PARTY PARTY PARTY PARTY

Like many other people who write blogs, I started this so that I could be witty, frothy and generally entertaining. There's little doubt that blogging is, indeed, an adult version of that horrible urge that precocious children have to play the piano or show off your ability to do break dancing in the middle of mum and dad's dinner party.

But I have to hold up my hands and admit that today's post comes to you from a narrative, comedic and linguistic talent that so far eclipses my own pathetic efforts that I bring it to you unedited, unexpurgated (and un-spellchecked!). It was shared with me, for which I thank him deeply and humbly, by pal Sherif The Killer of Yellow Things... It was sent to him, genuinely, as an email...

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Who doesn’t like to celebrate! All moments can be JOYFUL moments … YOU ONLY NEED THE RIGHT TEAM TO HELP YOU CELEBRATE!!!

Summer is here and the heat has drained everyone … But why not find the time to have some fun? Enjoyment & Pleasure is what we can supply you with… from the food to lights & music … from the simplest to the most sophisticated detail … we can plan and deliver all…

- Are you preparing for your WEDDING??? With all your wedding stress do you have the time to plan??? Why not enjoy and relax, while we plan for your wedding?

- From your BACHELOR or BACHELORETTE party … to the smallest and refine detail … we are pleased to do it all for you… To make your night a memorable evening !!!

- Your wife is PREGNANT and doesn’t feel like outing, the heat, the loud music, the cigarette smoke all would be things that bother her… why not do something SPEICAL for her just because you love her… but with a clean environment… and let us take care of the simplest details for you…

- You had a FIGHT with your lover… and you think everything is collapsing around you … why go for a cliché dinner??? Wouldn’t that be something you will expect ??? why not do something extraordinary… forget about the details just have the day to re-fresh and prepare yourself for the makeup night… and we will do it all for you…

- Are you getting a DIVORCE??? Why feel sorry about it??? Enjoy it and celebrate your new beginning??? We can plan your divorce party in way that you will enjoy it even better than your wedding…

- Your wife left for the summer vacation but you are still here working and feeling LONLEY missing her HOMEMADE FOOD… why feel lonely when you can have it all even if you are left alone??? Invite a couple of friends and lets us cook for you and celebrate your loneliness …

- Your best friend doesn’t feel like celebrating his/her BIRTHDAY??? Why not to come with the right plan to make him/her enjoy what was thought it would be a boring night??? We can come up with the idea and the plan and make your friends night a memorable one…

You just past your EXAMS and you think that’s something simple??? No its not !!! its another reason to celebrate… Let us organize it for you…

We at Cateriya Catering Services do it all… from your HAPPY MOMENTS to UNFORGETABLE MEMORIES … From your WORSE DAYS to days that will only be kept as HAPPY reminiscences … We make you forget that you even went through the stress… contact us and we will take care of everything … cause you deserve to be treated like a QUEEN / KING at all times and all occasions…

If non of the above exist and IS part of your life… Than for sure you need us … we will add the spices to your life with planning an unforgettable event for you…

Rendered speechless, for once, I have no comment...

Naked

Gulf News’ report that Dubai now has a Nudist Labour Camp made me laugh until the tears ran down my face. The thought of a number of these blokes making it home from the dusty building sites and then whizzing around the stacked rabbit hutches of the labour camps like the naked bloke with the juniper bushes in The Life of Brian really appealed to me.

It really is time to go on leave, isn't it?

RTA Quote of The Year

No sooner had I finished posting up a grumpy slice of whingeing about Salik than the morning papers landed with their customary 'thud' and with them the news that the new Floating Bridge over Dubai creek was shut yesterday morning for hours, causing massive and widespread chaos and misery on the roads.

Why?

According to Dubai's RTA (Roads and Transport Authority), quoted by Gulf News: "The bridge was closed for about two hours as part of the contingency plan to conduct some technical experiments during the peak hours so as to ensure that the emergency system works effectively using the smart traffic systems."

This is the finest, rarest, premium quality doublespeak. Not even Sir Humphrey Applebey could ever have reached these heights. This obfuscatory blither is the result of the hard work of a truly brilliant team of communications professionals and I salute them all individually and collectively.

Salik Surprises

So much has been written about Dubai’s congestion charge, Salik, that it’s difficult to contemplate adding to what’s already out there without a certain sense of resignation and perhaps a touch of fear that it’s just going to be a repetition of the considerable volume of incredulity, indignation, anger and exasperated invective that has peppered so many blogs over the past couple of months. Even the media, ever-aware of the burden of governmental disapproval, has tried to reflect the broad public dislike of the scheme. Strangely, few of the people who have complained appear to have been motivated to do so by the financial impact: it has been the apparent lack of a clear objective or a well-communicated plan of any sort that has drawn much of the negative comment in both on and off-line media. The response of the RTA, to the broad public concern has, at its least helpful, been to tell the public to stow it because they’re ‘not traffic experts’. The flow of information regarding the scheme and the ‘traffic management objectives’ that we’re told about as we hold for the Salik call centre to finish ‘helping’ other callers has hardly ever been more than a grudging trickle.

I am one of those people whose mobile numbers were ‘given wrongly’: I still have the copy of the form in which my mobile number is given with perfect clarity. I corrected the error over the ‘phone last week when I got through to their call centre. Today I got an SMS telling me that my balance of Dhs 2 was insufficient and that I should top up or face a fine. Now, forgive me, but I thought that one of the ideas was that you’d get an SMS warning you that your balance was low. Apparently not.

So I went to top up. I have to confess I was a little annoyed at having to do this on the spur of the moment rather than with a couple of crossings’ notice, but never mind. The Emarat station just prior to the Garhoud toll only has one till that can take Salik top-ups because they only have one pad of Salik top up forms – a rather analogue, multipart book of slips.

I can pay my phone bill using online and telephone banking, as well as my electricity and water bill. I can pay my traffic fines and I can even renew my PO box online.

But I have to top up my Salik account by filling in a cloakroom slip? So be it. I aimed to top up with a nice Dhs250 so that I wouldn't have to do it again for a good while. So I gave the girl my Visa card. Which is when I discovered you can only pay for Salik by cash.

What a muckle-headed slice of totally incompetent daftness.

But I’m not finished by a long chalk. You see, I then drove over Garhoud to hit the tailback immediately after the bridge. Because it’s gridlocked over Maktoum and the new Floating Bridge through City Centre and up the Ittihad Road to Sharjah. Because the traffic that’s crossed Business Bay to avoid Salik joins Garhoud a couple of hundred meters after the very bridge that this Salik scheme was meant to keep clear. It’s caused worse traffic congestion in the whole Deira area than we have every seen before and THIS IS SUMMER TRAFFIC – the number of cars on the road is something like 25% less than normal.

I thought I’d get a few laughs out of Salik but I, along with a lot of other people, have stopped laughing. Come September, when the traffic levels ramp back up to their usual heaving stock car race levels, there’ll be a whole lot more people not laughing.

Someone should really start doing some explaining.

Sky - That's Better!

Sky was getting properly into the swing of things last night: lots of stories on how communities were coming together and managing to cope with the flooding disaster.

I can only hope that my profound indignation, in the spirit of a butterfly in Beijing, somehow transmitted itself to London and changed a few synapses in the mind of a senior production team member. But sadly I have to admit that it's more likely that they simply came to their senses...

Shopper's Paradise

Today's Emarat Al Youm has a news story blaring the great news that retail sales in Dubai have gone through the roof this summer, obviously thanks to the Dubai Summer Surprises festival which is headed, as over 900 Facebook Group joining (it's going to hit the 1,000 by the weekend) people know, by the infinite-eyed grinning yellow evil that is Modhesh Al Modhesh.

25% increase in shoppers shrills the page 18 headline, backed up by the picture caption, Boutiques and accessory shops had the highest share of Festival sales.

Delightfully, the huge image used to illustrate the story is that of an completely empty shop.

One can only conjecture that they had been scared away temporarily by the appearance of a hungry, ravening Modhesh...

Ainsworth 1 Sky News 0 - They're Still Getting the Tone Wrong!

Following my wee rant about Sky News and how I think they’re getting the tone of their reporting on the floods in the UK wrong, I was delighted to watch Sky’s Jeremy Thompson interviewing Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment Peter Ainsworth last night. Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m no Tory. But long-time anchor figure Bowen started to rag Ainsworth about David ‘I wash regularly, actually’ Cameron going to Africa while his constituency was underwater. And that brought Ainsworth out of his corner fighting like Tyson on crack cocaine. Ainsworth slammed Thompson for Sky’s ‘blame game’ reporting, pointed out that we all had more important things to worry about and that the community was getting itself together and didn’t need Sky carping and pointing fingers right now thank you very much.

Thompson (whom I respect, incidentally) took a huge whack to the chin. And there I was cheering a spokesperson on again…

Meanwhile, talking about the weather, as the deliciously eccentric Alison Goldfrapp tells us: “It’s a strange day, no colours no shapes”. Today we woke up to the washed out colours of a summer Shamal, everything around rendered indistinct by the whirling sand, the air thick with the fine, pale dust. It gets up your nose, in your ears, in your hair, dries your skin and enervates your spirit.

The Mistral, the Khamsin, the Scirocco – the great seasonal winds of the world. And all we get is the miserable old Shamal.

The UAE’s Shamal whips up the desert and dumps it on the cities: sand streams across the roads and visibility drops, sometimes alarmingly. Shamal is Arabic for North and, perhaps interestingly, many people in the Arab World use shamal to mean left as well as yassar (right is yemin). Quite why North is synonymous with left is a mystery to me...

The beating hot wind, stinging with sand particles, is just what you need to add to that cheery summer feeling. Mind you, it could be worse. We could be 30 feet under in water.

Which is as neat a link as you’re ever going to get on this blog.

What to do?

This most celebrated of UAE ‘Hinglish’ phrases is the ultimate in fatalism. It means, ‘You’re so screwed, you might as well just give up and stop breathing now, pal’, but is infinitely more polite as it also involves a degree of 'And it's not my fault, it's out of my hands and in those of our creator'.

It is invariably delivered with an inclination of the head and a smile. Your electricity has been cut off because of a clerical error, it’s Thursday evening and the reconnection team have all gone home for the weekend and you face at least 72 hours in the sweltering heat with no power and water through no fault of your own. You’re raging and the man from the electricity smiles at you and shakes his head, saying: “What to do?”

Pals Dom and Scott and I thought it would be a great Whisky brand for the Indian market and many a boozy evening has consequently descended into brainstorming sessions for the commercials.

Actor is sitting, cross-legged on the compacted earth, in front of the ruins of a Malabari house. There are coconut palms waving gently in the sun behind him. He’s wearing a shirt and lunghi as he addresses the camera.

“House is burning. Insurance not updated. Wife is leaving. Dowry being refundable. I am having nothing left. Even children are going back to grandmother.”

Actor grins broadly, raising glass of whisky with lots of ice cubes in to camera and inclines head in time-honoured fashion.

“What to do?”

The variations on the theme are, of course, awesome.

It was a phrase I was able to use this morning, as young Carrington was heard fuming and fulminating as he tried to struggle with his new home PC. Apparently he was having some issues with something called Windows Vista that was causing his sparkly new slice of integrated technology platform to blow raspberries, generally misbehave, lock up, whistle Dixie and on the whole refuse to come out and play. I waited until he finished his litany of driver issues and errors and then expressed my sympathy appropriately.

“Yes, I understand the severity of the situation. But what to do?”

I shall not record his response for fear it may offend the delicate ears of the genteel reader…

UK Flooding: The Spokesperson Bites Back

The recent massive flooding in the UK has been interesting for me, particularly because I’ve been able to sit here in the sweltering heat and watch how it’s been handled from a huge distance. And I have to say that the interview I watched recently between Sky News’ anchor and a complete unknown called Graham Bowskill had me cheering.

I spend quite a lot of my professional life coaching spokespeople who will be dealing with media. I spend a little bit of my time being a spokesperson talking to media, too. And so I guess, despite my pro-media approach to my work, I’m also inclined to ‘root’ for a spokesperson. Rarely have I found myself so involved in the moments of combat, because let’s face it this is a contact sport, as I was watching the Bowskill interview.

The story is simple: a huge volume of rain fell on areas in the UK again this week, forcing motorists to spend overnight in their cars on blocked motorways. Roads across the country were flooded and became impassable: whole communities have been flooded out with huge volumes of water - much of it now contaminated.

So when Sky News’ anchor starts to play the blame game and try to pin the misery of overnight stranded motorists and flooded homes on the Highways Agency, you’d expect spokesperson Graham Bowskill to stutter and witter, to try and defend his agency’s pathetic performance to the journalist who speaks for all of us.

Well, he didn’t. He spoke well, cogently and with dignity.

Now UK PR commentator The World’s Leading (Theo to his mates) has already made the point that spokespeople in the UK speak in a strange, strangled, doublespeak when they’re put on the spot. And Graham did that, for sure. But he also pointed out that his agency had issued major warnings to the media (and he didn’t say that the responsibility that the media bore was that of ensuring those warnings were taken as seriously as they were intended, but he might as well have, because the media does bear that responsibility) and that his agency had told people not to travel and his agency was trying to deal with a highly exceptional event. He went on to detail what the issues were and how his agency and its allied emergency services were reacting to meet the challenge – and he was doing that right up until the anchor, who had sensed she wasn’t going to win her moment of fame for nailing the twerp who was responsible for all our misery, cut him off while he was still trying to tell us how the services were dealing with the issue. She was wrong to have done so: and by God, I was (I swear, I was) on the edge of my chair cheering him on. Because a decent man, outlining a decent response - on all our behalves - to a totally unprecedented situation actually deserves our attention and our regard.

The fact is that Bowskill putting his strong case forward well actually played against everything that the journalist wanted – a cheap shot story angle that focused everyone’s rightful indignation and anger on the sucker being interviewed. And so he came through it all beautifully. It’s such a shame that nobody was there to point out how at odds with our common feeling at a time of crisis this style of ‘blame game’ journalism is. Because, of course, the media playing that game would never DREAM of facing public criticism that their response was inappropriate.

Several of Sky's interviews around the whole flooding disaster since have been in the same vein: alarmist and obviously ranging around and looking for someone they can pin blame on. Last night they cut an interview short with a chap who was telling them that the community had actually given up worrying and was taking it all lightly. Again, it's not what they wanted to hear and so they moved on and cut the interview.

And I do find it interesting that, as communities pull together in the face of this unprecedented disaster, Sky is just lobbing stones, being alarmist and generally plain unhelpful. It does seem to me that their tone of coverage is sharply at odds with public sentiment. I wonder if it will backfire on them...

George Bush Colon Cancer Scare: Brilliant!

Do you understand what happened here? They removed polyps from his colon. That means the simian wee bastard had a rectally inserted laproscopy procedure. They gave him 48 hours’ worth of wickedly chemical laxatives that made him shit himself clear (literally), together with a 48 hour ‘no solids’ regime. Over the past two days, he’s eaten nothing but consommé and drunk nothing but water and apple juice. He’s had to take a number of evilly effective chemical laxative doses that had him speeding at absolutely no notice to the bog to void himself in an uncontrollable frenzy of shitting an increasingly watery and uncomfortable stream of warm gleet. And then they slapped a dose of pethedine into his withered veins (Christ, but I bet that reminded him of how a bottle of Jack felt) and slid a KY-smothered fibre optic 'scope into his puckered little Texan ass.

But that’s just the beginning...

Then they pumped air into his colon to inflate it so that the cameras can see around. It’s despicably uncomfortable, like someone released a high pressure airline into your gut. People who’ve done it without the happy juice have been known to scream with the pain of it all.

And then they excised lumps of his lower gut (videotaped – I can’t WAIT for the bootleg) with a hot wire loop so that he could shit it out in a stream of post-operative blood and KY jelly, like a pretty new resident of a Texan jail taking his first crap.

No wonder he handed over to Dick Cheney. Who wants the Free World to be in the hands of a drugged up psychopath who's lost control of his bowels and is taking a royally huge instrument up his ass?

Oh. Hang on. That's pretty much situation normal, isn't it? You'd almost wonder why they bothered calling Dick at all, wouldn't you?

This is something that people in the Arab World should be told about. It will bring them a little moment of joy. Particularly the Iraqis...