Today's Emirates Today (oddly thin, recently, at 32 pages. If they cut a section, it really would be 24x7) comes with the delicious news that a new home-grown reality TV show is to be launched. The page 3 piece, which doesn't name the production company that is creating the show and that has 'already talked to three of the leading broadcast channels in the region', outlines the novel concept they've come up with.
And, I have to agree, it's a classic. It had me in stitches of helpless laughter.
The show will 'pit individuals against each other in a competition that conveys the social nature of human beings' according to Emirates Today's story. This translates into a most novel concept indeed. In fact the six finalists will be locked in a room with nothing but basic amenities and the winner will be the one that outlasts the rest.
Of course, attempts at 'Big Brother' type shows in the Middle East have failed in the past because of negative public perception and, at times, reaction to the concept of having people sleeping together communally. So now we get over that hurdle by locking them in solitary!!!
The winner can expect to gain the added prize money from each contestant that drops out and also get a car at the end. The prize money could be as much as Dhs 100,000, gushes the show's co-creator, Anjum Fatima, in the ET story.
So each contestant will be paid Dhs 1,000 per day for going insane in a situation only normally imposed as a form of punishment or torture. Brilliant. Solitary confinement as a game show. Only someone quite mad could have thought this up - let alone how mad you'd have to be to allow them to execute the scheme. Nothing like as mad as the contestants are going to be by the end of it, though...
Whatever next? Chinese Water torture? 24 hour electro-shock therapy beamed direct to your home?
Torture TV. It's the way ahead!
Wednesday, 5 December 2007
Monday, 3 December 2007
Infinite Patience
Today's newstabulous Gulf News came shrouded in a four-page wraparound for new company Dubai Infinity Holdings. As, in fact, did a number of today's papers. With little information beyond the usual breathless focus-group mumbo-jumbo that is becoming so popular these days ("an innovative investments enterprise that empowers partners and communities to excel", for instance. Or how about "Our value add is anchored in sharing innovative insights, knowledge, creativity, human capital and strategic direction."), including a tagline of 'Empowering you to excel'.
The company, according to the ad, was 'Born on the 2nd December 2007', but there's nothing I can find in the papers to reflect a launch announcement yesterday.
Curious to learn more, I went to the website given in the ad - given that there's little more information given in the four page advertisement than that I have quoted above, one would be forgiven for perhaps wanting to find out more about quite who it is making all this noise.
The website, brilliantly, consists of a flash animation of the company's logo and the message 'Coming soon'.
The only call to action possible from the advertisement was the move to the website to find out more. By not having more on the website the morning the ad broke the company, whoever it is, has effectively wasted that money by ensuring that those answering its call to action were disappointed.
This, I humbly submit, is not terribly clever marketing. Particularly when even the most stubbornly Luddite marketers are having to recognise the absolute criticality of the Internet.
The company, according to the ad, was 'Born on the 2nd December 2007', but there's nothing I can find in the papers to reflect a launch announcement yesterday.
Curious to learn more, I went to the website given in the ad - given that there's little more information given in the four page advertisement than that I have quoted above, one would be forgiven for perhaps wanting to find out more about quite who it is making all this noise.
The website, brilliantly, consists of a flash animation of the company's logo and the message 'Coming soon'.
The only call to action possible from the advertisement was the move to the website to find out more. By not having more on the website the morning the ad broke the company, whoever it is, has effectively wasted that money by ensuring that those answering its call to action were disappointed.
This, I humbly submit, is not terribly clever marketing. Particularly when even the most stubbornly Luddite marketers are having to recognise the absolute criticality of the Internet.
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Thursday, 29 November 2007
National Day
Everyone's going crazy about National Day. Not me. I'm going camping. But I'm still generally happy for them all and do derive a great deal of enjoyment from their frenetic (and often quite insane - I mean who, in their right mind, PAINTS their car with a flag for national day?) celebration of nationhood.
I love the story of the formation of the Emirates: the transition from the Trucial States (the Brits made them all sign up to stop bashing each other and raiding unsuspecting passing dhows, hence 'trucial') to the UAE was accomplished in less than three years after a Brit in a bowler hat landed at Sharjah Airport with the news that Her Majesty's Government had (finally) realised the game was up, the Empire was no more and we were generally doing a Pontius Pilate on every obligation East of Suez.
This gave these guys a couple of years to define the constitution, acceptable system of governance, administration and identity of a modern nation state. They hadn't really been, errr, trained for it. The remarkable figures of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed were to play a critical role in forging the United Arab Emirates out of the messy and time consuming negotiations that at one time or another involved Oman, Qatar and Bahrain too.
It was all made worse by the fact that the dirty deed had been done by a Labour government - and the Tories had hinted strongly that they'd undo it. So the Trucial chappies didn't get down to it as seriously as they might right up until it became clear that the Tories were as full of it as the average backed-up septic tank.
The result has been the Federation of states that make up the UAE - clockwise: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain Ras Al Khaimah (which didn't sign up 'till a year after the others) and Fujairah. All have coastal and inland holdings, all have territory nested in each other (Go to Hatta, the inland town of Dubai, and you'll likely cross Sharjah, Ajman and Oman on your way) because the territorial division was done along the lines of tribal affiliations and all have totally separate police forces, municipalities and, in the main, public services. The result is often quixotic at best - but it works, somehow. Eventually. Mostly.
So what if they struggle at times to get things like the legal system to work properly (or even... sharp intake of breath... Salik). They defined a nation in three years and built it in 30 - an infrastructure that is still, of course, being built out in breathtaking, if sometimes slightly crass, style. The Brits were decimalising and worrying about Europe when the UAE was being born. I was personally involved in making my first ginger beer plants and hating girls at the time. I have since, by the way, continued to like ginger beer and considerably improved my opinion of girls. But I can't claim to have built a nation...
So here's a National Day toast: good luck to them, warts and all. We're here because it's better than there, after all.
Aren't we?
I love the story of the formation of the Emirates: the transition from the Trucial States (the Brits made them all sign up to stop bashing each other and raiding unsuspecting passing dhows, hence 'trucial') to the UAE was accomplished in less than three years after a Brit in a bowler hat landed at Sharjah Airport with the news that Her Majesty's Government had (finally) realised the game was up, the Empire was no more and we were generally doing a Pontius Pilate on every obligation East of Suez.
This gave these guys a couple of years to define the constitution, acceptable system of governance, administration and identity of a modern nation state. They hadn't really been, errr, trained for it. The remarkable figures of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed were to play a critical role in forging the United Arab Emirates out of the messy and time consuming negotiations that at one time or another involved Oman, Qatar and Bahrain too.
It was all made worse by the fact that the dirty deed had been done by a Labour government - and the Tories had hinted strongly that they'd undo it. So the Trucial chappies didn't get down to it as seriously as they might right up until it became clear that the Tories were as full of it as the average backed-up septic tank.
The result has been the Federation of states that make up the UAE - clockwise: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain Ras Al Khaimah (which didn't sign up 'till a year after the others) and Fujairah. All have coastal and inland holdings, all have territory nested in each other (Go to Hatta, the inland town of Dubai, and you'll likely cross Sharjah, Ajman and Oman on your way) because the territorial division was done along the lines of tribal affiliations and all have totally separate police forces, municipalities and, in the main, public services. The result is often quixotic at best - but it works, somehow. Eventually. Mostly.
So what if they struggle at times to get things like the legal system to work properly (or even... sharp intake of breath... Salik). They defined a nation in three years and built it in 30 - an infrastructure that is still, of course, being built out in breathtaking, if sometimes slightly crass, style. The Brits were decimalising and worrying about Europe when the UAE was being born. I was personally involved in making my first ginger beer plants and hating girls at the time. I have since, by the way, continued to like ginger beer and considerably improved my opinion of girls. But I can't claim to have built a nation...
So here's a National Day toast: good luck to them, warts and all. We're here because it's better than there, after all.
Aren't we?
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Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Cometh the lift, cometh the hour
What would appear to be a substantial part of Dubai's community appears to believe that, if you are on the ground floor, you call a lift by pressing the down arrow. This is, if you stop to think about it, quite logical. If you are on the ground floor and the building is three stories high (as is our office building), then the lift is three times more likely to be up than down. So you press down to call it down.
No?
In life's game of chance, of course, it is always possible that the lift is in the basement. In which case, pressing the up button will improve the odds significantly. Now you have supplemented your three in four chance of bringing the lift to you with a one in four chance of bringing it up. It's a dead cert that the lift is in the bag!
This is the reason why I often find the lift door opening in the basement, revealing a sea of puzzled faces. "Why?" They seem to be saying, "Why are we here?"
A question that I tend to relate to. Particularly when the lift arrives too full to accommodate one slightly irascible addition. I even, on one occasion when overdue leave, put the question to the assembled company. I am ashamed to admit I shouted it. But they just stared silently and large-eyed back at me until the doors closed and took them away.
But this is not the end of the story. Because lifts are not the smartest of devices. A lift, when it has been called to go down using the down button and then arrives at the basement, not unnaturally believes that it has fulfilled its purpose in life. And so whatever floor you have selected before the lift arrived at the basement is therefore cancelled, waiting for the next satisfied customer to select a floor. This often means that travelling, say, to the third floor from the basement, the people who were already in the lift when it arrived in the basement end up missing their intended floor on the way up, too. I am sure there are people who have spent the whole day in the lift, wondering how come their floor never seems to appear.
When you add to this the fatal attraction of the comb, you start to understand how it's so hard to get a lift in so many of Dubai's buildings.
Many lifts have mirrored back walls. And that would be fine except for the fact that many people can't look at a mirror for more than a few milliseconds without suffering from the sudden urge to whip a comb out of their back pockets and tidy their coiffure. This urge is deeply seated at a Pavlovian, even genetic level and far stronger than the urge to select a destination. I once shared a lift with a gentleman who noticed a spot and subsequently happily went about squeezing it, to the intense discomfort of those around him.
A colleague cracked some time ago and posted 'How to use a lift' posters next to all the lifts in the building. This was a noble, if ultimately futile, gesture. Any fule no that you press 'down' to call the lift down to you, after all.
They'd better have upwards of 50 lifts in the Burj Dubai. You could be stuck for days waiting for a lift otherwise...
No?
In life's game of chance, of course, it is always possible that the lift is in the basement. In which case, pressing the up button will improve the odds significantly. Now you have supplemented your three in four chance of bringing the lift to you with a one in four chance of bringing it up. It's a dead cert that the lift is in the bag!
This is the reason why I often find the lift door opening in the basement, revealing a sea of puzzled faces. "Why?" They seem to be saying, "Why are we here?"
A question that I tend to relate to. Particularly when the lift arrives too full to accommodate one slightly irascible addition. I even, on one occasion when overdue leave, put the question to the assembled company. I am ashamed to admit I shouted it. But they just stared silently and large-eyed back at me until the doors closed and took them away.
But this is not the end of the story. Because lifts are not the smartest of devices. A lift, when it has been called to go down using the down button and then arrives at the basement, not unnaturally believes that it has fulfilled its purpose in life. And so whatever floor you have selected before the lift arrived at the basement is therefore cancelled, waiting for the next satisfied customer to select a floor. This often means that travelling, say, to the third floor from the basement, the people who were already in the lift when it arrived in the basement end up missing their intended floor on the way up, too. I am sure there are people who have spent the whole day in the lift, wondering how come their floor never seems to appear.
When you add to this the fatal attraction of the comb, you start to understand how it's so hard to get a lift in so many of Dubai's buildings.
Many lifts have mirrored back walls. And that would be fine except for the fact that many people can't look at a mirror for more than a few milliseconds without suffering from the sudden urge to whip a comb out of their back pockets and tidy their coiffure. This urge is deeply seated at a Pavlovian, even genetic level and far stronger than the urge to select a destination. I once shared a lift with a gentleman who noticed a spot and subsequently happily went about squeezing it, to the intense discomfort of those around him.
A colleague cracked some time ago and posted 'How to use a lift' posters next to all the lifts in the building. This was a noble, if ultimately futile, gesture. Any fule no that you press 'down' to call the lift down to you, after all.
They'd better have upwards of 50 lifts in the Burj Dubai. You could be stuck for days waiting for a lift otherwise...
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Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Bad News Day
It was British Labour government spin doctorette Jo Moore who famously sent out a memo suggesting that government departments might find that 9/11 was a good day to put news out if they wanted to bury it. Moore was found out and ended up getting her career pretty effectively buried, of course.
Which has little to do with this post except that some terrifying news has come our way but the government seems to have buried it during a period when news has been dominated by the air-show, the Big 5 exhibition, the Red Bull FlugTag (good fun, great PR) and, of course, the upcoming Rugby 7s, the annual event where 10,000 animals are herded into a pen and fed alcohol until they become anti-social and leery.
What news could be so sinister, so awful? Wait'll I tell yer...
The government is going to 'regenerate' ageing areas of Dubai, according to the report we found in Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), including Sheikh Zayed Road and *sob* Satwa. You can view the full appalling story at Arabian Business.
Dammit. Satwa is where our office is. We like it here.
So the news has resulted in much amusing speculation from colleagues, including new names for the 'regenerated' Satwa: New, New, Old, Old Town; Satwa Boulevard; Satwa Lakes or Satwa City. Some other ideas could include 'JustbehindJumeirahOneCityofWonders' or how about 'Satwa Community'?
We're expecting ski-slopes, dolphinariums and theme parks where before there was a plant souk, a bus station and myriad shawarma joints, shoe repairers, car upholstery shops and all those other diverse little shops that make a city, well, human.
Now we're going to be bulldozed and replaced with faceless skyscrapers and shopping malls coloured that Dubai Dun colour that has taken over everywhere; we're going to be bombarded with the usual realtors Prozac-speak: "Elegant Living in the Old City" and all the rest of the tosh they push out. Golly, there's probably going to be some sort of Old Satwa display in one of the new shopping malls.
Dowdy, down at heel and raggle-taggle, Satwa is one of the last few truly human places left Dubai-side. And now it's going to get morphed, like everything else, into The Projects.
*sigh*
Which has little to do with this post except that some terrifying news has come our way but the government seems to have buried it during a period when news has been dominated by the air-show, the Big 5 exhibition, the Red Bull FlugTag (good fun, great PR) and, of course, the upcoming Rugby 7s, the annual event where 10,000 animals are herded into a pen and fed alcohol until they become anti-social and leery.
What news could be so sinister, so awful? Wait'll I tell yer...
The government is going to 'regenerate' ageing areas of Dubai, according to the report we found in Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), including Sheikh Zayed Road and *sob* Satwa. You can view the full appalling story at Arabian Business.
Dammit. Satwa is where our office is. We like it here.
So the news has resulted in much amusing speculation from colleagues, including new names for the 'regenerated' Satwa: New, New, Old, Old Town; Satwa Boulevard; Satwa Lakes or Satwa City. Some other ideas could include 'JustbehindJumeirahOneCityofWonders' or how about 'Satwa Community'?
We're expecting ski-slopes, dolphinariums and theme parks where before there was a plant souk, a bus station and myriad shawarma joints, shoe repairers, car upholstery shops and all those other diverse little shops that make a city, well, human.
Now we're going to be bulldozed and replaced with faceless skyscrapers and shopping malls coloured that Dubai Dun colour that has taken over everywhere; we're going to be bombarded with the usual realtors Prozac-speak: "Elegant Living in the Old City" and all the rest of the tosh they push out. Golly, there's probably going to be some sort of Old Satwa display in one of the new shopping malls.
Dowdy, down at heel and raggle-taggle, Satwa is one of the last few truly human places left Dubai-side. And now it's going to get morphed, like everything else, into The Projects.
*sigh*
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Monday, 26 November 2007
Moaning Minnies
A number of people have complained that I haven't been posting here but that I have been posting there and they don't like it because the food stuff is boring.
How can food be boring? Philistines!
Anyway. I'll try and post here some more as well. But don't blame me if it's not funny, mature or clever.
How can food be boring? Philistines!
Anyway. I'll try and post here some more as well. But don't blame me if it's not funny, mature or clever.
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Thursday, 8 November 2007
Money Can't Buy Me Salik
The potty Salik road toll system continues to amaze me. I ran out of credit a couple of weeks ago and, for one reason or another, I haven't managed to top it up. It's just been a mad time and every time I remember or am near a service station I've either been in a mad tear to get to a meeting or I haven't had cash on me. Because, of course, you can only pay for the blasted toll in cash.
A while ago they announced that you could pay online, so I toddled off to their website (www.salik.ae) to do just that. Imagine my delight when I saw that the module was up and running!
So I entered my account number, PIN code and mobile number and then went downstairs to the car to find the tag number because for some reason the system doesn't know my tag number automatically (a miracle of technology integration, is Salik). And then went to the 'Recharge' option on the menu, entered Dhs 250 as my recharge amount and pressed 'Next' to take me to the egovernment epay service and make my payment.
Nothing happened. Because it doesn't work. It's not broken or anything like that: it simply just isn't working. And I've been going back over the past week or so just to check that it still doesn't work.
So I checked my balance (32 Dhs apparently, but I know that it is -32 Dhs) and my violations (no violations).
No violations? Yes! No violations!
Genius. You can't pay for it, but it doesn't matter because nothing happens when you don't pay for it. Which makes it completely, utterly and totally pointless.
Which is what so many of us have been saying all along, I know...
A while ago they announced that you could pay online, so I toddled off to their website (www.salik.ae) to do just that. Imagine my delight when I saw that the module was up and running!
So I entered my account number, PIN code and mobile number and then went downstairs to the car to find the tag number because for some reason the system doesn't know my tag number automatically (a miracle of technology integration, is Salik). And then went to the 'Recharge' option on the menu, entered Dhs 250 as my recharge amount and pressed 'Next' to take me to the egovernment epay service and make my payment.
Nothing happened. Because it doesn't work. It's not broken or anything like that: it simply just isn't working. And I've been going back over the past week or so just to check that it still doesn't work.
So I checked my balance (32 Dhs apparently, but I know that it is -32 Dhs) and my violations (no violations).
No violations? Yes! No violations!
Genius. You can't pay for it, but it doesn't matter because nothing happens when you don't pay for it. Which makes it completely, utterly and totally pointless.
Which is what so many of us have been saying all along, I know...
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Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Sharjah Bad Traffic Day
Dubai traffic is normally bad, but Sharjah definitely took the biscuit this morning. The airport road was jammed, the Emirates road gridlocked back from the notorious National Paints to the airport road exit (RAK to Dubai in 45 minutes! Yeah, right). If you could have bottled all that misery and frustration then you'd have a bottle of misery and frustration.
We sailed through it in the main, thanks to many years' experience of snickets, back-routes and sneaky little hops, although even out in the desert roads there were cars backed up left, right and centre. But the biggest surprise of the day was yet to come.
The little bit of desert I hop across on the way to work was absolutely heaving with cars: every kind of four wheel drive imaginable was bogged down and they all had one thing in common.
They were all locals.
Now I can remember pal Matthew getting his Wrangler bogged on a beach in Umm Al Qawain and a local bloke sailing past him, laughing, shouting in glee and waving his arms at the helpless Matt as he gunned the engine of his Nissan Sunny.
I can remember in Falaj Al Moalla seeing a Chevrolet Brougham beating a Land Cruiser up a dune in a straight race, the Chevy absolutely bog standard except for its local driver, who must have killed the clutch in that one victorious impossibility.
I can remember seeing a local driving a Mercedes up Big Red - and many other unfeasible sights did Big Red (now, thanks to the volume of cars that ply its slopes, reduced to Little Red) give up over the years - and every time there was a local at the wheel, making cars do what they're simply not supposed to do on the sand.
In fact, I have many years of happy memories of locals driving cars in the desert with incredible skill, breakneck derring-do and a seeming disregard for life and limb that has never been less than jaw-droppingly impressive.
But I can never remember seeing so many nationals bogged down in any piece of sand, let alone a straightforward set of small dunes and tracks - in winter, too, when the sand is harder. It has forced me to reach a conclusion.
They don't make locals like they used to...
We sailed through it in the main, thanks to many years' experience of snickets, back-routes and sneaky little hops, although even out in the desert roads there were cars backed up left, right and centre. But the biggest surprise of the day was yet to come.
The little bit of desert I hop across on the way to work was absolutely heaving with cars: every kind of four wheel drive imaginable was bogged down and they all had one thing in common.
They were all locals.
Now I can remember pal Matthew getting his Wrangler bogged on a beach in Umm Al Qawain and a local bloke sailing past him, laughing, shouting in glee and waving his arms at the helpless Matt as he gunned the engine of his Nissan Sunny.
I can remember in Falaj Al Moalla seeing a Chevrolet Brougham beating a Land Cruiser up a dune in a straight race, the Chevy absolutely bog standard except for its local driver, who must have killed the clutch in that one victorious impossibility.
I can remember seeing a local driving a Mercedes up Big Red - and many other unfeasible sights did Big Red (now, thanks to the volume of cars that ply its slopes, reduced to Little Red) give up over the years - and every time there was a local at the wheel, making cars do what they're simply not supposed to do on the sand.
In fact, I have many years of happy memories of locals driving cars in the desert with incredible skill, breakneck derring-do and a seeming disregard for life and limb that has never been less than jaw-droppingly impressive.
But I can never remember seeing so many nationals bogged down in any piece of sand, let alone a straightforward set of small dunes and tracks - in winter, too, when the sand is harder. It has forced me to reach a conclusion.
They don't make locals like they used to...
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Thursday, 1 November 2007
UAE Car Crash Nationality Chart
If you’re tempted to have a car crash, then do keep this handy chart so that you know where you’re likely to stand.
- Khaleeji
- Brit
- Aussie/South African
- Yank
- Other Euro
- French
- Korean
- Japanese
- Lebanese/Jordanian
- Syrian
- Iraqi
- Egyptian
- Palestinian
- Other Arab
- Sudanese
- Philipina
- Philipino
- Indian
- Pakistani
- Chinese
- Nepalese
- Bangladeshi
- Pathan
- Tibetan
- Afghan
Notes
Does not take into account relative status ie: British shop assistant vs Chinese Ambassador. This complicates things, obviously.
Does not take into account ethnic origin. So, for instance, South African passport holder of Goan extraction tends to confuse things a little. Nobody’s fooled by a Lebanese name holding a Canadian passport, so it’s probably best not to try.
Does not take into account linguistic ability. If you’re able to speak Arabic, move yourself up a couple of notches.
Does not take recent world events into account. If you’re Pakistani and you’ve just lost to
Does not take personality into account. Move down three notches if you’re an argumentative, arrogant twat. It’s OK, you’ll still be just ahead of the rest of
Does not take the facts of what happened into account. However, this doesn’t really matter as a) the other person will lie outrageously, b) the copper will in all likelihood refuse to understand the blindingly obvious evidence burnt into the tarmac in front of him and c) nobody really wants the inconvenience of prolonging the whole sorry episode and if you get all dogmatic you’ll just end up down at the cop shop being told you’ll have to lodge a civil suit.
Does not take alcohol into account. You really don’t want to have had a couple of sundowners before this happened. Go to the bottom of the pile instantly and get mentally prepared to dine on biryani.
If your country of origin is not listed above, use the country nearest to yours.
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Sunday, 28 October 2007
Ships of the Desert!
The story is that of Egyptian journalist Amer Sulaiman, fined by a court for offending the 'Tarabin' tribe. The fine was a thousand camels. The spotter, Gianni, delighted by the barminess of the story and the picture that illustrated it in La Stampa, above, duly shared.
A thousand camels. That's an awful lot of fleas to infest a chap's armpits...
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