Exchange

寧為太平犬，不做亂世人

"It is better to be a dog in peace than a man in chaotic times."

I quite like that. I had always thought the Chinese curse was 'May you live in interesting times' but apparently not, according to the Wikithingy. Whatever, times is certainly interesting - and probably chaotic is a great description. Have you SEEN the exchange rate this week? It's mad. And I, like pretty much every Brit in the Middle East, am a considerably richer man for it.


Sterling/Dirham at 6.4 again - and on a pretty aggressive looking downward trend. What on earth is going on?

New

Emirates has got a new toy and this is a picture of it. I guarantee this will be the picture the papers run tomorrow for no better reason than the other one of the two they sent out with the press release was crap.

The new terminal will go operational on the 14th October, launching flights in a three-phase, staged cut-over from the existing terminal which is, as eny fule no, totally maxed to the max and beyond, with the morning busy period being my personal favourite hellish awful airport experience. Now that will all be (we hope!) a thing of the past.

Perhaps interestingly, EK has learned from its erstwhile friends over at BA/BAA and has gone for a cautious, carefully phased move to operations rather than lunge at it like an over-eager schoolboy discovering his first bra strap.

Phase one will be America and the GCC. Phase two the rest of MEA and then the third phase will see all EK flights cut over - some 269 flights a day.

The new terminal is something else: it'll feature 250 check-in counters, including 126 for cattle class, a set of outsize baggage check-ins located in the car park (neat, huh?) and a dedicated floor of 'themed lounges' that'll offer some 2,000 lucky little pampered pax a slice of pre-flight luxury.

I have to admire Emirates, and often do (I am, remember, a paid-up fanclub member) although humbly suggest that they haven't quite got the tone right in their media releases. The gushing hyperbole can come from the media - the releases don't have to claim things like 'a well-orchestrated move' and 'a well planned move'. That conclusion's for the media and public it serves to reach later on - with hindsight and success in hand. Alternatively, it's appropriate for that kind of endorsement of the company's work to come from a third party - for instance, a third-party analyst saying that Emirates' move has been well-orchestrated. Coming from the company itself, that kind of language can trip you up. It's that kind of 'we've got it right and we're great' language that contributed to the pasting BA got over T5.

The facts, with EK's T3, speak for themselves. You can see the care they're putting in, the planning and professionalism that's going into it. The releases don't actually have to make claims of excellence or performance. EK doesn't, IMHO, need (or want) to do that.

People will be more likely to let the occasional hiccup or teething problem go if they haven't been bombarded by how clever Emirates is. A little touch of humility often goes a long, long way. Even if you are announcing that sliced Hovis is, indeed, a thing of the past!

Tiny

Here's a gift for you geeks out there.

It's Tiny URL.

Tiny URL lets you add a widget to your browser toolbar and then, when you find a web page you like/want to share, you just click on the widget. Tiny URL then kicks in and converts the URL of the page into, literally, a Tiny URL - a small, manageable one.

Take this stunning triple-nested Klein Jar image, for example:

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/images/I046/10314758.aspx

Becomes

http://tinyurl.com/6qtwa5

Or, even more compellingly,

http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Las-Vegas-American/dp/0679785892/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220453012&sr=8-1

Becomes

http://tinyurl.com/6xtjhn

It even puts it on your clipboard automatically. So, no more emails with links that break a line and become unuseable, no more mad, long URLs and no more being unable to slip a link into things like Tweets and Facebook updates!!!

Sorry, the inner geek got out. And yes, I do feel better now...

Mobile

That old Campaign column about mobiles reprised. Because some people are just soooo curious! :)


8am
Realise I’ve forgotten my mobile. Awareness dawns with an unpleasant feeling of nakedness and exposure. It’s too far back home to go and get it. Decide to go ahead with the day without phone.

9am
Send email to clients and colleagues letting them know. Colleagues start ‘I’ve been trying to call you but…’ jokes.

9.45am
Realise that I don’t know the number of our Jordanian office. Or my account manager’s mobile number. Put off making call and do job by myself.

10.40am
Colleague manages (do not ask me how, it still baffles me) to bruise her coccyx. Is in agony, bent over desk in silly posture and laughing helplessly. Reach for phone to take picture. No phone. Damn.

11.00am
Borrow colleague’s phone to SMS wife and let her know not to call me on the mobile. Struggle without predictive text and unfamiliar handset/interface.

11.10am
Wife concerned about receiving strange messages from a mobile she doesn’t know.

11.15am
Client wants to know why I don’t care about their account any more. We last talked at 5pm the night before. No, he hasn’t read his email. Why didn’t I tell him by ‘phone? I just about manage a smile and a cheery word, despite my heart being black.

12.00pm
Have a meeting. Run into traffic, running late. No mobile. Damn.

12.30pm
Get to meeting 30 mins late. Meeting has left the building as he didn’t hear from me and assumed I’d forgotten. Given I have a head stuffed with kapok, this is understandable, if frustrating.

1.30
Get back to the office only to find everyone’s ordered lunch without me because I wasn’t answering my mobile. Manage not to strangle someone. I have, after all, been making a huge fuss about it all day. You’d think they’d know by now.

2.00
Get around to ordering my lunch from… Go looking for menu because their number’s on the mobile.

2.15
Find menu. Number’s changed since then.

2.45
Get sandwich from Emarat. I can’t describe this in print because they’d sue.

3.00
Feel ill.

4.00
Apparently my behaviour is unforgiveable. Nobody in the office is talking to me. Day is beginning to look up. Actually get some work done.

4.30
Journalist complains to client that I haven’t been answering his calls. Client highly amused. PR less so. Add journalist’s name to the list of those that are first to go come the revolution.

5.00
Last meeting of the day. Nothing unusual at all happens.

6.00
Get to car, meeting some pals after work. Open door. Mobile, which fell into footwell on way into work, falls out.

6.01
Kick car. Hurt foot.

Avis

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!

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.

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...

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...

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!

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!!!