NEW SALIK GATES? ARGH!

Image via WikipediaGulf News today reports that a 'study' by the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority has led to them proposing two new Salik gates - one on Al Ittihad Road (AKA 'Murder Mile') and one 'in Al Ghusais' says the paper, being a tad coy about the precise location. We can only presume that 'in Al Ghusais' means 'on Beirut Street', the second major arterial road into Dubai from Sharjah. (although Damascus and 24th Streets get pretty tasty in rush hour, too)


I have to confess to finding GN's story that this proposal comes after extensive studies somewhat hard to swallow. When Salik was first 'on the anvil' to use one of GN's more memorable phrases, any study would surely have included these two routes - you don't need a study to show that Al Ittihad Road is the most congested road in the Northern Emirates and has been such for the 22-odd years I've been knocking around this place. Every morning a snarling snake of metal belches fumes and induces coronaries from the Sharjah border to Dubai, a pattern reversed every evening. In fact, the Ittihad Road traffic is actually a great deal easier these days since we lost so many people to the joys of the downturn and the bursting of the Great Dubai Property Bubble. It's even reasonably clear outside the major rush hour periods.

Similarly, Beirut Street gets pretty lousy in the rush hours but isn't too bad outside them. I've always been fond of Beirut street - it used to be the sandy shortcut I took to get to Dubai and avoid Ittihad.

Salik gates on Ittihad and Beirut will undoubtedly force traffic out to the Emirates Road (E311) and the Dubai Bypass Road (E611) where Sharjah residents will be burning three times the fuel to make the same journey. So much for the RTA's 'green' lalala...

The Emirates Road is already notorious in rush hour. In the morning, traffic backs up to the Sharjah/Dhaid road intersection, in the evenings you're starting to stop at Sonapour, the labour camp area. It's horrible - jostling, lane-swapping traffic, heavy lorries and cars vying for that little advantage, that little selfish creep ahead of the next guy's bumper. The culprit is the infamous National Paints roundabout into Sharjah where the Emirates Road narrows to three lanes from Dubai's rather more generous seven lane stretch and where the side roads introduce a tiny, but telling, clog factor with joining traffic. I do often wonder if being strongly associated with shitty traffic jams has been good, bad or neutral for the National Paints brand...

I have long had fun posting about Salik (some posts passim linked here), which has been a constant joy to me since it was first announced. The RTA, which had 'no immediate plans' to expand the scheme back in 2008 has in fact already expanded the original gates - this will be the second 'expansion' of the scheme. The pretence that Salik is about traffic management is one I find interesting given the obvious and immediate consequences of this next move (to completely stuff up the Emirates Road), especially coming as traffic volumes and congestion have reduced considerably from the heady heights of 2008. Laughably we're told by the RTA that this is because Salik has succeeded, rather than being because something like 20% of the population has nipped off home to avoid being banged up by banks bent on basking in boodle.

When examinig the motivation for expanding Salik, it's perhaps interesting to hark back to the words of 'traffic expert' Mattar Al Tayer, the RTA's Chairman, in 2007 when he predicted that Salik would one day raise revenues of Dhs600 million per year. According to GN today, it's making Dhs800 million, smashing its original target and providing, IMHO, a very real incentive to expand the scheme once again.

This move will also raise the perennial question of quite how much each journey's going to cost us. If one is to travel from Sharjah to Dubai Internet City, for instance, an additional gate would bring the current cost of the trip in tolls alone to Dhs12 (the two gates on the Sheikh Zayed Road charge as one if you pass through them immediately after the Garhoud or Maktoum Bridge gates). Will this be the case, or will we see the 'multi-gate' discount applied to the relief of drivers?

Then again, the whole proposal may just not go ahead. Ittihad Road was an obvious target for phase one of Salik and was passed over for some reason. We can only wait and see what happens this time...

Ola Abu Jarmous - Update

Many will likely remember the story of little Ola, whose sheer liveliness and spit captivated Ussa Nabulsiyeh's Sara and sparked an online fund raising effort that raised the $18,000 needed for her life-saving surgery in record time.

We got an update from the Palestine Children's Relief Fund's Steve Sosebee this morning. It reads as follows:

"I would like to update you on the status of Ola Abu Jamous from Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem. Because you responded to our appeal to help us cover her expenses to go to Florence, Italy to have a tumor removed from her brain, and then to have radiation therapy for cancer, she has had what doctors there are calling a "miraculous" recovery and will be coming back to Palestine in a week of so.

As you know, we sent this beautiful child there in November with her mother, and sent her father a month later when the tumor was discovered to be cancerous. As you can see from these photos, she is still full of spirit and life, and we thank you for making this possible. I'll let you know when she gets back to Palestine. Thank you Diya Khalil for sending me these photos. I apologize for not getting photos to you sooner, but we had very little support there due to our almost nonexistent contacts in Florence. Thanks again for all of your support and help in saving this beautiful child's life."

I'm wearing a stupid grin this morning...

Benihana Kuwait - Silence! I sue you!

MyBenihana Experience

A few days back I posted about Benihana opening up at the Avenues and yesterday night I decided to pass by with Nat and try it out. The service wasn’t too bad for a restaurant that’s just been open for a few days and the staff were really friendly. The restaurant itself is made up of islands and bars with a grill in the middle of each one. You sit around the grill and the chef will come to your table and prepare the food right in front of you which makes things entertaining. It’s actually why I prefer sitting at the bar in Japanese restaurants in general, since you can talk to the chef and watch them put your dish together. The problem with my experience last night though was with the food, it was disappointing to say the least.



We ordered beef negimayaki for starters followed by an Orange Blossom maki and a Hibachi Chicken. The negimaki arrived looking good and was probably the best thing we had there even though I prefer Maki’s negimaki which has a richer teriyaki sauce. The Orange Blossom was very ordinary, wouldn’t order it again. Now the Hibachi chicken which is basically grilled chicken, that was the worst. The chicken was very chewy (I could swear it was undercooked if not raw) and tasted terrible. Even after I had the chef add some more teriyaki sauce in hopes of improving the taste it didn’t work. I tried to dip it into the sauces that came with the chicken but it was hard to figure out if they were actually making things worse or not. Nat only ate one piece of chicken and left the rest while I needed my protein since I’m on a strict diet and forced myself to eat my whole plate (I can do that) but the after taste was really bad. Even the rice and the veggies that came with it tasted bad AND were under cooked. Once we left I considered picking up a frozen yogurt from Pinkberry even though I hate frozen yogurts but I just needed something to get rid of the aftertaste. A few moments later we ended up at Chocolate Bar ordering the gooey chocolate cake (bye bye diet).



I shot the two videos above of the chef preparing our meal. Benihana are known for the live shows they perform when preparing your dish so I was expecting to see [This] but ended up with the above . Would I go back to Benihana? No I wouldn’t. Their sashimi and maki’s are pretty cheap (KD1.5 for 5 pieces of Salmon sashimi for example) but there are two other Japanese restaurants at the Avenues, Wasabi and Maki, and I would prefer either one of those to Benihana.
___________________________________________________________________

The above is a reproduction of Mark Makhoul's original post on Kuwaiti blog 2:48AM talking about what he thought of newly opened Kuwaiti restaurant Benihana. The franchise holder of the restaurant then proceeded to issue a lawsuit against Mark, presumably with the intention of scaring him into taking down his post or perhaps agreeing to post something altogether more fawning. The company then faced a wave of public anger at its actions, choosing to ignore this, deleting negative comments from its Facebook page and blocking those who commented. Both Benihana Kuwait and the franchisor, Benihana of Tokyo, have consistently refused comment on this shameful little episode.

This has already turned into a social media mismanagement case study that will run and run. They're a laughing stock. Millions of people around the world have read the story: Fast Company, BoingBoing, TheNextWeb and others have posted it (let alone traditional news media around the world). Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people have seen the story on Twitter. And it's not going to go away - bloggers around the region and beyond are posting copies of Mark's OP today - on blogs, Facebook and other social media platforms.

Already, this case is prominent when you Google Benihana - and it is, of course, on their Wikipedia entry. If you're looking for Benihana Kuwait, this nasty little story is all you get. Surely these people realise that this is already game over - that if they don't reconsider their actions and act to stop this (and stopping it rests, as it always has, entirely in their hands) that they won't have a restaurant left at the end of the day? It is NOT going to go away.

The case is due to have its first day in court on the 8th March. I would URGE Benihana of Tokyo to finally act responsibly and rein in its idiotic licensee before the damage to the Benihana brand globally becomes irreperable. This will start to hurt other Benihana licensees who have had no part in this. All Benihana has to do is drop the case.

For fun and larks, you can follow the hashtag #BenihanaKUW on Twitter.

Sharjah Shipwrecks

We live by the sea in Northern Sharjah. The other day, after the bout of bad weather that trashed our brand new and unused gazebo, we noticed a ship washed up on the Sharjah Corniche, seemingly dug into the sand back first, a small tanker by the looks of it. It's not often you see shipwrecks on the beach by your house and we were mildly curious as to quite how you manage to end up beached in Sharjah - it's sort of hard to miss, so it can't really have been a case of lost at sea. She's officially a shipwreck - more info here. Today, a second ship ended up smack bang next to the first one. Now there are two shipwrecks on our beach!

To wreck one ship on a beach may be regarded a misfortune, to wreck two looks like carelessness.

The Sea Mermid, the first ship, has now been joined by the Lady Rana, quite a large vessel (81 metres long, in fact). There's a pervasive stench of hydrocarbons in the air. We're wondering if a third will turn up. It seems so very odd that two ships should be beached in two incidents and end up feet away from each other. The Lady Rana had a very lucky escape indeed, at least she's in one piece and missed the vicious stack of rocks to her right. She's flying a Panamanian flag, but two years ago was flying a North Korean one. Shipspotters have already got her down as beached in Sharjah!

The Sea Mermid is a double mystery. Did they get the name painted on the cheap by the world's only dyslexic maritime signwriter?

Emirates

Image via WikipediaThis excellent article in the New York Times got me thinking about Dubai's greatest success story - its airline, Emirates. I've been flying with Emirates since the 1980s and it's long been my airline of choice. I'm a fan and I don't mind letting you know it.

One thing that has always amazed me about Emirates is how the management team, based around the near-legendary figure of Maurice Flanagan, has managed to turn two leased 'planes into one of the world's leading airlines. I don't care how much of Dubai's money was poured into it or how much support from the government EK has had in the past - the sheer achievement of creating the organisation, facilities and partnerships needed for something on this scale within one man's lifetime is breathtaking.

I've had my off moments with EK, alright (one story ended up with me being flagged in their reservation system as a 'Rude Pax', which made it into Arabian Business magazine, thank you very much Rhys bloody Jones). But I have had very many more satisfactory experiences and even occasionally been delighted.

Which is what it's all about, really. Exceeding high expectations is so hard to do - and yet EK so often manages just that.

You listening, HSBC? Good, just checking...

Google and Wael Ghonim - The Horns of a Dilemma

Image via WikipediaEgypt has a hero, albeit a reluctant one, in the shape of Wael Ghonim, the young activist behind the 'We are all Khaled Said' Facebook page. Imprisoned in a blindfold for twelve days, his release apparently brokered by Egyptian businessman Naguib Suweiris, Ghonim is now free and his first words to media were eagerly picked up and relayed around the world - his bravery and resolution were inspirational and are being widely credited with reinvigorating protests yesterday.

The media, as media does, scrambled for details on this new hero. Until his disappearance, Ghonim was an anonymous figure outside a small circle of activists organising the growing protest movement using online tools - although his Facebook page reached over 50,000 people. Luckily, he is a marketing manager at Google, so his official Google piccie was quickly procured and everyone had a nice, clear image of Ghonim. In front of a Google logo. The media also had a nice, snappy explanation of who Ghonim was. He was a 'Google Executive'.

'Google Executive' is brilliant. It's a neat, two-word characterisation that gives the guy some weight, some background, gives us a sense of just who this guy is. Together with the photo, it also neatly ties this young revolutionary activist who was at least partly responsible for bringing Egypt out onto the street and its government to its knees, to Google. Dubai newspaper Seven Days went even further today, with its splash screaming 'Google Chief Slams Traitor Claims'. 'Google Chief' reads so much better than 'young activist', does it not?

Google must be torn. On the one hand, there's little doubt that Larry Page, Sergei Brin and many others over at Goog Mansions would privately support and applaud the freedom of expression, activism and hope that Ghonim undoubtedly represents, let alone his courage. But on the other hand, this is a young man whose actions have helped threaten to bring down a government. His strong association with Google, which does business with, and increasingly depends on the support of, governments (some of which have much in common with that in Egypt), must be giving Google a great deal of pause for thought. It opens Google to the possible implication of involvement in all of this, if only  implicit involvement - surely, critics would aver, a company with the technological resources of Google would know what was going on here. The charge is bunkum, but that rarely stops charges being laid. And Ghonim must have been getting up to at least some of this stuff on company time, surely?

Yet Google can't sack Ghonim. The outcry around the world as this company that stands for the values of freedom and choice sacks a hero would be enormous. Can it champion him? Not without ensuring virtually every government in the world is deeply suspicious about the company, its motives and its staff. All governments, as Wikileaks has taught us, have something to be ashamed of. The best outcome for the corporate people at Google would probably be a quiet resignation and a few public words thanking Google and exonerating it of involvement.

You can imagine the conversation. 'You call him.' 'No, you call him.'

Service With A Smile.

Image via WikipediaMany of us are inspired to post on blogs by life's little hiccups rather than its delights. It's the part of human nature that fills our news with death and destruction, with Chi-Chi the panda's new baby relegated to the furry animal slot at the very back end of slow news days broadcasts. It's why the traffic slows for the accident, but not for the family picnicking on the verge. We're more interested in the negative than we are in good times. It's one of the reasons why Gulf News' local news pages are such an utterly compelling read.

Well, I'm bucking the trend. I've got something good to say. Al Ghandi Electronics, the distributor for Philips, has the best customer service out there. Bar none. It's stunning.

The washing machine's 's on/off switch bust. Put in a call to the boys and girls at Al Ghandi's Dubai service centre and got a woman who used my mobile number to access my record on their database, which held all our details from the last service visits they'd made. She told me the service callout would take 2-3 days as they had to ensure they had the part to repair our machine. I got a text shortly after with a service ticket number.

Two days later, in the morning, I got a call from the technician who wanted to set an appointment to come to the house. He asked for directions and told me precisely what the service fees would be. We agreed on 5pm and that was lovely.

At 5pm precisely two blue-shirted technicians were outside the house. Fifteen minutes later they left. They were pleasant, knowledgeable and efficient. Our washing machine was fixed.

This isn't the first time they've come out. They fixed the broken seal on our oven a few months ago and we'd called them out years ago for our last washing machine (the reason we bought Philips again was the service we'd received). Every time they've left me looking like a beached guppy as they drove pleasantly away, waving goodbye.

It always amazes me that this amazes me. But it stands as amazing customer service here in the UAE. So this is for them. Why the rest of 'em can't do this is beyond me.

Awesome

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI know I'm a grumpy old man, but I do have a number of pet hates. You know, things that any reasonable human being would rail against like grocers' apostrophes (Avocadoe's 2 for £1) or the awful American habit that has crept across the Atlantic of referring to everything as awesome. It's all too often accompanied by a specific pronunciation, AWESUUUUM! It helps to assume the expression of a particularly stupid chihuahua presented with a chocolate a moment before it has been smacked on the back of the head with a cricket bat.

It's like a linguistic background radiation. That Kit-Kat was awesome! You breathed in and out again? Awesome! This is all so totally, awesome! Wouldn't it be awesome if they have fish on as a special today?

No. It wouldn't.

I think my least favourite thing about this over-use of the blasted word is that if a Kit-Kat is awesome, what is the sight of two million Egyptians gathered in brotherhood in Cairo's Tahrir Square? What is the sight of them praying together, Christians and Muslims alike? What is the sound of two million voices raised in unison demanding that Hosni Mubarak resign on this 'Day of Leaving'? What is all that hope, that joy and that peacefully expressed, human want for justice, peace and freedom?

Yes, people. This is awesome. Mind-bombingly, thrillingly awesome. I have the feeling, the first time since that awful low of the early hours of Thursday morning when it looked like it might all be over after the terrible violence from Mubarak's thugs throughout the night, that these voices might, finally, be heard. I'm supposed to be editing, but I'm glued to AlJazeera, whose team must surely now win every award in television, journalism and sheer bloody minded determination this year. They're using satphones to broadcast their images - cameras stolen, office closed, license withdrawn and journalists under threat and yet they're still maintaining world-class non-stop programming. Awesome.

Have a flip through these when you've got a moment. The amazing images of photojournalists Samuel Aranda and Iason Athanasiadis that bring this all home. They're awesome too.

Benihana Kuwait. What you can do.

I'm sorry, I know I'm going on about this but I believe strongly that it is wrong and should be addressed by the very public that Benihana Kuwait has shown such contempt for in its actions.

I sent this message to Benihana Tokyo, the company responsible for the international Benihana franchise,  tonight. You can do the same - cut and paste mine, write your own, whatever. Just use the contact form linked right here.

Hi

I'm contacting you to let you know that I, and very many others across the Middle East, am angry and concerned that one of your franchisees has seen fit to issue suit against a blogger who posted a negative review of a poor experience in Kuwait's Benihana franchise.

The resulting online outcry will not go away, more and more mainstream media are picking up the story and it is highly likely to be covered by international media. It's a landmark suit - not only against Kuwait's most popular blog, not only unfair but also the first time that a company in the Middle East - a region with its own issues with censorship and repression - has sued a blogger.

Benihana Kuwait's maladroit handling of this issue has already created a social media case study that will run and run. It's time to stop this.

I urge you to pressure your franchisee into dropping this unwise suit. It has already caused untold damage to the Benihana brand in this region - you can act before it does so internationally.

The guys at 2:48AM shouldn't have to defend an expensive, scary and vicious - let alone frivolous - suit from a corporate company in this way for expressing their opinion as consumers. It's got to stop.

Thanks.

PS: A chronology of this goof-up is now up over at the UAE Community Blog.

Why The Benihana Story Matters

Image via WikipediaIt's been amazing to watch the Benihana Kuwait story spiral into the stratosphere. That the story has such a strong pair of legs is squarely down to the fact it matters deeply to very many people in the region and around the world - consumer opinion expressed in a blog crushed by a lawsuit filed by a company.

The story(I posted this yesterday which has more detail) was carried across a number of blogs yesterday (and will be in more today, doubtless). As SeaBee pointed out: "I wonder if they're beginning to understand how business works in the real world. You know, the place where customers have a say too. Where bullying and threatening creates a backlash."

It got taken up by a fast-growing community on Twitter (use the hashtag #BenihanaKUW to see the conversations) and then someone found that Benihana Kuwait had a Facebook page. The resulting flood of comments made it quite clear that public opinion was 100% against the idea of a company suing a blogger and expressed shock, outrage and a deep rooted anger.

Later in the day, the papers picked up on the story, The National, Gulf News and 24x7 all ran stories which, at least in the case of the first two, ran in print today. And now million-subscriber website The Next Web has picked it up - which is the start of what, IMHO, is an inevitable move into the international media.

Why so much outrage? It's a complicated mixture - most of the online people who have commented know perfectly well that Benihana's reaction is unacceptable today. Consumers have a new freedom to express their views and opinions in ever-expanding forums and it's a right we're not willing to give up easily. We're not going to tolerate being bullied or seeing the truth repressed. On a larger scale, that same sense of empowerment and fairness is driving some reasonably large collections of people, a million of them on the streets of Cairo today. Without wanting to 'big up' the Benihana story, I do believe it is a microcosm of the bigger one we're watching unveil in Tahrir Square.

We're talking to Kuwaiti blogger Mark on the Dubai Eye Techno Tuesday show today at 11am Dubai Time. If you're Dubai-based, you can catch it on 103.8FM or if not you can listen to the livestream at http://www.dubaieye1038.com  and follow the hashtag #DubaiToday.

Update: Here's the AudioBoo of today's talk between Jessica Swann, myself and 2:48AM's Mark  As many will know, this afternoon Benihana Kuwait chose to delete the comments from its Facebook page, one of the most obnoxious gestures of absolute contempt for the views of the general public - its customers and potential customers.