Clueless

It's been an interesting week in the old and new media: the UK FCO terror warning for the UAE has really shown the contrast between Internet and Heidelberg speeds. Yesterday, of course, the newspapers all missed the news: the news sites and radio were the only place you'd find information and the blogs the only place you could go for analysis, opinion and discussion. In fact, the blogs were up and running with the news and reactions to it from Monday night.

Incidentally, it's worth taking a minute to take a look at the whole advisory from the horse's mouth. Overall, it's probably the best, most realistic and balanced advisory you could want and certainly worth sharing with visitors before they travel.

Anyway, getting back to it, Gulf News today leads twice on terror: the irritating wraparound ad that now seems to be a regular feature of the soaraway GN gives the subs a chance to write an extra front page headline, so we have 'Case of crying wolf on terror' as the wraparound headline and then 'UK's terror warning a 'routine advice' as the real front cover headline.

I now owe Gulf News something like $25 if we take AP's new anti-blogging measures into account. Sorry, chaps: I ain't paying.

We can start to guess what angle GN's taking on the UK terror warning. It's on its own, too: KT has decided that it is above such petty things as terror warnings. So GN has, quite properly in my opinion, set out to pour cold water on any unnecessary panic or alarm. I do, however, find the reaction a little, well, overly positive. Terrorism is, after all, terrible for trade.

And so we have Dubai Police Chief, the charismatic and poetic Dahi Khalfan Tamim professing himself, according to GN, to be clueless: "We have no clue about what the British Embassy is talking about," the paper quotes him as saying on a local radio station. GN also quotes a well-dodgy sounding 'security expert', who apparently has information that the Brits couldn't substantiate a terror threat and so issued the warning to put pressure on UAE security forces to step up their own efforts. Hmmm.

There's a nice story inside with lots of Brits saying they think it's all tosh. There's nobody saying they're worried or concerned, which does rather puzzle me. Perhaps I'm just being silly in looking for some form of balance in what is clearly an effort to react responsibly to the situation.

GN's page 10 editorial says it all, really. I found the tone of the piece fascinating.

Personally, I'm not about to start introducing route diversity into my life. But I'd perhaps have liked to have seen a more reasoned, balanced reaction. It does carry so much more weight than this rather crude, relentless positivity.

Ads

I have a problem. I like to listen to The Business Breakfast in the mornings on my way to work. However I keep having to switch off the radio at the ad breaks and then I forget to switch it back on.

I think they should have an RDS based station changer that people can use to tune elsewhere during the ads and then tune back once they’re over. You could make it a premium service: I’d pay.

Pal Tim ‘Evil Journalist’ Burrowes, the former editor of The Magazine Formerly Known As Campaign Middle East (TMFKACME. I know, it doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well as TAFKAP, does it?) and currently the man at the head of Australian uber-marketing mag B&T came through town last week and we met up – we got to talking about the fun we used to have co-hosting ‘The Editors’ radio show. We occasionally managed to give radio advertising a hard time but it never seemed to provoke a response from the advertisers we were lambasting. I rather think that this is because nobody in their right minds, having produced this mindless, excruciating dross, would dream of actually having to listen to it.

I mean, what about the hospital recently that was punting its cardiology capability with the immortal line: “Managing a stroke takes more than a stroke of luck.” Did they really not consider that the weak gag is redundant, irritating and even tasteless?

Sadly, the ads are so weak and so formulaic that it’s possible to sort them into types.

There are the irritating declamatory calls to act redundantly: “Add an address to your business” and the one that really gets my goat, “Add life to life.”

Then we have the dumb attempts to be linguistically clever. The most galling recent example used the fact that the Greeks weren’t just great at astronomy, but at gastronomy, too. Is that complete drivel honestly justified by the ‘onomy’? What about their skills at taxonomy? Are we really suggesting that the Eastern Empire, the flowering of art, architecture and culture that followed the transformation of the Roman into the Byzantine Empire is really down to some astronomy – which was principally an Arab art in any case?

Another irritation is bad grammar or the misuse of words, which is regrettably common. I’ve spoken to voice over artists who’ve corrected ads and then recorded the original as well as the suggested correct version, then sent both back to the agency only to hear the incorrect version running on the radio.

Then there’s the “Dubai Classic” ad. I’ve been listening to this one for over 20 years now in many different guises. But it always follows the same basic theme:

Broom broom!
“Hi Dave! Why are you in such a hurry?
“Hi Barry! I’m off to the Khara Centre!”
“The Khara Centre?”
“Yes! The Khara Centre!”
“Why the big rush. Then?”
“The great WinABarOfGoldFamilyFunFestival is on! You can win a bar of gold just by shopping in all the great shops and availing of the great deals in the many outlets!”
“Great deals?”
“Yes. Great deals! There are loads of great deals. At the Khara Centre!”
Brrrroooom!
“Dave? Dave? Why are you in a rush now?”
“To get to the Khara Centre of course! I can't wait to win a bar of gold too!”

The newest one is from HP. I can’t believe that an agency and client have actually produced another one of these insane, cookie-cut radio ads, but it’s true. The efficiency of an HP graphic workstation allows the protagonist to keep up with the workload of projects in Dubai and also get to go home early to meet his kids. It’s inconceivable that any intelligent marketer would believe that this scenario would be greeted by anything other than irritated disbelief by any consumer with an IQ above that of primordial soup.

I'd name and shame more of the advertisers, BTW, but I genuinely can't remember who they are other than HP and Du. The companies and their products are buried in my consciousness underneath the disgust that their attempts to communicate with me have triggered.

I want to take the people responsible for these ads and gaffa tape high powered headphones to their heads before playing the massively amplified sound of screaming horses being eviscerated with rusty rice sickles. I want to keep the sample looping until their ears bleed and they stop twitching. Only then will I feel that justice has been done.

Warned

I probably wasn't the only British expatriate puzzled by the news that the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office had raised its terror warning status for the UAE to 'High' today.

You see, the FCO is a little more, well, British than, say, the Americans, who'll issue an extreme travel warning for Belgium on news that someone in Kamchatka has been annoyed by an ingrown toenail. The Brits tend take the old fashioned 'Listen, chaps, there's an awful lot of shooting in Gaza so we suggest any British nationals there may like to wear a hat if venturing out' type of approach to travel warnings.

So when the dusty old crusties at the FCO say they're raising the level to 'high', we're either up a certain creek without a certain implement, or the UK has turned into a nation of milk-sops and scaredy-cats. Obviously, as a good old fashioned expat, one has to believe the latter.

But now comes the news, the evening of the day in which the warning broke, that the UK has frozen the assets of Bank Melli Iran - and is encouraging other European nations to follow suit. You have to wonder if the warning is linked to fears of reprisals - and the timing of the warning and the asset freezing move do tend to point to a high level of integration and forward planning.

But if the two are linked, it's the association I don't like. "We're going to freeze the assets of one of their banks so you can expect terror as a response - because their only response is and ever can be terror", is what they appear to be telling us. The conditioning inherent in the messaging is something that I confess myself uncomfortable with.

Why is it so important to demonise Iran in this way?

Answers on a postcard...

Blag

An interesting debate on copyright and content theft on the Internet over at Charles Arthur’s blog had the effect of making me think about this stuff more than I would normally and I happened to want to put up a post last week that quoted some lyrics from a Stranglers song. With that in mind, I trotted off to try and find the publisher to ask permission. After a vast amount of time-wasting searching, which had the result of delaying my post by 48 hours, I finally found a company which appears to own the publishing rights to the Stranglers’ back catalogue, Complete Music. They have a single email address, info@complete-music.co.uk. The mail bounced.

At that point I finally gave up and posted anyway, reckoning: 1) It’s part of a larger work and a partial quotation of the original work. 2) It is used for illustrative purposes, attributed and linked back to the artist 3) Sod them. If they ask me to take it down, I will.

In this fast world we live in, where we all slap up posts on blogs that are frequently of great currency and rarely of any commercial (or even intellectual!) value, tracing down rights ownership does all seem a little redundant. And, as I found out, not easy. For instance - how do I obtain permission to quote from The Guardian? How long does it take? Surely in 99.9% of cases, by the time the permission request has been processed and granted, the posting finger has, as it were, moved on. AND the vast majority of posts have a lifetime of 24 hours before the next post comes along - so by the time you’ve granted your permission, I’ve moved on to something totally different and so have my (two) readers.

As long as we’re not distributing whole works of value and charging or distributing saleable property for free - and we’re crediting and also linking back to the rights owner, surely we’re doing enough? It seems to be impractical to impose the standard of rights/permissions regime that you would impose on, say, The Guardian, on individuals having ‘a conversation’.

And so it is: most people are perfectly happy that you quote them and link back to them. The debate, however, was triggered by Charles taking exception to the fact that a number of bloggers had ripped an entire article along with its illustrating photograph from The Guardian. If you go doing that, a link back to the source of the content would, indeed, seem redundant. But the line between acceptable use of other people’s content and unacceptable use would appear to be particularly ill-defined – and that doesn’t even touch the issue of how you could possibly enforce your rights when you’re dealing with the multi-country, multi-jurisdiction Internet.

If you look at current UAE legal practice, for instance, I think you’ll find pretty much anything electronic is going to involve high risk, a lot of court-appointed experts and a great deal of wasted time. Like two years of it.

So I guess it's lucky that we're such honest little bears, isn't it?

Love

Coming from the tradition that gave us the Karma Sutra, K. Malik has a lot to live up to when he proffers assistance to his countrymen in the preparation of letters of love. But it is precisely this noble endeavour that we are to celebrate in this week’s extract from that most efficacious of guides for the correspondent, 1111 Letters For All Occasions. Not for Mr. Malik all that messing around with pestles and mortars and bawdy talk of pinching and slapping, lingams and yonis. Oh no. Mr. Malik is much higher minded than that, although, by these examples, he lacks no ardour – and the spelling mistakes below are faithfully reproduced: it is, I believe, a testament to the strength of passion that overruled M. Malik’s normally scrupulous eye for grammar. But it is when he turns his hand to poetry that he transcends his own very high standards. And if anyone can be sure of what a household motion is, please do let me know. I suspect it is to do with housework rather than the toilet...

It is just possible that young people following his guidelines will find the effect of their epistles more prophylactic than procreational...

One last note. My apologies in advance to anyone reading this who realises that the silk ribbon-tied letter which led to love’s young dream blooming that has been preserved in a drawer all these years was not actually penned by young Lothario, but cribbed from K. Malik’s example. Please do not address your complaints to me, but to New Light Publishers of New Delhi.

LOVE LETTERS

Love letters are the most delicious part of all correspondence. Here below are a few specimens which you can use, employ and emulate.

Personal Magnetism
To see you is to fall head over heels in love with you. You are like a red rose that’s newly sprung in June. Your voice is like a melody that is sweetly played in tune.

When may I have the honour of meeting you and pressing you to my breast and squeeze the elixir our of your kisses and embraces?

Yours,

Feeding a Flame

All my thoughts, all my passions and all my delights feed the sacred flame of love for you in my heart.

Let us live, Lizzy, and love, and value at a paisa all the talks of crabbed old men who do not understand love.

Yours,

Ministers of Love

All my thoughts and fancies are concentrated on you. Day and night I think of nothing but you. When are you coming to me? Whatever stirs this mortal frame are but ministers of love. When shall I squeeze you in my arms to let the elixir ooze out of your rose-petalled lips?

Why not meet me Friday evening at Lido? I shall be there at 6pm.

Elopement

Let us leave everything and everybody. We shall sail beyond the sunset and the horizon. We shall follow the morning star until we die. It may be that we shall touch the happy Isles.

Censure

There are some meannesses which are too mean even for men. Only Women – Lovely Women – can venture forth to commit them!

To Middle-aged Women

You are a perfect woman, nobly planned, to warn, to comfort and to command. In your eye serene I see the pulse of the universe. You are a spirit, yet a woman too. Your household motion is light and free. Your steps possess virging liberty.

Best and Brightest

Oh, my beautiful beloved, best and brightest, come away. Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, are heaped for the beloved’s bed. Let me be crushed to juice under your satin skin. Your passion vibrates in my memory and makes me a slave of your passion. Help me to live or die.

Enhanted Boat

Bear Neena,

My soul is an enchanted boat that floats like a sweet swan on the ocean of your love. I am lost upon the silver waves of your singing. Come, love with me and merge into my heart and be mine forever.

Yours,

Nath

Stealling a Beloved

The seed we sow another reaps.

The wealth we find another keeps.

Let it not be said that the girl I discovered was kidnapped by another college student!

Be you mine forever.

From the Girl to the Boy

Oh, I am in love with the janitor’s boy.

And the janitor’s boy loves me:

He’s going to hunt for a desert isle

In our geography.

Next week: Letters of Complaint

Genetix

See the little nuclei
Bursting full of information
There's a need to regulate
Bring it down to cells and plasma

Tell you what they're gonna do
Started doing it already
Got to find something new
Looking for it in genetix

Found a new game to play
Think it's impossible to lose
Messing round at playing God
Easy way to play genetix

The Stranglers
Genetix, from The Raven, 1979

Have you ever wondered if you have a predisposition to cancer? Ever been curious about what weaknesses you’ve inherited from your parents? Have you ever pondered the idea that silent kinks in your DNA could turn around and kill or debilitate you? Ever stop to think why you hate broccoli or perhaps even why codeine based painkillers don’t seem to work for you?

The answers to these questions are now available from a number of companies, mostly American, which will take a painlessly obtained sample of genetic material from you, usually a swab from inside your cheek, and then analyse this material to give you a report on predispositions to a number of diseases and other known genetically triggered facts of life. It’s known as direct to consumer genetic testing and the most prominent of these appears to be a company called Genetic Health. (BTW - If you're interested in this whole area, I can recommend this article as a primer and this one as a laugh.)

I was surprised to find a huge number of companies, including many outside the States, offering DNA paternity testing. One company I came across even offers you the service of storing a loved one's DNA, which did strike me as a little... American? But the industry remains largely US dominated and, if you’re interested in getting a look at your genetics, you’re looking at sending a sample to the land of the brave and the home of the free.

Until now.

I was fascinated to find a company had started up offering services based on your genetic profile in the UAE. But then I had reckoned without the Dubai factor. You see DNA-DX will take your DNA sample and then send you back a picture of your gene map for you to use decorating your uber-funky Dubai Projects Pad. Really - the picture at the head of this article is from their really rather stylish website. The site is a compelling visit: for $420, you can have your very own (signed by the founders, mind) and utterly unique piece of 36 by 24 inch art. Your own genetic map.

Forget being worried about cancer or whether your baby is likely to have Downes syndrome. Forget the trillions of dollars and billions of man-hours that have gone into genetic research. Forget the very real ethical issues and debates raging across the world, the conflict between religion and science, the scares and concerns over GMOs and genetic mutations. Forget the petaflops of processor power – the world’s most powerful supercomputers unravelling protein chains and mapping genomes so that we can start to understand, haltingly, the incredibly complex processes that underpin life itself.

Nah. Stuff that. Because we live in Dubai and we’ve got a unique piece of art that celebrates us in a new and wonderful way. And let's face it: we're Dubai people, so we're really, really worth celebrating.

I’ll regale you with a quick quote from the DNA-DX website:

Dubai has recently become a new capital for Design, Fashion and the Arts in the Middle East that is attracting worldwide attention akin to the style centrals such as Milan and Paris. We feel that our GenePortraits are fitting for a demanding populace and a growing culture that oozes style, class and exclusivity in every form.

It did occur to me today that the city we live in is not imposed upon us: it’s a reflection of us. And I’m not sure I altogether like what I see in the glass sometimes.

Iranians

I was bibbling on about speedbump communities developing in the UAE the other day. Another developer-free development that I have been delighted to witness in my time here has been that of the Iranian souks of the Arabian Gulf coastal ports. While Dubai had the long established Iranian community in Bastakia (named after Bastak in Iran and rebuilt in concrete rather than the more authentic Souk Al Arsah in Sharjah which was restored using traditional coral building materials), younger communities have built up in Sharjah, Ajman and Ras Al Khaimah, built around dhows from Iran docking and offloading their cargo of stuff to flog on the side: melamine plates, garish plastic kitchenware, aluminium pots and ‘mutton grab’ trays as well as knock-off brand soaps, cleaners (Dettox! Clorex! Persul!) and detergents.

Ajman’s packing-case Irani souk burned down a few years ago and was replaced with a covered souk by the government. It’s a wonderland of mad plastic and ceramic, local housewives hammering away verbally at moustachioed, swarthy vendors in vests - locked in the glorious traditional ritual of barter.

And in Ras Al Khaimah, you’ll find the Irani souk on the dockside, still made out of wooden offcuts: a long line of stalls selling the whole mad collection of things they make in Iran and China.

Today, the most developed of these port-side souks is the Iranian souk off Sharjah port, which has now become a row of established shops along the corniche road and even has its own distinctive blue mosaic-adorned Irani mosque. It’s here, just off the restored buildings of the old souk and arts area, that you’ll still find ‘poor’ stores selling charcoal, hashish, shishas and traditional brooms and matting, as well as stores selling dried herbs, medicines and traditional bukhours and perfumes: it’s a wonderful evening’s wander along the shopfronts.

Here, incidentally, as well as on Ajman's perimeter road where there are also still a couple of traditional 'poor' stores, you can buy hashish. But don't get too excited - hashish is Arabic for 'grass' and this stuff really is dried grass. And, as I'm wandering, you might (or might not) be interested to know that this is how we derive the English word assassin - it's from the Arabic 'hashishim', or dope-fiends. There's a story to that, but I think I've wandered enough for now...

The shops all have Iranian names and sell floor to ceiling kitchen goods, kitchen electricals, plastic stuff, cool-boxes, spices and pretty much anything else that can be retailed. The opposite side of the road is all bustle, too: the frenetic commerce of the dhow port is at play here – the boats that still ply the ports of the Gulf, Red Sea and East Africa as well as the routes across to India and carry anything from onions or coal to cars and white goods.

If this kind of thing tickles you, incidentally, you’ll love this: Len Chapman’s labour of love (I’ve plugged it before), www.dubaiasitusedtobe.com is a really amazing collection of pictures and anecdotes from the people that truly do remember ‘when that was all sand’... It’s a great place to spend an hour wandering around – particularly if you want to get a feel for quite how astonishing the transition from Dubai to Lalaland has been.

The dhow ports are probably the last surviving link between Len's UAE and ours. I bet they'll find a way to convert these last informal communities into nice, neat formal ones too, with RTA regulated shippers operating from air conditioned cabins and plastic dhows with electric motors to stop residents being woken. Dubai Dhow City. Can't wait.

Leaders

I suppose most of us have a visceral mistrust of politicians, but the method of dealing with them proposed by the mighty K. Malik, author of that most glorious collection of correspondence brought to us by dint of the earnest labour of New Light Publishers of New Delhi, 1111 Letters for Every Occasion, is quite singular. Write letters of advice to the leaders of all parties, giving them the benefit of direct contact with the electorate they seek to win over to their views. Tell ‘em how it is! And then get stuck into the current government, sharing a new way forward for the country!

In fact, K. Malik’s letters to various Ministers spell out an interesting alternative national agenda. Perhaps India would have been improved had he actually sent these letters rather than selling them to New Light Publishers? We may never know...

A footnote, perhaps interesting or perhaps not: the exhortation to the Sikh Akali party claims that Guru Nanak Dev founded Sikhism to bring together India and Pakistan. That’s interesting, as he died in 1539, a little over four hundred years before Pakistan’s sanguinary foundation. Further proof, should it be needed, that K. Malik does, indeed, exist in a parallel universe that is fundamentally different to our own.

Next week: Love letters.

Letters to the Leaders
People must keep a vigilant eye on the doings and misdoings of the political leaders. We must praise their good works. Also, we should point out their faults and the faults of their policies.

To the Congress Party
Please redeem your pledges of Price rise immediately.
If you do not, your days are numbered.
You can fool some people for all time and all people for some time but you cannot fool all people for all the time.

To the B.J.P.
You have failed to challenge the might of the Congress (I).
Why continue to have nuisance value?

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
Stop insulting Northern India, Hindu and Hinduism. Don’t cut your nose to spite your face.

To the Akali Party
Sikhism and politics do not go together. We must help bring together Hindus and Muslims, India and Pakistan. Guru Nanak made Sikhism for that purpose.

To the Minister for Foreign Affairs
In line with the great ideals of Mahatma Ghandi, we should abolish passports and visas. Let us have open doors to the world. That is the true mission of India.

To the Finance Minister
The word ‘Income-Tax’ should go. It smells of feudalism. It does not suit democracy. Income-Tax should be known as “Public Charity Fund”. And taxpayers should be induced to pay the maximum without coercion. If the government does not trust the people, why should people trust the Government?

To the Minister for Information
Television spells a great danger to the psychological health of the people. Children are wasting too much time seeing TV rather than studying their books. TV should be restricted to Sundays and holidays. It is a great national nuisance.

To the Minister of Agriculture
You must encourage people to become agriculture minded. Agriculture should be made a compulsory subject in schools. Children must grow something in schools or their houses, even on house-tops, to qualify for Board Examination.

Taxi

Right. Here comes a question I've been meaning to ask everyone I know for a while now...

What is WRONG with ‘illegal taxis’? The Dubai Road and Transport Authority (RTA) has been insisting on car poolers jumping through hoops of fire whilst visibly chewing on photocopies of their grandparents buttocks so that they can stop the societal evil of illegal taxis. But the very reason for a market developing in illegal taxis is that there is a clear and unfulfilled market need. Whatever happened to ‘laissez-faire’ – the attitude that built Dubai?

Nobody sensible would take an illegal taxi in a market where there were well-regulated legal taxis that offered a prompt, clean, efficient and pleasant service at a reasonable price. But if someone wants money for a ride and I'm willing to pay it and be outside the regulated environment, then that's my lookout – my risk and my choice to make. The better the ‘regulated’ taxis, the less likely I am to go ‘unregulated’.

If the regulated taxis were a bunch of irresponsible, rude, self-serving bahoos that won't pick up fares, won't travel to a range of places, won't abide by the regulations, don't know their way around and generally try and fleece all and sundry, then I'd be very tempted to do the unregulated thing. Particularly when trying to travel in difficult traffic in what must be growing into one of the world’s most hellish rush hours – an experience unrelieved by the existence of any viable public transport. Particularly cross-Emirate public transport. Because if there were a cost effective viable public transport option, punters would surely be taking that rather than an unofficial taxi! No?

So the very market for unregulated (‘illegal’) taxis is created by the inefficiencies of the regulated (‘legal’) market. If there’s a market in illegal taxis, it’s surely a clear sign of failure on the part of the RTA, isn’t it? Or have I got this all wrong because I’m not a ‘traffic expert’?

Informal markets exist when formal markets fail. And most formal markets start as informal ones. It’s called innovation!

Using regulation to stifle market innovation is something that we've seen before (Skype), but it don't make it any the less ugly...

Toot

I will never fail to lose my sense of marvel and astonishment at the Arab World. It's been a 22-year love affair for me so far (with the occasional unexpected pot hole) - and yet I'm still finding new things around every corner. If I've learned one thing, it's that I've so much yet to learn.

So breakfast today in Amman with pal and colleague Ammouni brought a new discovery, one so basic that it left me breathless with the weight of my ignorance.

Toot.

Now I always thought Toot was a Jordanian blog aggregator, or perhaps even Columbian Marching Powder, but I failed to spot the fruit behind the name. Toot is a pale, slightly greenish fruit, something like an anaemic gooseberry colour that has the shape of a slightly elongated, and smaller, raspberry.

And it's delicious. And I'd never heard of it before. And it's unique. And now I'm going to look out for it wherever I can.

So I am, as the barrister once admonished the judge, none the wiser, but better informed.

I feel slightly better to learn that I got to it before Wikipedia did. But only slightly.