The Joy of Editing

Image via WikipediaI have taken against a number of words and phrases as a consequence of my nasty writing habit. Some of these are insidious little things that creep into manuscripts like cockroaches, infesting decent prose with their chitinous scuttling.

It's odd, but the vast majority of sentences containing the word 'that', for instance, are improved by its removal. I have started taking against that in a mildly unreasoning way, even attacking unsuspecting thats as I walk down the street. (Have you ever walked into a grocer and complained about his apostrophes? No, me neither, but I have oft been sore tempted, I can tell you. Avocadoe's my arse!)

I have just purged a manuscript of the word 'before', which is almost always a symptom of lazy writing. Excising before almost always leads to better sentence structure or to forcing you to rewrite the sentence more elegantly.

He stood before walking quickly out of the room.

Not only includes a before, it also contains two other weasel words - stood and walking. We 'stand' so rarely and standing is such a passive thing to do. Stood goes 90% of the time to be replaced by a more active occupation or, ideally, no explanation of the movement - we can infer it. Similarly 'walking'. We run, jump, dash, fly, leap and race. Why bother walking? It's so humdrum.

Put and putting are also very passive ways to describe an action which can often either go (giving way to inference) or be replaced with a more active description. We rarely put things down - we drop them, bang them, toss them or perhaps even gently place them.

And then there's 'and then', which I recognise is a nasty little habit I have to consciously sweep up after. It's always redundant. Friends have other habits like 'just' - and 'started to' is an indication that you can usually lose the action altogether. Things starting to happen rarely interest us - it's the happening that engages.

Any contributions to my list of words up with which I shall not put are more than welcome!

Sorry for the writing post. Normal service resumed shortly...

Oh Noes, My Shiny!

"Hi. I've come to collect my Shiny."
"Ah yes, it's you. Come in. Sit down. Tea? Coffee?"
"Neither thanks. Just my Shiny."
"Sure, sure, no problem. Just give me a second to get organised here. You sure you wouldn't like a drink? Mirinda? Teem?"
"No. No drinks thanks. Just my Shiny."
"Ahahahaa. Yes. Right. One tick then. Judith? Judith? Oh, where has that blasted girl gone. Here. Try one of these."
"What are they?"
"Dates. Traditional welcome from the mystical orient. I've got some ghawa around here somewhere. Just so that you can taste a little Arab hospitality."
"Look, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't want tea or coffee, Mirinda or Teem, dates or khawa. I just want my Shiny."
"Yes, yes, I know. Everyone gets so excitable about these things. I don't know. Ah! Here she is! And there you are!"
"Thank you, what's this?"
"Why, it's a nmkl pjkl ftmch of course!"
"But I don't want a nmkl pjkl ftmch. I want my shiny."
"That is your shiny. It looks like a shiny, feels like a shiny doesn't it?"
"Well, no. It looks like a nmkl pjkl ftmch. And feels like one. It's not as shiny. And why is there a string attached to it?"
"So we can stay attached to it. We'll take it back if you try and alter it or do anything with it we don't like. that's the big difference between shinies and nmkl pjkl ftmchs, really."
"But I bought a bloody Shiny from you, a proper shiny Shiny with 'Dare to dream' and 'Live to love in a graceful fairytale' and 'Your desert paradise comes to life' plastered all over it."
"It's the same thing, stop being so obdurate. It's no different."
"Except it's called a nmkl pjkl ftmch and it's got strings attached to it."
"Stop complaining."
"I will not stop complaining. I bought a Shiny from you, where is it?"
"I don't think you're making things any better for yourself you know. You'll be running out of time soon."
"Out of time?"
"Yes, you can only stay here two minutes at a time. After that we have to jab you with needles and take money from you."
"But I bought a Shiny!"
"No you didn't, you bought a nmkl pjkl ftmch. And if you don't like it..."
Omnes: "You can always leave!"

(If you want more Shiny dialogues, they're here and here and even here.)

Meh

Image via WikipediaSome days you just take a look around you and throw up your hands.

Electricity and water charges in Dubai are going up by 15%, a rise that applies to expatriates only.

New labour card fees are to be announced soon, we're told - hot on the heels of the news that labour cards are to be renewed on a two year cycle rather than the current three year cycle. And somehow I don't think they're going to be talking about cutting the cost of the cards to reflect their 33% reduction in validity.

A top Dubai police official is calling for a ban on parades following the chaos (or fun, depends on how you look at it) of National Day - Abu Dhabi police have confirmed a whopping tally of 25,000 bookings and 300 accidents around National Day. HSBC have a confusing and irritating new phone banking service that depends on you using the telephone they have registered for you.

Adding to that lot, we have finally had it confirmed that, in the UAE at least, 'freehold' actually means 'usufruct'. What the hell is 'usufruct'? It's "...the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged." Seriously.

I don't know where to start...

UAE Residency Visa Validity Cut

Image via WikipediaGulf News and The National today both report on a new move to cut labour card validity to two years instead of three. This means that residency visas will also now only be valid for two years.

Quite apart from allowing us to look forward to a more frequent bruise on the inside of our right arms along with the attendant paperwork, the move will obviously mean shelling out for a visa, labour card and health card more often. Rather brilliantly, Gulf News attempts to quote the rather confusing story filed by the Emirates' national news agency WAM where it appears to assert that the move will save everyone money. That WAM story appears to have been filed in Arabic only, BTW - I couldn't find hide nor hair of it in English.

According to GN's piece, 70% of all labour cards are cancelled before two years have passed, so reducing their term to two years will save UAE industry Dhs678 million. Apparently total license and work permit fees for 2009 were Dhs2.25 billion.

Let us not dwell churlishly on the fact that 2009 had to have been a record year for cancelled visas because of the good old downturn and the enormous outflux of labourers, let alone all those estate agents, from Dubai and the Northern Emirates. Oh no.


A short time spent trawling the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners website for information on the cost of visa paperwork (also called DNRD, the Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department. You'd think they'd make up their minds, wouldn't you?) not only yields some interesting tips on building websites and a peek into some fascinating minds, but also tends to result in returning 'Under Construction' whenever you approach anything that might look like being useful information. Thank goodness for e-government.

However, DubaiFAQs estimates the cost of a visa and the slew of papers, permits and cards that goes with it to be as much as Dhs6,000. If we decrease the validiy of visas by one third (3 years to 2 years), we can perhaps assume that visas will effectively cost us 33% more rather than 70% less. Not only does that cost us more money, it means residence visa revenues would increase to a handy 3 billion dirhams at the, presumably unusually low, 2009 rate.

The move will also result in enhancing 'competitiveness and movement in the job market', GN quotes a Labour Ministry official as saying.

It might well do for all I know. But all I can see is that nasty, dehumanising shuffle around the Satwa clinic and that brutal little needle moment looming closer on the horizon.

Why The UAE Skype Block Is Pointless

Image via WikipediaThe next move in the transformation of the telecommunications industry would appear to be afoot - Skype's off to the cloud (see this piece from TechCrunch). As eny fule no, Skype is currently blocked by the UAE's telcos as it doesn't hold an operating license in the country.

It's already starting to seem a little quaint and old fashioned, this idea of issuing operating licenses to offer telephony services. It reminds me a tad of the good old days when I first arrived in the UAE to start a new business publishing magazines. I quickly fell foul of the Ministry of Information and during the rather painful interview with the Man From The Ministry, it became clear that he was a tad confused about where my 'publishing house' was. It was in the boot of my car, in the shape of a PC. Having been an 'early adopter' of desktop publishing in the UK, I didn't need compositors, Linotronics, make-up artists, illustrators, designers, photo-editors and teams of writers.

Similarly, you don't need massive buildings housing ranks of switches to sustain pay-per-minute circuit-switched telephony any more. The cost of the infrastructure required to support communication has plummeted and operators are springing up using low-cost wireless technologies rather than all that expensive last-mile copper and fibre. At the same time, IP telephony means that we can use the robust and high speed infrastructure of the Internet to support both voice and video calling. Increasingly number-independent with our online social identities, we can access each other freely now without having to pay dollars per minute for that access - or possibly without even having to know who's providing us with that access. Apple, for instance, has been investigating the rather marvellous idea of the 'simless mobile', which would make Apple your telco, not the telco whose network you're roaming on. Not surprisingly, Europe's telcos have reacted with alarm at that one.

With Google and Microsoft both offering video calling integrated into their core platforms, as I've pointed out before, it's pretty hard to actually block these sites the way Etisalat and Du both block Skype. But if Skype moves onto the cloud, it'll be integrating with other platforms - TechCrunch, for instance, mentions LinkedIn but FaceBook has to be a top contender for Skypegration. However things develop, it rather looks as if blocking Skype will soon be No Longer An Option, because it'll be like grains of sand flowing around a jar of marbles.

The question is how much longer the UAE's operators will be snugly nestled in the cosy protectionism currently afforded them by the TRA. Because that protectionism is staving off the inevitable - and the inevitable, when it comes, may well do so with astounding speed.

Ye can't block innovation.

Kulluna Khalifa

I wandered down to the Sharjah Corniche this evening and spent twenty minutes snapping away at the procession of madly decorated cars, getting sprayed with silly string, beeped at, waved at and generally enjoying the atmosphere of celebration and delighted joy that swept everyone, even the poor expats caught in the huge end-to-end motorcade. It was the kind of buzz you'd only get from going to a big footie match or a Formula One race, everyone united in celebration and being jolly nice to everyone else. For a people normally so reserved and private, this public demonstration is always a remarkable reminder that national identity is utterly critical to the people of the UAE.

'Kulluna Khalifa' (as I explained yesterday, it means 'We are all Khalifa' in reference to HH Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed, the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the President of the UAE) was the motto of this year's celebrations, although 'Kulluna Blissed Out and Only Delighted' would have been closer to the mark.

Bring together hyper-nationalism, a reason to get together and be joyful and ubiquitous car culture and the result is remarkable. Shots I didn't get included the guy who had totally painted his car in poster paint, the guy who had 100% covered his car in UAE flag coloured feather boas and the car of grinning youths who'd painted their faces in the flag (the light was bad by then and my snap of them was blurred, dammit). The police were also in evidence, appearing to be nicking those who had flouted the 'keep your back windscreen clear' rule.

All in all good, harmless fun and quite, quite silly.

National Day

Image via WikipediaEveryone's going potty about National Day and the lads have been busily decorating their cars - already the streets are littered with Landcruisers with red, white and black feather boas decorating them nose to tail, Altimas covered in UAE flag stickers and FJ Cruisers with pictures of Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Khalifa all over them. The street lights have the mandatory LED light strings in green, white and blue (because black lights don't work, people) and billboards are shouting out 'Kulluna Khalifa'! ('We are all Khalifa' after Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the President of the UAE)

Abu Dhabi police have issued an order forbidding people to completely cover their car windows with flags or to hang out of cars, sit on the doors or roofs or in other ways behave madly. It's very brave of them, but I can't help feeling that there's a touch of the Canutes to their effort - tomorrow is going to be one great parade as an outbreak of festivity, national pride and car culture come together like the Dead Sea closing after Moses and that lot nipped through.

I love the story of the formation of the Emirates: the transition from the Trucial States (back in 1853 the Brits made them all sign up to stop bashing each other and raiding unsuspecting passing dhows, hence 'trucial') to the UAE was accomplished in less than two years after a Brit in a bowler hat landed at Sharjah Airport with the news in his briefcase that Her Majesty's Britannic Government had (finally) realised the game was up, the Empire was no more and we were generally doing a Pontius Pilate on every obligation East of Suez.

This gave these guys a couple of years to define the constitution, acceptable system of governance, administration and identity of a modern nation state. They hadn't really been, errr, trained for it. The remarkable figures of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum were to play a critical role in forging the United Arab Emirates out of the messy and time consuming negotiations that at one time or another involved Oman, Qatar and Bahrain too.

Let's not forget that there was precious little infrastructure in place and that only a few short years before, people here were still living in barasti houses - the ruler of Ajman didn't quit the old fort (now the museum) until 1967, there were still tribes and Dubai was a small town centered around Bastakia, Shindaga and the souk of Deira. It wasn't until the late 1950s that Sheikh Rashid started a programme of development and modernisation that included dredging Dubai Creek so that larger boats could come in, leading eventually to the visionary (people at the time thought quite mad) project to create Port Rashid. These men transitioned from being semi-nomadic tribal leaders to the heads of a modern nation state. Their achievements were truly remarkable.

I have some old video footage of Sheikh Rashid, a man that used to take 5am tours around his city as it was being built, in true Arabian Nights style. He's sitting negotiating with some rather stuffy looking Brits and his expression is magical, a sort of 'Yeah, right lads' look on him as if he knows what they're up to. He probably did, too. This is the man that built the Dubai World Trade Centre when there was no world trade here, who blew a letter F in the desert so big you can see it from space - this was to become Jebel Ali Free Zone, another of his projects that had people at the time shaking their heads and saying that the Sheikh had lost the head. I've got video of the blowing up of the desert, too - blokes with mad sideburns and really, really wide collars presiding over the Wile E Coyote style plunger and then BOOM.

The complexity of negotiations to hammer a federation out of these disparate coastal Sheikhdoms was horrendous - land negotiations alone were a huge problem, let alone the different vested interests, rivalries and claims everyone had to settle. It was all made worse by the fact that the dirty deed had been done by a Labour government - and the Tories had hinted strongly that they'd undo it. So the Trucial chappies didn't get down to it as seriously as they might right up until it became clear that the Tories were as full of it as the average backed-up septic tank.

The result has been the Federation of states that make up the UAE - clockwise: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain Ras Al Khaimah (which didn't sign up 'till a year after the others, holding out for better representation at the Federal level, apparently) and Fujairah. All have coastal and inland holdings, dating back to when the tribes would winter by the sea but escape to the mountains and oases in the unbearable heat of summer) all have territory nested in each other (Go to Hatta, the inland town of Dubai, and you'll cross Sharjah, Ajman and Oman on your way) because the territorial division was done along the lines of tribal affiliations and all have totally separate police forces, municipalities and, in the main, public services. And yet all are part of one country and one nation.

The result is often quixotic at best - but it works, somehow. Eventually. Mostly.

So what if they struggle at times to get things like the legal system to work properly? They defined a nation in two years and built it in (so far) 39 - an infrastructure that is still, of course, being built out in breathtaking, if sometimes slightly crass, style. The Brits were decimalising and worrying about Europe when the UAE was being born. I was personally involved in making my first ginger beer plants and hating girls at the time. I have since, by the way, continued to like ginger beer and considerably improved my opinion of girls. But I can't claim to have built a nation...

So here's a National Day toast: good luck to them, warts and all. We're here because it's better than there, after all, aren't we?

Mind you, take a look at the lads all hooning around tomorrow and spare a thought for quite how bonkers they're all going to go for the 40th National Day next year. That I have to see! :)

(UAE National Day is celebrated tomorrow, the 2nd December)

Strange Searches

Image via WikipediaI occasionally dip into SiteMeter to take a look at what brings people here and the results are always wildly unpredictable. Sometimes people search for mad things or things that are completely at odds with the content here but which happen because of some odd pairing of words. Sometimes people look for the oddest of things. And sometimes the arcane laws of Google and SEO mean that people actually find what they're looking for here, rather than in the 'right' place. The titles are linked to the pages you gets with the searches...

Fake Plastic Whore Face
This little joy from Google Germany leads to a post about one of those Dubai bashing articles, so the lone pervert bashing away at his (her?) keyboard in search of odd things got rather bilked by this search. I wonder what it is?

Negative reaktion crédit agricole green banking
I'm quite proud of this one, because all sorts of searches like "crédit agricole green banking", "credit agricole greenwashing connery" and, in fact, 'Negative reaction crédit agricole green banking" get a first page result and so lots and lots of people have dropped by to see what the fuss was all about. The Times sums it all up quite nicely here. The ads, as egregious a piece of greenwashing as you could want to see, don't run any more, but I frequently use them in workshops and the like as the perfect greenwashing example. Oh, and those hotel towel washing notices, too...

Tantalise your tastebuds
This is Google irony at its finest.  In posting a rant about this most irritating phrase used in hotel radio advertising, I have now ensured that I own the damn thing on Google. I'm obviously happier about owning "nmkl pjkl ftmch"...

mish mushkila ya habibi meaning
It's always amused me wildly that the most popular thing I've written in something like three years of bloggery was the silly post about 'Ten Word Arabic', which posited that there are only ten words you really need to know in order to survive in the Arab World. Apart from being picked up by a big US blog (which saw a huge and wholly transient spike in readers) it has consistently led to people landing here whenever they search "Arabic Akid" or "what does arabic mushkila mean"? (It means you're screwed, pally). So I suppose it at least does some good...

what is mineralised water
It rather surprises me that this silly little blog in the middle of nowhere is the second search result for this phrase, but all sorts of search phrases such as "Aquafina TDS" lead to here, which is another great source of pride for me as my post explores the fact that Aquafina is tap water that is filtered and then re-mineralised with a mix supplied by Pepsi, something that few people appear to know and which the water's branding conveniently avoids.


social media tart
Another slice of Google irony - in giving myself this label I have now thoroughly conferred it upon myself - this here blog is number two search result for the phrase. I'm a little less certain about wanting ownership of the honorific these days... :)

Probability of sharks at hamra beach at ras al khaimah
I wonder if this was someone wondering whether to go swimming or checking that he really did see what he thought he saw. Or maybe just someone with a creative take on probability theory...

Fake this, fake that
I get people landing here looking for all sorts of fakery, including fake plastic chicken, fake plastic trumpets, fake plastic pottery and so on and so on ad infinitum.  Never Fake Plastic Trees, for some reason...

Nipple souk
I am truly at a loss. IS there a nipple souk somewhere in the world, filled with stalls of tiny temptations? Or is it just a mildly dysfunctional fantasy? Only a search can tell...

Strange searches
Posting these strange searches has meant I now own this phrase too. Because Google gives blogs more SEO than I would (strange, but true) argue they deserve, top level text (ie blog post titles) tends to do really, really well in search. I consciously decide not to title posts for SEO preferring instead a title consistent with the content, but what I lose in SEO I gain in the collection of oddball searches that occasionally lighten my days...

Thotty Mous

It has puzzled me for some time. Does anyone care to hazard a guess as to what animal, vegetable, mineral or quality of thing a 'Thotty Mous' could possibly be? I suspect the clue may lie in the Arabic above, but I'd not go betting on that...

The Problem With Numbers

Image via WikipediaToday's edition of Dubai tabloid 7Days carries the Sharjah taxi driver's protest as its front page splash under the headline "Take the deal or go home". It's precisely what the cabbies were told by the UAE's Ministry of Labour, which has upheld the right of the five Sharjah taxi companies to unilaterally impose a charge on all drivers of 52 fils ($0.14) for every kilometer they drive. That 7Days gives the story such prominence is highly laudable - particularly as the other newspapers treat it as a minor and unimportant story barely worthy of metion.

Charging a taxi driver paid on a commission-only basis for actually driving is an act of genius, you'd have to admit.

I have posted before at some length about the awful conditions under which these drivers are working - and about the lack of coverage being afforded the whole dispute by the local news media who, while quick to protest their disintermediation with cries of context and analysis, have given us little more than compliance and silence. Gulf News, in particular has chosen to bury the story, something it rather does again today by featuring the dispute as a decoration to the gutter on page 6 under the roaring headline, 'Taxi drivers protest salary deduction'.

Gulf News says that 'More than 100 taxi drivers gathered yesterday morning outside the Ministry of Labour...' which is interesting given 7Days' claim that 'An estimated 2,000 drivers descended on the Ministry's offices in the emirate yesterday'. The National agrees with 7Days' figure of 2,000 protesting drivers, further reporting on the resignations of 600 drivers and police dispersing the crowd with the threat of fines. All rather different to Gulf News' sparse report.

So what is it? More than 100 or some 2,000? Can Gulf News really not tell the difference? Presumably not, as it goes on to report that 'dozens' of drivers have refused to return to work, which is also a slightly different scale to 2,000 protestors, 600 resignations on the spot and previous reports of hundreds of striking drivers.

Khaleej Times also relegates the story to page 6, but gives it more space. It rather conveniently omits any tally of protestors. Those pesky numbers again.

Estimates vary wildly, but of something like 5,000 taxi drivers employed in Sharjah, over the past month the vast majority have been on strike or taken some form of action to protest the new charges, which render their lives here virtually untenable. Many have said they will now cancel their visas and leave - and every driver I have spoken to has expressed an intention to quit as soon as they can. I can quite believe The National's figure of 600 resignations yesterday alone - and that this number was only limited by the Ministry of Labour's ability to manage the flood of resignations.

So there we have it. This is either the largest ever labour dispute in the UAE or its a few dozen cabbies making trouble. What do you think?

Just think. These resignations could even affect demand for new Ford Mondeos...

(I am actually amazed at how much ranting I've done on this subject in the past - it's all linked here if you want to trawl the backstory.)