How Green Was My Valley

Now this one gets a bit involved, but do bear with me.
It’s in all the papers today. Sheikh Mohammad has announced that all buildings in Dubai after January 2008 must be constructed as ‘green’ buildings ‘to the highest international standards’ according to my usual favourite linking source, Gulf News.
The news comes as Pacific Controls inaugurates its headquarters, which has been constructed to the US Green Buildings Council standard. That was inaugurated yesterday, just in time to be in today’s news, by Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi, UAE Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs. Also present were members of the Emirates Green Building Council and ‘environmentalists.
Today also sees the announcement of the inauguration of the Middle East Centre for Sustainable Development, an initiative backed by The Environment Health and Safety (EHS) and Pacific Controls. If you were wondering who EHS were, according to the 1st September story on the announcement of the MCSD in Arabianbusiness.com, it’s the environment, health and safety division of Dubai World (whose CEO, Sultan bin Sulayem, patronised the launch). The ‘establishment will facilitate the roll out of green buildings to developers in Dubai World and the Middle East, provide service and systems that will establish guidelines for all development projects, assist them to achieve LEED certification, under USGBC/EGBC Guidelines and/or certification, established under the guidelines of MCSD, thus enabling sustainable development in the whole Middle East region.’
This must be all be regarded as something of a PR coup for Pacific Controls which, of course, supplies consulting and engineering for intelligent and ‘green’ buildings. And which first launched the Middle East Centre for Sustainable Development back in August. So this is a pretty neat second hit at the story!
Pacific is an interesting company, originally headquartered in Australia, it appears to have moved its head office to Dubai - and CEO Dilip Rahulman is also chairman of Solar Technologies, a Free Zone company that, back in 2006, announced the establishment of a Dhs50 million solar power energy facility in Dubai Techno Zone. So quite a commitment to Dubai from Pacific...
The company's green HQ was originally intended to be opened in April 2006, according to this company release dated February 9th 2006, but perhaps more interesting is that the building was originally to be certified by a completely different body to the USGBC - in fact, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was originally to provide certification. Both of these facts perhaps would arguably merit further investigation, but our investigative media would appear to be too busy fighting over cash awards from the government.
In news completely unrelated to the sudden outbreak of green angst in Dubai, an international UN-backed conference on the global environment today opened in Abu Dhabi, organised by The Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi and UNEP, which is behind the GEO-4 report on the state of, and trends in, the global environment.

Biting The Hand That Feeds

As we continue to applaud Sheikh Mohammad's wise intervention in the Khaleej Times journalists threatened with jail case and his Undertaking That Journalists In The UAE Will Not Face Prison As A Potential Consequence Of The Pursuit Of Their Profession (with certain caveats as confirmed by certain authorities in a certain way), media and the law are something of a focus around here at the moment. It is perhaps timely and even mildly amusing to see the news that a journalist is suing the government-owned Dubai Press Club, his former managing editor and his former employer, the enormous Saudi Research and Marketing Group over an award for journalism.

The problem, apparently, is that the journalist feels that a $15,000 award for investigative reporting was wrongly presented by Dubai Press Club to his managing editor, as the journalist claims that he contributed to the report. He is suing for just under $137,000.

Litigious hack slaps back indeed.

The Gulf News report of the scrap details the slightly complex nature of the suit, which has now gone to appeal having been thrown out by the Civil Court for 'lack of evidence'.

None of the investigative reporters involved appear to have seen fit to question scrabbling in the dust for a cash award for journalism made by a government-backed entity. Strange, that...

Modesty is my Middle Name

So the meeting ends and we both leave the building, the client for a sneaky smoke outside the back door and myself to go to my car.
"Wow. Is the black one yours?" asks the client. My car's parked under the covered awnings behind me to the left.
"Yes," I say, smiling. But I'm perhaps a tad puzzled. I'm quite fond of my wee Pajero, but it's a 4WD and doesn't really tend to attract that many wows. And I detected a hint of envy in the client's wow, too. You know, more of a WOW than a Wow.
"Are you a fan or something?"
"Absolutely. I think they're gorgeous. I'm quite impressed, to tell you the truth!"
By now I'm a little worried. "Well, it gets me from A to B, I suppose," I say, laughing, a little nervously. The client's laughing too in the kind of 'you old dog' rogueish way that people laugh at people who are bullshitting them.
And then I turn towards the covered parking and walk to my car. I have to squeeze past the black Porsche 944 that's parked beside it as I get in.
Daaaammmnnn.

Taxi!

I've always found taxi drivers to be essential to getting a quick feel for how things are going in a particular country at a particular time. Mr Ghulam, our 'regular' driver, is no different. A Ghulam's eye view of the world is often an interesting counterpart to my own.

Travelling, I always make sure to talk to any cabbies I meet. This has often resulted in me having a remarkable 'inside view' of the place I've just landed in. Once, in Jordan, it resulted in me having my fortune told by an excellent numerologist. He was also, incidentally, driving the taxi but he was better known in his circle as a numerologist and was consulted by many as a result of his talents. I could see why - an uncanny reading and a refreshingly careless attitude to the less metaphysical question of foreign objects occluding with our own co-ordinates in the space time continuum meant that I was deeply glad to be able to get to the end of the reading with no direct reference made to the imminence of my meeting with my maker. That meeting is not one I am particularly keen to hasten as I am keenly aware that said maker is going to be expressing a great deal of disappointment, probably forcibly.

Anyway, Mr. Ghulam's highly amused that the UAE's petrol pumpers (with the exception of ADNOC, for some reason) have decided not to accept credit card transactions - a situation that I hate to say I predicted some time ago as the result of the nasty little spat between the petrol companies and the credit card companies. Ghulam's point of view is that they're forecourt pirates who are charging too much for petrol anyway and should give the banks the fees they're demanding.

My own personal view is, not unreasonably, that the overwhelming majority of bankers are scum and should be hung from meathooks - particularly anyone whose bank has the letters H, B, C and S in their names. I'm hugely amused to see the UAE's petrol companies take on Visa and Mastercard as the card companies try to levy their payment taxes. I'm sure the little guys (the petrol companies) won't win in the end. But there's a 'Passport to Pimlico' sort of David against Goliath fight against bullying, faceless force and willful bureaucracy that the Brit in me admires immensely.

Trust a cabbie to have it in for the petrol companies, of course. I always enjoy chatting with the cabbies at Heathrow about how much I pay for petrol here in the UAE (we pay per gallon what they pay per litre, a fun challenge for people with scientific calculators to work out what the ratio actually is I'm sure). It cheers them up, the poor dears.

I've always bought my petrol in cash. Just in case you're interested, Ghulam who, as a cabbie, is an expert, says that credit card accpeting petrol company ADNOC's a damn sight cheaper than anyone else anyway.

Someone's Put Acid in the Water

I swear it's finally happened: someone's dumped kilos of high quality acid in the water. It was only a matter of time before some wag thought of it. And the drugs have started to bite deep and hard just in time for Dubai's 'CityScape' real estate exhibition - 45,000 people are expected to wander around the sprawling ten-hall World Trade Center and visit this megalopolis of megalopolises.

The advertising around the event is proof positive that there is a twisted dose of California Sunshine in the public supplies: 'Find your home in a cultural palette' screams the wraparound to the Gulf News business section today from developers Dheeraj & East Coast. No thank you. I have no desire to live in a cultural palette. Whatever a cultural palette is. The ad goes on to gush 'Discover the roots of civilisation that flourished by the creek/Find contentment where life moves according to your own beat.'

Complete tosh.

But it gets worse. A lot worse. How about developer Iris Amber, which is offering 'A premium investment for those wishing to experience the warm tones of a cultivated life'?

The warm tones of a cultivated life? Really?

Or perhaps Qatari developer Qatari Diar (they must have hit the Qatari supply, too), which informs us: 'After all, there is only one Earth and there is only one you. It is our privilege to serve both.' An earnest promise, surely, and one to take seriously.

But this is my favourite from the rich crop of insane babble that is splashed across the double page spreads, four-page pullouts and wrap-arounds festooning today's UAE newspapers. How's this for acid-fuelled copywriting? "...a new kind of community, it provides all the comforts of upscale community living with one exception; smart value that does not come at the expense of ideal location, extensive community amenities, lush landscaping, spacious garden apartments, Moorish architecture and an uncompromising build quality"

Errr... wasn't that one exception?

Lush icons, peerless landscapes, unctuous vistas and scatological effulgence abound. A declamatory jumble of insanely positive assertion, semi-English verbiage and gushing torrents of epithet, plastered across the facade of an industry that only appears to understand facade.

Woops! Oktoberfest

Sitting in Dubai's lavish Grand Hyatt for a meeting with guests from Germany: a client and her account manager from our affiliate, European mega-agency Pleon. Everything was just peachy until they found the Hyatt's Oktoberfest promotion leaflet:

"Steins, Pretzels, Sausages and an authentic Oktoberfest band await you in the air-conditioned festival tent. Don your lederhosen, grab your Fraulein and get into the spirit of all things German... just make sure you take your towel and get there before the Germans do!"

I didn't know whether to laugh or die of embarrassment. Neither did they. So we all did both.

Camels in the Mist

A deep fog descended on the desert this morning, transforming the humdrum drive to work into an oddly silent period of peering through thick, patchy and frequently impenetrable banks of white; the occasional car looming into view out of the miasma, hazard lights flashing.

The short run through the sand in the fog is a gamble: if there's anyone stuck in your path you'd likely be fast following them, with visibility down to about four or five metres and decision making time cut to zero. The need to maintain momentum makes it hard to pick your way through the sandy humps as gingerly as you'd perhaps like.

And then the run through the sands around Khawaneej, lighter fog here for some reason (it obviously fogs less in Dubai than Sharjah for the same reason that it floods less and smells less. Because Dubai is, well, just better. No?) and then the smell of woodsmoke carried on the still air and, I swear it, the smell of camels. There are so many camel camps around, you can actually smell them. And it's an oddly comforting, warm smell on this cool, silent, tranquil and misty morning.

New Blog Gets Glittering Gala Launch

Last night saw the glittering gala dinner launch of new Dubai food blog, The Fat Expat at the Fairmont Hotel, Dubai. The red carpet was worn to shreds by the sheer weight of expensive leather that travelled up it as the paps snapped like the snarling gang of flash-happy jackals that they are and the greeting line’s arms and cheek muscles were aching, sore and in one case left in spasms with the sheer amount of celebrity meeting and greeting before the glamour of the evening kicked in.

OK, so I lied. Last night saw me and HMHB having a few drinks and wrangling over restaurants and chefs and things as well as lifting a glass to the new Blog. Thanks to 7Days, by the way!!!

Talking of new sites and snappers, do please dedicate a few minutes to going here. This is the new, fabby and generally phototabulous website of the highly talented Taline Jones (nee Tutunjian), also known as ‘T’ and ‘that girl over there just swore at me!’, depending on who you’re talking to at the time. T is a dear friend, ex-colleague and deeply talented photographer and anyone who’s got any sense will wire her thousands of pounds to have her on retainer right away.

Toasts all round, then!

A New Blog is Born!

Today is a momentous day, as it marks the launch of a new Blog dedicated to broadcasting the lunatic babbling of not one but two blogging types to the world. Yes, myself and HalfManHalfBeer are collaborating on a new Blog designed to indulge our shared unhealthy and obsessive interest in all things food-related.

The Fat Expat will contain regularly posted recipes, articles about food, restaurant reviews and more. More? Yes! More!

We’re aiming to have a great deal of fun with the format, including special promotions, cook-offs, recipe competitions and, I hope, an increasingly off-the-wall selection of content. There are already over 100 recipes posted up there in the archive, more than yer average cook-book, and we’re hoping to add loads more, together with bringing more contributors to the Blog.

So if you like Arabic food, pies, barbecues, eating out around the world, reading cranky restaurant reviews or prefer to dabble in a delicious assortment of Asian splendours then drop on by to the The Fat Expat!

UAE Banks Can Disable Cars? NO! NO! NO!

The People’s Newspaper, Emirates Today, has once again pipped its rivals to the post with a smashing front page lead today. The story is that some daft company has launched a new device that will disable your car if you default on your car loan – and it’s already been adopted, according to ET, by two of the UAE’s lenders. The story is, oddly, wholly uncritical and unquestioning of the device and its aims.

Letting UAE banks disable cars? This is beyond unbelievable.

If the UAE’s lenders were capable of administering their way out of a wet paper bag, you could see where this system might – I said might – have some utility. But there are two teensy-weensy problems I can see in this – quite apart from the issue of who meets the extra expense of having the device (let me guess here…ummm… the customer?) or getting the thing installed it what is intended to be your car without them smashing holes all over the dashboard.

Firstly, let’s bear in mind the fact that we all have to write cheques to guarantee the loan here in the UAE (either 24, 36 or 48 individual cheques, depending on the loan term, or a single cheque for the full amount, which is becoming more common). The thinking behind this, which has worked just fine so far, is that if you bounce a cheque in the UAE you’re potentially in for major trouble – the police can be called and you can be imprisoned - if you do it twice, your banking facilities are suspended.

So loans here are about as secure as it’s possible for them to be. You default, the cheque is presented and bounces and you get a call from the boys in green. So banks don’t actually have any real need to have this device installed.

Secondly, UAE banks are in, my personal experience at least, incapable of administering the most basic of financial transactions without screwing them up and turning their customers’ lives into a hell of petty-fogging bureaucracy that would make the average Byzantine blanch. Specialising in rote process without empowerment, idiotic beyond measure and unhelpful to the point of inviting violence, banks here should not be allowed to go anywhere near people’s cars, let alone be given the ability to disable them.

Apparently rent-a-car companies are also using the system. I can see where that works. But banks? No, no and a thousand times no. I'd pay cash rather than put them in the position of being able to interfere with my car!