Ships of the Desert

According to Time Middle East's Scott MacLeod, a mystery ailment has killed almost 2,000 Saudi camels: tainted feed is suspected. In his piece MacLeod attempts to underline the importance of camels to the Saudis: there are apparently just under a million of them in the Kingdom.

It all brought to mind a story I was told many years ago by an experienced Middle East lawyer from a British law firm. His firm had been called in to defend a major oil company against an angry Bedouin tribe which had lost one of its prize racing camels in a tar pit owned by the company.

Getting to court, our man was surprised to find himself up against the tribal poet, who apparently waxed most lyrical and at considerable length on the grace, beauty and sheer delightfulness of the deceased beast, leaving not a dry eye in the house. Of course, the highly esteemed (and as highly paid) counsel flown in from London didn't stand a chance and lost the case hands down.

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…

Gosh! Blighty!

Off to The Berkeley for a couple of nights to attend the nuptials of pals Jo and Carl. The Maktoums have taken the top floor. Knightsbridge is so Arab we feel totally at home. Breakfasts at Harvey Nicks are great: the organic cafe on the 5th floor with food that explodes after our normal diet of greenhouse-reared, air-freighted food. A spin over to Wales to Casa McNabb Senior. Awful weather predicted for the journey back tomorrow. Everything's green and terribly well off.
It's strange, this going home. Everyone's pleased to see you, you've saved up and you've got cash in pocket. You do things you normally wouldn't do, blow money you wouldn't normally blow: live it up a little. Home's home comforts abound. And then you start thinking you'd like to move back, a few dangerous moments before you realise that life back down home on the farm would be perhaps a little bit different if it were the stuff of everyday life. If you were ripping yourself out of bed every driecht winter morning to plod down to the tube: just another number in the jostling crowds of pale-faced anonydrones swaying with the movements of the train, staring up at the tube map, counting rivets. Anything to avoid eye contact.
Back to lotus eating, then...

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.