I was so busy posting up stuff about champagne over at The Fat Expat that I totally forgot to post this, although I had promised myself I would.
Flying back to LalaLand from LHR, we'd checked in and were going through security when I went to put my mobile in my laptop bag before going through the scanner. A creature of habit, I always put my mobile in the laptop bag for security. Not this time.
There was no mobile. I'd left it in the hire car. Now I don't know about you, but my mobile is relatively important to me. I once got a whole Campaign column out of the day I forgot my mobile. To fly back to work sans mobile was not an option. I had to get it back. We called the 'phone, but no answer. There was only one thing for it.
The nice bloke at immigration wouldn't let me just unleave the UK. I had to arrive again. So I left an exasperated Sarah and some mildly resigned hand baggage and made my way to flight transfers, where they said I could go to visit the UK again. Then I had to go the wrong way through a lot of scanners and amused security people. And then, finally to arrivals, where I waited at the bus stop for an Avis bus to turn up.
Now I was perfectly aware of my chances. Who in the world would expect to get that phone back from a hire car checker in the world's busiest airport? I stood, mentally kicking myself until I finally, three hours later (ten minutes, really) saw a red bus hove into view.
I explained. The driver got on the radio, called his control, who went on a quick search and then confirmed they had indeed got the mobile and would send it over on the next bus. No messing around, thoroughly pleasant and helpful, efficient and generally wonderful. And twenty minutes later I had my phone and was back at departures in plenty of time to do some last minute shopping and have a couple of swifties with herself.
Which, along with their excellent, flexible and intelligent customer service throughout our complicated holiday car arrangements, is why I'll be using Avis from now on.
It's also why I went to the UK twice this summer - and managed to leave twice in an hour!
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Monday, 1 September 2008
Ramadan
I have a small wish to share for Ramadan this year. And here it is:
I wish that people will just stop a second to think that there are others around them; that each time someone in a car does something stupid, they interpose themselves into someone else's life - an unwelcome guest often carrying an unwelcome payload of injury, sadness and death.
I wish that people will remember that they're fasting - and therefore are more likely to make mistakes and so give themselves that little extra margin of care and extra time; that they think twice and err on the side of caution rather than hurting themselves and others.
I wish that people won't scream home at 180kph because they're late for iftar, driving recklessly as if their very car is a weapon, tired, hungry, thirsty and run down but yet convinced that they are immortal for some reason.
I wish that we don't all have to see as much glass on the roads of the UAE as we saw last Ramadan. And that's not meant to be self-important or smug, about whether someone is fasting or not fasting. It's a genuine wish that everyone will be safer on the roads this year.
I wish that people will just stop a second to think that there are others around them; that each time someone in a car does something stupid, they interpose themselves into someone else's life - an unwelcome guest often carrying an unwelcome payload of injury, sadness and death.
I wish that people will remember that they're fasting - and therefore are more likely to make mistakes and so give themselves that little extra margin of care and extra time; that they think twice and err on the side of caution rather than hurting themselves and others.
I wish that people won't scream home at 180kph because they're late for iftar, driving recklessly as if their very car is a weapon, tired, hungry, thirsty and run down but yet convinced that they are immortal for some reason.
I wish that we don't all have to see as much glass on the roads of the UAE as we saw last Ramadan. And that's not meant to be self-important or smug, about whether someone is fasting or not fasting. It's a genuine wish that everyone will be safer on the roads this year.
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Sunday, 31 August 2008
Chick
As you'll know by now, John McCain's running mate is the previously unknown Sarah Palin, who became governor of Alaska two years ago. Before that, she was the mayor of somewhere we've never heard of in Alaska. She didn't even have a passport until last year. She had to get that, apparently, to make a visit to some Alaskan troops serving in Kuwait.
That somewhere we've never heard of, by the way, is called Wasilla. It is home to 8,500 people. You'd have to be pretty talented to go from representing 8,500 people to being namechecked as the potential vice president of the United States of America within a couple of years, wouldn't you?
A deeply pro-oil industry conservative (which, it would appear, you'd have to be to get anywhere in Alaska) through and through, Palin is a passionate pro-arms lobbyist and a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association. Her office is decorated with the pelt of a bear shot by her father. She is an evangelical Christian and deeply opposed to abortion. She's gone on the record as saying that she doesn't believe that global warming is man-made and she is opposed to listing polar bears as an endangered species. She is also apparently under investigation by the Alaskan legislature, which will rule on October 30th regarding her conduct over the sacking of Alaska's public safety commissioner. The election is due five days afterwards.
Although she seemed like a lady of some substance when she gave her acceptance address, I also found myself wondering whether McCain's people picked her in a cynical 'get the girlie vote' gambit. I also wonder how much he really knows about her - take a look at this, for instance - particularly the bit about that investigation.
So we're looking at a deeply religious, ultra-conservative redneck with a taste for shooting things who has arguably little or no knowledge of the world outside being proposed to be the second most powerful person in the world's most powerful country.
You do have to worry, don't you? I'd be laughing about it, except that I've just reminded myself of who the president is, still...
That somewhere we've never heard of, by the way, is called Wasilla. It is home to 8,500 people. You'd have to be pretty talented to go from representing 8,500 people to being namechecked as the potential vice president of the United States of America within a couple of years, wouldn't you?
A deeply pro-oil industry conservative (which, it would appear, you'd have to be to get anywhere in Alaska) through and through, Palin is a passionate pro-arms lobbyist and a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association. Her office is decorated with the pelt of a bear shot by her father. She is an evangelical Christian and deeply opposed to abortion. She's gone on the record as saying that she doesn't believe that global warming is man-made and she is opposed to listing polar bears as an endangered species. She is also apparently under investigation by the Alaskan legislature, which will rule on October 30th regarding her conduct over the sacking of Alaska's public safety commissioner. The election is due five days afterwards.
Although she seemed like a lady of some substance when she gave her acceptance address, I also found myself wondering whether McCain's people picked her in a cynical 'get the girlie vote' gambit. I also wonder how much he really knows about her - take a look at this, for instance - particularly the bit about that investigation.
So we're looking at a deeply religious, ultra-conservative redneck with a taste for shooting things who has arguably little or no knowledge of the world outside being proposed to be the second most powerful person in the world's most powerful country.
You do have to worry, don't you? I'd be laughing about it, except that I've just reminded myself of who the president is, still...
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Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Currency
The UAE’s unit of currency is the Dirham. A dirham is divided into 100 fils and there are coins for 50 fils and 25 fils. Much less common, but still sometimes to be found in circulation, there are little brown coins worth 5 and 10 fils respectively. Much more prevalent, and valued at anything up to 50 fils, although 25 is more reasonable, is the Chiclet.
The UAE central bank has never really recognised the Chiclet, but then no other Middle East central bank has – and it’s a recognised unit of currency throughout the Arab World. Wherever you go in the region, a lack of small change in any shop is met with a Chiclet. A boiled sweet or small pack of Wrigley’s gum is acceptable if the shop doesn’t, for some strange reason, have a sufficient stock of two-piece packs of Chiclets.
Nobody ever buys Chiclets. They get given them as change. And, oddly enough, they're the Middle East's market leading gum - they're actually made in Lebanon.
It’s probably the strangest product success story of 'em all...
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Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Pimp
BTW people, just in case I haven't pimped the food blog hard enough with the 'YOU MUST GO HERE' sidebar - this week there's a whole load of features on champagne the drink and Champagne the place from our summertime week spent discovering just how much pop you can drink before the bubbles come out of your nose. The whole series will finish off on Thursday, but just in case you can't wait, just hop across to The Fat Expat and get more information on the old fizz than is, in fact, really strictly necessary!
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Stealth
With the car in the shop and Al Habtoor getting ready to take a significant chunk out of me in return for the usual skimdisksreplacebrakepads experience, I'm travelling to work this morning with Mr. G. and about a million other poor bastards. Sharjah is gridlocked and there are roadworks every which way you go. It's madness. However, it's an ill wind and all that - a two hour journey gave us plenty of time to catch up on the arms trade (Pakistan is apparently awash in Rs10,000 AK47s, compared to an ex-factory price ten times that), murdered Lebanese starlets and, of course, what's new in taxi-land.
Although I thought, given the number of conversations I've had with Mr G. on the subject, that I had a relatively good grounding on the iniquities of the transport companies, I didn't know, for instance, that the drivers are forced to go to the taxi company's own garage for minor repairs and pay for them themselves at rates fixed by the company. As the company garage is operated as a profit centre in its own right, drivers are finding that these simple repairs are coming with a pretty hefty price tag.
This, surely, is yet another classic example of the fact that these drivers are, in fact, indentured labour.
Mr G is also quite gleeful with his new mobile: operator Du apparently gave the taxi company 1,200 SIMs for the drivers and Mr. G. is delighted at the per-second billing as he makes a load of short duration calls such as 'I am outside the villa now, Sir' and the like.
Personally I'm less than impressed with this stealth marketing. Not only are they giving the damn things away now, they've kiboshed the Du Test with my taxi driver!!! Grrr!!!
Although I thought, given the number of conversations I've had with Mr G. on the subject, that I had a relatively good grounding on the iniquities of the transport companies, I didn't know, for instance, that the drivers are forced to go to the taxi company's own garage for minor repairs and pay for them themselves at rates fixed by the company. As the company garage is operated as a profit centre in its own right, drivers are finding that these simple repairs are coming with a pretty hefty price tag.
This, surely, is yet another classic example of the fact that these drivers are, in fact, indentured labour.
Mr G is also quite gleeful with his new mobile: operator Du apparently gave the taxi company 1,200 SIMs for the drivers and Mr. G. is delighted at the per-second billing as he makes a load of short duration calls such as 'I am outside the villa now, Sir' and the like.
Personally I'm less than impressed with this stealth marketing. Not only are they giving the damn things away now, they've kiboshed the Du Test with my taxi driver!!! Grrr!!!
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Monday, 25 August 2008
Death
Sharjah's Al Wahda Street. It used to be where Dubai came for the night out, you know. Honestly. It was a really kickin’ place by night – even today, its cellars can tell some stories from back then. After the big change in Sharjah, Al Wahda Street had to fall back on its other trade – being a second Beirut. During the civil war, so many families made their homes in Sharjah and Al Wahda Street was where they loved to live, eat and shop. There were classics: Red Shoe, Old Shoe, Bird, Valencia, Penguin – mad shoe shops, sharp suit shops: tailors that called you ‘Seer’ and knew what they were doing and more slicked back hair and Lebanese shop assistant attitude than you could shake a stick at. Everyone used to ‘do’ Al Wahda Street for clothes and stuff. It was just class – Al Aroubah Street was always Indian, all saris and souks, but Al Wahda was where you’d do the maddest Mediterranean magnificence.
At one stage in the '80s, some wag produced a spoof UAE job application form. It was one of those things that plays on the various nationalities that make up the 'entrepot' that everyone used to go on about so much. You had to tick your nationality and give your address. If you ticked Lebanese, it directed you to the question, "Where on Al Wahda Street do you live?"
It was funny because it rang true - Al Wahda Street was always a Little Lebanon. And that's what made it wonderful.
Shopping on Al Wahda Street was just a total pleasure; it always rewarded an evening’s wander, dipping into the stores, dropping by at Al Mallah for a shawarma or fatayeh and maybe a jooce cocktail. It was always part discovery, part entertainment – flashing neon lights and amazing, flashy fashions. And during the very height of the civil war, it was a place where a community in diaspora still lived as if nothing was happening, as if their families weren’t sitting in the cellars listening to the crack and thud of gunfire above and living off cream crackers or whatever else they could get their hands on that day. Somehow, Al Wahda Street's zeitgeist was to escape the civil war but was of it. It’s sort of complicated.
And now it’s gone. Dead. A few sad, gasping vestiges of what was life and drama, laughter and celebration still remain, but they won’t outlast the roadworks. The traffic problems and then the sliproad started the rot, the parking metres confirmed it as a rot. Now the Wahda Street Masterplan Phase Four or whatever they’re calling it has really screwed things. Wahda Street is dead, extinguished by a strange and cack-handed attempt to do something, anything, with Sharjah’s traffic.
In the meantime, possibly the strangest and most dangerous diversion in the country now takes traffic from Dubaiwards up through the backroads between Al Wahda Street and the Industrial Estate: the mad two and three and two lane route snakes past shops and workshops, godowns and sideroads. Men on bicycles career around the corners, cycling against the traffic and groups of shalwar khameeses scurry across the road as the cars try and work out what they’re supposed to do in the face of a total lack of road markings and signage, let alone lighting. There are few barriers and those that are there have come askew. It’s a Wacky Races alleyway of death through the backstreets and someone’s going to get hurt pretty soon.
Is this really the best thing to have done? Is this really the apogee of urban planning? I really do wonder...
At one stage in the '80s, some wag produced a spoof UAE job application form. It was one of those things that plays on the various nationalities that make up the 'entrepot' that everyone used to go on about so much. You had to tick your nationality and give your address. If you ticked Lebanese, it directed you to the question, "Where on Al Wahda Street do you live?"
It was funny because it rang true - Al Wahda Street was always a Little Lebanon. And that's what made it wonderful.
Shopping on Al Wahda Street was just a total pleasure; it always rewarded an evening’s wander, dipping into the stores, dropping by at Al Mallah for a shawarma or fatayeh and maybe a jooce cocktail. It was always part discovery, part entertainment – flashing neon lights and amazing, flashy fashions. And during the very height of the civil war, it was a place where a community in diaspora still lived as if nothing was happening, as if their families weren’t sitting in the cellars listening to the crack and thud of gunfire above and living off cream crackers or whatever else they could get their hands on that day. Somehow, Al Wahda Street's zeitgeist was to escape the civil war but was of it. It’s sort of complicated.
And now it’s gone. Dead. A few sad, gasping vestiges of what was life and drama, laughter and celebration still remain, but they won’t outlast the roadworks. The traffic problems and then the sliproad started the rot, the parking metres confirmed it as a rot. Now the Wahda Street Masterplan Phase Four or whatever they’re calling it has really screwed things. Wahda Street is dead, extinguished by a strange and cack-handed attempt to do something, anything, with Sharjah’s traffic.
In the meantime, possibly the strangest and most dangerous diversion in the country now takes traffic from Dubaiwards up through the backroads between Al Wahda Street and the Industrial Estate: the mad two and three and two lane route snakes past shops and workshops, godowns and sideroads. Men on bicycles career around the corners, cycling against the traffic and groups of shalwar khameeses scurry across the road as the cars try and work out what they’re supposed to do in the face of a total lack of road markings and signage, let alone lighting. There are few barriers and those that are there have come askew. It’s a Wacky Races alleyway of death through the backstreets and someone’s going to get hurt pretty soon.
Is this really the best thing to have done? Is this really the apogee of urban planning? I really do wonder...
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Sunday, 24 August 2008
Word
I own the word ‘Numklefutumch’!
It originated from The Young Ones, the brilliant 1980s British comedy series led by Rick Mayall and Adrian Edmonson, Nigel Planer and Christopher Ryan and even featuring the occasional burst of Alexi Sayle. There’s a scene in the episode 'Boring' where two of Satan’s little helpers have an argument: one’s called Orgo and one’s called Numklefutumch. Numklefutumch has a problem because, as a little devil, nobody ever says his name, so he’s never called to earth to do evil, while Orgo is always getting stuff because people say ‘shall we go to eat out or go to the cinema tonight?’
At that point, Neil The Hippy tries to read something in the newspaper and pronounces it “Numklefutumch”, calling our little devil to earth in order to get up to some naughtiness.
So it’s word that, oddly, stayed with me. I started using it in the phrase, ‘faster than you can say Numklefutumch’.
And now, thanks to the strange dynamics of the Internet and search, if you google it, all you get is me.
I shall die a happy man... Odd, marginal and perhaps irrelevant, maybe, but happy nonetheless.
Footnote: As you will see from the comments, I screwed up faster than you can say "nmkl pjkl ftmch"... :)
It originated from The Young Ones, the brilliant 1980s British comedy series led by Rick Mayall and Adrian Edmonson, Nigel Planer and Christopher Ryan and even featuring the occasional burst of Alexi Sayle. There’s a scene in the episode 'Boring' where two of Satan’s little helpers have an argument: one’s called Orgo and one’s called Numklefutumch. Numklefutumch has a problem because, as a little devil, nobody ever says his name, so he’s never called to earth to do evil, while Orgo is always getting stuff because people say ‘shall we go to eat out or go to the cinema tonight?’
At that point, Neil The Hippy tries to read something in the newspaper and pronounces it “Numklefutumch”, calling our little devil to earth in order to get up to some naughtiness.
So it’s word that, oddly, stayed with me. I started using it in the phrase, ‘faster than you can say Numklefutumch’.
And now, thanks to the strange dynamics of the Internet and search, if you google it, all you get is me.
I shall die a happy man... Odd, marginal and perhaps irrelevant, maybe, but happy nonetheless.
Footnote: As you will see from the comments, I screwed up faster than you can say "nmkl pjkl ftmch"... :)
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Thursday, 21 August 2008
Spanked
Gulf News today carries, on page 41, a slightly strange advertisement for telco Du’s Unlimited Blackberry offer. The ad, which struck me as unusually weak in a market slopping over the brim with weak advertising, offers “unlimited wireless access to email, calendar, messaging and internet through seamless and secured office connectivity”. It features a sketch of two aliens looking amazed at a Blackberry, having discarded a number of other useless gadgets.
Unusually, Gulf News has also, on page 36, spanked the offer editorially. GN’s Nadia Saleem not unreasonably points out that the ‘unlimited’ Du offer is actually limited to 1 Gb of data transfer, after which usage is charged at Dhs 0.01 per kbyte (or, in other words, a cool Dhs 10 per Mbyte). When contacted about the fact that its ‘unlimited’ offer is actually limited (a slightly paradoxical thing, I’m sure most would agree), Du apparently told our Nadia, “someone might use the data access facility to download movies all day or use the mobile as a modem to transfer large amounts of data”.
Ooh! The rotters!
Firstly, the point is surely that in today's 'always on' world, the data volume is not the charged unit in the vast majority of internet transactions. Package prices are the way forward and the amount of data used in a given package is not germane. The internet is not circuit switched - you pays for the pipe - access not volume. Operators billing volumetrically for access are sort of cheating, really. Particularly when they have mobile IP infrastructures.
That apart, I personally received something like 250Mbytes of useful* email this month, despite being on leave for three weeks of it - and the month's not over yet. If I include the junk, we're looking at a mailbox of over 300 Mbytes and I haven't started allowing for internet access, streaming video or any other cool apps or toys. So it's actually conceivable that a heavy user would actually want 1Gb of access.
What’s missing here are a few words on their advertisement to explain that they don’t actually mean unlimited when they say unlimited. Perhaps interestingly, Etisalat, the big telco, doesn’t limit its unlimited offer.
I bet the GN advertising sales boys aren’t talking to our Nads today, though...
PS: I know I said I wasn't posting for a couple of days, but I couldn't resist it...
*Useful is a relative term.
Unusually, Gulf News has also, on page 36, spanked the offer editorially. GN’s Nadia Saleem not unreasonably points out that the ‘unlimited’ Du offer is actually limited to 1 Gb of data transfer, after which usage is charged at Dhs 0.01 per kbyte (or, in other words, a cool Dhs 10 per Mbyte). When contacted about the fact that its ‘unlimited’ offer is actually limited (a slightly paradoxical thing, I’m sure most would agree), Du apparently told our Nadia, “someone might use the data access facility to download movies all day or use the mobile as a modem to transfer large amounts of data”.
Ooh! The rotters!
Firstly, the point is surely that in today's 'always on' world, the data volume is not the charged unit in the vast majority of internet transactions. Package prices are the way forward and the amount of data used in a given package is not germane. The internet is not circuit switched - you pays for the pipe - access not volume. Operators billing volumetrically for access are sort of cheating, really. Particularly when they have mobile IP infrastructures.
That apart, I personally received something like 250Mbytes of useful* email this month, despite being on leave for three weeks of it - and the month's not over yet. If I include the junk, we're looking at a mailbox of over 300 Mbytes and I haven't started allowing for internet access, streaming video or any other cool apps or toys. So it's actually conceivable that a heavy user would actually want 1Gb of access.
What’s missing here are a few words on their advertisement to explain that they don’t actually mean unlimited when they say unlimited. Perhaps interestingly, Etisalat, the big telco, doesn’t limit its unlimited offer.
I bet the GN advertising sales boys aren’t talking to our Nads today, though...
PS: I know I said I wasn't posting for a couple of days, but I couldn't resist it...
*Useful is a relative term.
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Wednesday, 20 August 2008
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