Talking about new lows in advertising, as we were last week, today's soaraway, sizzling slab of superlatives, Gulf News, carries an advertisement for a rather unremarkable little development called, as far as I can see, 'Sundance'.
Buckingham Palace, Mysore Palace, Palace of Versailles...
Trumpets the ad, getting my attention for a start. What new Dubai Lalaland superlative awfulness are we in for next?
ALAS!
Screams the copy.
None are commercial towers!
Oh, alas indeed! I'm sure Liz is bemoaning that very fact as she gets tucked into her tupperware full of Frosties this morning! The copy goes on to warble about how this humdrum little building is to be 'a business space fit for the emperors of the business world' and how 'if you ever feel the need for a space befitting your empire' you need search no more.
It's not often that something cuts through the constant background buzz of Dubai's prozac laced, hyperbolic real-estate promotion and actively manages to provoke irritation. The idiotic comparison between this drab little square of low-rent office space and great works of architecture shouldn't really get my goat. There's even some merit to the scheme. The idea that Buck Palace would be better utilised as commercial tower space would, I know, dovetail very neatly with my Irish and staunchly Republican wife's view that the British Royal family should be fed to the nearest available carnivore.
It must be me. I must be due leave...
Sunday, 20 July 2008
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Border
It's been almost nine years since the border between the UAE and Oman was agreed between the late Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and HM Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Detailed negotiations then carried on, resulting in in a detailed and mapped agreement on the border in May 2005, almost six years to the day from the original agreement.
Over the past couple of years, a green fence has started to snake its way along the frontier between the two countries, slicing through the wadi plains and climbing up into the rocky foothills of the Hajjar mountains. The 'rabbit proof fence' is high and topped with razor wire, set into concrete and relatively serious as fences go. And it was built by the UAE, apparently.
It's no easy task, closing this border. Because of the original tribal affiliations of the people living in these areas, there are enclaves of Oman within the main borders of the UAE, including the Northern tip by the Straits of Hormuz, the Musandam Peninsula; a pocket of land inland from Khor Fakkan on the Indian Ocean near the village of Shis and the wadi plains of Vilayat Madha. So you drive from Dubai through Sharjah, Oman and then a little bit of Ajman to get to Hatta, for instance. What's more, if you drive North of Hatta on the road (used to be track, *sigh*) from just beyond the Hatta Fort Hotel to the desert town of Dhaid, which is part of Sharjah, you'll be driving through Ras Al Khaimah to get there.
It's kind of complex, no?
Now they've shut the border between the UAE's desert oasis town of Al Ain and Omani town Buraimi, which have always lived side by side in the desert, sort of semi-morphed into a single town. What's interesting here is that there are now to be two border crossings between the two towns, a move that was hilariously headlined by Gulf News: "Expatriates get separate border crossing at Al Ain" as if it were some kind of benefit to have to drive 15km out of town to cross the border!
The National had an excellent piece on the effects of the move this week, as residents try to manage a border through a community that in many ways had become a single community made up of two adjacent towns in two adjacent countries. A sort of Siamese City.
The other border crossings, including the road through Vilayat Madha to Hatta, remain open. The question is for how long - and how they can be closed. It's hard to find a reason why the border has been so comprehensively locked down, although smuggling and illegal immigration have both been mentioned as the core reasons behind the massive project.
So now you can't just pop over the border to Buraimi and visit the pools at Kitnah or pop over to the Hanging Gardens and then slip up the track from Al Ain to Hatta, perhaps stopping off for a splash around in some of the wadis on the way. It'll be interesting to see how long it'll be before the Hatta Track itself (now blacktop anyway, so no wadi bashing to be had here) is closed off.
Sad times.
Over the past couple of years, a green fence has started to snake its way along the frontier between the two countries, slicing through the wadi plains and climbing up into the rocky foothills of the Hajjar mountains. The 'rabbit proof fence' is high and topped with razor wire, set into concrete and relatively serious as fences go. And it was built by the UAE, apparently.
It's no easy task, closing this border. Because of the original tribal affiliations of the people living in these areas, there are enclaves of Oman within the main borders of the UAE, including the Northern tip by the Straits of Hormuz, the Musandam Peninsula; a pocket of land inland from Khor Fakkan on the Indian Ocean near the village of Shis and the wadi plains of Vilayat Madha. So you drive from Dubai through Sharjah, Oman and then a little bit of Ajman to get to Hatta, for instance. What's more, if you drive North of Hatta on the road (used to be track, *sigh*) from just beyond the Hatta Fort Hotel to the desert town of Dhaid, which is part of Sharjah, you'll be driving through Ras Al Khaimah to get there.
It's kind of complex, no?
Now they've shut the border between the UAE's desert oasis town of Al Ain and Omani town Buraimi, which have always lived side by side in the desert, sort of semi-morphed into a single town. What's interesting here is that there are now to be two border crossings between the two towns, a move that was hilariously headlined by Gulf News: "Expatriates get separate border crossing at Al Ain" as if it were some kind of benefit to have to drive 15km out of town to cross the border!
The National had an excellent piece on the effects of the move this week, as residents try to manage a border through a community that in many ways had become a single community made up of two adjacent towns in two adjacent countries. A sort of Siamese City.
The other border crossings, including the road through Vilayat Madha to Hatta, remain open. The question is for how long - and how they can be closed. It's hard to find a reason why the border has been so comprehensively locked down, although smuggling and illegal immigration have both been mentioned as the core reasons behind the massive project.
So now you can't just pop over the border to Buraimi and visit the pools at Kitnah or pop over to the Hanging Gardens and then slip up the track from Al Ain to Hatta, perhaps stopping off for a splash around in some of the wadis on the way. It'll be interesting to see how long it'll be before the Hatta Track itself (now blacktop anyway, so no wadi bashing to be had here) is closed off.
Sad times.
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Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Dummy
It stands out among the many fine examples of the Worst Advertising In The World to be enjoyed on Dubai’s radio stations, in particular Dubai ‘News Talk Sport’ Eye, where I am occasionally forced to turn off the radio to avoid it. It certainly takes my personal nomination for the Year’s Worst Radio Ad. It’s the RTA ‘dummy’ ad. Remember? It’s the dialogue in a car between AUB American accent and the robotic voice supposed to sound like a crash test dummy... it goes something like this:
“Hey dummy, watch out for that reticulated marmoset!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the syllogistical conclusion!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the red light!”
CRASH
“Oh no! Its fine, it's fine, it's fine! Now that’s a whole lot of fines!”
VO: “He’s a dummy but you’re not....”
Who wrote that? What type of dim-witted, addle-pated, misbegotten son of a retarded jack-ass actually wrote that as a creative execution designed to communicate a message? And what message was it supposed to get across in the first place? Worse, what idiot of an account director didn’t strangle the creative at birth? And what kind of client would actually approve that as an awareness campaign ad?
Oh. The RTA. I understand everything now.
Look, the whole point of communication in the modern world is that consumers are less and less likely to buy this kind of advertising. We’re in the Internet age – as consumers, we’re in the driving seat. We know what we want and when we want it. Like now. People are more cynical than ever before: we know that eating your product or drinking your drink won’t make us sexually attractive to hordes of lascivious Lolitas. We’re more likely to know about the calorific content of it and the child labour being used to produce it than any other generation before us. We’re not, in short, idiots.
Similarly, I think we can all take it for granted that we know that driving dangerously is a bad thing. We, residents, probably all know that a new points system has been introduced to punish bad driving. I think the vast majority of us think that, fairly and evenly implemented, that this is a very good idea indeed. But I would suspect that few of us know much more than that – how many points before you lose your license, how points are accumulated, how long they remain on your license. I, for one, am unclear on the actual rules. And this stupid advertisement does nothing to make it any clearer for me. It just annoys me.
I don’t want the creative execution – particularly not when it’s so awfully, irredeemably piss poor, but in any case not when it’s taking the place of clear, straightforward communication of the facts that consumers actually do want.
This is the age of the communicator – an age when it has never been more important to say what you want clearly, succinctly and in a timely fashion. There are powerful tools that let you do that, not least of which are the Internet and the ‘social media’ that are driving such a rapid pace of change in human behaviour right now.
All I want from that 30 seconds of airtime is to know what’s going to affect me and how – and ideally a link to a website where I can find out more information if I want to. That's what an awareness campaign IS in today's world.
By the way, do have a look at the RTA website and see if you can find any information about the blasted points system that they're spending good money 'building awareness' of, but which they can't be bothered to highlight on their website.
And just in case the clots behind the Dubai Water and Electricity advertisement are laughing at the RTA, you lot are even worse. I really don’t need some soapy-voiced nerd talking over a background of whiny, soppy faux-pastoral muzak telling me that there’s a team of people working to bring me ‘enabling’ power. I think I can work that out for myself, you dimwits.
There. That’s much better, thank you!
“Hey dummy, watch out for that reticulated marmoset!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the syllogistical conclusion!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the red light!”
CRASH
“Oh no! Its fine, it's fine, it's fine! Now that’s a whole lot of fines!”
VO: “He’s a dummy but you’re not....”
Who wrote that? What type of dim-witted, addle-pated, misbegotten son of a retarded jack-ass actually wrote that as a creative execution designed to communicate a message? And what message was it supposed to get across in the first place? Worse, what idiot of an account director didn’t strangle the creative at birth? And what kind of client would actually approve that as an awareness campaign ad?
Oh. The RTA. I understand everything now.
Look, the whole point of communication in the modern world is that consumers are less and less likely to buy this kind of advertising. We’re in the Internet age – as consumers, we’re in the driving seat. We know what we want and when we want it. Like now. People are more cynical than ever before: we know that eating your product or drinking your drink won’t make us sexually attractive to hordes of lascivious Lolitas. We’re more likely to know about the calorific content of it and the child labour being used to produce it than any other generation before us. We’re not, in short, idiots.
Similarly, I think we can all take it for granted that we know that driving dangerously is a bad thing. We, residents, probably all know that a new points system has been introduced to punish bad driving. I think the vast majority of us think that, fairly and evenly implemented, that this is a very good idea indeed. But I would suspect that few of us know much more than that – how many points before you lose your license, how points are accumulated, how long they remain on your license. I, for one, am unclear on the actual rules. And this stupid advertisement does nothing to make it any clearer for me. It just annoys me.
I don’t want the creative execution – particularly not when it’s so awfully, irredeemably piss poor, but in any case not when it’s taking the place of clear, straightforward communication of the facts that consumers actually do want.
This is the age of the communicator – an age when it has never been more important to say what you want clearly, succinctly and in a timely fashion. There are powerful tools that let you do that, not least of which are the Internet and the ‘social media’ that are driving such a rapid pace of change in human behaviour right now.
All I want from that 30 seconds of airtime is to know what’s going to affect me and how – and ideally a link to a website where I can find out more information if I want to. That's what an awareness campaign IS in today's world.
By the way, do have a look at the RTA website and see if you can find any information about the blasted points system that they're spending good money 'building awareness' of, but which they can't be bothered to highlight on their website.
And just in case the clots behind the Dubai Water and Electricity advertisement are laughing at the RTA, you lot are even worse. I really don’t need some soapy-voiced nerd talking over a background of whiny, soppy faux-pastoral muzak telling me that there’s a team of people working to bring me ‘enabling’ power. I think I can work that out for myself, you dimwits.
There. That’s much better, thank you!
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Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Scoop
In what must stand as a major triumph for ‘citizen journalism’ in the Middle East, I can exclusively reveal to you that this silly little blog has scooped The Gulf News in a deep and fundamental way. Well, in a small and silly way at least.
Today’s multi-kilo wodge of tree landed on my desk containing the excellent story, ‘Special petrol shortage in some pumps’, reporting that ADNOC had run out of ‘Special’ grade petrol (95 octane to you, mate). As regular readers of this motley collection of half-baked bibble will attest, you read it here first - last week, in fact!
I shall refrain from any unseemly triumphalism.
GN also features another story that featured elsewhere first: yesterday’s edition of The National carried the story (chucklesomely headlined ‘Diesel demand delays drivers’) that Abu Dhabi was groaning under the strain of supplying enough diesel to meet the massive demand for ADNOC’s cheap diesel – currently retailing at Dhs10 less than other brands of diesel. As has been mentioned here before, the resultant tailbacks have been massive and Abu Dhabi and Sharjah have both implemented rules to send trucks and large vehicles outside the city limits to refuel.
As GN points out in its story today, ADNOC is not answering press calls, which is really not the way to manage the situation (as we saw yesterday with Etisalat). That’s a shame, because this story is really quite fun.
Why should fuel shortages in Abu Dhabi tickle me?
Well, let’s reflect on this for a second. One of the world’s largest oil producers and a country where the stuff, literally, comes out of the ground, is now facing a wide range of transportation challenges, including the danger of not being able to ferry workers to building sites and food to retailers. Because it’s run out of fuel.
Priceless!
Today’s multi-kilo wodge of tree landed on my desk containing the excellent story, ‘Special petrol shortage in some pumps’, reporting that ADNOC had run out of ‘Special’ grade petrol (95 octane to you, mate). As regular readers of this motley collection of half-baked bibble will attest, you read it here first - last week, in fact!
I shall refrain from any unseemly triumphalism.
GN also features another story that featured elsewhere first: yesterday’s edition of The National carried the story (chucklesomely headlined ‘Diesel demand delays drivers’) that Abu Dhabi was groaning under the strain of supplying enough diesel to meet the massive demand for ADNOC’s cheap diesel – currently retailing at Dhs10 less than other brands of diesel. As has been mentioned here before, the resultant tailbacks have been massive and Abu Dhabi and Sharjah have both implemented rules to send trucks and large vehicles outside the city limits to refuel.
As GN points out in its story today, ADNOC is not answering press calls, which is really not the way to manage the situation (as we saw yesterday with Etisalat). That’s a shame, because this story is really quite fun.
Why should fuel shortages in Abu Dhabi tickle me?
Well, let’s reflect on this for a second. One of the world’s largest oil producers and a country where the stuff, literally, comes out of the ground, is now facing a wide range of transportation challenges, including the danger of not being able to ferry workers to building sites and food to retailers. Because it’s run out of fuel.
Priceless!
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Monday, 14 July 2008
Grumpy
A very grumpy little pair of pieces in today’s Gulf News: the ‘phone company that everyone loves to shout at, Etisalat, has released a new block of numbers starting with the prefix 056 and hasn’t bothered telling anyone, according to the paper which gives the grievance front page space (alongside a report of the horrific crash that happened yesterday on the Sheikh Zayed Road outside the Grand Hyatt: a minibus jumped the central barrier and hit an oncoming car with the loss of five lives) and then repeats the story inside.
The source of at least some of GN’s grumpiness is given away in the story, “repeated requests by Gulf News for a comment from etisalat went unanswered”, and then GN gets its revenge, continuing with “Etisalat subscribers regularly complain about the poor customer support.”
Ouch.
The GN story is hung on a single subscriber complaint, which is a tad thin if you ask me. Australian businessman Irshad says he's been given a new number and is facing constant problems with people insisting they’ve got the number wrong. The paper says that ‘apart from a press release’ there has been no attempt at raising awareness of the new number: that press release, as far as I can see, went out in August 2006!!!
Changing a national numbering scheme without any attempt at public awareness is an odd decision to make. Choosing to ignore media enquiries about it an even odder one, particularly given that Etisalat is involved, at least nominally, in a competitive market. The result would appear to be some unwelcome coverage given unusual prominence, I would submit precisely because the company has been ignoring the newspaper's requests.
You can only conclude that there’s a potent cocktail of stupidity and arrogance at work here and that’s surprising given the vast number of very positive changes that have been taking place over at Etisalat towers over the past couple of years.
This news is also bad news for a completely different reason: it’s the death knell for the Du test, because people are going to start asking for the ‘full’ mobile number including the prefix now.
Mind you, I have to confess I’ll be delighted if people start asking “Is that 050 or 056?”...
:)
The source of at least some of GN’s grumpiness is given away in the story, “repeated requests by Gulf News for a comment from etisalat went unanswered”, and then GN gets its revenge, continuing with “Etisalat subscribers regularly complain about the poor customer support.”
Ouch.
The GN story is hung on a single subscriber complaint, which is a tad thin if you ask me. Australian businessman Irshad says he's been given a new number and is facing constant problems with people insisting they’ve got the number wrong. The paper says that ‘apart from a press release’ there has been no attempt at raising awareness of the new number: that press release, as far as I can see, went out in August 2006!!!
Changing a national numbering scheme without any attempt at public awareness is an odd decision to make. Choosing to ignore media enquiries about it an even odder one, particularly given that Etisalat is involved, at least nominally, in a competitive market. The result would appear to be some unwelcome coverage given unusual prominence, I would submit precisely because the company has been ignoring the newspaper's requests.
You can only conclude that there’s a potent cocktail of stupidity and arrogance at work here and that’s surprising given the vast number of very positive changes that have been taking place over at Etisalat towers over the past couple of years.
This news is also bad news for a completely different reason: it’s the death knell for the Du test, because people are going to start asking for the ‘full’ mobile number including the prefix now.
Mind you, I have to confess I’ll be delighted if people start asking “Is that 050 or 056?”...
:)
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Sunday, 13 July 2008
14
Enigmaticaly, little orange bus stops have started popping up all over Sharjah. The fact that bus stops have popped up isn’t in itself enigmatic: the enigmatic bit is that they all carry the number 14. It must be the Mother of all Bus Routes, the Sharjah Number 14.
There is no other number. Every single bus stop is served by the number 14 bus: from Al Wahda and Al Arouba street right up to the airport and around the university, down to the industrial estate and out to the Emirates Road.
And, of course, this being Sharjah: if every bus stop on every route is numbered 14, then obviously every bus should be a number 14 bus, too. And so it is. Yup: every man jack of ‘em’s a number 14 bus.
This from the place where every roundabout is named as a square.
Ya gotta love it...
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Thursday, 10 July 2008
Lifeless
Google has a new 3D 'immersive world' offering called Lively. It allows you to move around as an avatar in 3D spaces called 'rooms', where you can interact with people, chat and generally be three dimensional and immersive.
Where Lively possibly gets interesting is that it combines streams of Google-related stuff: you can watch YouTube videos or view Picasa images within the Lively environment, as well as embed desktop gadgets and post Lively rooms to your blog. The 3D immersive experience, in short, crosses a number of boundaries with reality and gives some possibly interesting new ways for people to access and use content - including music.
It's currently in Beta, but there's a long way to go. Lively crashes Firefox repeatedly, suffers from awful lag and appears to be, well, lacking a point. You'll need to download the (free, of course) Lively client browser plug-in.
And there endeth the Geek post...
Where Lively possibly gets interesting is that it combines streams of Google-related stuff: you can watch YouTube videos or view Picasa images within the Lively environment, as well as embed desktop gadgets and post Lively rooms to your blog. The 3D immersive experience, in short, crosses a number of boundaries with reality and gives some possibly interesting new ways for people to access and use content - including music.
It's currently in Beta, but there's a long way to go. Lively crashes Firefox repeatedly, suffers from awful lag and appears to be, well, lacking a point. You'll need to download the (free, of course) Lively client browser plug-in.
And there endeth the Geek post...
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Silvio
Gianni posts a link to this story which I otherwise would have missed. Unlike myself, being of mature years and a more reflective and sensible nature, he declines to comment.
The White House, home to that fine, upstanding fellow George Bush, apparently handed out a press pack to members of the media travelling to the G8 Summit that neatly positioned Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi as “one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice”.
It gets worse. The four page biography of Berlusconi contained in the press pack was apparently yanked from an encyclopaedia without being edited or checked and also referred to Berlusconi gaining his position through his media contacts.
Brilliantly, it went on to highlight his early career: “He earned money by organising puppet shows and making people pay a ticket, he sold vacuum cleaners, worked as a singer on cruise ships, made photographic portraits, and did the homework of other students in exchange for money.”
The White House has been forced into a grovelling apology to Silvio and 'the Italian people'.
You gotta love it.
Meanwhile, in related news, the gravitas and deportment of said Italian premier are here displayed for all to see. A pair of classic Silvio moments:
The White House, home to that fine, upstanding fellow George Bush, apparently handed out a press pack to members of the media travelling to the G8 Summit that neatly positioned Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi as “one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice”.
It gets worse. The four page biography of Berlusconi contained in the press pack was apparently yanked from an encyclopaedia without being edited or checked and also referred to Berlusconi gaining his position through his media contacts.
Brilliantly, it went on to highlight his early career: “He earned money by organising puppet shows and making people pay a ticket, he sold vacuum cleaners, worked as a singer on cruise ships, made photographic portraits, and did the homework of other students in exchange for money.”
The White House has been forced into a grovelling apology to Silvio and 'the Italian people'.
You gotta love it.
Meanwhile, in related news, the gravitas and deportment of said Italian premier are here displayed for all to see. A pair of classic Silvio moments:
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Betrol
The ADNOC queues go on and on and on. But the whole 'we're selling fuel cheaper than anyone else' binge appears to have caught up with them. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company has been using private tankers for some time to shift the massively increased volumes of diesel it needs to distribute to meet the demand for fuel that's Dhs10 a gallon less than other outlets.
But this seems to have led to new challenges: all through this week my local ADNOC has had 'no special'.
There are two grades of fuel sold by local petrol stations 'special' (low octane) and 'super' (high octane)*.
And special is off the menu, it would appear. So I've been paying 50 fils a gallon more at the EPPCO station down the road...
*Thanks to the Dubizzle reader that fixed this! :)
But this seems to have led to new challenges: all through this week my local ADNOC has had 'no special'.
There are two grades of fuel sold by local petrol stations 'special' (low octane) and 'super' (high octane)*.
And special is off the menu, it would appear. So I've been paying 50 fils a gallon more at the EPPCO station down the road...
*Thanks to the Dubizzle reader that fixed this! :)
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