’t great, but I’m a little biased: I still haven’t forgiven Cage for fronting the Hollywood sanitised Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. I can’t believe that Louis De Bernières, an author I have so much respect for, let that happen, but then he’s minted and I’m not and if I think he sold out his integrity over a sorry adaptation and a horribly mutilated ending that negated the entire purpose of a great book, then I’m quite, quite sure he don’t care.
BTW: De Bernières Little Birds buys forgiveness for all sins: a terrible, beautiful book that tells the story of the Anatolian massacres with heart-breaking skill and panache. He paints with words like Durrell when he wants to.
Back to airline movies. I enjoyed all of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. I think only because Johnny Depp is so fundamentally mesmerising. Someone mad and dangerous enough to have Hunter Thompson confer the honorific ‘Dr’ upon him must be a man apart, though. I wonder if Depp ever met Steadman?
There was a waiter in Italy (at the Irish Society Wedding of the Year) that looked a bit Deppish. He was convinced that his curly-haired good looks had Sarah in a tizz. Sad for him: it was because he was in charge of doling out the (excellent quality) Prosecco and our girl is a devil for da bubbles. She'd flirt with a tramp if he was toting a frosty bottle of DP rosé...
Anyway. We’re back here now. Buckle in for at least a week’s worth of black and snarly posts as the reality of life back in Lalaland bites…

Du Slapped Over Offensive Radio Ad

The news comes today that Dubai’s brightest and most exciting new telephone company, Du, has withdrawn its ‘fish and chips’ radio advertisement after complaints from some people that the spot, which featured a chap singing ‘I want some fish and chips’ to the tune of God Save the Queen, was offensive. I must clarify that we’re talking about the British national anthem, not the Sex Pistols’ version. If it had been the Sex Pistols’ version, it might have been a slightly more interesting creative, now I come to think of it.

My Arab colleagues are furious that the British community have had the advertisement withdrawn in this way, as they would very much like Du to also withdraw the Arabic one, which has some daft Egyptian bird extolling the virtues of ‘kusheri’ to a Lebanese waiter and which one colleague was convinced was actually going to be an advertisement for ghee or cooking oil until the end. They reckon the Arabic ad is even more irritating and mindless than the English one was.

Radio ads. You gotta love ‘em…

Burj Dubai Not Going to Fall Over Shock Horror

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

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

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

And it hasn’t fallen over yet, either.

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

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

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