The Fast Service

English: Sharjah, UAE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For some reason officialdom has all happened at once this year. Hot on the heels of the great health test and residence visa renewing, I've had to renew my tenancy, which means getting it attested.

As eny fule no, the UAE is a tax free country. This is a good thing, IMHO. It is not 'fee free' however and tenants must pay a 'fee' of 2% of their annual rent to the government and have their tenancy contract attested, which validates it in the eye of the law.

I duly presented myself at the appointed place and was given a queue ticket by one of the harried-looking chaps at the information desk. Clutching ticket 271, I couldn't help but notice the number on the board was 22 - and the hall was full of men standing around with tenancy contracts in their hands. After ten minutes, 22 had become 23 and I was starting to worry about the likelihood I'd be renewing my visa again before my number came up. I waited some more, starting to get that nasty feeling you get when you don't understand a system and are actually in the wrong place. Maybe the 271 related to another area or procedure? Surely I wasn't in a queue of 250-odd that was moving at one every few minutes?

By the time we got to 24, I went back to the information desk to check this was, indeed, my queue. Oh yes, said the chap. You have to wait unless you take the fast service. The what? The fast service. It costs 150 Dirhams. Right, I'll have one of those, please.

Ten minutes later, I'm out of there, clutching my attested contract. And while I am duly grateful for the fast service, I am left with two thoughts.

For one, rather than charge for a fast service, why not fix the system that's so broken that you need a fast service?

And thought the second is why did I sit and watch a man at Deyaar type my details into a PC, print them out on a form and hand it to me, which I duly took to the government office and watched a lady scan to input into some type of document management system? Surely, he could have filled out an online form - in fact, the entire process could take place online in a fraction of the time it's currently taking.

It's at that point I cast my mind back to 'the old days', when attesting a tenancy contract was a ten-step process of jostling queues and men who unpicked the staples from each bundle of papers before shuffling them around in a different order and restapling them and grunting 'seven' at you. This meant 'go and stand in queue number seven now for twenty minutes and he'll unpick the staple and reshuffle the papers back into their original order before grunting 'twelve' at you' and so on in the time honoured tradition of 10 PRINT ABANDON ALL HOPE; 20 GOTO 10.

The Fast Service is progress of sorts. I'll take it, with thanks...

Where's My Identity Card?

English: Letters in a post office box in a US post office lobby. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I renewed my UAE residence visa last month. Visas used to last for three years, now they last for two. This is apparently to improve the flexibility of the labour market. Sure enough, a new Emirates Identity Card is also part of the fun and games.

Yesterday marked the passing of The Last Great Deadline for applying for an ID card in Dubai. The Emirates Identity Authority, or EIDA, has been issuing dire warnings and waffling about deadlines since the whole thing started back in 2007. Five years later, the card issuing process is finally linked (or at least, operating in parallel) with the visa application process and a deadline has passed without being extended, clarified or otherwise obfuscated.

I had to go to Sharjah's Central Post Office yesterday. I wanted to wait around for fifteen minutes waiting for a listless youth, who had apparently had all the bones removed from his body, to find my registered letter and experience tells me this is the best place to do it. While I was waiting for the aforementioned youth to bother turning up, I noticed a long, shuffling queue which led to a counter labelled "ID Card Collection Counter". Behind this, there were floor to ceiling racks stacked of cardboard mail boxes stuffed with envelopes and two grumpy looking blokes flopping around and grugingly doling out envelopes to supplicants. Because your ID card isn't actually sent to your PO Box, it's sent to the post office where your PO Box is and then handed out individually. There are in fact two queues - the one with no people queuing in it is marked 'Ladies and Locals'. There must have been thousands of envelopes in all.

This dystopian little scene reminded my of my own, as yet undelivered, ID card. It's been nearly a month since the visa was issued and there's been no sign of any ID card. I asked around. A pal with a visa issued last December is still waiting for her ID card. Another who applied in May is set to go for fingerprinting late in July.

Anybody with a less charitable outlook would conclude that the EIDA people are swamped and the whole system is totally backed up trying to manage the tide of last minute applications. If the scenes in the EIDA back office are in any way parallel to the communications side of things, it must be a tottering, Heath-Robinson style system creaking dangerously under the pressure.

I prefer to think of it as a well oiled machine snapping into action. And anyway, I'm in no hurry to join that long, hopeless-looking queue in the post office...

Has anybody out there actually received an ID card recently?

The Definite Article

English: The first Qatar Airways Cargo Boeing 777F (A7-BFA) in Frankfurt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The is the definite article. It is used in front of definite nouns, for instance, the world. So if you want to be known as the world's five star airline, you need a definite article.

Someone forgot to tell Qatar Airways. Which is a shame as every night I try to catch the news on Sky before going to bed, my only regular TV consuming habit as otherwise I tend to shun TV like a rabid dog. And every night the weather sponsored by Qatar Airways plays out some cheesy image of someone being unfeasibly cosseted together with the tagline, "Qatar Airways. World's Five Star Airline."

I find this annoying. Not in a life-threatening call the anger management guys he's about to chew off Akbar Baker's face sort of way, but in a sort of itchy animal bite sort of way. I do often wonder if the ad agency responsible are client doormats or simply stupid and incapable of stringing together a five word sentence. Alternatively, I suppose, they might think it's clever or in some way 'disruptive' to intentionally mangle the sentence. I can actually see some pony-tailed, yo-yo toting cretin presenting this new way of getting the consumers' attention. It could catch on. Imagine: "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and marmoset". See? Disruptive to the max, baby.

And then in today's Gulf News I spot an advertisement for Qatar Airways to Perth. And lo and behold, the headline's RIGHT! "Fly to the capital of Western Australia with the world's 5-star airline" it says.

I bet someone's gonna cop it for that one.

"You're sacked."
"But it's right!"
"Yes, that's what's wrong. It's not supposed to be right."

Cue Another Farce?

Two cellphone SIM cards (bottom and top) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Did  you catch this one? I, for one, didn't I've missed it until I finally tumbled today.

The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) last week launched a new campaign, 'My number, my identity'. It's probably my fault and certainly not the almost impenetrably obtuse language of the announcement which is clarified by Gulf News today in a story that, try as I might, I could not find online.

We're all going to have to trot off and re-register our mobile SIMs with whichever operator we're with. From July 17th, Etisalat will have over 100 registration points around the country where you can go, eagerly clutching your national ID or passport with visa, and complete an application form to, effectively, re-apply for your mobile phone number. Du didn't confirm its re-registration arrangement intentions to GN in order to make the story, but CEO Osman Sultan, quoted in the TRA release lauding the TRA's campaign, did say customers could go to Du shops.

Many of you will recognise July 17th as the likely starting point for Ramadan, the ideal time to conduct a national campaign of this sort.

Unregistered SIM cards will be cancelled "once the registration period expires" according to the GN story. We haven't been told when that is, or what likely timescale they have in mind.

There are 12.36 million mobile lines out there. It's taken five years for the Emirates ID Authority to 'roll out' the national ID card. How long will it take this campaign I wonder? How many needless frustrations, queues, visits to physical locations and extended deadlines, empty threats, retracted announcements and 'clarifications' are we set to see?

But believe me folks, take this one seriously and get in there early. Because if there's one thing these bohos can do well, it's cut people off...

The "Nutella Needle" Story

I'm not sure where to put today's Nutella syringe story. All of the UAE's English language papers have faithfully reported on a warning issued by Dubai Municipality - apparently some people have been circulating pictures online of hypodermic syringes filled with Nutella, that mixture of chocolate, hazelnut and vegetable oil that is as beloved to the Gulf as that gloopy processed cream cheese.

Newspaper language for some people have been circulating images, BTW, is 'viral'.

But it would appear Dubai Municipality has taken the images seriously, with GN's story calling the syringes 'illegal' and claiming they have sparked a 'sharp response'. Geddit? Syringe? Sharp response? You gotta love those GN subs, they nail it every time!

A spokesman for 'the company' (Gulf News is too precious to name distributor Arabian Oasis or manufacturer Nutella. The National cites both) said "It could seriously tarnish brand image and we will take action against it", according to GN's somewhat breathless report.

I'd like to see them do that. What are they going to do, sue the Internet?

I can't argue with Dubai Municipality's action in the name of protecting the public, although the words storm, tea and cup do tend to spring to mind. You can never be too careful and some nutter deciding to pack medical syringes with Nutella is just the kind of thing that could only happen here.

It's not the first time this type of image has been made, a simple Google Image Search will confirm that. In fact, the first search result is a popular image that's altogether more graphic, showing a man 'shooting up' Nutella. The gag's a simple one, 'I need a fix of Nutella'. If the local image were 'viral', it'd show up on image search, incidentally. And it doesn't.

What does show up if you do a comparative image search is an classified entry on Arabic website souq.dubaimoon.com advertising the syringes at a price of Dhs10 each. That post, linked here, hadn't been taken down at the time of writing and does, indeed, seem to confirm that some nutter is selling Nutella repacked in syringes. Of course, it could well be a hoax or prank, but the entry has a phone number against it and it would presumably be well worth a follow-up by a journalist with half an ounce of enquiring mind.

But then again, such a journalist would already have looked into the origins of the image and... oh, never mind.

Would You Like An App With That, Sir?

English: Apple iPad Event (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had sworn off going out to eat following my last pocket-emptying plate of Dubai restaurant mediocrity, but was talked around and so the weekend saw us once again approaching a crisp linen table in a mood-lit temple to gastronomic indulgence. I feel compelled to write about it and as The Fat Expat is dead, you'll just have to put up with it being posted here.

The restaurant was called Terra Firma and pals had found it in that timeless tome for the cost-conscious consumer, The Entertainer. For those who don't know it, The Entertainer comes in many editions, all of which are basically books of special offer coupons, typically of the 'one main course free when two dine' variety.

The first hitch was the fact the restaurant had moved. Nobody had thought to mention this when we booked, so there was a certain amount of confusion at the Al Badia Golf Course when we tried to find a restaurant that had, in fact, been moved to the Intercontinental Festival City late last year. The second was the menu was significantly more expensive than the sample menu in The Entertainer. The third was it came on an iPad.

Yes, an iPad.

So you swipe your way through the menu, with an illustration of each dish against it available by tapping on a button on the screen. There's a wine list, too. You can't actually order from the iPad, you just browse using it. I confess to finding the idea gimmicky to the point of being mildly offended by it. There is no earthly reason to present a menu on an iPad, except perhaps that the restaurant lighting is so gloomy you couldn't read print. It's actually more onerous to navigate the screens than hold paper.

And then we get to the prices. Dhs150 and more for a starter. One of the starters, the Beluga caviar, was almost Dhs 1,000. Mains were similarly hefty on the wallet, with steaks starting in at around the Dhs 250 mark and climbing steeply. And the wine list was outrageous, kicking off at Dhs200-odd for the stuff they slosh out at cheap brunches, typically Dhs25 at 'street' prices. I can live with five times cost (grudgingly) but this was way beyond that. At least you find out how they managed to pay for all those iPads...

It was here I was on the point of leaving and striking out for the Belgian Cafe. It was a touch and go thing for a while. We stayed, but only because of the vouchers. I had a very nice smoked haddock saffron chowder, probably the most affordable starter on the menu at Dhs60. We all had steaks and sides and these were truly excellent (although one didn't come as ordered, which as Gregg Wallace would say, 'isn't good enough at this level'), if slightly pricey. The Entertainer vouchers took care of that, though. If the selection of salts and mustards was trying a little too hard, it was so overshadowed by the iPad stunt it didn't stand out. The mustards were very nice, in fact.

And then back to the iPad farce for dessert. I wanted cheese, but balked at paying Dhs150 for a cheese platter. That's twenty five quid for some cheese! Are these people mad? We asked for the maitre d' and enquired what was so special about the cheeses? Washed with virgins' tears? Made of milk from cows fed on cheese? Imported from the Scapa Flow Ice Cheesery? Nope, just some Brie and stuff with quince jelly. Now you feel free to tell me I'm being unreasonable about this, but I can't see it. I'm not a mean person, at least I think I'm not, but I can't see where Dhs150 for a plate of cheese works at all. I asked if I was the first person to complain and apparently I am.

Deciding we couldn't face dessert in the face of The Great Cheese Disaster, two of us went for Irish coffees. These were made by someone who has never seen an Irish coffee - two lukewarm white coffees with foamed cream on top and some undissolved brown sugar on the bottom. They might have contained the magical ingredient, they might have not. They were the worst Irish coffee I have ever seen, although Sarah assures me she was served a worse one once in Kenya in 1988. Apparently the chef is Irish, which just makes the insult to Shannon International Airport's gift to its American visitors even worse.

We got the check, which didn't come on an iPad. The vouchers meant it added up to Dhs1,800 for four. We had eaten well and hadn't stinted on the sauce. The food had been very good indeed. But we had picked our way carefully around an outrageously expensive menu and wine list - you could easily have burned through a thousand dollar dinner for four.

And I'm simply not paying that. I was right the first time. I can cook. I'm staying home.

Anti Social Media

Khanjar, Saidi-type, circa 1924, from Oman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oman's National Human Rights Commission has come out against the online commentators and activists who have been irking the government to the point where there have been a significant number of arrests recently.

The Commission's statement, linked here, is a model of clarity. For instance: "NHRC pointed out that there is a difference between the freedom of opinion as a right and the practice of this right in reality. The dividing line makes the practice of this right legal and going beyond it a crime punishable by the law. The rule in this issue is that the freedom of individuals stops when the freedom of other individuals starts."

Right.

The Omani public prosecution issued a statement last week that clarified its position on the issue of opinion expressed online and "calls upon all citizens on the importance of following the legal methods and means for the expression of opinion in line with the legal concept for the freedom of expression."

The problem is, of course, as Omani columnist Susan Mubarak points out in Muscat Daily, there is no official 'line' that defines quite where " the freedom of individuals stops" and "the freedom of other individuals starts". Her excellent piece on the issue is balanced by the Uriah Heep tones of the Oman Tribune.

Article 29 of Oman's 'Basic Statute of the State' guarantees "The freedom of opinion and expression thereof through speech, writing or other forms of expression is guaranteed within the limits of the Law." Those limits are, of course, nowhere defined.

Further clarifying its statement, the NHRC said that "It affirmed that it supports the freedom of opinion, which seeks to achieve the public interests rather than those harming or insulting others."

The 'About Human Rights' page on the NHRC's lovely, retro-style website is "under construction". You'd have thought it would have been 404, wouldn't you?

(Update: I've just learned from @muscati that a female member of the NHRC has resigned from the commission as a result of its decision to make this statement.)

Etisalat Roaming Package Competitive Shock Horror

English: Etisalat Tower in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We pay about double what consumers in, say, the UK do for mobile data here in the UAE. So you can imagine my immediate scorn at seeing one of our cosy, regulated duopolists Etisalat advertising a global data roaming package of Dhs150 (about $41) for 35 MB of data per week.

They actually used the word 'only' in the ad, which carries the idiotic headline 'Instagram from India'. You'd get less than five images up to Instagram with 35MB of data...

Just for fun, I took a look at some UK operator rates for data roaming. And it's a little shop of horrors that makes Etisalat actually look quite good. I know, I know. Sit down for a while and it'll pass.

The problem of mad data roaming prices has been extensively documented, with tales of unwary travellers notching up bonkers mobile bills because they haven't turned off the data function in their mobiles. It's so bad, in fact, that the EU introduced a roaming data cap of €50 back in 2010 that cuts subscribers off at this mark unless they specifically ask their operators to increase it.

Tariffs in the UK vary pretty widely, but the worst of them is BT, which wants £7.70 ($12) per MB of roaming data. At that rate, your 35MB of data would cost Dhs 1,617. (Oh, and you'd hit that EU data cap downloading a couple of songs)

Etisalat beats out BT? It's pretty amazing, isn't it?

Orange will sell you a 200MB plan for a cool £120 (Dhs 188), while Virgin comes in with a neat £10 ($15.72) for 50MB data within the EU only.

So Etisalat's mad-looking plan is actually pretty competitive to UK operators. That doesn't mean for one second that they're off the hook for their insanely expensive broadband and call costs. And it doesn't make international roaming 'affordable' for UAE subscribers - it's actually because it's insanely expensive that our insanely expensive operator's package looks reasonable.

Compared to competitor Du (I couldn't find a package offer, so if there is one please correct me), which charges Dhs1 for 50 kilobytes of roaming data, Etisalat does have the local edge however. For those of you who have grown up since they were relevant, kilobytes are 1024 bytes or 1024th of a Meg. We used to use them back when I were a nipper and Bill Gates said 640 kilobytes should be enough memory for anybody's PC.

EIDA Discovers The Internet

Eida (Photo credit: cgsheldon)

A lovely piece in Khaleej Times today lifted from national news agency WAM  telling us how the Emirates Identity Authority is launching "the Social Media engagement service". 

The brave providers of 'context and analysis' didn't even bother changing WAM's copy,  using the official headline and including the redundant definite article and the unnecessary caps for social media. You can read the EIDA announcement on the authority's website here.

I must confess, they might have made a remarkable four year long hash of their communications, but EIDA has consistently served up quality entertainment.

The "Social Media engagement service" will help customers with queries and "underscored the Emirates ID’s keenness on keeping pace with the development of the modern media and employing the social networking tools for upgrading the ID card-related services and meeting customers’ requirements by responding to their queries and solving their problems most urgently through the channels they prefer in their daily life."

EIDA has already lauded its own success with  the service, replying to over 1,700 customer queries and complaints last month alone. It's followers have grown by 40% over the month-long test period.

If you want to social media engage with the Emirates ID people, you can talk to them on Twitter @EmiratesID_HELP or on Facebook, where you can pick up insightful hints and tips such as 'Important info! Ensure that all personal data entered in the e-form are correct'.

There is also, by the way, a new ID card status service. I've just renewed my visa (itself a somewhat fraught process in the circumstances) and am waiting for my new ID card so I thought I'd try it out. Apparently I'm 15 years old, which is always nice to discover when father time weighs down on one's shoulders. Quite where my ID card is, I couldn't honestly say...

Are Tablets Microsoft's Bitter Pill?

Microsoft Corporation - 1978 (Photo credit: Brajeshwar)

Microsoft missed the Internet. The story of the company's recovery from the blunder is not only fascinating, it's still unfolding.

Bill Gates literally turned the company on a sixpence, refocusing on the new technology and the very real danger of Netscape's Navigator, a layer of software that threatened to disintermediate the Windows operating system. The browser wars and the DOJ case that followed saw Microsoft accused of using its desktop dominance to punch out its rivals. Fascinatingly, Microsoft quietly acquired some 800 patents from AOL a couple of months ago, which AOL owned following its acquisition of what was left of Netscape.

Back in those days, Apple was The Sick Man Of Computing. Ironically, it was Gates who provided Jobs the loan he needed to get the company back on its feet. Jobs went on, as we all know, to create the world's most valuable company out of the wreckage. Along the way, he also created the most existential threat Microsoft has seen since it missed the Internet.

Microsoft missed the tablet. Not just the device, although it did, but the concept of a company built around hardware that accesses a content repository. The new big dogs on the porch are Apple and Amazon, with Google in attendance. All three companies have millions of tablet devices in consumers' hands, being used to access paid content. Google's model is slightly different to Amazon and Apple's, but all three share one important thing in common. Unlike the vast majority of PCs in the world today, none of these tablet devices uses a Microsoft operating system. In fact, none of them has a byte of Microsoft code installed.

Can Microsoft turn on a sixpence again? Its recent partnership with Barnes and Noble gave the company access to a content repository, as well as a powerful US retail channel. There has been much speculation that another partnership, with Nokia, would result in a tablet product. Now, with pundits eagerly awaiting a 'mystery launch' announcement by Microsoft today (well, actually tomorrow Dubai time), there's much talk of a Microsoft 'own brand' tablet. We've seen similar noises in the past, notably 2010's 'Courier' dual-screen tablet concept, a project that was reportedly 'killed'.


But an 'own brand' Microsoft tablet cobbled together with B&N and probably bits of Xbox content streaming won't unseat the iPad. And if I'm a tablet manufacturer, I couldn't really see why I'd ship Microsoft Windows on my products when I'm already shipping Android - particularly if Microsoft is a hardware competitor, too. On top of that, it won't take long memories for manufacturers to recall what being in thrall to Microsoft felt like.

Watching Microsoft's next move is going to be fascinating, but you can bet on one thing - MS no longer has the dominance it needs to turn on a sixpence and force its product on the entire market. You could argue that the three musketeers - Microsoft, troubled Nokia and Barnes & Noble are actually three companies that have had their time.

Youth will have its fling...