Fast Company

Sharjah’s bottled gas companies still ply their trade, operating an instant callout service with their rickety orange trucks laden with rusty yellow 100lb bombs. They took a huge hit when SEWA, the acronymically amusing Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority decided to pipe gas to the Emirate’s houses. Some of us diehards still prefer to pay the bottled gas prices rather than the wickedly expensive cost of the piped stuff. So the bottled gas companies still slip their gaudy stickers under the door and I still keep them.

The newest one arrived this weekend and I was struck by the company’s name as I added their sticker to the back of the storeroom door alongside the others that have been pasted up there over the years. A few years ago we had ‘Fast Gas’, a company whose promise was ‘Fast Delivery’. Seems like fair enough positioning to me. Then we had ‘Super Fast Gas’ who differentiated themselves with ‘Neat and Clean Cylinders’. That obviously didn’t resonate so well, because the new lot have gone back to promising ‘Quick Delivery’. But the new name caught me: neatly trumping all before them, the new kids on the block are called ‘Fast and Fast’.

You can see ‘em sitting there over a chai panjesari, older brother Akbar smoking an evil-smelling fag: ‘Good to be calling it Fast and one more thing, but what thing? Fast and good? Fast and clean? Fast and well filling?’

And then Iftikar, the bright one, suddenly banging the table: ‘What else to do? We shall be calling it Fast and FAST! That will be bloody showing them!’

I’m waiting for the next lot. My bet is they’ll be called ‘Fast and Fastest’…

And then the gas runs out halfway through cooking dinner last night. So I put in a call to Fast and Fast. I swear to God, they’re at the house within ten minutes. I can’t believe it: the first time this year I’ve been truly delighted at a service and it’s a damn local gas company. And then I see the bloke and I start laughing. It’s the same man as used to come from Superfast Gas. And, just because I was curious and asked him, yes he used to run Fast Gas before that.

Fast Company indeed…

Wot, No Posts?

No posts over the weekend. Phone company Etisalat cut off our Internet for non payment. It's a long story. Needless to say the entire episode involved the words unhelpful, process driven, automated and pillock.

Back online now.

One day someone's going to work out that great customer service is only possible when you empower your staff to take decisions so that they can go the extra mile to meet customers' needs. And when they do, my money says the last monkey to get to the typewriter will be Etisalat.

Although, strange to recount, I'm still not minded to go to du.

Would You Like Fries With That, Sir?

This has been a funny week. One of my most enjoyable jobs this week was going shopping for a private jet. It's not often (I know you'll be amazed, but it's true) that I get to do that. Not any old
private jet, either. A 37-seat private jet with cargo hold space for 150 bags is what was called for. Which was more complicated than you'd at first think...

I was truly delighted at the way people reacted to my calls. "Hi. I'm calling from Dubai and I want a sizeable private jet to pull two long-haul flights at less than a week's notice during high season."

Now you'd be forgiven for thinking that a reasonable reaction to that lot would be "Are you kidding me, mate?" but the reality was more like "Certainly Sir. We'll get onto it right away."

Most executive jets come in at under the 15 seat mark. There's actually a sizeable industry built around the sale, leasing, hiring and operations and maintenance of these little high-flying business essentials. However, the requirement for 37 pax meant an altogether larger 'plane. Most of the sub-100 seat 'planes are regional jets which can't do the long haul flight, so you're looking at something like a Boeing 737 or 757 - particularly because we also wanted cargo room for 150 bags.

For much of the week brokers were scouring the market for us while the client's team was also working on the problem (it was the client's team, grrr, that found the best solution in the end!).

The solution turned out to be an Embraer 135 LR, a long range version of the popular Brazilian regional jet that drops 13 seats to give a 37-seat (37 seats! How 'just right' could you get?) 'plane that's still got enough cargo space for the bags.

Alongside that, another client is doing a number of 'classy' events that necessitated investigating the cream of the city's private dining rooms and exclusive venues to find the very best of the lot. In a city packed to the gunwales with five star hotels, that was quite a lavish brief.

A real lalaPR week...

BTW: Shifting pop bands around the world is a pain in the arse, in case you are ever interested in going into the shifting pop bands around the world game...

Mabrouk Alan Johnston

Truly great news today, which broke at 2am so all the papers in the UAE missed it.

The slideshow of his release on Yahoo! is worth checking out - a smile that only a man who had been locked in a darkened apartment and threatened with death for four months could smile when he finally came out into the light.

A nice start to the day...

Are You Getting the Salik Message?

As predicted earlier, the SMS infrastructure that's underpinning the Salik road toll in Dubai has been providing some unscheduled summer surprises, with Gulf News reporting (one suspects a touch gleefully, if the truth be told) on the hapless punters whose mobiles have been flooded with huge quantities of SMSs originating from the Road and Transport Authority (RTA).

Now getting SMS spam is bad enough (it's still an occasional annoyance in the UAE, although nothing like the constant stream we used to get). But these people have been receiving over a hundred texts overnight! Can you imagine what it feels like to get a tsunami of SMS spam from the people behind the universally popular and well regarded road toll scheme?

I bet it had them hopping, I really do...

I still haven't got my activation message. I wonder how they're doing with that data entry? >;0)

Microsoft Gets Spanked

I have always been something of a fan of Arab News' Molouk Ba-Isa. Unremittingly grumpy, difficult and highly opinionated, her weekly technology column often informs, interests and generally amuses me. I have worked with her many times over the years and have delivered many a faintly trembling executive into her tender care. I remember one being told, by way of an introduction: "I hope Alexander briefed you about how difficult I am."

Alexander is usually too amused to say much. I've always been a sucker for a misanthrope.

But this week's column is something of a car-crash experience. I don't want to look, but I'm drawn back to it time and time again. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to communicate with Middle East markets. It should be on every international technology PR person's training curriculum. It's linked here and it ain't pretty.

Microsoft doled out a lazy press release on the Xbox 360. Molouk doled out the punishment. To be fair, she could have been a lot worse. But it's worth bearing in mind that this is pretty heavy stuff for a media environment like Saudi Arabia, where it is still rare to encounter a critical tone.

What's interesting to me is that her obvious irritation has been triggered by a thoughtless communication. A little care and this wouldn't have happened at all...

That Toll Again

Well, as predicted, the papers were indeed filled with Salik yesterday. Every front page bar one had the story of the clear roads by the toll gates and the chaos everywhere else. Gulf News dared to be different and didn't put the Salik story on its front page at all, which was a nice change. And Emirates Today splashed with 'Salik Chaos' which was an even nicer change, although the tone of the story, perhaps rather predictably, didn't quite follow through from the headline.

Nobody's got a confirmation SMS. Nobody quite knows what's happening about that (although I refer you to my earlier mathematical sleight of hand) yet. Today's papers are still rumbling and grumbling but life is settling down back to its regular rhythm.

Wait 'till they try and sneak the next set of toll gates in, though. Look out for announcements regarding the success of the Salik pilot scheme and how that success has led to a review and subsequent decision to expand it to cover other routes...

My money's on Jebel Ali, Qusais and Business Bay. Because that's where there are 'Salik 2km' signs today, put up by someone who rather jumped the gun...

Salik - A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Well, the papers should be full of this lot tomorrow. Dubai's congestion charge cuts in and it's certainly true that there's been no congestion today at the two points in the city where the toll's RFID scanners span the road.

But oh, dearie me, the picture is far from pretty almost everywhere else. Pushing thousands of cars an hour off the arterial Sheikh Zayed Road meant that the city's streets were heaving: the traffic this evening backed up past the airport, Maktoum and Satwa were rammed with punters trying to find any which way but Salik.

Even the Emarat station before the Garhoud toll had its queues: application form-waving punters ten deep as they made that last minute application for the little orange sticker. Barsha and the area around the projects was apparently misery this morning and will have been again tonight.

Some of the day's best fun was to be had on Facebook, the new forum for the Middle East's chatterers: "It’s a car park! I can’t find the logic in this!!!" says a furious Suzy, while an astonished Alisha keys, "It was also the worst road rage I've ever seen in my life!"

"With the exception of one straight stretch of road starting at Al Barsha, going through Sheikh Zayed Road, towards Garhoud Bridge, the remaining streets of Dubai have successfully, overnight, been turned into one huge parking lot," says a shocked Sherif who goes on, one suspects with a touch of irony, to say: "So worry not residents, all you need to do to grab lunch is turn off your engines wherever you are, pop out for a bite, and odds are, traffic will be at a standstill upon your return!"

While my favourite contribution of the day, from a naughty Nadim, was: "Anyone fancy helping me to take out a half page ad in the newspapers thanking RTA?"

I predicted this would be fun. And yes, I am delighted to have told you so. And I don't think it's really started in earnest yet: the best is definitely yet to come.

What larks, Pip!!

Spiderman!

Talking of Al Maha, we found this bad boy in the room when we got back from dinner. With enormous regret, because he had more right to be there than we did, a life-long arachnophobia and a deeply unsettled wife resulted in a swift spider/sandal occlusion. The Birkenstock survived.

Showed the pre-two dimensional spider photo to our guide, who couldn't name it. He thought it was similar to a species of funnel-web he'd seen in the desert. It reminded me of the chap shown below, who was lurking in our outdoor bathroom in Sri Lanka one night. I can't find anything like it online...

Anyone got any ideas?


PS: I really, really hate spiders. I'm talking about the British garden variety, not these monsters - both had a legspan over 5cm.

Fake Plastic Chicken

It's not that pal and colleague Carrington has posted up a rubber chicken for auction on Facebook. It's not that he took the trouble to photograph the damn thing. It's not even that the bird-flu resistant rubbery piece of poultry is known to form part of a massive collection of totally useless things because Carrington collects useless things.

It's the fact that the item in question has so far gathered 57 views and already attracted two offers. If this success continues, I'm going to put my Acer Promotional Stone up for auction.

(PS: I've just realised where he got the damn chicken from! Unwanted gift! I'm hurt!)