Green

I found this NIB in today's soaraway Gulf News (800g):

SYMBOLISM
In recognition of the World Future Energy Summit, January 19-21, Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC) will turn its website green to symbolise Abu Dhabi's world leadership in energy production and the importance of the evolving global future energy market.

I was still wiping the tears from my eyes when I remembered something from my session last night over at EMDI, where 20-odd hapless PR and communications students were subjected to an extraordinary two-hour performance of insane gibbering and kazoo playing by your humble correspondent.

You see, I like to go through AME Info and pull random press releases from the site to critique in writing-focused training sessions. And so I thought, well if GN ran this as a NIB, somewhere out there in the great sea of wonder that is the Internet, there must be a press release with more of this marvellous material in it. And so, indeed, there is.

Here, to round off the enjoyment of the many connoisseurs of fine things wot visits this blog, is the quote from that release:

"We are always looking for innovative and exciting ways of supporting the events which are held at Adnec, particularly our most important shows such as WFES. Thousands of people visit our website every week and by turning the site green for the duration of the show we are demonstrating our support to the event."

Turning a website green is innovative and exciting. Oh, good grief. My sides actually hurt.

NB: This blog post has been turned green to symbolise breathless excitement.

Complacent

In a breathtaking display of brass neck, The Emirates Identity Authority has yet again announced that it's our fault we haven't elected to stick needles in our eyeballs in order to register for ID cards.

In fact, an EIDA 'senior official' apparently told Gulf News (650g) that complaceny was visible after GN's report that no fines would be imposed - and that such complacency would 'create problems'.

The website fails, the application application is a joke, the whole fulfilment process consists of asking people to queue for hours waiting for a limited number of appointments to actually make an application to be doled out and then they accuse people of complacency when they decide not to play the game?

The deadline that would absolutely not be extended oh no over my dead body no way José that is so not happening buddy has, of course been extended until February 28th. Emiratis, who started first and who make up a smaller proportion of the population, get more time for some reason - their deadline is the 31st March. And while 80% of expatriate professionals haven't registered, almost 80% of Emiratis, apparently, have. So 80% of us now have six weeks until the next 'we're serious this time' deadline.

Having created a situation where nobody in their right mind wants to go through the pain and frustration of applying, what is EIDA doing? Speeding the process up? Streamlining it? Actually FIXING the broken website so that people can MAKE appointments online as was originally intended?

Nope. It's sitting back and being, oh what's the word? Yes! That's it!

Complacent.

Disconnected

The result of any search performed through Etisalat's seach function this morning: 'Cannot get connection'.

I know the feeling...

BTW: This comes courtesy of pal Derek. I wouldn't dream of trying to use Etisalat's search function myself...

Crock

Every morning I connect my laptop to the wireline network in the office. For some reason I can't get wireless to work at work. Every evening I go home and connect to my wireless network. My not at work network works. With one tiny little 'issuette' every time I use it.

For some reason I have always equated Windows Vista to the voice of Barney the Dinosaur. You know that, 'Heyyy, li'l buddy! Let's have some fuuun!' voice.

So every evening, I'm delighted to be told, 'Heeeyyy! Li'l buddy! I don't see no network! You want I look at the proooblem for you? Huh? Huh?'

I have no option but to press 'yes'. Although I know all too well what the problem is.

'Heeeyyy! Li'l buddy! Lookin' for your problem. Hang on tight! Here we gooo!'

Sigh. I know what comes next. Wait as reassuring colours swoosh on the screen.

Ping!

Heeeey! Guess what? I found your prooobleeeem! Your wireless is switched off! Wow! You want I switch it on for you?'

You switched it off without asking me, you fatuous purple bastard. Yes.

'Cool! I switched it on for you and, guess what, I solved your prooobleeem!'

I hate you and want to see you eviscerated slowly using a blunt, rusty fork.

So the cartoon above really cheered me up no end. I do commend to you following the XKCD site, wot is where I got this cartoon from, daily as it consistently rewards. Thanks to Eliot for the tip!

Goons

I've just taken a 'phone call from a goon called 'Rob' from Dubai claiming to be building a database for British Airways of people who wish to subscribe to "BA's low price offers for Westerners and Europeans".

The colleague who passed the call to me, as most of my colleagues are, was Arab. And so wouldn't qualify.

I think Rob got a bit more than he bargained for when I lost the head with him entirely. That's a racist policy that would, assuming 'Rob' really was calling from BA, have British Airways hung out to dry in the UK media, let alone opened up to action under the Race Relations Act.

Sadly, when I asked to escalate, Rob put me on hold and then dropped the line. Because I'd have loved to have had a few more choice words with Rob's manager, too.

Only in Dubai...

Sammy

Chirpy Freesheet 7Days appears to have started campaigning for the release of TWSFKAS (The Whale Shark Formerly Known As Sammy). The whole thing seems to have been kickstarted by a piece in Friday's edition and has now gathered pace quite nicely.

As all right minded people know, Sammy was a Gulf News (690g) campaign that ended abruptly with the news that the whale shark being held by the bouillabaisse-themed Atlantis hotel was to be released Some Time In The Future.

The fact that the whale shark is a rare, CITES-listed 'threatened species' has annoyed quite a few conservationists, according to the reports. And so 7Days has joined the fray and taken up where GN left off.

Whether its new-found ardour for the story will last remains to be seen. For instance, try searching Gulf News' website for 'whale shark' or 'Sammy'...

Socialite

Here are some ‘social media’ predictions for 2009, just for fun. Why social media? Well, my first prediction is that we’re going to see a lot more fuss about ‘social media’ here in the Middle East in 2009. And the trick there will be sorting the wheat from the chaff – because you’re about to see a load of ‘experts’ talking with great authority on the subject. And, as usual, the expertise on offer will all too frequently be scant. I recently had an advertising agency offer to ‘infiltrate the forums’ on behalf of a client, for instance. That to me is a signal of quite how bad it’s going to get before we settle down and work out who are the practitioners delivering new and insightful programmes using the social media tools that are revolutionising communications practice elsewhere in the world.

So I think we’re probably going to see one or two high profile social media gaffes in our region, quite a lot of weighty pronouncements and agencies rushing to show how they can package their ‘unique insight’ into the social media paradigm for clients. This is what my very good friend Gianni Catalfamo, the uber-geek and European Web 2.0 guru, calls 2.0Wash. Like Greenwash that preceded it, 2.0Wash is when every programme contains a blog, just because, well, they should all contain a blog these days...

In the meantime, I think we’ll see an increasing pressure on regional telcos to stop blocking these social media networks – orkut, flikr and other important components of the ‘Web 2.0’ mix remain blocked. These blocks continue to contribute to retarding our region’s use of some of the most powerful communication tools to emerge since Thomas Caxton started thinking about Ps and Qs.

My final social media prediction for 2009 is that we’ll start to realise quite how powerful the grassroots movement towards using these tools can be. It’s already happened in other world markets and it’s late arriving here precisely because of the blocks. But more people in the Middle East are using FaceBook than read any single newspaper. More people in the UAE are using FaceBook than read any single newspaper. And FaceBook is only one of many, many social media platforms...

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named 'A Moment with McNabb' columns in Campaign Middle East magazine.

Barry

When brother in law Ritchie asked if we'd mind hosting his sister Breda and husband Barry for a couple of days on their way through Dubai to Ireland and the UK, we readily agreed. Although we didn't know them, any friend of Ritchie's is etc. etc.

The reason they were travelling is so that Barry could say goodbye to everyone, because he was suffering, and had suffered for the past ten years, from cancer.

Now, I'm not very good with that kind of stuff and I can't say that I was looking forward to their visit. As it got closer, I convinced myself that we were in for a couple of days of awful sadness.

And then we picked the two of them up at the airport. Barry started his trip by telling me he'd just carried 40 days' supply of morphine through UAE Customs and nobody had batted an eyelid!!! Given the state of DJ shoe soles around here, I thought that was bloody funny.

I didn't stop laughing, or smiling, for the next 72 hours. Not only were our visitors delightful company, Barry was nothing short of inspirational. Although he'd get the odd twinge of pain in his back and needed to take enzymes to aid his digestion, he was more on top of a disease so chronic that an x-ray of his skeleton showed the cancer was so widespread it was like 'someone had thrown a handful of sticky rice grains at it' than I could ever have imagined. He'd been fighting it for ten years and was still beating it back.

A silver-haired charmer, Barry's face was lined but I could never work out whether they were laughter or pain lines. And it didn't help that he was either laughing or smiling most of the time. You could see the Lothario who swept Breda off her feet all those years ago, and who was still sweeping her off her feet. Full of inquisitiveness, particularly about the many aspects of life in the Emirates, which tickled him enormously, Barry took in Hatta and Mahatta alike with a twinkling, blue-eyed curiosity. His sheer bravery, self-effacing manner and his charm lit up our lives for 72 hours. We were talking about flying to Australia this Easter to go see the two of them.

Yeah, you're right, you do know where this is going.

He died half an hour ago, eight months after saying goodbye.

Blockheads

I have posted a number of times about the sandy snicket that affords relief to intrepid 4WD-owning commuters bypassing the Sharjah-Dubai traffic. Here, for instance. Or here, here and this memorable moment here on the day I caught one of the employees of Dubai's beloved traffic regulator, the RTA (Road and Transport Authority), who regularly use the snicket to escape the chaos they are at least morally partially responsible for.

And then they started to try and block it. Quite who 'they' are remains a mystery. The increasingly insane attempts to block the short cut have meant that this small stretch of inter-Emirate sand is now littered with concrete blocks, barriers, quite extensive sandy berms, trenches and a constant flow of people insisting on crossing anyway. We're a hard lot to stop when we've got an alternative to sitting on the road for 2 hours jostling with every other poor sod on his way to work. (My other alternatives are, BTW, move to Dubai or ship out. I'm not doing the National Paints Shuffle or the Ettihad Road car park every day. No way.)

It's been quite fun, in its way. Seeing the new set of obstacles every night and then finding a way around them really does mix a little fun, a smidgen of winding down after the day adventure and perhaps even a splash of eff-you rebellion.

But it's getting beyond a joke now - the entire stretch is so built-up, blocked off and messed around that people are really damaging their cars trying to get through. The sand's soft, the driving's technical and 9/10 of the border rats are getting stuck. As of today, with the addition of a new set of barriers and impediments, there are only two possible ways through and both are 'difficult' drives.

And I am damned if I will let them win. Whoever 'they' are.

Damned.

Taxi

So Sharjah taxis have implemented the Dhs20 surcharge for going to Dubai but, as far as I have seen, Dubai taxis have not implemented the charge the other way.

The charge was ostensibly to make it easier on drivers reluctant to brave the traffic and not be able to return with a fare due to the odd rule that cabs can't pick up fares in other emirates. A driver rewarded is a driver keen to serve, is the theory, no?

As Gulf News (690g) asserts, in the report linked above: "Taxi companies in both Sharjah and Dubai lobbied for the new flag-fall rate. The decision was taken to provide an incentive to taxi drivers, who have sometimes refused to make the trip between the two emirates, especially during peak hours or on holidays, leaving passengers helpless."

The truth, certainly according to the cabbies I've spoken to, is a little less poetic.

Out of the Dhs20, the cabbie gets only Dhs5. Dhs13 goes directly to the company and the rest gets eaten in 'fees and commissions'.

As usual, the cabbies get screwed over, the cab companies take our money. We get the same old woeful levels of service but get gouged again.

Amazing.