Poo

Of the many things that Grumpy Goat has written that have amused, entertained and even informed me, one of my favourites was this post, which I thought neatly summed up the whole Dubai waste treatment dilemma. It links, in turns, to Seabee's posts on the very same topic. And if you're really into deep background, there's this.

Today, Gulf News tells us (with an exquisite lack of irony) that the 'short to medium term solution' to the problem is to be a big hole in the desert, which shall in time be filled with what fan makers like delicately to call 'the brown stuff'. The gigantic 'La Pooa Pit' will take up to 500 tanker-loads a day and will be 'aerated naturally' which is, I think, waste management speak for 'smelly'.

Watch out for it out there in the sands when you're picknicking, chaps! You really don't want to yarp down the sharp leeward face of a dune and realise that your inexorable progress will land you in the 'soup'...

Du du du Dah dah dah

I'm a little hesitant to post about Dubai's most splendid and admirable new telecom operator Du again, because last time I took a pop at them the blog was flooded by readers from Du network addresses and picked up some really daft comments from people using Du's corporate network. You can tell they worked for Du because they had Du IPs and they also referred to Du as du which is something only a du employee would Du.

So they care too much, in short.

But I can't resist. We have a new special offer from the telecom operator that likes to say 'Whaaaaaaat?' in the form of a mobile package that offers you a new Du line for a mere 1 Dirham. Yes! Pay only Dhs 55 and get 54 Dhs back in airtime! That means just Dhs 1 for your super Du line!

Except that Dubai's new mobile operator's previous promotion offered subscribers a line for just 1 Dirham! All they had to do was buy a line for Dhs 155 and they got Dhs 154 back in airtime! That meant just Dhs 1 for your line!

The difference, smarter readers will note, is that they've dropped the package price by Dhs 100 ($27 or so, depending on whether we keep the peg of Dhs 3.657 to the Yankee Dollar, which seems likely).

I'm not sure I get it. They're trumpeting a million happy users, but they're dropping their pants on price and the barrier to adoption alike with a promotion that is pricing a new Du line at $15 and presenting it as a 98% cashback deal. Next it'll be a line for Dhs 2 - with Dhs 1 in airtime...

And I still have not had ONE person who has failed the 'Du Test'. So I'm still a little cynical about those million users, too.

If you can't sell a mobile line for Dhs 1 (30-odd cents), what CAN you sell it at? If the barrier to entry, at Dhs 155, is too high in a country with one of the world's highest GDPs per capita, what ARE they getting wrong?

Is dropping price the answer, then, for Du? Or is it time for the company to perhaps consider some smart, differentiated marketing together with a range of targeted service propositions that intelligently segmented audiences in the UAE will buy?

No, I thought not. It's back to mindless jingles and pointless promos then. Watch out for the 'Win a Bar of Gold With Du' promotion. It's only a matter of time...

Salik: Wading Through a Mountain of Forms

I was thinking about refusing to babble on about Salik, the Dubai congestion charge, any more simply because everyone's talking about it so much it's in danger of getting boring.

But then I have been giggling quietly to myself so much this morning, I had to share. As predicted in posts passim, Salik is turning out to be far too much fun to ignore.

When you apply for your tag (as I did on Sunday), you fill out a form with your name, address, mobile number and car registration. If the databases were smart, you'd be able simply to give your vehicle registration number and everything else would be pulled from the database. Which rather points to the fact that the registration database isn't linked to Salik. Which rather points to manual data entry of those forms. Which rather points to delays in getting accounts activated.

So I called the nice Salik people on 800 SALIK (800 72545) and asked why I hadn't yet received my SMS advising me that my account was activated, as advertised. And they said there was a data entry backlog and I should kick my heels for a further 2-3 days.

Today's Gulf News (Emirates Today, for some reason is suddenly silent about Salik) reports a four day delay from readers, with one unhappy chappie saying he applied over a week ago and still hasn't got his SMS.

Oh dear, oh dear. There are only three more shopping days to Salik day and I have only yet seen two cars on the roads wearing their Salik tags. Media reports are a little confusing, but it would appear that 200,000 tags have been distributed in total, with reports of sales of 80,000.

Now. Let us assume that each form can be data entered in an average of two minutes (including downtime, error checking & toilet breaks, I think that's more than reasonable). That would mean 333 forms could be processed by one operator in a working day. So 80,000 forms would entail 240 man-days of data entry. If you had a massive data entry operation with 50 people working on entry, you're looking at 6.6 days' work.

However, we've got 200,000 tags out there and, this being Dubai, most people haven't bought their tags yet. Let us assume, then, that the 80,000 already sold have been data entered (although mine hasn't!). From today, we have another 120,000 tag applications to enter. That's going to take our 50 data entry operators ten days. So they'll be entered around about the 12th July given that no more applications are received.

I am, of course, more than happy to be told my calculations are incorrect and do point out that this is all speculation, guess-work and conjecture. But that's what people do when they're not being told what's happening...

So someone, somewhere is likely sitting underneath a huge and growing pile of forms while retailers will be facing the prospect of a weekend of increasingly angry customers demanding their tags and the call centre's in danger of getting flooded and people whose accounts aren't activated are probably going to start triggering fines or just be too scared to go through the gates...

It's all kicking off rather nicely, isn't it? What larks, Pip!

The Septic Tank Wallah

He's the 'dunnyman' in Australia but we don't have any fancy names for the bloke that comes in the big lorry to empty the septic tank.

There was some problem at the Dubai Sewage Treatment Plant today: whatever it was, the distinctive orange tankers were backed up all the way to the main road and up along it as I drove home from the daily toil. That's a lot of big lorries full of noxious sludge: I'd have said there were a hundred and more of them.

It's a job that's worth reflecting on when things are looking down during your working day. Just giving the Septic Tank Wallah's lot a second's thought should brighten up your view of your own place in life's great periodic table. He drives around answering phone calls from desperate people (because we usually don't know the damn thing needs emptied until the downstairs toilet backs up or something equally revolting) and then he spends a good 20 minutes sucking out months-worth of our bathwater and variegated bodily secretions through a fat pipe into his lorry, dragging the pipe out, shaking it off (yes, 'yeww') and hanging it back on the lorry before driving the whole sloshing, odiferous load to the stinking treatment plant (woe betide him if he dumped it in the desert) and emptying it out. And you thought having a stupid boss or the ninth cubicle from the sun was bad? Think again!

I spared a grimace for them all, stuck there and waiting in the humid, heavy and pungent air by the Sewage Plant as I drove by. Most of us bitch about the shitty traffic, but they were stuck in a literally shitty traffic jam.

A last thought and a tip for you, dear friends. Always have the right money ready for the Septic Tank Wallah. You don't want the change he offers you...