The Day After Bush - Private Parts!!!

Emarat Al Youm today reprinted some of the SMS jokes that were flying around Dubai, the city that shut for George Bush's convenience, yesterday. One such SMS suggestion was that George should replace Matar Al Tayer, the head of Dubai's RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) as George at least managed to clear the roads for a day. Matar, obviously in very good humour, apparently replied to the paper "Why not? He's going to be out of a job soon!"

Which is lovely.

Meanwhile, French premier Sarkozy visited Qatar (which didn't clear the city for him) and was pictured by none other than yours and my favourite newspaper Gulf News as he held the hand of the Qatari Emir at the airport. A touching gesture except you'll notice that Sarkozy has grabbed the Emir's right hand with his own left hand: a cultural 'nono' that any newbie to the Arab World should be perfectly aware of.

And in totally unrelated news, apparently the RTA has banned the wearing of 'G-strings'. We are in possession (thank you, Sherif!) of a document, a facsimile of what would appear to be a leaked memo to RTA staff carrying the delicious instructions: "It is hereby prohibited to wear short clothing, bright colours, see-through dresses or tight jeans. It is also forbidden to wear what is known as G-strings as we also request that you refrain from touching your private parts in front of the RTA employees."

Outrageous and dated 20th September 2007. Must be a fake!

What a day of larks, Pip!

Bush Tickled

Well, it's official. Dubai has declared a day off to celebrate the day that George W. Bush came a visitin' - and we can all cancel our plans at 12 hours notice, reschedule our diaries or do whatever it is that lesser beings do when the great and mighty come knockin' with some apple pie and grits or whatever redneck losers bring round when they come a-socialisin'.

After a day of increasingly hysterical rumours and 'I know this bloke and he knows a Smurf who was down at the pub last night listening to a chap at the bar who works for someone in the know' type debate, we have had it confirmed. We can stay at home so that he can come around.

I, and most other people around here, would rather that he had stayed at home so we could have got on with our working lives. But then perhaps I'm just out of touch with the times...

'Unbalanced' Women Unfit to be Judges: Lawyers

According to this most amusing piece over at Arabianbusiness.com, sent to me by grumpy and misanthropic Scottish person Angus, Qatari lawyers have come out and told it like it is: women are of an unbalanced disposition and therefore unfit to be judges.

AB based its piece on a chucklesome survey carried out by Qatar's very own The Peninsula: the newspaper polled Qatari male lawyers on the question, no doubt expecting an outburst of blind, vacuous misogyny and getting its money's worth as a result.

"A woman is emotionally and physiologically not geared to fit in the role of a judge since the job demands a balanced disposition," one lawyer was quoted as saying in the Peninsula piece.

Meanwhile, in today's Peninsula, researcher Dr. Rana Sobh tells the paper's breathlessley excited reporter: "There is a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding of Middle Eastern women in the West. Middle Eastern women are depicted in the Western media as oppressed and ignorant."

I suspect I might not be the only person in the world to spot something of a disconnect here...

What larks, Pip!

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

Highly amused to note that this morning opened in Sharjah with torrential rain but, crossing the border into Dubai, not a drop has fallen: dry as a bone. Just goes to show what great value you get with that real estate, no?

The sandy snicket between the two had been turned into a muddy morass by the downpour, a deep brown drab and sulky looking piece of desert if ever there were one. The usual clusters of trophy cars (They call 'em 'Chelsea Tractors' in London) were stuck in all sorts of unfeasible positions. Driving past I was horrified to see, nestling in amongst the Cayennes and Hondas, a Pajero bogged down up to his running boards.

I couldn't help feeling as if somebody hadn't rather let the side down.

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Are Our Heads in The Sand?

We're in the perfect place to bury our heads in the sand: there's plenty of it around. And it looks like we're doing just that as today's scorching news sensation Gulf News brings us a story on how smaller grocers in the UAE are now operating an 'egg-booking system' because the massive culls in Saudi Arabia, the country next door to us, have hit imports of eggs and not only an acute shortage but also a steep rise in the price of eggs of anything from 50-100%.

So we're worrying about the morning's omelette while Avian Flu, the HN51 virus, is flaring up all around us. Saudi Arabia has destroyed 13,500 ostriches following culls of tens of thousands of chickens. In Pakistan a man has died of the disease which is also present in India. In Indonesia, the disease has claimed its 93rd victim: with GN reporting that 115 people have been infected, that's an impressive mortality rate.

So you'd perhaps think that we'd be worrying about what measures are being taken to enforce quarantine, track or manage the migration of wild birds, protect the UAE's small but thriving chicken and duck farms and deal with the potential requirement for early diagnosis and emergency care for anybody suffering from this alarming disease.

But no. We're worring about where the next tray of eggs is coming from...

Kissing Tarmac

This has been an interesting week for me, involving much travel to Abu Dhabi. I used to think Abu Dhabi was the pits, a sort of sub-Sharjah, halfway between Dubai and Saudi in every way. Now I have come to appreciate it a little more. People who lived there always told me it was a great place to live, but I never really managed to believe them. It seemed, well, just sort of behind.

It seems like paradise right now. The first thing is, as colleague Mai pointed out, when you get there 'you can see the tarmac' - a prosaic way of pointing out that the roads are not a constant grind of bumper to bumper lane-swapping crawling pace madness.

People want to do business with you: they're not doing you a favour giving you the time of day.

Hotels are flexible and service-oriented, not process driven and hide-bound. Even the absurdly sumptuous, but nevertheless impressive, Emirates Palace.

There are locals. They talk to you. They're pleased to see you, friendly and open.

There's a sudden feeling of 'can do' attitude about the place. Abu Dhabi's changing - and fast.

I swear the driving's improved. I might just have gone mad, though.

On the way back this week, entering Dubai, we passed a poster for the RTA (Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority), congratulating itself on the wonderful achievement it managed on the opening of the Floating Bridge. And I really, I swear, started to wonder if a move wasn't really such a bad idea...

Salik. Nyer Nyer Told You!

I've got little to add to what is destined to be a tide of furious blogs on the news today that ten new Salik gates will be built, an expansion of Dubai's road toll system which will ensure that every which way you turn in Dubai, you'll get nailed. Those coming from Sharjah, Ittihad to Garhoud, will get nailed twice.

Mattar Al Tayer, the 'traffic expert', said that RTA was not considering expanding the scheme. I predicted back in July that this was dissembling. I'm sad to have been proved right.

And, again, appallingly communicated.

Some time ago, during the original fuss about Salik, I posted a wholly unhelpful Q&A on Salik. One of the questions was 'What happens if a chance stone hits my windscreen and the tag is damaged?' - of course, God has his way of doling out punishment - my windscreen now has a nice crack right across it from such a stray stone and, a police report, garage visit and insurance claim later, I'm now thoroughly irritated to find I have to buy a new blasted Salik tag. The good news is that they say they can transfer the balance. Let's see...

Du du du Dah dah dah

I'm a little hesitant to post about Dubai's most splendid and admirable new telecom operator Du again, because last time I took a pop at them the blog was flooded by readers from Du network addresses and picked up some really daft comments from people using Du's corporate network. You can tell they worked for Du because they had Du IPs and they also referred to Du as du which is something only a du employee would Du.

So they care too much, in short.

But I can't resist. We have a new special offer from the telecom operator that likes to say 'Whaaaaaaat?' in the form of a mobile package that offers you a new Du line for a mere 1 Dirham. Yes! Pay only Dhs 55 and get 54 Dhs back in airtime! That means just Dhs 1 for your super Du line!

Except that Dubai's new mobile operator's previous promotion offered subscribers a line for just 1 Dirham! All they had to do was buy a line for Dhs 155 and they got Dhs 154 back in airtime! That meant just Dhs 1 for your line!

The difference, smarter readers will note, is that they've dropped the package price by Dhs 100 ($27 or so, depending on whether we keep the peg of Dhs 3.657 to the Yankee Dollar, which seems likely).

I'm not sure I get it. They're trumpeting a million happy users, but they're dropping their pants on price and the barrier to adoption alike with a promotion that is pricing a new Du line at $15 and presenting it as a 98% cashback deal. Next it'll be a line for Dhs 2 - with Dhs 1 in airtime...

And I still have not had ONE person who has failed the 'Du Test'. So I'm still a little cynical about those million users, too.

If you can't sell a mobile line for Dhs 1 (30-odd cents), what CAN you sell it at? If the barrier to entry, at Dhs 155, is too high in a country with one of the world's highest GDPs per capita, what ARE they getting wrong?

Is dropping price the answer, then, for Du? Or is it time for the company to perhaps consider some smart, differentiated marketing together with a range of targeted service propositions that intelligently segmented audiences in the UAE will buy?

No, I thought not. It's back to mindless jingles and pointless promos then. Watch out for the 'Win a Bar of Gold With Du' promotion. It's only a matter of time...

Where In The World Is Barnaby Bear?

You know all that fuss about Gillian Gibbons, the teacher whose class named a bear Mohammed in the Sudan? An interesting (or perhaps not, you be the judge) footnote to the whole mad incident, which incidentally left many Muslim friends and colleagues frustrated and irritated by the behaviour of the Sudanese, is that the bear's real name is likely to be Barnaby.

How do we know this? Because Gillian's a British teacher, she's likely to have been teaching Key Stage 1 of the British National Curriculum to her kids (it was a Year Two class, I believe) - and the geography curriculum involves a bear (rather a celebrated bear, Barnaby is a registered trademark of the Geographical Association and even has his own website). There are a number of ways of using Barnaby to teach young children geography - one common geographical activity involves using Barnaby Bear, who is taken home by the children in turn at the weekends - they then 'write up' where in the world Barnaby Bear went over the weekend. Fun, no?

This particular Barnaby, believed to still be in custody in the Sudan, is likely to have had a slightly more interesting diary than most...