Aquafina - Artificially Mineralised Water, Anyone?

Aquafina is a bottled water that's sold in the UAE. It's one of a couple of strange sidelines operated by Pepsico, the people that bring you carbonated water, sugar, phosphoric acid and caramel under the brand Pepsi Cola. They also produce a brand of basmati rice sold in the UAE, for some bizarre reason.

Aquafina has been outed by US based action group Corporate Accountability International, which has been making something of a song and dance about the fact that water from public sources is being bottled by companies branding what is effectively tap water masquerading as spring water. Their point, a fair one really, is that selling tap water under brands that reinforce a strong association with purity, freshness, mountains, green hillsides and all that sort of stuff is misleading. It has to be said that they're not really that worried about the stuff we buy here in the UAE - water under the Aquafina brand is sold in the USA and, we can safely assume, a rather larger volume of the stuff is shipping over there than here.

There is a fine distinction involved here. Water sold as spring water or mineral water must come from a natural source. But Aquafina is not sold as spring water. It is sold as 'pure drinking water'. I'd always assumed it was a by-product of purifying the water needed to produce the Middle East's favourite cola, 'Bebzi', but apparently not.

Pepsico's UAE franchisee, Dubai Refreshments, has moved swiftly in reaction to the 'Aquafina is tap water' charge by arranging a press trip to its facility in Dibba to show press that Aquafina is sourced from underground and is not tap water. The press duly turned up and were taken around the factory and the report is in today's media. They were shown 'two wooden boxes with pipes leading from them', assured by the manager that this was an underground source and handed a statement from the Dibba Municipality that asserts that the water is produced from an underground source inside the premises of the factory.

In a moment of magically skewed messaging, the manager of the factory assured media that "Even the water in our toilets is from the wells."

The end of Gulf News' report is, I think, the most telling part of the story. To quote GN, whose story is linked here (and which I highly recommend, just so you can read between any lines you might find in the carefully worded statement from the Municipality): "...the water's total dissolved solids (TDS) can be anything from 400 to 1200 parts per million (PPM) when it is first pumped but this is reduced to nil before salts and minerals, provided by Pepsico International, are injected in the water. The final TDS count in Aquafina is 120ppm." (My italics, BTW)

Funnily enough, the claimed TDS count on Aquafina's label is 110ppm. Putting that discrepancy aside, we have a water that is labelled, similarly to mineral waters, with its mineral content displayed on the label. But we now know that this mineral content is added by the bottler to water that has been treated to remove a high content of dissolved solids.

The question of source is almost irrelevant now: Gulf News' report makes it clear (although not as clear as some may have liked or expected) that Aquafina is treated water that has been artificially mineralised. But what interests me is that the media didn't do the one thing that would get to the bottom of the question of Aquafina's source and purity for once and for all: take it to a lab and have it analysed.

My pal Scott, a qualified chemist, worked in a testing lab here in the Emirates for a couple of years and would only ever drink Masafi. It was the only bottled water in the Emirates, he used to say, that contained what it said it contained on the label. I've tended to go with that advice myself...

Rabid Cool Web 2.0 Technology Widget Thing Plug Post

Talking, as we were a short while ago, of searching blogs - here's something that you might like to try out. A number of people are finding their way back to this little backwater by searching for posts they remember, which means (Sherlock, me) they’re not using RSS. I do have some sympathy: it’s really not quite the ‘push button, click and go’ technology that its name, ‘really simple syndication’ appears to claim and although feed readers do make this easier than managing a drop down tab of live bookmarks, I have found a number of those readers to be, well, gnarly really.

Let me introduce you to a rather superior solution which lets you keep on top of your blogs with incredible, elegant simplicity. Netvibes lets you build your own dashboard of blogs and other content sources – anything that has a feed, in fact (including a rather natty widget that lets you keep track of Facebook activity, too – if you’re into that sort of thing…). You can then move them about on the page as you like and you can also keep groups of feeds (Dubai blogs, global blogs, blogs about beards) in tabbed pages, so that everything’s up to date, tidily put away and kept spankingly up to date. You can add the Netvibes widget to your browser (Firefox compatible, which is cool) and that makes adding a feed as simple as hitting the Netvibes logo it installs on your toolbar.

No more typing the names of posts you remember to get back to blogs! No more forgetting the blog you liked the other day! No more missing things happening around you! No more fighting with texty screens of badly formatted information!

No, please. Don’t thank me. Just be nice to a small furry animal today… Or, if you can' find any furry animals, be nice to a Gianni, as it was 'im what turned me onto Netvibes in the first place...

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…

Search Me!

As many blogging folk will know, services such as the excellent SiteMeter track visits to one’s blog. One of the many interesting (and, many people find, scary) things SiteMeter does is track referrals – which page you came from to get here. So if you googled something and found this blog, I can backtrack and find out what you googled to get here. Having discovered this some time ago, I have got into the, slightly worrying I know, habit of taking a peek at how on earth people found this little backwater of the Web. And the results can be wildly amusing, odd and sometimes just downright unsettling.

I am very proud indeed to be able to tell you that if you google George Bush Colon, then this blog is the first result, thanks to this post. That amuses me in a huge way and I still occasionally remember the fact and break out into random chuckles, which I have noticed does rather tend to make other members of the general public behave slightly oddly towards me.

If you google Death to Modhesh, your first three links are also in this direction. And that tickles me, too – as does the fact that your first two search hits if you google yellow abomination are to this very place too!

Other first page Google search string results that point in the direction of Alexander’s silly blog include lolcats boiled (and no bad thing, either); Masafi (I know, it’s amazing isn’t it?); fake plastic chickens; public relations quotes (is that for real? That nobody else in the world has got anything better to say about public relations than the occasional fatuous reference in this - visited by a handful of people and highly marginal - little blog? Grief!), mimetics and, Fakhreddine Amman. Again, I’m slightly puzzled that such a great restaurant should be represented by idiot features here as the first thing you get when you search for it!

And now we pause for a moment of absolute insanity.

If you google ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason’, the title of Pink Floyd’s 1987 first album after Roger Waters’ departure, the fourth search result in the Universe is… you guessed it… Fake Plastic Daftblog. The album went quadruple platinum, for gawd’s sake!

The one that worries me is the person that keeps searching for Russian girl face slash. I don’t know why, but that one just nags at me.

The things people google, eh? I suppose I should thank my lucky stars that anyone ever comes here, however inexplicable the road they took to arrive. So now you’re here, I do hope you enjoy your stay. Do wipe the hand basins and leave them as you’d wish others to find them – and don’t forget to close the door on your way out!

It's all in the Name

I have previously referred to the highly amusing letter sent by His Brittanic Majesty's Ambassador to Moscow to his mate Reggie, Lord Pembroke.

Now I have a further Turkish Name Amusement to share thanks to pal Scott who shared this link.

I can't wait for him to become Prime Minister. If he does, it'll presumably be because his name carries with it such a compelling campaign proposition. Scott actually called their campaign headquarters to try and blag a t-shirt, but no dice!

Let Us All Waft Favourable Gesture

Sherif, the leader in the fight against the yellow peril, shared another chucklesome email gem the other day: this time from a job seeker who emailed our man an unsolicited CV. I have to say, Sherif gets a more interesting inbox than I do - you may remember last week's classic contribution from his little inbox of horrors, the promotional email from an event management company that was little short of insane...

The covering email from this chap appears to have been more suited to an applicant for Director of the Brontë Society:

Respected Sir

With due deference and in all obeisance to your exalted organisation, I submit my C.V for your valuable scrutiny and estimation in respect of validity and appropriate merit of my application and your kind disposal in favour of me.

I expect with sanguinary hopes that your benign study of my application may waft favourable gesture and due consideration.

There are, I can assure you, poets out there who are crying tears of blood because they didn’t think of ‘waft favourable gesture’. So much genius, so little appreciation…

Cairene Reflections

Back for the first time in 8 years to this crazy, quixotic, frenetic, noisy, rambling metropolis where Africa meets Arabia. Soaking it all in, delighted by every twist and turn, remembering and celebrating this place that, for two years, was virtually my second home. Dappled light, ramshackle tenements, the placid Nile, scraped and bumped cars, busted sidelights and broken down kerbstones. People: everywhere people, lazing, laughing, running, scowling. Rubbish on the streets, sprawling cables above and concrete cancer eating the facades of slab-sided blocks of flats and the filigreed art nouveau buildings that butt up against them in a dizzying upwards accretion of ages. Everything seems smashed and cobbled together. Here are life’s extremes, rich and poor; sick and hearty, young and old, caught up in the uncaring torrent of traffic and the relentless, pounding tide of humanity washing up against the roads crammed with cars jostling insanely in the orange glow of the dying sun.

My last memory of Cairo all those years ago was crossing the river in a black and white cab, watching a man with his legs severed above the knees beg at the traffic lights, propelling himself on a rickety cart, pushing against the faded tarmac with a stone in his hand. Reaching the other side of the river only to catch a moment of timeless humanity: a good-looking young policeman chatting up a pretty girl, his grin cheeky and hers, cast over the shoulder and flirty, a moment, caught in the sun, of youth and pleasure. That’s Cairo.

Everyone’s on the make, over-eager to grin like a Nile crocodile at the Inglez and take his money. They’re welcome to what little I have, even the blowsy, raven-haired receptionist, caked in make-up and stuffed, like an afterthought, into a uniform bursting at the seams with her bountiful yet grudging charms.

Everywhere you go, you’re ‘Seer’: “Is this your first time in Cairo Seer?”

The Egypt Air Restaurant in the airport hasn’t changed since the 1980s: nothing seems to have moved, not even the display of slightly desiccated yucca plants, their withered leaves more like papyrus than living organism. Perhaps the ceiling tiles are dirtier than they were, perhaps not. As I have so many times before, I sit here and drink a cold beer before leaving.

This time I’m lost in space, looking out of the dirty window and wondering what it is about Cairo, this raddled old whore of a city that I love so much and yet had forgotten that I loved.

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…

Out of Control

Oh dear. I don't seem to be able to stop myself! All sorts of naughty 'Modhesh is Evil' scenarios are unfolding in front of me!!!

It's deep in mid-summer and I need a holiday. That's my only excuse your honour...

Proof that it IS Evil!

In celebration of the 1000th member of the chucklesome Facebook Group: proof that he is, indeed, evil.

Hmmm... I can feel a meme coming on...