Do More Evil

 The Man in the Mustardy Shirt

I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have a large number of talented friends dotted all over the world. Some are online pals, others are ‘real world’ friends – and some are people I met online and subsequently have hooked up with' in analogue'.

One such person is my old authonomy buddy, Simon Forward. We joined each other in the race for the authonomy ‘Editor’s Desk’ and both got there, gleefully and manically mucking about in the forums as we plugged our respective works, promoting them to creaking point but also having a great deal of fun in the process. We became something of a double act: Simon’s schoolboy humour and my suave, sophisticated charm worked together like a dream.

Not content with bobbing around at the top of the foetid pool of festering books that is authonomy, Simon then tossed a second book into the ring, a kids’ yarn focused around hero Kip Doodle. And, damn me, but he did it again and so became the only writer to get to the top at authonomy twice. Not, you understand, that it did him the blindest bit of good...

Simon has, in fact, written several highly successful published novels, although sadly on other people’s behalf – he’s one of the writers of the massively popular Dr. Who books, for instance. This resulted in The Niece From Hell (who is Dr Who bonkers) getting a signed Dr Who book to add to her signed Caroline Lawrence ‘Roman Mystery’. Caroline, a highly astute million-selling kids’ author who knows a niece with a minted uncle when she sees one, seeded TNFH’s massive and ever-growing collection of Caroline Lawrence books by whipping one out and signing it for me when we met at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. But getting a signed Dr Who book awed the child into a rare (and prolonged) silence. For this alone, I owe Simon a great debt.

It is with great pleasure, therefore, that I can now report that The Man In The Mustardy Shirt has only been and gone and gone ‘e’. He's taken the plunge and released his hilarious sci-fi comedy, Evil UnLtd, on Amazon’s Kindle, which means you can get your hands on the book for a mere $2.99 and, what’s more, you can have it in your eager paws in seconds flat.

What better way to celebrate than talking to him about the project? Here’s the View From Forward.

Evil UnLtd is clearly something of a pangalactic caper - was this an escape from writing Dr Who books for you?
Pangalactic is the telltale word there, I think. As in gargleblaster.  The Hitch-Hikers influence is strong in this one, Obi-Wan, but it's fair to say that, rather than an escape from, this is an extension of my Doctor Who writing. Basically name a TV sci-fi series and it was an inspiration of one sort or another. Even the sci-fi series' I loathed played their part - if, for example, they were bland or boring, I thought how much more interesting even the same storylines would be if you replaced the wet goody-two-shoes hero types with a band of villains.

On a very basic level, saving the universe/world/space-whale then becomes a different ball game. Even if it's just saving the universe/world/space-whale for themselves. Then when it comes to the details, well, everything just spirals in all sorts of directions, which is just great from a creative point of view.

How would you describe the plot, briefly?
It's a very organic affair, kicking off with a sort of Reservoir Dogs bank-robbery goes wrong scenario, with a gradually unfolding mystery that culminates in what I hope is one of the bizarrest action-packed sf climaxes  you'll have ever read - until I can come up with a better one for Evil 2.

Do you not think we already see enough commercialisation of Evil without contemplating a future of evil commerce?
We see way too much commercialisation of Evil, yes. Which is why the world needs a brand of Evil we can actually laugh at.

Who's your favourite character in the book and why?
That would have to be Dexter Snide. I have a soft spot for all of them - and no it's not just the marsh world of Delta Magna - but there's something wonderfully odious about Dexter. He's essentially like the Master, I suppose, a sort of Moriarty figure - which means I should give him a thinly veiled Time Lord opponent at some point I guess - but he's also the pure unadulterated evil in me. That is, I'd never do or say the things he does, you understand, but I do love writing him.

I also love the Hatchling, as he's the most enigmatic of the bunch - spending so much time in his egg as he does - and the rare point-of-view scenes I do for him are a treat.

What's your proudest 'funny moment'?
That would have to be the climax. At the time, I didn't quite know how the whole thing was going to wrap up, and it just came to me in a flash. One of those things that just grows organically out of the plot and as I was writing it, everything just clicked. Although that may have been the RSI.

Did you ever sit back and think, 'Crumbs, this is just too silly!'?
Not really. I mean, there were times I had my doubts whether it would appeal to anyone else, but the curious thing about SF comedy, I find, is that the characters and the universe you're creating have to take themselves seriously. So it's as immersive in its own way as crafting a straight-faced sci-fi epic - for which, by the way, I have the greatest respect, and I think you have to love your 'proper' sci-fi in any case in order to write a full novel of the slightly dafter variety. There were probably a few bits and pieces I chucked out as too silly or not working, but if something is daft and makes you laugh, you just construct a rationale for it within the context of your universe and voila! suddenly it's part of that universe and as a bonus you've (hopefully) written an entertaining discourse on the ins and outs of a society of leaf-like aliens who eat music. (I haven't, you understand, it's just an off the top of my head example.)

Why did you decide to go down the Kindle road? Did you evaluate various 'e-publishing' options, or just go straight for the 'Big K'?
I'm afraid to say, I didn't really investigate alternatives and plumped straight for the Special K. Possibly out of a desire to fit into that slimline red dress, who knows. But more probably because, while I was resistant to the e-publishing route for a long while, one particular friend and my mum-in-law kept urging me to publish something of mine on Kindle. They happened to specify Kindle and so when I finally buckled under the persuasion, I opted for that route. When I think about it now, there's part of me that associates the Amazon brand with a degree of trust that perhaps wouldn't be felt with other options, so I'm hoping that people will see the book on the Amazon site and that might help persuade them to give it a whirl.

What's your hope for the project? 100 copies sold? International fame? Just get it out of your system?
Here I have to separate hopes and realistic aims. Hopes are to attract the attentions of a publisher or Joss Whedon. (Evil is already - for plot reasons - kind of a TV series in book form and Joss, for my money, is the man to head the screen version.)  But this is an experiment and there's a sales figure I'd consider a success, although I'm not sure what that is at this stage. I don't know enough about the general volumes of sales of Kindle e-books, although I gather recently they outstripped Amazon hardback sales for the first time.
If every one of my Facebook and Twitter and authonomy contacts bought a copy, that'd be a few hundred sales right there, and more if they spread the word and so on, but you know how it is, you invite twenty people to the party and only eight can make it.

How would you define success? If you reach that, would you take other projects online?
Real success would be, like I say, attracting the attention of a publisher. When (a sample of) Evil was on authonomy, it proved its appeal to a wide range of readers - not just sf-heads - but there was a forum in which people could be enticed to give a book a chance, even if it was outside their normal comfort zone, because you'd been helpful or entertaining or just plain daft in the online discussions.

Without that - and without the kind of budget a mainstream publisher can command - it's going to be a huge challenge to attract the readers and convince them to give Evil a chance. So I'll be tweeting, facebooking, blogging and quite possibly even putting together a book trailer and seeing how it goes. That said, if I do feel this one meets with a measure of success, I will be putting other projects online. At the very least, I'll be uploading Evil 2 and future Evil volumes, maybe make that an annual event. Because a) establishing a series might prompt more interest and b) I enjoy writing these characters and, damn it, some of my work needs to be out there, being read, by some of the people at the very least.

Why Evil as your first Kindle book? Wouldn't KipDoodle find a more ready 'e-reader friendly' audience?
I considered making Kip Doodle available - that one was even more popular on authonomy - but as much as adults do enjoy it, I didn't think it would reach many of its target audience - ie. kids - on Kindle. I may be wrong, but I didn't imagine a lot of kids reading e-books. Although a friend of mine pointed out there were something like 15,000 kids' books available on Kindle already. Whereas I figured there might be some crossover between, say, sci-fi geeks and the sort of technophiles who'd either have a Kindle or be into downloading the software to their PC/Mac/iPhone/whatever.

What has been YOUR favourite Kindle buy so far? Is there anything you wouldn't read on a Kindle?
It's early days for me as a consumer. I have my eye on a few titles, and if nothing else the novelty value has re-awakened my previously flagging enthusiasm for reading. But so far I've focused on some of the classics that I've overlooked - not least because they're free, or close to it. Most significant has been Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, which I enjoyed, not necessarily because it's his best, but because I've found it surprisingly ripe for comedy.

More inspiration like that can only lead to more Evil and is therefore very welcome.

BUY EVIL!

I'm sad to say that Amazon does NOT support the Middle East on Kindle and won't allow downloads unless you have a valid address in the UK, US or elsewhere in the world you can give 'em. This sucks royally, BTW.

However, if you have a Kindle (or the Kindle PC reader, which is surprisingly usable, BTW) and you can download books, you can buy your very own copy of Evil UnLtd for $2.99 from Amazon UK by clicking here or Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Ha. I want to see the silly bugger sign this one.

Media Events

Image via WikipediaLook, 'doing' social media does not consist of sending invitations to bloggers to attend media events.  Many bloggers I know have day jobs and any with media experience would rather force a prickly pear up their right  nostril than go to a press event.

There's a department in hell that consists of press events. It's for really, really bad people for whom an eternity in blistering flames being tormented by devils is just too good.

In particular, if you send me invitations to attend media events, I will feel perfectly free in future to hold you up to public ridicule. I am not interested in your product launch. I am not interested in your initiative. I might give the coverage, however it is derived or appears, a passing glance if it engages me - but I am not about to invest a couple of hours in some drab hotel being fed tired food while suited executives cluster around and whisper, glancing at me before approaching me with wolfy smiles and 'So, you're a blogger!'

If this blog was that of a dedicated follower of fashion, I'd likely go to a preview or launch event if it was big. Likewise, if I had a geeky weather blog and the airport met office contacted me to arrange a tour of their facilities, I'd likely be interested.

But a deranged marmoset with a frontal lobotomy could surely work out that this blog is merely commentary, of personal experience, news and a few tatty half-thoughts. Which brings us back to the single greatest complaint that journalists have about PRs and in-house communicators that attempt to engage with them - that these people simply haven't taken the time out to understand their publication/medium and its target audience.

Anyone that wants me to go to a launch announcement 'as a blogger' has similarly not invested the time to work out that not only do I not care, I actively do not care. I vocally and negatively do not care. I will respond well (but negatively) to appropriate invitations from known social contacts. I really don't like getting press invitations. I'm not press and I won't act in lieu of a compliant media and slavishly convey your product information for you.

That my name is now presumably on someone's list of 'social media' contacts is a worry. This, then, is a cease and desist order. Next time, I'll take it public.

More Jordan

Image via WikipediaDaoud stood. ‘Have you ever seen an olive tree, Paul? Come with me, I’ll show you our little grove of olives we keep here in Abdoun.’

Nour pushed back her chair, taking Mariam’s plate and beckoning for Aisha’s. ‘Yes, go on. We’ll clear up the table. Aisha, give me a hand in the kitchen.’

He led the way and I reluctantly followed. We stood together on the veranda looking out over the dark garden - a couple of acres of prime Abdoun real estate. He flicked a switch by the kitchen door and I saw that part of the garden was laid to lawn, but the hilly part to the side accommodated a small stand of olive trees.

‘Ibrahim and my father brought these trees from our farm in Qaffin and planted them here over thirty years ago. At that time it looked like we were going to lose everything from over there, so they thought they’d keep at least this much.’ He led the way down the steps to the trees. ‘Smoke?’

‘No thanks, I don’t.’

He grunted, then lit up a Marlboro Light. ‘These trees are everything to the farmers. They are tended like fine grape vines, the olives are pressed like wine. The first cut is virgin, the finest. The olives weep the purest oil when they are first squeezed. We still press it over at the farm on the old stone press. It is not much, it is not enough to keep the place running, but we help out, as Ibrahim said. It is the finest oil you will ever taste. It is a symbol for us too, you understand. Of peace and hope.’

I held a bunch of the smooth, silvery-green leaves in my hand. I didn’t know what to say to him. He stood in among the trees, the faint pall of smoke from his cigarette making my nostrils widen.

‘Ibrahim said the security wall cut the farm in two.’

‘We demonstrated, like the other farmers. But there was nothing anyone could do. Some of the hot headed ones got themselves beaten up, arrested. The world looked the other way.’

I didn’t know what to say, surrounded by these trees and the family’s loss. ‘At least you still have the farm.’

Daoud shook his head. ‘Now, after all these years, they are starting to cut the water to the farmers, both there and here in Jordan. The olive groves are starting to die. These trees are the heritage we must take with us into the future. My company is investing in the water because we believe it will be critical for the future. Not just for the trees but for our people to live. We are bidding for the privatisation of Jordan’s water resources. You have heard of this?’

‘Yes, the Minister told me about it. Is it really such a problem, the water shortage?’

‘We are already suffering from the lack of water. We will suffer more, our crops will fail and our farmers starve. It is critical to our future to find a better way to share the water. The Israelis steal the water from us every day. I want to steal it back.’

I dropped the bunch of leaves I had been holding and glanced across at Daoud, who was looking down to the glowing tip of his cigarette.

‘How?’

He looked up and I could feel the intense physicality of the man, feel his eyes burning in the darkness. I shifted uncomfortably and so did the conversation.

‘You like Aisha?’

I tried not to react to the abrupt question, taking my time and listening to the faint traffic noise carried on the cold night air. I replied cautiously. ‘She’s been great to me, Daoud. The Ministry’s lucky to have her. I couldn’t have settled in the way I have without her. She’s a smart girl.’

A crowd cheered in my mind. Just right. My breath was coming out in misty puffs.

‘She was my father’s favourite.’

The cheering died down. ‘She’s a very fine artist. You must be proud of her.’

‘Yes. Yes I am. I would not like anything to happen to her. She took his death badly, as I suppose we all did. She is still perhaps,’ he searched for the word, ‘vulnerable.’

Fucking hell. Enough already. I kept the smile going, but it was getting hard to maintain. My cheeks hurt from the effort. ‘Jordan is a beautiful country, Daoud. I’m glad I came here. I’m sure my girlfriend will like it here, too. She’s a lawyer. She practises international contract law, actually.’

Not strictly true, the line about Anne liking it in Jordan. I hardly expected her to turn up. Workaholic Anne never took leave and we didn’t anticipate seeing each other until I went home for Christmas.

Daoud seemed lost in thought, leaning against the trunk of an olive tree and drawing on his cigarette. Finally he spoke.

‘The Israelis have taken everything from us, Paul. Our land, our dignity. They took my father, too. Now they’re taking the water. We’ve lost too much.’

He pushed the cigarette butt into the sandy soil with his heel, then put his hand on my shoulder, a quick squeeze and a pat, a very Arab gesture of finality and yet, somehow, accepting. ‘I won’t let the olives die. Come on, let’s get back inside. I’ll get you a bottle of our oil. At least when the olives weep, we are enriched.’

#

And so Paul Stokes embarks on his betrayals, betraying Aisha's brother Daoud even as he suspects Daoud of betraying human decency. Olives is prefaced with a quote from Mahmoud Darwish: "If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears."

In unrelated news, the reason I'm here - The MENA ICT Forum - is a triumph of an event, it's been marvellous meeting so many old friends and catching up with new faces. The quality of debate and feedback has been excellent. The King spoke brilliantly and his support for this industry clearly continues to be extraordinary. It's good to see Jordan once again striding strongly on its road to building a truly great ICT industry.

Jordan

Image by APAAME via FlickrAisha took us downhill into a leafy avenue of fine old houses before she gestured, her wooden bangles clacking. ‘This is the First Circle, the centre of old Amman and it’s becoming fashionable for cafés and bars. There’s a place here that may be within your budget, but it’s unfurnished. It’s just up the street from the Wild Café, quite a popular place that the Americans built as a gift to Jordan. They like to give us little gifts.’

I stayed quiet as Aisha pulled the car to a stop in front of a flight of stone steps leading up to a house that stood apart on the hillside, ornate wrought-iron railings protecting its windows and a vine trailing on the pergola in the garden to the front of it. I found myself following the swing of Aisha’s hips as she led the way up the steps from the road. She stopped abruptly at the top, turned to catch me looking at her bum and raised an eyebrow. I felt my face reddening. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her burgundy handbag and offered them to me.

‘I don’t, thanks.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, lighting up and inhaling hungrily, her lipstick leaving a dark red mark on the white filter and her head raised to let the smoke go. I noticed she had ink on her fingers, like a naughty schoolgirl, an incongruity in someone so sophisticated. ‘It’s owned by a lawyer and his wife. It’s on two floors, there’s a Swedish guy who rents the upper floor. You would get the ground floor and the use of the garden area.’ She opened the door and waited for me to go in. It wasn’t huge, a traditional house built maybe in the thirties or forties and clad in pale Jordan stone. A green painted door led straight into the cool, terracotta-floored kitchen. I wandered around the echoing rooms before going back outside and standing in the lush little garden.

I looked out across to the Jordanian flag flapping merrily atop the Citadel, the central hill of the seven that Amman was founded upon. The buildings carpeting the city around us glowed deep orange in the sunset. I listened to the sound of a cricket in the bushes, taking in the fresh breeze and wishing time would stop and leave me with these feelings for ever. All thoughts of police charges and cells were gone, chased away by my joy at the little house. I heard Aisha’s step behind me and caught a whiff of her cigarette smoke, looking round and seeing the glow of the setting sun on her skin.

‘I want to live here.' I said, 'This is beautiful.’

‘Alhamdulillah.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It means thanks to God. Why do you look so worried if you like it?’

‘How am I going to furnish it?’

‘I can get the landlord to defer the first three month’s rent if you agree to leave the furniture behind you when you go.’

I glanced at Aisha, her brown eyes alive, gauging my reaction. I looked around the garden again, at the trellises and the wooden table and chairs under the vines. She ground the cigarette out under her foot. ‘Who’s the landlord?’ I asked.

Aisha walked back to the car. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to your hotel.’

I laughed and persisted. ‘Who’s the landlord?’

She stopped and turned, grinning. ‘My cousin.’ Then she flicked her hair at me and carried on down the steps.


Wasta.

#

And so, in the first serious book wot I wrote, Olives, Paul Stokes settles down into life in Jordan, where he is betrayed and in turn betrays because betrayal is all he eventually has left. I'm back in Amman, the country where the book is set, for the first time since I finished re-writing it and I'm grinning like an idiot to be back. The drivers always ask, 'Is this your first time in Jordan, seer?' and I enjoy the reaction to my, 'No, the sixty fourth' almost as much as I enjoy talking about petrol prices with London cabbies. I have spent a lot of time in this country and have many friends here. It's a sort of third home.


I called my pal Ra'ed and told him how very much I loved his country. His reaction, instinctively Jordanian, was 'Why? What's the problem?'


It's great to be back!

When was the last time you dialled a telephone number?

Image by IronRodArt - Royce Bair via FlickrTelcos are facing something of a challenge moving forward. They are staring looming disintermediation in the face and many don’t have the faintest clue what the hell to do about it.

It's an interesting idea, but there's every chance that social media will end up transforming them beyond recognition and even killing a number of them off. 

I got to thinking about this speaking at a telecom event recently. I came across more than one Great Question in the process. For instance, when was the last time you actually dialled a telephone number? We’ll be unlikely to ever dial numbers again. With today’s IP enabled networks, telephone numbers are actually something of a virtualisation – we don’t need numbers, because we don’t have to use circuit switches any more. We don’t even need URLs to communicate with each other, we’ve finally arrived at the point where we can all mimic the prisoner – we’re people, not numbers.

In this virtual world of Facebook phones and IP to IP connections (whether that's between handsets or PCs), the good old fashioned telco is reduced to being the provider of ‘the pipe’. It’s sort of analogous to a road network – the company that used to provide us with our car (finance and all), maintenance, petrol and car washing services – as well as the road network we used, together with service stations and hotels, is now just providing the blacktop. From the huge logistical enterprise that gave us everything we needed for road travel (and that also ran the big lorry networks for commercial customers) – except choice, they face being reduced to toll road operators. All they’ll be is the occasional toll booth with a sleepy chap taking our payment and a crew to fill in the occasional hole. There are other companies now providing the cars, the maps, the petrol and the logistics.

Even more scary for the telcos is their coming irrelevance.

The reason that Microsoft went for Netscape is that Netscape’s gameplan was to expose APIs to applications – this meant that Windows would become irrelevant to users and be replaceable by any old operating system, because applications only care about the next set of APIs down the pancake stack that sits between you and the hardware. Telecommunications has its own pancake stack, known as the OSI model - and telcos are facing being shoved down to the transport layer. Or perhaps even lower.

Today’s social media platforms are scaring the bejabers out of operators. If I spend all my time on Google, Facebook et al – and if these platforms are providing me with my telephony connections, I don’t actually care very much about my telco – I don’t actually see the transport layer, just the applications I use. And so the telco becomes irrelevant, whether you’re Etisalat, Du, Zain, BT or Vodaphone doesn’t matter to me. I’m just buying bandwidth and I don’t really care who I buy it from apart from price and stability – and they would all be pretty much comparable in a perfectly competitive market (which regulators are there to give us).

This means operators today have a very stark choice – transform or die. I’ve been saying this at conferences and stuff for a while now. Operators need to define new business models based around selling content and services that consumers want. They need to compete in the social space, they need to build complex revenue models that use the thinking that drives services like Google, YouSendIt and AVG. They need to look at those ‘Freemium’ models, indirect revenue streams and new competencies. They need to sell the stuff that smart IP networks enable - including content. Anyone planning to continue depending on the ongoing flow of easy money across the counter, cash for credits and money for minutes, is on a one-way ticket to oblivion, baby.
 
If they don’t change, and I'd suggest pretty quickly at that, they’re just going to be joining the queue behind the newspapers. Like newspapers, they’re not going to die overnight – just slowly and awfully collapse in on themselves, threshing around and squawking painfully on the way down. There'll be something left at the end, but it won't be the telcos as we know them.  More like a number of bandwidth wholesalers. Pipe pushers...

How did you get here?

Image by tricky ™ via Flickr
I'm not asking any deep philosophical question or setting out to give you a Paulo Coelho answer to the riddles and mysteries of life. I was just wondering how you actually, you know, got here.

SiteMeter, which is a handy little doodad that does all sorts of analysis on visitors to one's blog, shows a remarkable diversity of paths that lead to this silly little blog. Quite a few people come via the UAE Community Blog, appearing to use that Venerable UberBlog as a 'jumpsite'. Another good dash of visitors wander in from Twitter for one reason or another - some impelled, no doubt, by the odd pimping tweet broadcast by yours truly.

A good number come via search and all sorts of strange searches lead people, presumably often bitterly disappointed to find that what you see is most certainly not what you get, here. I am particularly proud that all sorts of permutations of Subway, Aquafina, Pringles and Kelloggs are leading people to the posts on this blog that explore the egregious side of all four. That people searching Google for "subway fake wheat bread" get this post on their first page of search results is a delight to me. I see quite a few people, one way and another, who are looking for various sorts of fakery. A rod for my own back, that one!

Some appear to repeat searches they've made before - at least I can only hope this is the case with the recurring incidence of 'Russian Girl Face Slash' I get landing here. I'm also very glad I regularly disappoint the people searching for various permutations centred around Russian girls and nocturnal activities. I occasionally post some of the stranger searches I get, such as this here post.

Some people seem to stumble by. Some use their RSS readers, although by no means as many as I'd have thought. A few people wander in from other blogs who have either linked to one of my intemperate rants or kindly put me on a blogroll.  Quite a lot come up as 'unknown', so I don't know where they came from.

So here's my question today. Where did you come from? Drop a quickie comment if you wouldn't mind.

Oh - and thanks. It's nice to see you!

Rotten Bankers

Image via Wikipedia
I'm being predictable, I know, but there's no way on earth I'd let the news that customers are unhappy with their banks pass me by without comment.

A poll by YouGov, full details on Zawya here, has found that 20% of people are highly upset with their bank, while fully 50% of consumers would not recommend their bank to a friend. 42% cite the main reason for their dissatisfaction is the lack of priority banks give to customer service. Some 40% of people have cancelled a credit card.

I am shocked, people, deeply shocked.

Why aren't the figures higher? Nobody I know who lives in the UAE is happy with their bank. Nobody has ever been able to recommend their bank to me. The one time I bit the bullet and tried to flee ever having to deal with the hapless goons at my bank, Lloyds Jumeirah failed to open our account without a litany of stupid mistakes that finally had us giving up and sticking with the devil we, sadly, know all too well.

Actually, one reason why the figures may not be as high as I thought is that between them, the 'most used banks' are Dubai Islamic Bank and HSBC - and between them, they account for only 21% of respondents to the survey.

I'm saying nothing about DIB, you understand...

Watching A New Life Unfold

Image via WikipediaI have known Sara for years. A former colleague and current friend, she is far too talented for her own good and manages to combine a keen intellect with an absolute lack of ambition for herself. She believes in people and in the good to be found in people; something I admire particularly as I do not at all share her capacity in this regard.

She left Dubai for London some years back with a vague idea of using the communications skills she had honed in a sort of NGO sort of way. That never really happened as I fancy she thought it would until a few weeks ago all sorts of things came together and she decided to throw in London life and travel to Nablus to become a teacher.

I would contend this is not normal behaviour, but then chacun à son goût...

One of Sara's many talents is language. She's always had better than native English language skills (although this is not, generally, setting the bar very high. Few foreigners manage to mangle English like the English manage mangling English); I recall her once stopping a client dead in his tracks by pointing out that their encounter had been more than usually serendipitous. After all, it's not a word you expect from an Arab girl, is it? Her encounters with ignorant English colleagues in London were relayed back to me with delighted indignation ("Dahling, I just can't belhieve an Arab is editing my copy!"), but the fact remains that Sara has a way with words that is unusual, a keen eye for humanity and a strong sense of fairness and compassion.

When you combine these things with the whole 'Year in Provence' adventure of starting a new life as a volunteer in the West Bank, you could be forgiven for thinking the mixture would provide a powerful, evocative and compellingly detailed account of the experience.

And it does. Her blog is linked here and I commend it to you with all my heart. Go there now while it is still new and she is at the very opening of her adventure. Because I bet you a pound to a penny that this unfolding story will delight you as the days fly by.

Wedding Night

Sabina England, or Deaf Brown Trash Punk as some will know her, is a colourful character at the best of times. I first met her on authonomy where her entrance, characteristically led by a greeting laced with the 'C' word, caused outrage amongst the serried ranks of tank-top wearing literary aspirants. Her book, 'Brown Trash' was a stunning read - fresh, challenging and with so much voice you'd want to cover your ears to block out its strident call. If you did, you'd get a taste of Sabina World, because she is (as you may have worked out from the above sobriquet) profoundly deaf.

Sabina's silent movies have been popping up on YouTube for a while now and have earned her a growing following. Her stageplays, never less than provocative, have been produced both in the US and UK and now she's gone and written, direct and produced a bigger budget film, 'The Wedding Night' - a much slicker piece that has so far been funded by donations raised by supporters. She's not quite there yet, the film's in the can (well, on the hard disk) but she needs more money to pay for the final edit. Take a look at the trailer:

 

I wanted to bring Sabina onto the radio show I co-host with Jessica Swann every Tuesday on Dubai Eye Radio, Dubai Today, but there's a slight glitch - being deaf is a slight impediment to doing phone interviews on the radio. So we did it by text instead:

What inspired the idea of ‘The Wedding Night’?
I was inspired to write "Wedding Night," which was originally a stage play. It is a very minimalist piece with just 2 actors in a hotel room. And I thought to myself, I can turn this into a film with a very low budget. It is heavy on drama, but very light on the budget. I wrote "Wedding Night" because it is a feminist response to the hypocrisy of sex and women's bodies in Indian-Pakistani culture and amongst Muslims. It is widely accepted for males to have had sexual experience and to have many female partners, yet if a woman dares to explore her sexuality and have sex with just 1 man, she is shunned and shamed by society. Also, I was inspired and disgusted by countless real-life stories I have heard about forced arranged marriages and the tragic consequences that come out of it.

Who are the actors? Are they trained?
The actors are Alpa Banker (actress) and Sanjiv Bajaj (actor). Alpa is a professional actress who lives in Los Angeles. She does theatre, commercials, modeling, and film. Sanjiv Bajaj is a doctor who graduated from Princeton University and founded an independent South Asian theatre company. They were both amazing in their roles.

What was the greatest challenge in conceiving, filming and directing this?
The greatest challenge to make the film happen was getting started in the first place. I didn't know who I was going to hire to shoot the film. I didn't have any money. I didn't have a goddamned clue how to go make this happen. But after consulting many Facebook friends who have worked in the film industry, I got some very good ideas and began raising funds through IndieGoGo. I also posted ads online seeking crew and actors. And soon, all these people were coming up to me and they wanted to work with me.

What’s your hope for it?
I don't have any hope for "Wedding Night." I just made the film because I've always wanted to be a filmmaker, it was always a dream of mine to write, direct and produce my own film and call my own shots. Well, I did it, and I'm glad.

Conflict runs through your work; you hit issues head on all the time and relish holding their little corpses up to show us. What was your one BIG target here, among all the little targets you’re hitting?
My big target in Wedding Night? It's just a big fuck you message to all these narrow-minded male chauvinists in our society. Misogynists, chauvinists, old-fashioned, sexist males and even sexist females, who believe that sex is a bad thing, these people who look down at women for even daring to speak out about sex and for having the courage to explore their sexualities. Sexual liberty is one of the most important rights for human beings, yet most people won't acknowledge that. "Wedding Night" is also a film that proudly shoves female aggression in your face. It's a film that says "hey, women have rights, too and we're not going to let you push us down."

It’s very slick, the trailer. How much did it cost and how did you raise it/convince people to take part in it?
The trailer didn't cost me any money. I just salvaged the film footage from the storage drive and then I created it on my laptop. But the real money will be pouring into post-production. It will cost me $4,000. Post Production includes: editing, colorization, sound synching, music, credits, and so on. When I first began to raise money for the film shoot, I used IndieGoGo and convinced a lot of people to donate to my film project. I raised over $1,000. I said that if you wanted to support a Deaf South Asian Muslim female filmmaker, this is your chance to help me. Hollywood is notoriously racist, sexist, and misogynistic. There are plenty of successful female filmmakers, yet they are ignored and shunned by the Hollywood studio system. Men are always favored over women. And then white men are always favored over non-white men and people of color. And then of course, most people cannot name a successful Deaf person working in Hollywood. So I said, if you're tired of the Hollywood studio system and you want to help someone make a film on her own, this is it. And that's how I got a lot of donations from the public.

Why would anyone in their right minds fund a revolutionary film-maker who’s made a habit of confronting taboos and prejudice so violently and graphically?
I have a little bit over $1,500 in donations for my Film Finishing Fund now, but I need more. If you can donate as little as $10 or $100, that would be great. If you're wondering why you should help me out, all I can say is this: if you go to the cinema and you complain about how mediocre, stupid and pathetic the female lead is, or if you read an article about Hollywood or Bollywood and you complain about the lack of successful female filmmakers being ignored, or if you complain about how film awards are always being handed out to men instead of women, then do something about it. Take out your wallet and give money to an aspiring female filmmaker. Encourage a Deaf person to become a filmmaker, artist, or writer and make their voices be heard. Encourage more filmmakers to make strong, interesting films about strong female leads instead of always creating bimbo, weak, pathetic female characters. Encourage young Muslims and South Asians to go out there and create a film, novel, play, or music that's not typical or cliched. Give me your money and I'll make more films with even better storylines that'll smash the mirror and shove it in people's faces.

The Internet has given you a voice and audience you otherwise wouldn't have, hasn't it?
I think in the Digital Age, in the age of youtube and Vimeo, in the age when crowd-sourced funding is becoming so common, we will face an even bigger change coming onto the filmmaking field. Today, you can create a webseries and put all the episodes online and people will watch. You can put your film online and people will watch. You can even get press attention from it, too. It's nice. More people are discovering that they don't need to get an agent or approach a film producer to get their scripts produced. You don't need to move to Los Angeles to be a filmmaker!! Who cares about Hollywood or Bollywood? Who cares about these irrelevant, pointless networking parties? You don't need an agent. You don't need famous friends. Write a script, set up an online fundraiser, ask people to donate money. I made a film on my own, and so can you. Hollywood is a place that needs to be destroyed. Hollywood keeps churning out pointless remakes and sequels. Hollywood keeps churning out the same, tired, sexist, racist, homophobic stereotypes. Hollywood is a white boys club where women and people of color are struggling to get into. Well, guess what? The studio system is rigid and it's time for Hollywood to collapse and crumble down.

Sabina's website is linked here or you can find her on Twitter: @jihadpunk77.

Talker

Image by notacrime via FlickrI'm doing quite a lot of conference speaking thingies this Autumn, so apologies in advance to anyone who suffers in one of those audiences. I'm particularly looking forward to the MediaME Conference in Amman on the 8th and 9th November, I'm genuinely pumped (but retained as a consultant by, so please take a pinch of salt) about the MENA ICT Forum taking place in Amman on the 10th and 11th October and I'm speaking on a panel thingy tomorrow at the Global Arab Business Meeting in Ras Al Khaimah.

There's more, but I've forgotten them. It's not arrogance, I've just got a brain the side of a dried pea.

I think tomorrow might be interesting. I'm a panellist on the topic of The Sustainable Corporation - "How the corporate sector may embrace socially responsible strategies" and I'm planning to set a cat or two among the pigeons. You see, I think the Middle East's corporate sector must embrace socially responsible strategies or die - but I'm not talking about giving a few thousand Dinars to some centre that's backed by an influential figure. Believe me, I have seen enough of 'ana mudhir' companies doling out cash to well supported causes (which they laughingly call 'CSR') to last me a lifetime, and railed against it every time I've encountered it (often to little effect). I'm not talking about that tomorrow. I'm talking about true social responsibility.

Try this on for size:

Be transparent.
Your ability to obfuscate and dissemble is being limited day by day because of the sharing and access that the Internet is driving. We know much more about you than you think - and we share a lot more opinion about you than you'd like. That movement of opinion, that tide of consumer-driven feedback is actually becoming increasingly important.

Be truthful
If there's a leak, you can not longer go out and say "there is no leak" and depend on a mendacious PR company and a compliant media. We're sharing the video of people sloshing around as you're pretending there is no problem (Sorry, 'issue'). When you need people to believe in your integrity, you'll find that you've already undermined it.

Be honest
Companies make profits. It's what they do. We don't believe for one second that your move to expand your operations is driven by a commitment to the market or a clear response to the needs of the community. It's about profitability and that's okay. But stop trying to dress up clearly commercial decisions as community commitment. And you can stop the greenwashing stuff right there, buddy. Oh, and one more thing. I'll buy a mobile network based on price and quality of service, bess. Your "giving back to the community" lip service is not a factor for me. If you were a true and active member of my community, now that's interesting. But you're not, you're just bankrolling stuff.

Be responsible
We all make mistakes (as the hedgehog said, climbing off the toilet brush). You can actually engage with communities, your customers, and explain why you made a decision (get a spine) or why you made a mistake and how you'll put it right. We expect no less.  When you don't do this, your customers with gather together and talk about what weasels you are.

Be led by your customers
Too many companies in the Middle East splosh 'customer-centric' in their brand values and then go on to treat customers like dirt. Take a close look at the telco sector and you'll see how those organisations have been punished by customers. God knows, I've taken diabolical glee in every piece of work I've done breaking a telco monopoly and you would not believe how low that fruit lay every time. You're a monopoly? Play nicely, because winds of change are abroad and they can change things a damn sight faster than you think.

Last but by no means least - be digital.
What do I get when I Google you? Do you know? TripAdvisor makes hoteliers sweat, but many other Middle East businesses are unaware of the flow of opinion - and are not searchable, responsive or digitally competent. Which is a shame, because an increasingly large number of your customers are. You can assert what you like about your company, it's products and brand. But you are no longer in control of the process of communication - your customers are talking on a wonderful scale. Your assertions are being tested by third parties with more reach than you have.

That's all I'll have time for - and believe me, my list is a sight longer than that. But I'm looking forward  to the reaction...