Hands Off Sharjah!

Cultural Palace, Sharjah (Photo credit: gordontour)

Friends from Dubai made The Great Journey North and visited us many, many years ago. Arriving, they amusedly reported their eldest daughter's reaction as they crossed the border into Mordor, leaving behind the wonders of Dubai - "Oh, but Daddy, Sharjah's so very dirty!"

Years later she came to intern for me and I actually forgot to make her suffer. I'll get her next time.

Why is it that the people of Dubai so dismiss The Cultured Emirate? What is it quite that makes them look down their noses at their neighbours? This was brought to mind the other day when someone on an  expat forum kindly linked to this blog. A person was new to the UAE and was asking about Sharjah - oh, the outpouring of denigration and disgust!

Sharjah is just like Saudi, it's backward, it lacks the facilities and finesse of Dubai - on and on they go. I've lived there for nigh on twenty years now and can't say I've ever found the need to 'move to civilisation'. Not for us life in the noise of the approach to Dubai International or the power cuts and parking space denial of vengeful developers. Sharjah has long been home and there's nothing wrong with it. Sure, it's not Croydon (The Telegraph, many years ago, memorably and sniffily dubbed Jumeirah 'The Croydon of the Middle East') but then we never signed up to live in Croydon. It's the fact Sharjah is foreign makes it more fun to live in.

What about the hooch? You can drink at home or go to The Wanderers Club. What about the traffic? We drive around it. What about the strictness? It's more than balanced by tolerance. And you might like to consider how many 'banged up boozy Brit' stories have graced The Sun from Sharjah in recent years - the answer's none.

And if we want gleaming marble-floored shopping malls packed with cookie-cutter global brand chainstores, over-priced restaurants in fake souks and 'lifestyle walks', we know where we can find 'em - conveniently down the road so we can visit when we want but don't have to live with 'em on our doorstep.

Here's to Sharjah and all that's in it!

Back In Station

Disney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's like a tetanus jab - every time you do it again, it feels worse. It's a sort of disorientation, a mixture of homecoming and going away, of relief at familiarity jumbled together with doubt and loss. What the hell are we doing here (the question we asked each other across a green table cloth in the President Hotel one night some nineteen years ago) and it's good to be back fighting each other against the background of flight-weariness and the strange unreality of leave fading away.

It's hard to talk about being back to reality when you live in Disneyland, but leave is hardly time in the real world. You've got money and time on your hands, everyone's pleased to see you (they haven't seen you for months, so they're naturally excited. If they saw your ugly mug every other weekend it'd be a different story, wouldn't it?) and you can pretty much suit yourself. The long-distant memory of the grey daily grind of life in the UK is forgotten as you have your 'Cider with Rosie' time off. That feeling of homesickness you get landing back in the Emirates is actually a hankering for a distorted vision of home that's even more unreal than Lalaland, The Home Of The Shiny.

We actually went to the real Disneyland, part of a glorious week in Paris and a chance for little niece Ellen to meet Mickey Mouse, which was a moment of pure magic for a wee girl. I didn't tell her his head comes off, she's too young and there's plenty of time for that yet. I can only marvel at the genius of an organisation that can make you queue for forty five minutes to meet a dancer in a mouse suit then gouge you twenty Euro for a photo of the meeting on the way out. Genius of a truly evil order.

We also spent a brilliant (if heart-rendingly expensive) week in Sweden, which is too long a story to tell. If you ever find yourself in Stockholm, stay at The Grand and eat at Fem Sma Hus in Gamla Stan. Don't ask questions, just do it.

They've opened a Carrefour around the corner. It's hot. I've got the manuscript of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller back from Robb The Editor and there's a load of work to be done before it's ready for publication.

I've got a paw on the hamster wheel and a gentle shove confirms that familiar old squeak is still there. Time to hop on again...

If You Don't Like It, Leave

Song Celebration in Tallinn, Estonia (Photo credit: ToBreatheAsOne)

Last year we managed to carve out a few precious days from the round of visits to family & friends that have become so core to our summer leave routine and visit Tallinn in Estonia. I even posted about it, so stunning were the place and people. It was a double whammy as I'd already decided to set part of my fourth book, Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, in Tallinn, so the opportunity to do a little resarch combined with a much needed slice of 'us time'.

 We were a true pair of 'idiots abroad' and didn't even bother researching Estonia, so we were very lucky indeed to fall as comprehensively on our feet. This year we decided to go to neighbouring Riga in Latvia, the second of the three Baltic states that saw the 'singing revolution' when the populations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood in the street in an unbroken line spanning all three nations, hand in hand, and sang. The Russians, perhaps understandably, threw up their hands and went home.

Much against our better judgment we booked with Ryaniair, but it was the only direct flight with reasonable timings. Funny, those 'bargain prices' don't half start to look less attractive when you've paid £70 for a bag, £10 for a seat etc etc.

This is the bit when we actually do some research on the place we've booked to visit - not that we were planning to, it just happened. And, believe me, it's not good. We flicked through websites with growing horror. The travel advice is unanimous - this place is a tip. Currency exchange scams, prostitutes, pick-pockets, cut-purses, thugs on the streets, pricing scams, nightclub bouncers beating punters up at ATMs to extort their PIN numbers. Turns out Riga is the mafia-infested crime capital of Northern Europe.

Nope. Stuff that. We decided to cancel. Of course Ryanair doesn't offer refunds. And Michael 'crawl on your belly over broken glass for a discount' O'Leary wants £160 to change the ticket.

You live and you learn. We're going to Sweden instead.

Is This Space Free?

From around about now, you can download your very own copy of the Kindle edition of my first novel, the highly chucklesome manic romp Space, for free.

That's right. 270 pages of scabrous madness can be yours for no remuneration whatsoever. Free. Nothing. Nada. Sifr. For 24 glorious hours, this most silly of books is, as Lynrd Skynrd are wont to tell us, as free as a bird.

Download Space from Amazon.com in the US here.

Download Space from Amazon.co.uk in the UK here.

Space will make youi laugh - guaranteed (or your money back). I posted about the book and my decision to hit the 'publish' button the other day, so I won't bore you with more detail. But I'd very much appreciate if you could share the word and encourage friends, family and followers to grab their bit of Space while it's still a no-risk buy. Tweet like canaries on crack. Let the world know. This Space is free!

Space - A Literary Lacuna

I sat down to write a book sometime in 2002. I'd given up smoking and it was annoying me. I reckoned I'd just dash down the first thing that came into my mind and London's literary scene would fall at my feet. Shockingly, they not only failed to fall as predicted, they rejected me. A lot. In fact, Space went on to pick up well over a hundred little photocopied slips that said something along the lines of 'Not for us, thanks'.

Space spoofs a genre that I have come to call the ‘airport novel’; that comfortingly large slab of silliness that you invariably turn to when you have to survive a seven-hour flight. Just like the Avian Obsession and the Maltese Balcony and those other man-in-race-against-time-against-unfeasible-odds-to-save-the-world-against-shadowy-cabal-led-by-megalomaniac books, Space is a fast moving page-turner filled with baddies and secret agent babes. Unlike the majority of them, Space is also intentionally and successfully funny.

Main character Dr. Ben Jonson is transformed from being a happy middle-class GP into a wilful killer, chased across Europe by police and various intelligence agencies. His odysseyette (it is so a word. I looked it up on the Internet) brings him together with a psychopathic CIA agent in a catsuit, a sex worker from Weybridge and a devastatingly effective computer virus that causes widespread societal breakdown. It all ends up with American bombers, the police and army, the Russian Mafia and a number of highly eccentric octogenarians coming together under a stone circle somewhere in Southern England.

 In Space, the baddy spends most of his time with his hand up his pneumatic secretary’s skirt, the good guys are kooks and MI5 safe houses are staffed by pink-haired camp people. The book darkens a little when the action starts moving, but it never stops being irredeemably daft. By the time we’re ready to resolve things at the end, there’s lots of slightly strange sex going on. I always find that strange sex is so much more interesting than ordinary ‘boy meets girl and gets it on’ which, lets face it, has been done before.

It was a popular book on Harper Collins' Authonomy peer-review website, but never even garnered a 'full read' from an agent. Having taken a look at the original MS and edited some of the worst flaws out, I found myself rather enjoying reading it. I'll tell you one thing, it's damn funny.

So I've eventually (and with mild reservations) decided to publish it as a Kindle only book for $0.99 (or 79p to you). You can go here to buy it from amazon.com or here to get it from amazon.co.uk. If you've got Amazon Prime you can borrow it instead. If you haven't got a Kindle or Kindle software for your tablet, you're going to miss out, sorry. I'll plug it a couple of times here and there, but I'm not going crazy promoting it. If you enjoy it, you can do that for me. If you hate it, please feel free to leave a review on Amazon or a comment on this post! I won't mind, honestly!

I'd get it while it's cheap. If I sell more than a few copies or start getting good reviews, the price is going up faster than you can say 'nmkl pjkl ftmch'...

Warning - Space has got a number of rude bits in it. So if you're easily offended, please don't read it.

Justice For Natalie

Sometimes a cause comes to light that you just can't ignore. Natalie Creane's is one such. For two years her family have been fighting in the UAE's courts to get Abu Dhabi's Emirates Palace Hotel to admit liability for the injury she sustained when staying in one of their rooms. According to her family:

"After going to the Emirates Palace Hotel for a weekend break, Natalie opened the door to the wardrobe in her hotel room to put shoes in the bottom. A loose wooden panel high up in the wardrobe fell, hitting her on the front of the head. A member of the hotel’s staff found Natalie unconscious in the room.

Rather than call an ambulance, the hotel’s duty manager took her to hospital by car. It soon became clear that Natalie was very unwell. With no prior history of such problems, she began to suffer from violent seizures. The Emirates Palace Hotel referred the family to its insurance company. After talks with the company broke down, the family was faced with the hotel’s lawyers. Forced to take their case to court, a full two years after the accident, the family is still fighting for justice now – four years on."

The injury was a serious one, Natalie's family say the appalling seizures and a range of related conditions have seen her in four comas with a totally shot immune system and over twenty visits to intensive care. Right now she's on a ventilator in Rashid Hospital and in desperate need of specialist treatment her family can't afford any more - four years after the accident, they've spent all they have.

She is a very sick woman indeed.

The luxurious 'seven star' Emirates Palace Hotel, which is managed by the Swiss/German multinational Kempinski Hotels, has apparently consistently refused liability and the family say the hotel's legal team has 'aggressively' fought their attempt to take the issue to court, appealing against expert opinion that has favoured the family's case. That court battle has arguably cost Natalie dear - and the family is now finally so desperate they've decided to take it public. The family is scrupulous to point out that the legal system and judges in the case have been fair and professional. But time is running out for Natalie...

This is the Facebook page, 'Justice for Natalie'.

There's also a petition for her at Care2.

Could I suggest you go there and add your voice? If you can give help, expertise or do anything to help her cause (for instance publicity), you'd be showing a great deal more humanity than any wealthy international hotel management organisation that would stand by and watch this happen to a young woman in the name of liability.

Dumpster Divers Done

International Recycling Symbol  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The United Arab Emirates sits smack bang on the socio-cultural tectonic plate that divides the east and west of humanity. With remarkable ethnic and nationalistic diversity, it's home to people of all faiths, shades, backgrounds and origins. We come from around the world to live here for one reason and one reason only.

We're all better off here.

That's as true of you and me as it is of labourers and housemaids. It's one reason why the crime rate here is so unbelievably low - we're all on the hog's back and wouldn't risk our privileged position just to pick a few pockets or steal money from someone's car. Other reasons include, it must be said, a draconian judicial system. I've seen the cells (from the oustide, thankfully) and stumbling lines of prisoners in leg gyves. You don't want to be there.

But better off is relative. My better off is a great deal more clover-lined than, for instance, an uneducated man from the Swat Valley or the Bangladeshi flood plains. For them, better off would be something simple like a decent billet, regular food, the absence of constant fear and a few dollars to send home every month. In fact, there are people here whose 'better off' is combing the rubbish bins in the streets for cardboard, tin cans and even plastic. They sell these to recycling companies. You'll often see chaps pedalling along with a great stack of cartons bungied to the back of their black-framed Chinese pushbikes.

Well, they're a thing of the past now. Sharjah Municipality has just herded them all up - 150 of them over the past six months according to Gulf News - to protect Sharjah's estimated 10,000 dumpsters from their unwelcome depradations. You'd have thought they weren't hurting anybody, wouldn't you? Even that this form of recycling, perhaps an uncomfortable sight for those who'd rather pretend this sort of thing didn't happen, is nevertheless actually efficient and a demonstration of free market economics at work. Cripes, you might even get carbon credits or something.

But no. Sharjah has not only nicked them all, but has issued them with fines ranging from Dhs 1,000 to Dhs 50,000. Where in blue blazes is somebody who's making his living rooting through bins going to find Dhs 1,000 to pay a fine?

"Raiding waste bins is considered a violation of Municipality property, as there is a special recycling plant for the various types of waste," a municipality spokesperson told Gulf News. And therein lies the answer. The dumpster divers' few pennies here and few pennies there tend to rather mount up with 10,000 bins at stake and there's Bee'ah, the national environmental company, at the end of the line, making revenue from recycling. Because where there's muck, there's brass...

You can only hope that these people are shown clemency in the traditional Ramadan amnesties.

The Joy Of Summer

"Modhesh", Arabic for amazing, is the mascot of Dubai Summer Surprises. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You know it's summer in the Emirates when:

• Hot water comes out of the cold tap. 

• Gulf News runs pictures of pigeons drinking from a standpipe in a public park. Alternatively, people shading themselves from the harsh summer sun or labourers sleeping in the shade.

• You can't seem to get dry when you get out of the shower.

• Everybody you've ever done business with needs to meet face to face for no particularly good reason.

• Your shirt's stuck to you by the time you've made the walk to the car. The car's baking hot when you get to it.  

• The back of your shirt in contact with the car seat never quite dries out.

• By the time the car has finally cooled down you've arrived at the next meeting.

• The walk from the car to meeting sticks your shirt to you. 

• By the end of the meeting you've cooled down just in time to walk to the baking hot car with your shirt stuck to you. The first blast of air from the AC through the hot dashboard makes it worse. You're better off opening the windows initially to bring the car down to ambient temperature.

• When you forget to put up the sunshade you have to hold tissues in your hands to protect from the super-heated steering wheel.

• Your electricity meter starts to defy the rules of physics and proves the theory E=M$2.
  

• You see strange, yellow sprung maggots with evil, leering grins start to appear. You know this is not a hallucination, but a strange annual manifestation of that cargo cult known as Dubai Summer Surprises. 

• Somehow, you're not surprised.

Worth Its Weight In Gold?

English: A 1st generation Apple iPad. This is the 32GB WiFi model and shows the home screen. Please check my Wikimedia User Gallery for all of my public domain works. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back in the distant past, when Dubai was all sand and mobile phones a novelty (and dinosaurs ruled the earth), we were regularly beaten down with offers to win a bar of gold. It was all Dubai's ad agencies could seem to think of, win gold was a sort of promotional catechism and nothing else seemed to matter.

'We want an ad campaign.'
'Sure. How much gold can people win?'
'We were thinking of five ten tola bars for runners up and a kilo as the first prize?'
'That should do it. We'll get cracking on the creative.'

The 'creative' usually included The Dubai Radio Ad, where Bob would meet Jim at the lights and wonder where Jim was in such a hurry to get to. Jim would reply that the Khara Centre is giving away a bar of gold. It is mandatory at this stage to have Bob and Jim repeat the phrases 'A bar of gold?' and 'Yes, a bar of gold!'. Preferably breathlessly and in the excited tones of someone who has just discovered that snorting cocaine and breathing helium are quite fun when done in unison. Bob would then speed off, with Jim wondering where he is in such a rush to get to. The Khara Centre, of course.

I once knew a successful ad executive who come here from Hong Kong. Over the months I watched his slow decline into chronic alcoholism as every idea, scheme and stunt he came up with was met with, 'Yes, that's all very nice. And the bar of gold?'. I had to stop meeting him in the end, my liver couldn't take the lunches. I lost track of him, but believe he eventually left. It's the only time in my life I've sympathised with someone in advertising.

Now there's a worrying trend emerging. I'm starting to hear those self same radio ads again, but this time there's no bar of gold. It's iPads. Yes, win an iPad! An iPad? Yes! An iPad! What do I have to do?

It's confirmation that the iPad is now widely seen as a Most Desirable Thing, as desirable in fact as a bar of gold. You'd have thought that was all a bit behind the curve, but then look at the increasing number of stupid ways people are finding to try and have some of that Apple 'halo brand' spangle dust stick to their sloppy brands.

I posted a short while ago about the pointless restaurant that doled out iPads instead of menus. Colleague Carriington reports of a restaurant in the Ramada that goes one step further than using an iPad as a like for like dumb replacement for paper - this restaurant lets you select what you want using the iPad and the application has an 'order' button so your order can be placed with the kitchen. Guests are asked not to press this button but hand the tablet back to staff so they can place the order. Brilliant.

Beirut, Beirut and GeekFest Beirut

The Salim Slam tunnel is arguably the most polluted place on earth. Well, apart from the Aral Sea. It's a brilliantly designed long road tunnel that crests a hump and has no ventilation so the concentration of exhaust fumes literally forms into billowing, choking clouds of noxious grey gases. I'm stuck in the back of a hot taxi with cracked leather seats, no AC and the windows open as we hit the traffic jam. As usual, I held my breath as we entered the tunnel, a 47 year-old man playing an eight year old's game of holding my breath until we get to the other side. As we draw to a halt, I realise I'm about to fast track my way to a powerful hit of carboxyhaemoglobin. And I don't care. I'm back in Beirut.

Catching up with friends, wrangling with Virgin (who, like Virgin in Dubai for various reasons of their own devising, won't sell my books) and generally mooching around the city take up my time, but I still have time to finish editing the last few pages of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and send it off to its editor. I hadn't planned to finish Beirut in Beirut, but it's worked out that way and I am glad. I'd just like to say thanks to the Ministry of ICT for the awful Internet, which went down totally for a day and more. A nation offline, but a man with nothing to distract him from editing!

Sara, Eman and I went for lunch to one of my favourite places, the Cliffhouse restaurant in the tiny village of Shemlan up in the Chouf overlooking Beirut. The traffic in Hamra is broken and we spend an hour in hot, snarling lines of lane-swapping, jostling cars and vans. More mad traffic on the Saida road and then we're free, breaking upwards into the cool, clean mountain air. We're much later than we'd planned, but never mind. A seat by the open window and sunny warmth, beige stone walls and the sound of music, chattering and argileh soothe. A quick toast to absent Michelines and we start to tuck into the plates of food pouring out of the kitchen in a tide of riotous colours, the dark red muhammarah, the creamy houmous piled up around little pieces of grilled lamb, the fattoush. Ah, you know.

Then sitting back with chai nana (and an argileh nana for part time caterpillar Eman) and full stomachs, enjoying the breeze and the sight of Beirut turned golden by the waning afternoon sun. It really doesn't get much better.

GeekFest Beirut in the evening. I love The Angry Monkey, from its daft logo to its wireless internet. The Alleyway is literally that and the peeps at the Online Collaborative have set up a stage there. Something like four hundred people pitch up, a big cheery crowd of lively, chattering geeks spilled out onto the busy thoroughfare of Gemmayzeh, Rue Gouraud. The talks are talked, the fashion show is catwalked - both are enjoyed by the crowd, hands in the air clutching mobiles to snap the occasion. It's all impeccably done, if a tad hot out there. Four hundred beaming geeks is a lovely sight...

I take refuge in the air-conditioned Angry Monkey where later on the bands excel themselves, combining with pints of 961 to induce a warm, happy perma-grin.

GeekFest Beirut 5.0 was the most ambitious, diverse and stunningly put together event that has ever been held under the GeekFest name. Darine, Mohammed and the team produced something wonderful, a community-driven event that was slick, diverse and gloriously exuberant.

And so to home. I do so very much like Beirut...