Five Smarter Tweeting Tips

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Just in case they're of any use, here are five smarter Tweeting tips triggered by things I've been noticing cropping up on Twitter recently.

1) Want retweets? Write for retweets!
Just in case you're asking, 117 characters is a 'retweetable' tweet - you can retweet without having to edit my tweet. In fact, much of my Twitter editing time goes into editing other people's tweets so I can share them. That's partly my fault, I have a long twitter handle (this has long been a subject of debate, but it's my name and I'm sticking to it) - but it's also people not thinking about where their tweet is headed. This is not a good thing, as generally you're sharing a tweet because you want to share information widely (otherwise, surely, you'd just be keeping it to yourself!) and retweets are grist to the sharing mill. With this in mind, it's generally a good idea to keep Tweets to around the 120 character mark. And, of course, a link will further reduce your character count! This means some judicious editing, but doesn't mean you have to sacrifice 'proper' language.

2) Edit like you mean it
I've come across a few posts out there about 'why writers should tweet' and the like and, while I generally agree that Twitter is a great way for content producers (that's what we call writers these days. It's so much more practical than 'novelist', isn't it?) to connect with audiences, I think it has a much more powerful role to play. You see, Twitter is a fantastic editing tool. The discipline required to get your message across in 140 characters (or, in my case, in 117 characters) is considerable. But it can usually be done - and without resorting to eight year-old text speak - with a little consideration and some editing.

The skills used in twediting are the same skills we use when editing writing - boiling sentences down so they say what you mean without unecessary verbiage and redundancies, rephrasing sentences to make them crisper and clearer. In fact, rare is the tweet that couldn't use a quick edit.

I thought I'd just pick a tweet at random to show what I mean:

The weather is so poetic this morning;the inspiration is just itching 2 get out doesn't it?We hope that ur inspiration is fully active 2day

This tweet left one character .What can we do to improve it? Well, we can get rid of 'this morning' as we know it's the morning. We could also get rid of 'doesn't it?', although you could argue this is an invitation to engagement, which would be a good thing. So we'll just change it to 'isn't it?'. And we can now ditch the 'text speak' and be left with a properly punctuated tweet of 120 characters that hasn't lost a thing:

The weather's so poetic; the inspiration is itching to get out, isn't it? We hope your inspiration's fully active today!

3) Delete Redundancies 
One word you can almost always ditch, in twitter and MSs alike, is 'that' - a word responsible for almost as many wasted bytes as Tim Berners-Lee's //. It's almost always redundant. Phrases like 'somewhere else' can become 'elsewhere' and save five characters. And an odd thing I frequently see is hashtagged tweets that repeat the whole hashtagged phrase unnecessarily, as in:

Please read my book Olives! http://bit.ly/ttJ0Uq  #Olives


Obviously, the hashtagged Olives can go, the tab being appended to the remaining Olives. And you can stop saying 'dah' in that tone of voice, I see people doing this all the time.

4) Consider the structure of your tweet
People often seem to forget that starting a tweet with the @ character means that only people who follow you AND the person you're @ing will see that tweet. If you want to address the widest possible audience, restructure your tweet to place the @ handle within the tweet itself, for instance:

Hey, @alexandermcnabb, I just bought your book! #Olives

Another thing about twitter handles is they're not invalidated by punctuation, so if you tweet Hey, @alexandermcnabb! I'll still get that tweet - there's no need to add a space either side.

5) Bear context in mind
When you tweet 'You're absolutely right!' to someone three hours after they have shared the tweet you agree with, you're likely forcing them to backtrack the conversation to find out what on earth you're talking about. Similarly, a Tweet like 'I think you'd probably agree with @randomperson on this one!' is hardly helpful.

Tweeting a link to your content more than once is a temptation, but I always think it's politer to append 'in case you missed this' or another phrase that makes it clear you're repeat tweeting.

Happy tweeting!

Olives and The Book Club

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The Expat Women's Book Club meets regularly at Paul Café in Jumeirah's Mercato shopping mall and had decided to 'do' Olives - A Violent Romance as their book choice having scanned through a list of the books that are to be at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. We made contact on GoodReads.com and before I knew it, the day had come when I was to 'Come at 8.45 so we can meet at 8.00 and have some time to dissect your book before you arrive.'

That sounded ominous...

I duly rocked up to find a group of about 12 ladies in a secluded corner of Paul (I didn't actually count, I thought it might have looked rude, you know?) with copies of Olives strewn around the table. I pulled up a chair and got ready to hear The Verdict.

'Right,' said Mary-Anne, who had organised the meeting. 'First I should tell you we really enjoyed it, so you can relax on that score...'

The rest of the meeting was bliss - an hour talking to people who had read my book, enjoyed it and wanted to ask questions about it. What more can life offer someone who's written something? Why did this character do this? Why did that happen? Why does Aisha wear red underwear? Who are the baddies? Why doesn't Paul flee the country? What's the publishing process been like? What will I get up to next?

The time flew and I found myself having to think about my own book in a way I hadn't before, seeing it through other people's perceptions of the characters and the plot. It was a strange and very rewarding experience, I can tell you. On one occasion I got caught out not knowing an event had happened in the book one eagle-eyed reader had asked me about. Oh, blushes!

Here, as a result, are five things you likely didn't know about Olives:

1) Paul is mildly OCD
Paul's got a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder in his makeup. He's always counting steps to see if they'll be an even number, because if they are this or that thing will be alright. There's a slight echo of that in Aisha, the girl who thinks of olive trees as serried ranks of courtiers as she walks through them. One reader suggested I might have been better calling the book, 'The Olive Princess' which I actually fervently agree with - it was a decision I nearly took at the very end of the process (the book's working title has always been Olives) and didn't.

2) Paul becomes a smoker in the book
As the book progresses, Paul takes up smoking. The Jordanian member of the club was hugely amused by this, knowing how prevalent smoking still is in Jordan. It's also symbolic of Paul's increasing 'Jordanisation' in the book.

3) Anne is Merrie Englande
Paul's girlfriend Anne is a metaphor for England and its pull on Paul as he adjusts to a new life in a strange country. One club member looked at Anne's part of the story from Anne's perspective which, I confess, I hadn't been conscious of doing myself before. Lucky, then, it all worked for her! Anne's role towards the end of the book really represents Paul's determination to follow his course and finally take sides once and for all.

4) Paul's dilemma is TE Lawrence's dilemma
To love what you betray and betray the thing you love - Lawrence tried to balance loyalty to his country with loyalty to the Arab cause, whilst the conflicting purposes of each ensured he betrayed both. It's one reason why the book references Seven Pillars of Wisdom and, specifically, the dedication. I actually contacted Lawrence's estate and got their blessing for the quotes, by the way. They're out of copyright. Similarly, the Mahmoud Darwish quote is fair do's, qualifying as 'fair use'.

5)No, I don't identify with Paul

I think as 'the Brit' in the book, there's a tendency for people to ask if there's any of me in him and my answer is invariably 'I hope not'. There's been quite a lot of 'I don't like Paul' feedback, but I think that might be missing the point a little as you're not actually supposed to like him - I know this was me making life difficult for myself. Paul, as blogger Sara pointed out with a precise nail/head occlusion, Paul is the side of all of us that we know is there, but would prefer to think isn't - that we'd be braver, wiser and more true to ourselves than we actually are. He's young and callow and emotionally a little inept. There's actually a lot more of me in 'bad guy' Gerald Lynch. My reader for Beirut (my next book, which is a much 'harder' thriller and whose main character is our Gerry) complained, calling Lynch 'A violent, unpredictable drunk'. My response was 'yes... and?'.

Mary Anne was evidently somewhat perplexed by the juxtaposition of the evil Lynch with the witty, urbane and charming* young man sat beside her. What can I say?

I'm not going to make such a big fuss about every book club meeting, don't worry (oh, long-suffering reader), but this was my first. And I owe everyone there a huge vote of grateful thanks.

* Would you be sick quietly, please? Thank you.

Remember when Ratings Were About Films?

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So a company in America called Standard and Poor's has pronounced on the performance of Europe's economies and governments and downgraded them. This has been taken seriously rather than laughed out of court. I'm sure I'm not alone in being totally bewildered as to how this is the case.

I first came across a rating agency, and the concept of 'ratings' in 2001, when I was working on launching a mobile network. My client's competitor had been rated (It was being primped for a sale) by one of the 'big three' rating agencies with many As and pluses. I was interested to see how the competitor could rate so highly in someone's eyes and obtained a copy of the rating report. The report cited a total lack of competition and an excellent infrastructure. At the time, (if memory serves me correctly) we had just noisily launched a competitive network with the backing of a major international telco brand. The competitor's infrastructure was also, as was obvious to anyone who had spent any time on the ground, woeful. Even their masts looked like rickety water pumps on a hick Ohio farm.

The chap from the rating agency told me they didn't just rate companies - they rated municipalities in the States, too - cities. I remember being awed at the idea that some company would actually have the power to rate a city and effectively change its ability to raise money.

It's an experience that's been very much in my mind over recent weeks as we hear this or that agency threatening to downgrade this or that government. Firstly that these three companies hold that power (and don't tell me for one second these decisions aren't politically or commercially influenced over cosy little lunches in Washington) and secondly that my one experience of them showed that the rating was based on what was presumably some pretty sloppy research and didn't reflect the actual market conditions prevailing.

I wonder why everyone's putting up with it?

How To Write A Book

This, believe it or not, was my Christmas gift from 
The Niece From Hell - a 'starter pack' of book napkins!.

You have to bear in mind the advice below comes from a self-published author who's just started out and will likely never sell more than a couple of hundred books, not Jeffrey Deaver, okay? You are, of course, more than welcome to buy my book and decide for yourself whether to listen to me.

Pal Abdulla Al Suwaidi (@Aabo0 to you) asked me on Twitter to share the resources I used developing my book, Olives - A Violent Romance. To that end, the below.

In terms of actual literature on writing books, there are hundreds of books on how to write a book. It's notable that few of them are written by successful authors of anything other than books on how to write books and many carry mendacious subtitles such as 'How To Get Published'. I think you've more chance of being published by wearing a duck on your head and standing naked outside Blackstone's than you have by reading these books. Books on writing will only take you so far - the rest of the process is as arcane and mystifying as the famous Nebulising Nonentity of Nether Thragulon Nine.

I own two books about writing, foisted upon me by an insistent and exasperated Phillipa Fioretti as we worked together on an early edit of Olives. Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King and The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. Both are books I am very glad I bought. Other than those, I suppose I've read a load of articles and stuff online but most of my learning has come from working with writer friends on my manuscript or theirs - there are writer's websites such as Harper Collins' Authonomy or Litopia which let you post up your manuscript and allow others to 'crit' it. The upside of this is you get lots of advice and input, the downside is there can be a lot of backbiting, competitive 'backing' where, for instance authonomy, the site is based on competing and it can be hard to know if the advice comes from a seasoned pro or a complete dufus.

Should you join a writers' group? I have found (as I acknowledge in Olives) the company of writer friends utterly invaluable, but I stress they are friends - people whose company I sought and enjoy. I have never belonged to a writers' group as such and look on them with mild horror. But don't 'go it alone' for pity's sake. I did that for over five years and now fervently wish I hadn't wasted so much time.

I follow a number of blogs, but these are more focused on publishing rather than writing. However, I'd recommend:

The Passive Voice - mostly posts from other people's blogs, but his selections are usually thought-provoking and his observations often add value, too. And, of course, he's finding other writers worth following for you.

The Shatzkin Files - Consultant Mike Shatzkin was one of the early voices that 'got' digital and he remains a must-read commentator on publishing.

The Bookseller - The trade journal of publishing. I find this great for following the industry and occasionally  useful for 'reality checking' some of the more strident neologist voices.

Pub Rants - A useful agent's blog. Kristin is one of the very few agents who I follow.

Writer Beware - A good early warning system for scams and scammers. As self publishing grows, so will the marketing scams that promise to market your book etc.

Mad Genius Club - A bunch of writers writing about writing, always worth a visit.

The Independent Publishing Magazine - Does what it says on the cover.

Obviously, if anyone else has any smart ideas on writer/author/publishing blogs to follow, feel free to chuck 'em in the comments.

As for the rest of it, here are some of my learnings so you don't have to smack your head against the same brick walls I did.

How to write a book

So, you've set up all these blogs in your reader and popped off to Amazon to buy those books. You've got a nice, sharp pencil and a piece of paper ready. Now you can start writing your book. Step back from that keyboard, I was serious about the pencil and paper.

1) A Novel Form
What kind of book are you intending to write? Be clear with yourself, categorise it from day one. Chic-lit for the over 30s European housewife? A thriller for early 20-something professionals? Tighten it as much as possible and try to imagine your audience. Is it a large audience? What kind of books is it buying? Where is it buying them? Is your genre of choice one you read a lot in? Which authors do you admire/enjoy the most? Are they selling well? How will you be different to them, yet occupy the same space on the shelf? (One writer solved this problem by using a pseudonym that placed him next to his 'target author' on bookshelves!)

These questions all seem far removed from the beautiful process of creating literature and they indeed are. But if you want your beautiful literature to get published, you'd better start thinking commercially from the get-go. Publishers don't buy beauty any more, they buy books they think they can sell in the mainstream. If you're in it for the beauty and to hell with the consequences, then you're self-publishing and you're as well to understand that before you press a single key.

Now to use that piece of paper (some people use whiteboards or big charts, I happen to use paper). Presumably you've got an idea of the basic plot of the book. Now you can Google 'narrative curve' and came back to this after you've spent a couple of days reading all the advice out there. I start out by putting the events in my book in little clumps of text and linking them with arrows, so each clump is a little like a scene. Each scene, then, takes your character forwards on the journey of your book (the journey can, of course, take place on an armchair), by moving the character or by moving other characters and situations that influence or impact your character. The arrows let you move to the next scene and connect scenes. Force yourself to do this through the whole book to the end (the temptation is to do about half and then decide to resolve the rest when you get to it). It doesn't have to be totally granular - it can be a very 'broad brush' approach, but you want to have an idea of what you're setting out to do. Ideally, the whole thing can also be colour-coded to belong to the beginning, middle and end, which takes you back to the narrative curve stuff.

2) Start writing
Now you can start putting your scenes on paper, knowing where they belong in the full picture. In fact, books are ideally structured in scenes, each scene having an objective to it that moves the story forward. Each scene belongs in a place, so be careful to let your reader know where he or she is. Each scene has a single point of view, that is the events are witnessed through one character. If you start using two or more POVs, you'll confuse the reader. This is where you Google "point of view" and come back to this article in a couple of weeks when you've exhausted yourself with the endless debate writers love to have about POV.

How much should you write? I'd aim for 1,000 words a day, but if you're doing 500 that's fine. The keyboard has arguably done us some dis-favours here as it makes it all to easy to dash ahead like a charging rhino, which is hardly the stuff of considered prose. Writers who worked long-hand did a great deal less editing, I suspect, than we do today.

3) Consider these things.
What person will you write your book in? There are arguments for first person and arguments for third person. Come back when you've done Googlin' - I wrote Olives in the first person, but my other books are all written in the third person. The first person demands that you really get behind one character and I created something of a rod for my back by choosing to narrate my story through a character who isn't intended to be necessarily likeable or admirable, in fact other characters elicit your sympathies and admiration. I personally think it's worked, but I'm biased. And it was a hell of a lot of work to do. Third person would have been simpler and easier all round. Having said that, there is some really smashing literature out there written in the first person and a cherry-pick of the very finest I'd suggest would include Camus' The Stranger, Fowles' The Magus and Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. If you're going to write in the first person, I'd recommend some movement of green paper over to Jeff Bezos' account.

Who is your main character? No, I mean really who? One of the things that makes JRR Tolkein's work so fabulous is that he created his world before he populated it, even down to defining its history, folk-lore, culture and languages. What are your character's personality and quirks, background and situation? How will your character be changed by the story you're telling? How will other characters interact with your main characer - and who are they? All of this is "characterisation" and, yes, you should Google it right now and come back to this article in a few days when you've defined your characters and fleshed out their lives so you feel you know them. They can develop as you're writing, of course - but you're best having thought them through first so you can have them react to situations realistically and in a way we believe and can empathise with.

4) As you write...
Think about where you are in each scene and how it is best experienced through your character's POV. What are the sights and sounds? The smells? The feelings? Close your eyes and  breathe it in, live it. And now put it down on paper. Use one word where ten will do, but pick the word that really nails it. Don't kill yourself being a 'rivet man' and detailing the scene to the point where we all start haemorrhaging , just set it up in a few well chosen words and then make it come alive for us by referencing it through your characters' senses. Don't forget touch - a cold key in the pocket, a warm baby. You might like to Google "writing style" here and come back in a couple of months or so.

Language is the only tool you've got, in the same way as voice is the only tool you have during a phone call. That means you have to use it to create pictures, draw the reader in and build a sense of reality. Strangely, less is more - a few well chosen words is all you need because we will fill in the gaps for you. But do avoid cliché and don't use two verbs where one will do. In fact, one writer friend is a passionate killer of adverbs and she's right almost all of the time. Consider your choice of words. If Simon gets up and walks from the room leaving Helen behind is Simon being as interesting or engaging as if he pushes back the chair irritably and strides out of the room, brushing past Helen? Be careful not to let yourself get too 'purple' here, it's a balancing act.

Focus on your characters' emotional responses, but do try and avoid telling us what those responses, those feelings and reactions are. We're better off you showing us what they are in the way the characters react. Here's another Google moment, the idea of "showing not telling". See you in a few days.

5) Hammer away
 Keep hammering away at it, building your scenes and helping your characters live the lives you've given them in your mind. Keep to the straight and narrow, don't forget we're going to have to read this, so your amusing, if self-indulgent invention of Granny Smith who is a totally great character but actually matters not one jot is something you might like to reconsider spending time on given you're almost certainly going to dump her when you get around to the edit. Do bear in mind many books suffer from a 'soggy middle', something you should avoid if you've planned well but can also avoid by bearing this particular bear trap in mind. One day, probably in about 80-100 days depending on your genre and story, you're going to sit back and experience a remarkable moment of satisfaction.

Now the doubt can creep in from the dark corners and gnaw at you. Is it any good? Did it all work? Will anyone read it? Is it just a pile of self-indulgent tripe?

Welcome to my world. And good luck to you.

When A Delay Means On Track

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It's a funny old world, isn't it? There you are reading Gulf News' front page Business, "Strategic Oil Pipeline On Track" and the next minute you've got the National with its contrary headline "Delay for UAE crude oil pipeline".

Is this some of that vaunted context and analysis at work? Or perhaps a little doublespeak and obfuscation? A closer examination of the GN story "Habsham-Fujeirah oil pipeline 'will be ready in six months" shows that the pipeline was originally scheduled to be commissioned last year. So where precisely is GN getting 'on track' from?

Even the National story talks about a six-month delay, but both newspapers' stories cite a handover date of six months from now. So if the thing was supposed to be commissioned last year, that's more than a six month delay, isn't it?

In fact, construction of the pipeline was completed in March 2011, according to oil and gas industry magazine Pipeline in this story, as well as to this highly detailed summary of the works on the Hydrocarbons Technology website. So we're looking at an eighteen month delay, aren't we? And why, if the construction is complete, are we regaled with a huge picture in GN of a pipeline under construction, leaving readers with the clear inference that the project is still at a pipelaying stage? The National's story is picture captioned "Construction continues on the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline in Fujairah".

And why, if the thing was finished in March of last year? Neither newspaper is clear on any reasons for a delay. In fact, both stories left me (a humble reader) with more questions than answers.

Context and analysis. Keep repeating it

(BTW, a tweet from @patrickosgood led me to his story for Arabianoldandgas.com which is altogether more credible, clearly well researched and factual - and refers to, wait for it, an 18-month delay)

An Olive Update

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I had an argument with uber-geek Gerald Donovan when I told him I was planning to launch Beirut, my second serious novel, at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in March. He exploded with indignation at the very suggestion, waving his hands around and emphatically repeating, 'No, it's too early' in the face of my earnest assertions that this was publishing at internet speed and the new paradigm didn't wait around for months like old fashioned publishing used to.

It hurts me inestimably to say this, but Gerald was right and I was wrong. There. Got that out of the way.

Beirut will be lucky to see a September launch at this rate - it needs a great deal more time than I had anticipated to get the ball rolling as it is a very big and heavy ball indeed - although we can only hope it has commensurate momentum.

It's been nearly a month since Olives was launched at TwingeDXB and a great deal has been happening in that time, I can tell you. If you're considering self publishing, let me tell you this for a start - it's a hell of an amount of hard work. Distribution channels take a great deal of time to kick into place and bookshops have been taking their sweet time ordering copies from distributor Jashanmals, although the hard copies have been available all along in Jashanmals and Spinneys outlets. But it's really down, at this stage, to promotion, promotion, promotion. I'm trying to strike a balance between getting word out and annoying people with relentless promotion but, of course, you find yourself a little too close to it to be objective. That's why people need great communications agencies... :)

Reviews are important in this age of self-publishing. The recommendation of other readers can be key to people's buying decisions, so reviews on Amazon, GoodReads and blogs are gold dust. The first reviews are just now coming through and they're looking positive, which is something of a relief as well as a joy to behold - Big Dave's early review on Amazon was a grin-inducer and people have found it useful - particularly as said Mr Dave is, although a reader of this blog, unknown to me. My first blog review, cheating a bit as she saw the book before it ever got printed, was my censor's daughter, which was fun. It was also a sigh of relief as the book passed the critical test of a pair of young and culturally alert Palestinian eyes - again, a reader of the blog but otherwise unknown to me. Other reviews have followed, although they're not terribly objective as both authors are very well known to me - the lovely Sara Refai and scurrilous cut-purse Simon Forward.

The tweets have started to come in from people who've read and liked the book, which has been a daily treat, I can tell you. I'm giving a talk to my first book club later this month and Olives is on the reading list of other book clubs, too. There's a rumbling building up in them thar hills - a great deal more slowly than my deeply impatient personality would ideally like, but that's momentum for you.

So the million dollar question - how many have I sold? I haven't got the foggiest. It's too early to see a sales report for the print edition yet, but the online edition has probably sold something in the region of fifty copies, the majority on Kindle.

Which is fifty more readers than Olives would have had if I hadn't decided to do this - something that I stop and consider every day and which still brings a silly smile to my face. It's also, as I have now learned, very early days indeed.

Sharjah Festooned With Felicitation

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"How you doing today, Brian?"
"Oh, you know mate. Same old, same old. Festooned with felicitation as usual."

His Highness Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi is the ruler of Sharjah. He returned recently from France where he underwent a 'minor surgery'. As Gulf News reports today (although I can't find the piece online), the resulting outbreak of felicitations is nothing less than extraordinary. Free-standing posters of Dr. Sultan have started popping up everywhere in the emirate over the past week.

I had at first thought it was purely a municipality thing, but families, businesses and generally everyone has been getting into the 'put up a poster' act, so the roundabouts are now becoming literally festooned with pictures of His Highness, while more are popping up on any piece of spare ground people can find. They appear to be increasing in number daily, too.

This year will mark Dr. Sultan's fortieth year as Ruler of Sharjah. I get the feeling there may be something of a party in store for us all...

The Great Al Habtoor Robbery

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After eighteen years of complaining about what robbers Al Habtoor are every time I get my Pajero serviced, I have finally actually been robbed for real while having my car serviced.

The checkers always remind you to remove valuables when you drop the car off, so I duly emptied the coin tray and packed myself off home, clinking merrily. Paying the taxi, I realised I'd left my wallet in the car. I called the girl at the service centre and headed back to Al Habtoor. I was laughing and joking with her as we got to the car together and I picked up my wallet, which had been relieved of its cash contents, about Dhs400 in all.

It didn't sink in at all until later. Someone had actually taken money from my car. To those of you living elsewhere, this will come as no surprise, you're probably sitting there thinking, 'Like, obviously, duh' and I appreciate why you would. But I live in one of the safest places in the world. We're all of us on the hog's back here, from labourers through to CEOs we're all in the UAE because we're better off than we would be back at home. Any criminal conviction, once you've done your time in El Slammer, means getting sent home and so crime, for the vast majority of us, doesn't pay.

The service centre manager was, I was told, investigating. After a while, he'd drawn a blank and, well, that was sort of that, really. I asked him to call the police. He said they wouldn't do anything, he'd had experience of this sort of thing before. I insisted. He refused. I pointed out it was his secure area, his employee and his responsibility. He said they had internal procedures and he couldn't call the police. I asked him to escalate to someone who could call the police and he ignored me. It all got a little heated. It wasn't really about Dhs400 by now, but about someone who had chosen to steal from me. I called the police myself. After ringing out twice, the 999 number answered. I had tried calling police HQ, but they didn't answer at all. You do wonder sometimes.

The CID chap turned up, a young chap in a baseball cap and dishdash. The service centre manager and I explained (he had no English) and he nodded sagely and took my ID, borrowing a pen and piece of paper from the manager to write down my details. Watching him, I was strongly reminded of our friend captain Mohammed filling out Paul's charge sheet in Olives, his tongue stuck out in concentration...

At this point one of the service staff popped in and put a wad of money on the manager's desk and murmered a name. I got the impression the staff had taken matters into their own hands - nobody really wants CID snooping around their workplace asking awkward questions. The culprit was called for - the most stupid thief imaginable - the man whose job it was to drive the cars around to the storage area prior to work commencing. He had already been through 20 minutes of questioning with the manager before the police were called and had professed his innocence. Now he broke down and pleaded for mercy.

The CID guy's first question to the thief was an incredulous, "You're a Muslim?"

So I got my money back and the thief was sacked and will be sent home. I asked the CID guy if he could leave matters at that, which he indeed could - in fact, I'd have to go down to the copshop and file a case against the man if I wanted it taken further.

Of course, later today I'll just have to hand the money over to Al Habtoor anyway. But I suppose at least they extract it with my (grudging) acquiescence...

The Emirates ID Card Moves Online

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The Emirates ID Card was launched in 2008. Now, in 2012, we are to see the application process for the card implemented as an online form. Launched initially for UAE nationals only, the online application will be rolled out to UAE residents and GCC nationals in the 'next two months'.

This latest in a long line of announcements, many of which have been followed by clarifications, is potentially the most welcome (and useful) of all.

Gulf News, reporting on the move, focuses on the cost saving to applicants (you save the Dhs30 typing centre fee, so the card will cost you a mere Dhs240 instead of Dhs270) rather than the saving in travel, waiting, queuing, shuffling around from counter to counter with a pile of papers and general messing about involved.

Although, as is so often the case, there's a whiff of sulphur invading the clear air of paradise - Gulf News' story (linked here for your viewing pleasure) contains the line, "Online applicants can print out their receipt which will mention the appointment to visit an Emirates ID registration centre."

Of course, an online application process would involve filling in a form, uploading copies of any documents required, paying any fees online with a credit card and then having the card mailed to you, wouldn't it? It would be insanity to have people filling in the forms online and then having to make an appointment to physically travel to an Emirates ID registration centre and queue to have the application reviewed and the card issued to them in person. Nobody in their right minds would implement an online process like that, would they?

I should perhaps remind you that this announcement comes from the people that gave us the application application, an online application that allowed you to fill out and print the application form required to make an application for an appointment to make your application.

We can only await the usual clarification...

#SaveSamar

Image via Wikipedia

I'm sure someone wise and statistically inclined will analyse it, but the fact is the #SaveSamar campaign has raised $21,000 to send a terminally ill little girl from Ramallah to Florence for surgery on the brain tumour that would possibly have snuffed out her life before January 2012 had passed.

The Palestine Children Relief Fund's 'thank you' message is linked here. It's a remarkable demonstration of online activism, social media and all that. Sara of Ussa Nabulsiyeh fame and I both posted about Samar's dilemma (the dilemma being she was dying) on the 21st December. On the evening of the 22nd the fund was nearing 50% subscribed and we had heard privately that the fund was going to close thanks to the intervention of Salam Ya Seghar, the fund for children's education in Palestine backed by the wife of the Ruler of Sharjah, Her Highness Sheikha Jawaher Bint Mohammed Al Qasimi. The offline world works at differential speeds and so fundraising online carried on apace, with a spirited effort on Twitter carrying word out, so that by the time the Salam Ya Seghar offer was formally made and accepted, the online campaign had reached something like 70% of the fundraising target.

So you could say this online campaign raised the funds in 24 hours. You could say it took five days. But either result is remarkable for the speed, the generosity of people (Half-crazed uber-geek Gerald Donovan take a bow, BTW) and the involvement of am amazingly diverse and seemingly inchoate community in coming together to address a small, but vital, need.

The vital catalyst, the speedy element, was Twitter. The power of that platform constantly stuns me.

But I'm still grinning. Crumbs, chaps, we might have saved a life! Isn't that tiny, tiny thing wonderful?