SNAFU*

I posted about my awful bank, HSBC, and at how happy I was to make the move to Lloyds. Lloyds then proceeded to make an awful hash of setting up the account. They issued my debit card with the wrong name on it twice, managed to lose Sarah’s application for a Visa card and generally screwed up the Internet banking side of things by sending me an email to complete the process that was only distinguishable from a phishing email by the fact that it wasn’t as professionally presented as the phishing mails. I still can’t believe that a bank could be stupid enough to send its customers emails with live links to online forms that ask for secure information. It’s taken them over two months to fail to open an account properly. In the meantime, people have been walking up to me in the street, incredulous that I’ve moved to Lloyds and telling me how much they hate them. So we’ve decided to sue for peace and stay with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Blitheringfools Club.

Then I posted about the furniture cleaning company man being impressive. So impressive that when it came to the day of the actual cleaning, they didn’t turn up. They had decided they didn’t want to do the job. Their parent company, meanwhile, managed to lose a silk throw that was sent into them for dry cleaning, with much attendant unpleasantness and a week’s worth of hysterical phone calls from a ranting Sarah. The upholstery team eventually did turn up, just at the wrong time, and destroyed the afternoon although, and let us be thankful for small mercies, not the sofa.

So when Axa insurance sent me an SMS reminder to renew my car insurance, with my policy number in the message and their call centre number so’s I could call then and there to renew, I vowed not to post anything about being impressed. When the call centre took the call, dealt with it effectively and efficiently and renewed my policy on the spot, I promised myself that I would preserve the silence of the confessional. When the documents turned up on my desk, delivered by courier the next day as promised by the girl in the call centre, in order and perfect in every respect, I finally snapped.

It’s safe to post now.

*SNAFU is a great acronym, BTW. Just in case you didn’t know, it stands for Situation Normal All Fcuked Up.

Earthwards

I didn't see any announcements in the papers about this one. And I don't think Emirates announced it. Getting to the airport today, I notice a leaflet that says Silver Skywards members can no longer invite a colleague or other person to join them in the business lounge. The 'privilege' will be 'temporarily suspended'.

Why? Because "given the exceptional growth of Emirates Airline, our existing lounge facilities are not able to accommodate the current volume of visitors."

Well, it's nice to see EK confirming what most of us have known for months already - that the current lounge is totally unable to cope with the volume of users, particularly at busy times like the 7-8am rush - being confirmed. Wiser heads know to nip next door and use the DCA lounge.

But the answer, surely, is to expand the facility, by hook or by crook - not to simply fail to provide people with something that you have undertaken to give them. That's just reneging on the deal. That's really bad for the brand - particularly given a frequent flyer programme asks people to make a significant investment in their relationship to that brand.

And to first tell them at the check-in? That's just poor communications.

Swatch

Nothing to do with watches. I mean like colour swatch. I would like to propose a new colour for the world's paint makers. Dubai Beige.

Dubai beige is the colour of Emirates uniforms - of shopping malls, hotels, residences and logos. It is the colour of the taxis and souks, embassies and free zones. It is the colour of Arabian Ranches and Emirates Hills and Dare To Dream Villas and Falcon Heights or whatever else you're dreaming up to sell to the rubes flying in on EK001 to buy up a slice of Dubai Dream.

C5 M35 Y65. Dubai beige.

Deadly

Three of the landlord’s maintenance team, all Keralite bandits who had taken up building maintenance as light relief after their previous careers as Indian Ocean pirates, were gathered in my kitchen hacking at a lump of asbestos which they wanted to use to back a fuse they were repairing. They were completely flummoxed at the fuss I made, were rather put out to be thrown out of the kitchen, asbestos chunk and all, and even more confounded at my point blank refusal to let them use the material in the house at any price. To them, this stuff was the most brilliant construction material of all time: easy to cut, strong, light, fire-proof and infinitely flexible. I was being utterly unreasonable, obviously. And the very thought that it could cause disease had them rolling their eyes and giggling at me: I'd obviously been pegged as the local English eccentric.

We’d arrived at a major cultural disconnect. In the UK, even the word asbestos is enough to bring in teams of environmental health officers dressed in biochemical hazard suits, carrying canaries in cages and shouting 'Stand clear!' into high powered bullhorns. And yet asbestos is still not only manufactured but used widely as a construction material in the Indian subcontinent. In fact, it is also still widely promoted – even if we have substituted the word ‘asbestos’ for ‘fibre cement roofing sheet’.

You can start to see why the landlord’s guys were so puzzled at my horrified reaction. Amazingly, it is still a subject of debate in India – with an active lobby calling for a ban in the manufacture and use of the material – and seeming to have something of an uphill struggle, too. Meanwhile, in the States, asbestos litigations have been estimated to have reached an overall value of $250 billion, involving in excess of 750,000 litigants. That’s a lot of sick people.

I suppose the question I was left with was how the hell they were importing the stuff into the Emirates. You know, with the world class strict building regulations and standards we enjoy and all that. How much of this very nasty material is being used in the houses we’re living in? Take a close look at any grey corrugated roofing you see around you – but don’t take too deep a sniff! As of 2006, asbestos was one of the top five imports to the UAE from the Czech Republic, one of the many places around the world where the material is still made – for export to developing markets, obviously, not for domestic use. It's far too dangerous for domestic use, after all!

It is, when you think of it, just a little bit evil, isn’t it? European countries selling materials that are known to be highly toxic (and that are banned in the EU) to ignorant, eager consumers in developing world markets. Including this one.

Romance

I tried to desist. But it’s no use.

Pal Kenneth found something special and was kind enough to make the ultimate sacrifice and give it to me. It’s an issue of a magazine called ‘Good Time’ which specialises, as it says on the cover, in hotels and dining out in the UAE. It is wonderful beyond words and I shall treasure it for a good time to come.

The magazine has, I believe, been written in the original Arabic and translated by a very literally minded person or an automated translation system. It is possible, just possible, that the translator is struggling to do his work under the influence of something chemical and powerfully psychosomatic. I suspect the latter, but whatever the cause, the results in print are rarely short of majestic.

Consider this, then. On the Emirates Palace Hotel:

• “Emirates Palace Hotel... wonderful architectural masterpiece enthralled eyes by design and ingenuity construction, its beauty takes you to the grand atmosphere a lot of people not tasked like this previously...”

This is the stuff, no? We go on:

• “Combining internal decor of the rooms between the designs Arab nobility and modern techniques of modern classical form and Duke simple harmony between sophistication and dazzling which exceeded expectations of visitors.”

A good review, then. And written in precise, clear language that anyone who has written copy for a Dubai real estate company would truly appreciate.

A review of Singapore’s Marina Mandryan Hotel takes us into a new world of strange, acid-fuelled other-space. The hotel is, apparently:

• “Characterized as a signatory in the heart of the Israeli ‘Marina any’ vital...” And if that weren’t enough by itself, the hotel’s spa, “means all procedures and treatments that remove tension and make the eradication times Hotel Marina Mandarin fun fact.”

Quite.

Passing through Australia, “beauty country” the magazine tells us, we land at Bab Al Shams which is, apparently, “constructed in the form of a traditional Arab bulwark”. It is here that the powerful hallucinogenics have really started to jack in with a deep surge of synapse-frying electrical overload. Struggling for some kind of control, our man is by now quite obviously pulling the text together through a haze of images and bad-trip sounds and smells.

• “Reflecting the spirit of grandeur himself prepared to provide dreamy atmosphere during handling and jpetk between instance, the visitor to a restaurant Knights will never forget the quality of the dishes provided underlying crew of cooks months in region.”

Smashing his head against the keyboard in an effort to retain some semblance of control, gnashing his teeth and keening in a high pitched wail, he goes on, a cry for help echoing in his writing: “I need to go Asterkhaek search for love outside the diet...”

The following review of an offroad safari confirms that the trip has turned very, very bad. Fighting off the gryphons and gibbering from fear of the shapes oozing out of the black, limitless corners of the room, our man is scared of offroading:

• “We cry of the terror and great surprise...we have barely believe what is happening to us and going by the positions we were not to live...”

And then, finally, a feature on dining in the dark completes what has been a most interestingly Keseyesque roadtrip, an electric cool-aid acid test magazine:

• “the difference lies in the exchange of roles where the guest in the Welfare of the blind (waiters) then, as if he is not sighted while waiters (blind) who are moving freely as if they are sights and servicing customers kindling pleasure dependent on them.” And then, deep into the review: “...in the home does not find a black guest, but not the only voice heard music and faint? Dishes and Spoons and some chats and laughs...”

You saw it here first. Good Time Magazine. Subscribe now!

Joke

Family out, couple of days off: a chance to visit Sharjah's Desert Museum and Arabian Wildlife Centre for the first time in a while. It's officially shut on Mondays, which explains why it was open on a Monday.

I can never visit the place without encountering the ghost of a rather remarkable woman called Marijke Jongbloed. I interviewed her for a magazine I was working on, just after the centre had opened many years ago back when the world was a sillier place. It was all a bit fairy tale: Jongbloed had originally moved out to Al Ain decades before and had carved a place as the UAE's most ardent amateur naturalist. Given the lack of professional ones, she quickly become the authority on the flora and fauna of the UAE.

Jongbloed had become concerned with the potential extinction of the 'dhub' or spiny-tailed lizard. The creature's tail was thought, by the bedouin, to be an aphrodisiac and its sole breeding ground, a large depressed area of desert to the left of the Sharjah/Dhaid road, was being decimated by love-lorn Lotharios looking for a lift.

So she wrote to the ruler of Sharjah, Dr. Sultan Al Qassimi. And he wrote back saying that he not only totally agreed with her, but would fund the creation of a nature reserve and wildlife centre.

When I interviewed her, she was weaning a hedgehog with a pipette. Marijke was a very large lady and it was a very small hedgehog. It was one of three species indigenous to the Emirates she told me, which did rather surprise me. I had always thought of hedgehogs as two-dimensional inhabitants of European roads.

She belly laughed, a deep, booming laugh, as she let me in on her favourite joke: she was building a major part of the centre so that the animals were outside and the humans confined. She thought that was only too appropriate. And so it is: today, as you walk around the centre, you're behind the glass and the baboons, cheetahs, wolves and Arabian Leopards are outside.

Marijke's great mission in life was the Arabian Leopard Trust. I'm not sure what happened: one day she was simply gone, leaving a whiff of sulphur behind her: something, somewhere, had gone wrong. And the Arabian Leopard Trust, founded to foster a breeding programme for these most attractive and almost extinct tarts of big cats (they lounge on rocky shelves at the Center, licking their paws and talking in languid, Terry Thomas lounge lizard tones, 'Helllooooo') appears to have disappeared too. If you ask one of the horde of under-employed local girls sat around behind the reception desk, you just get puzzled looks.

But I still see Marijke, in a red outfit, sitting in the garden with a hedgehog nestled in her big arms, every time I go to the Centre...

Breakfast

Mr Ghulam, a lugubrious sort at the best of times, drove me to work today. He was tired: his first fare of the day had been at 4am to Jebel Ali from Sharjah, followed by another to Jumeirah. And so he had splashed out on a Red Bull – Dhs5 is a lot of money for a cabbie, but he considers the expenditure to be an occasional professional necessity.

We passed at least four ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) petrol stations, with trucks queued up off the forecourt and out into the street. This is because ADNOC is charging Dhs 4 (A little over $1) per gallon less than anyone else for diesel and 50 fils less for petrol. It’s saving Mr G’s company Dhs 150,000 a month, he says. The consequent surge in demand has been such that ADNOC is apparently bringing in private tankers to ship the stuff out to their service stations in sufficient volumes.

The forecourts at the EPPCO and Emarat stations we passed remained empty: you can almost hear the wind and see the tumbleweed. It must be killing them.

Meanwhile, Mr. G has necked his Red Bull and has become positively garrulous, “See? See?,” he spreads his arms out and laughs in a slightly worrying cackle. “Good feeling, not tiredness!”

Mr G is cleaner than Eddie Murphy. Brought up by a strict Pakistani military father (who served in the British Army, I am told with some pride), he’s never smoked or drunk and he doesn’t even do fizzy drinks like Pepsi and 7Up. I can only imagine what Red Bull’s doing to him. It must be a like a damn hard toot of the finest Columbian Marching Powder.

We pass another ADNOC: the queues remind me of the ‘70s, when my dad and I used to drive around together looking for petrol because OPEC was spanking the Western World.

Mr G. cackles maniacally, his knuckles white on the wheel and his foot alarmingly hard to the floor as we pass the petrol station, reduced to a blue and white blur as we near warp-speed: “Two gallons saving eight dirhams,” he cries triumphantly. “This breakfast cost!”

Indeed.

Journalist

I first came across John Mason when we were organising a big event for Jordan Telecom a few years ago: a big conference with 1,000 guests, regional, local and international media and all that good stuff. He was freelancing for the IEEE journal and covered the event from Spain, where he lived. He was always on the hunt for new stories from the region as he attempted to convince various telecom and electronic magazines in Europe to run his stuff and it slowly became obvious that John was not really like other journalists: I came to the growing realisation that our correspondence and his constant crusade to get freelance work were more about an old man keeping going and having something to do than they were about journalism and hungry freelancers. John had retired and, in fact, was in his eighties.

I always made sure he was on the press release list, although the feelance work never really came through for him and I was always very careful to reply to John’s requests, including asking a number of colleagues, on one occasion, if they’d collude with me in responding to questions about attitudes and outlooks of modern Arab women for a piece he was working on. One of my many blessings is that I work with a team of very modern, very Arab women...

Bit by bit, as we corresponded, I built a picture of John Mason. An American, John was passionately opposed to the Bush administration. I thought this was funny, given that he had worked for the American military and government as a young man. In fact, he’d flown over 30 tours on B17s in WWII, making him something of a war hero. He had travelled widely in the Middle East and was fond of the region and its people. He was horrified by events in Iraq and Lebanon.

Every now and then he’d email about some hope for a new piece or an editor who’d been open to an approach. This type of news gave him a great high. I’m not sure any of the pieces he worked on actually ran, but I do know that the whole process gave him enormous satisfaction.

I lost touch with him for a while last year and sent a quick ‘how are you’ email through to him in September. I’d helped him do some research on a story about Dubai Silicon Oasis and he was trying, unsuccessfully, to sell it to some European website or another. His summary of the DSO proposition and its likely success was wry, succinct and typical John: “I have a feeling that DSO is never going to amount to shit. I am sorry I invested my million dollars in it. Fortunately, I can spare it. I imagine you invested even more.”

I didn’t hear from him for ages after that.

You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this already. This morning I received an email from John’s niece. He had given her a list of people to tell when and if he died.

She was at great pains to point out that John had died peacefully of plain old wear and tear: no dramatic illness, no scans and poker-faced doctors and no pain or lingering wasting. He simply died in his sleep, at peace.

John and I had never met. We had, in fact, only once spoken and that very briefly. But I am terribly, bitterly saddened by today’s news. The fact that he had such a rich life just makes it more poignant that it’s over.

Sofa

Dials 800 well-known laundry company.

Ring ring. Ring ring... click...

"Alo"

“Hello. You have an upholstery cleaning service.”

“Horse trading?”

“Upholstery.”

“Upper trade!”

“No upholstery. Up hols ter ee”

“Ah! No. This laundry.”

“I know that. You have a cleaning service for sofa. Furniture.”

“Ah! Sofa cleaning!”

“Yes. Sofa cleaning.”

“Yes. We have service. You have sofa?”

“Yes.”

“OK. What your location?”

“Muntaza”

“Moon Plaza?”

“Muntaza”

“Ah! Muntaza. OK. You call my man this number. He come for quotation.”

(I take the number. As a point of interest, it’s given as the last seven digits only, thereby failing The Du Test)

“Thank you.”

“No problem. What your name?”

“Alexander.”

“Ali Zafer.”

“No, Alexander.”

“Ah, good! Alexander. OK. You call, he come.”

Given the way the first call had gone, I have to say I made the 'call to man' in full anticipation of the fellow failing to turn up when he said he would, if at all, getting hopelessly lost, needing to be talked in from somewhere north of Bandar Abbas and being unable to communicate in any United Nations recognised language when he did finally arrive in our elegant and bijou abode. I have had many years' experience of this very scenario and it is now my default expectation.

But he turned up bang on time, miraculously arriving at the house all by himself, was straightforward, serious, smart and professional, gave us a quote and arranged to come back and do the work at the time of our choosing.

Negative expectation met with a positive experience: a brand building (and therefore, incidentally, inestimably valuable for the company) thing that, like a rare brandy, is wonderful and deserves to be savoured at leisure.

MmmmmMMMMmmmmm...

Water

Some time ago I put up a post about Aquafina, the artificially mineralised water from Pepsi, after compliant local journalists were herded around the Aquafina plant here in the UAE to be shown that it is, indeed, ‘pure’ water from ‘an underground natural source’. The resulting coverage represented hardly more than a faint 'baa' in response.

The problem was that the USA, where the Aquafina product was conceived, had seen a rising tide of negative media coverage regarding the fact that Aquafina was tap water that had been purified and then had been artificially mineralised using a mineral mixture perfected by the scientists over at Pepsico. Artificially flavoured, coloured and sweetened foods are accepted as the norm in America – but it would appear that even an American sensibility can be offended by the concept of an artificially mineralised mineral water.

Consumer protection bodies in the USA are strongly of the opinion, bless them, that labelling bottles of water with blue mountains, a table of mineral composition similar to labels found on pure bottled spring water, and the words ‘pure drinking water’ did not quite tell the consumer the whole story. That, for instance, ‘tap water’ might be nearer the truth. You’d be tempted to agree with them, no?

This had, in turn, prompted the local bottler here in the UAE to respond to the situation, in typically brilliant style, by refusing to admit that it was a problem at all and taking media for a tour around their bottling plant where, it was strongly asserted, pure water from an underground source was being purified, mineral balanced and bottled. The full story from back then is to be found here, along with the finer linguistic points that showed the entire press trip to have been a shameful attempt to mislead media – a media, incidentally, that was all too ready to desist from giving the story the really hard edge it deserved – and still does.

It is a great pity that people can still get away with behaviour like this in the Middle East, but it is a fact. If your appalling behaviour is challenged, stick your fingers in your ears and shout 'lalalalala' at your challenger and the problem will soon go away. The issue is that all too often that is precisely what does happen.

Last year, the consumer rights group that has lead the effort to ‘out’ Aquafina, Corporate Accountability International, succeeded in getting Pepsico to change the labelling of Aquafina to say ‘Public Water Source’. I’ve been keeping a vague eye out on the local water to see if it would change its labelling in compliance with Pepsico, but it hasn’t. Which rather struck me as a bit naughty until I checked out the Corporate Accountability International website for an update – and found that the organisation has embarked on a further campaign to highlight the fact that Pepsico has not, indeed, changed its labelling as it had, apparently, promised to do.

So do feel to pop along to the CAI site and use their handy 'send an email to Pepsico' thingy if you think we would all be better off, if not without artificially mineralised water, then at least truthful labelling of a product based on what is, in fact, municipal tap water.