A New Performing Arts Venue For Dubai? It's Up To You!

I give over the blog today to a guest post from Aflamnah's Vida Rizq. Aflamnah is a crowdfunding platform that aims to help innovators in the arts, humanities and science raise the funds they need for their projects...

The Courtyard Playhouse project on Aflamnah is just 9% away from reaching its target but only has one day to go. You can still get involved by buying one of the fantastic rewards on offer and seeing the project to a successful start.

As of last night, the project had raised $16,801 through 73 supporters. Whilst you can make a contribution of $10 (and you can remain anonymous too), the most popular reward has been to have your name engraved on one of the theatre seats. Front row seats are going for $400 each with only two remaining. Back row seats where you get a plaque on the wall were recently added as a new reward and are on offer for $500.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of crowdfunding: it’s is a very simple idea that allows people to raise funding by collecting relatively small amounts of money from a large number of people generally through the Internet. In return, the Aflamnah model means that the idea owners offer contributors rewards for as little as $10.

The Courtyard Playhouse aims to create a more contemporary, alternative performing art space where local talent is nurtured in Dubai. Husband and wife team and co-founders of Drama Dubai, Kemsley Dickinson and Tiffany Schultz have almost realized their goal to put the Courtyard Playhouse, a unique grassroots venue, on the map. They invited the community to get involved to help complete the project through their crowdfunding campaign on Aflamnah. They're taking a bold and costly step to convert what was once a partitioned office space into a working studio theatre and workshop space.

“We’ve gone as far as we can” said Kemsley as the campaign launched in October, “now we need help from the community to complete the project and realize our vision of a vibrant theatre space created for Dubai, by Dubai.”

After years of struggle to find practical and affordable performance spaces for their acting workshops, improvisation classes and local theatrical productions, the couple decided to run a campaign on the Aflamnah.com website. Individuals donate what they can in return for ‘rewards’ to help achieve the financial goal and ensure an official opening night before the end of the year. The project is still in need of lighting, changing rooms and washrooms to complete the renovations.

“We’ve put together some truly exclusive rewards” says Tiffany, some of these are:

• to have your name engraved on one of the auditorium seats 
• have an improvised play staged about your life 
• private tuition in photography or as part of an acting workshop 
• a Dramatic Photoshoot featuring you styled and costumed as the actor or character of your choice 

If you would like to be a part of their project as an individual or a corporate sponsor, visit www.aflamnah.com/en/play-your-part-the-courtyard-playhouse/ to watch their fantastic video and see how far they have come in transforming the space. And do save the date for their Xmas horror themed event on 13th December for a night to remember!

The project is linked here.

Duck Up: Florentijn Hofman, Dubai And The Giant Rubber Duck That Never Was

This Is The Real Duck (Photo credit: See-ming Lee 李思明 SML)

Dubai used to be famous for attracting tribute bands. You'd hear announcements like 'Riverdance is coming to Dubai!' and get all excited before finding out it was actually 'Riverdancers: The Tribute', consisting of two wee girls and a couple of tired blokes clacking away in a weary parody of the massive Oirish spectacle that awed the world.

There was even a joke about it. A bloke goes home on leave only to be accused down at his local of living somewhere lacking in night life and gigs. "We've got gigs!" he contends. "Quo played Dubai last month!"
"What Status Quo?"
"No, State Is Quo. It's a tribute act."
"Who else, then?"
"The Stones!"
"The Rolling Stones?"
"No, the Roly Polying Stones. They're bigger."
And so on until he finally, with exasperation, cries out, "And Duran Duran!"
"What, the Her Name Is Rio people?"
"Yeah, them."

That, of course, was then - the UAE has seen plenty of headlining acts since and the days of the tribute band have gone. Or have they? Because this week we've seen a new first for the City That Likes To Set Guinness Book of Records World Records - a tribute duck. It's not the actual duck, but a copy of it. Because there is actually an actual duck - the work of Dutch installation artist Florentijn Hofman.

Eagle-eyed (award winning!) blogger and culture wonk Hind Mezaina first caught the whiff of sulphur surrounding the announcement, by the UAE franchisee of car washing company Geowash, that Hofman's globally famous duck was going to be coming to the UAE. Geowash had apparently been bandying it about that this was that duck as opposed to a tribute duck, but quickly backed down when questioned. It was a tad late - local media had already announced the event in the usual breathless tones.

The 18 metre duck that set sail on Dubai Creek to coincide with the UAE's 42nd national day was, in fact, an imitation duck made in China. Or, if you prefer, a tribute duck. Hofman's reportedly hopping mad that someone nicked his idea - and rightly so: his giant yellow duckie has been raising smiles around the world for months now and it's clearly a unique and original concept.

7Days gleefully led today on the fake duck farrago, something of a PR disaster for Geowash which had apparently thought up the duck stunt as a way of raising awareness of water scarcity. The company's Facebook page is quick to link to post-'clarification' stories about the duck, but omits to mention earlier stories that clearly state the Dubai duck is Hofman's Duck. In fact, one link to 'The National' actually links to Gulf News - because The National's story mentions the original dubious provenance. Mind you, Geowash also blithely makes use on its Facebook page of images of Donald and Daffy Duck - trademarked properties of Disney and Warner Brothers respectively. One can only presume they do so under license as they would understand, as a franchise business, the value of intellectual prop...

Oh, never mind...

The Bloke In A Pinstripe Suit

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's always tickled me pink, the idea of the bloke in a pinstripe suit. He'd likely have landed in Abu Dhabi, but I've got him landing in Dubai - possibly even Sharjah. He'd probably have walked down the steps of a Vickers VC10 into the warm air of the Gulf, which would have had him in something of a sweat, although he'd have gone to great lengths to avoid that showing.

He would have gone to the consulate in Dubai for his briefing before going on to the meeting he'd flown here for. By the time he got there, his copy of The Times would have been decidedly sweaty and rumpled. But he would have, of course, remained cool and composed. He was to tell the assembled Sheikhs of the Trucial States that Great Britain's Labour government had decided to cede its colonial role in the administration of all territories east of Suez. They were to have two years to found a nation or whatever it was they wanted to do. But regardless of their decision, the people and government of the United Kingdom were to play no further role in the administration or protection of the Sheikdoms of the Trucial Coast. It was undoubtedly a shameful way to end a close relationship that had spanned well over a hundred years.

I can only imagine the consternation that would have greeted our pebble-glassed visitor's news. The British had long governed the Trucial Coast, providing pretty much all of the tools of administration including defence and foreign policy - defence, at the time, being particularly crucial to the tiny Sheikhdoms that clung to the shores of the Gulf. It was called the Trucial Coast simply because the Sheikhs had all been signatory to the Perpetual Maritime Truce of 1853, following a British campaign to eradicate the endemic maritime piracy in the Gulf. By the end of the century, a further treaty had formalised the British protectorate over the Trucial States.

The bloke in a pinstripe suit would have left a chaotic scene behind him as he headed for the airport. Two years to agree a form of government, write a constitution and build the whole administrative apparatus of a nation state. It was an insane task.

It was made worse by the British government's parliamentary opposition - the Conservatives - who promised they'd reverse the move when they won the election. They lost and their promises came to nothing except wasted time.

Two men were to play a crucial role in the coming two years: the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively - Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan and Sheikh Rashid Al Maktoum. To this day, Zayed is known to Emiratis as 'Baba Zayed' - the father of the UAE. Both were remarkable men who transitioned from being tribal leaders to the heads of a modern nation state. Alongside them, the rulers of the seven Emirates that made up the Trucial States worked to pull together a single country from a tribal map that looked like a giraffe with measles. Constitutional experts were brought in from Egypt, talks held between rulers not only of the seven trucial emirates, but Oman, Qatar and Bahrain about forming a federation of emirates. A whirlwind of activity started that was to see negotiations about borders and the division of rights and responsibilities from healthcare and education through to foreign policy. Zayed's leadership - and, yes, his deep pockets and ready generosity thanks to Abu Dhabi's oil - were to be critical.

It's hard to imagine how dangerous this period was - there were larger forces all around waiting to fill any vacuum the British left. The tiny new fledgling state faced a precarious start.

But as that frenetic rush to meet the insane deadline commenced, my thoughts are with the bloke in a pinstripe suit, sitting in his VC10 as it banked over the dazzling waters of the Gulf, sipping his English Breakfast Tea and thinking what a colourful bunch of chappies those Sheikhs had been as he headed home to write his memo confirming we had drawn a line under our colonial heritage in the Lower Gulf.

It'd be fun to see his reaction if he came back today. A former colleague of my Father's was amazed to hear I lived in Dubai. He'd served there during the war. "Dubai? What'd you want to live there for? It's just a bunch of mud huts on a creek" he'd exploded.

Quite.

Happy National Day, people. I truly wish you all the very best as you celebrate the 42nd birthday of this nation I have called home for the past twenty years.

PS: If you're interested in exploring the history of the UAE, this here book by Frauke Heard Bey is THE definitive work. It's an expensive buy, but worth every penny.

Book Post: A Question Of Trilogy

It was never meant to be. Olives - A Violent Romance was originally written with a mild idea of an 'interlinear' to follow - a retelling of the story from another point of view, possibly Lynch's. There's a lot to retell on the Lynch side of things, we have the possibilities of balancing Paul's jaded view of the man who is blackmailing him, as well as Lynch's negotiations with the Israelis and the Jordanian authorities as he tries to keep his young victim alive long enough to fulfil his destiny. And then there's Paul's future - Olives originally started with Lynch sitting in the wreckage of Paul's house before the young journalist moves to Beirut (where Lynch arranges a job for him working on a newspaper) to wait for Aisha.

Beirut - An Explosive Thriller isn't linked to Olives in any way, except its events commence with the eventual fate of young Stokes and, of course, it features Lynch. But that's where it stops. The events retold in Beirut might be contiguous to Olives, but there's no link. And so with Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy: the book's events take place a year after those of Beirut but are otherwise in no way linked. Some of the same characters pop up. Others don't make it through. I have a nasty habit of killing those I love the most.

Three very different books set in the same rough timeline do not a trilogy make. I intended to write a romance, a thriller and a tragedy but most certainly not a trilogy. It's a little appreciated fact, for instance, that all of the Bond books are written in a contiguous timeline. I realised this when I bought them all last year and read 'em one after another. It made me appreciate quite what a grim, sexist old soak Ian Fleming was - I discovered, for instance, in every single Bond book the female protagonist is referred to as a "Stupid bitch" except one, narrated in the first person by the female protagonist - she does not neglect to call herself, however, a "stupid bitch." I'm not a fan of unsuccessful writers (me) slagging off successful ones (Fleming) but I also found I disliked his writing in general. Mind you, re-reading Alistair MacLean had me in a blind impotent fury.

However, protest as much as I like, people keep referring to the three books as a trilogy. Even early reviews of Shemlan refer to it as 'the third of McNabb's trilogy of Middle East thrillers'. Clearly I'm out of step and might as well just go with the flow. It's either that or write a fourth Lynch book just to prove everyone wrong and I'm not about to do that.

In the meantime, on the offchance you haven't got around to doing it, here's the link to buy Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy in print or as an ebook. If you want to start reading the trilogy with Olives - A Violent Romance, that's linked here. And then Beirut - An Explosive Thriller is to be found over here. See? Three clicks and you're away!

No, no, it's fine. My pleasure. It's nothing, really.

A Helping Hand

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I need your help. And no, I'm not asking you to drop a review of 'Beirut' on Amazon.com (although if you could that would be nice). It's much more important than that.

For various reasons, I ended up cleaning up one of Spot On's old laptops (Thanks, Spot On!) and sending it to Sri Lanka, where pal Deepika is sponsoring a young man from a poor village near Anandharapura through his medical degree. This small gesture has turned out to be transformational for him, allowing him to finally get access to a resource we take for granted and which he desperately needed. He's sharing it with four other students right now.

Although that's better than nothing, clearly there is a need for more machines. And each machine could end up playing a small role in saving people's lives. We could use at least five more laptops.

So I wondered - if you're UAE based and want to clean up and get rid of that old PC and let me know, I'll come and pick it up from you and take care of getting over to these guys. Clearly, the machine needs to be functional, but it doesn't need to be the hoochiest, coochiest laptop on the block. A couple of generations on from the illustration would be nice...

It's a small enough gesture for the likes of us, yet it's a huge deal to these young men.

So can you help? @alexandermcnabb, leave a note on the comment form on www.alexandermcnabb.com or dump a comment here.

And do please share this post!

Thanks.

UPDATE You can take machines to The Archive in Safa Park and leave 'em there to be collected. Ta!

Book Review: Neuromancer - William Gibson

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I came to this particular party almost thirty years late. But oh, my, what a party it was!

I romped, giggling, through this book. I read it standing up, I read it waiting in the car, I read it when I should have been editing my own work. I devoured it with glee. It's so very well done, you see.

I gave up reading sci-fi decades ago. I can't remember what did it in the end, I think it might have been Frank Herbert's 'Yet another Dune book that milks that last drop from something that used to be better', but sci-fi became 'just not quite my thing.'

I'm going back now.

William Gibson's book invented 'cyberpunk' and gave us the setting for films like The Matrix, Blade Runner and The Fifth Element. Cyber-thief Case has had his ability to 'jack in' to the matrix burned out of his cortex by his vengeful employers and is on a fast track to drink, drug and crime fuelled suicide when he's rescued by a mysterious chap called Armitage.

Armitage fixes the damage, but he's got a purpose for Case who embarks on a race against time as Armitage complements his repair job with sacs of time-release neurotoxin placed in Case's veins. Do the job fast or get fried is the message. Case and murderous sexbomb Molly (Who calls a murderous sexbomb 'Molly' for pity's sakes? Only a lunatic or a genius, I figured) embark on a rampage through spaceports and Case gets down and dirty inside the cyber-world of the 3D realised network that is the Matrix. And oh my, it's fun stuff.

That I could be so blown away by this book today only had me wondering what this did to readers back in 1984. And that Gibson only trips up twice with his future technologies, as far as I could see, is little short of miraculous. In one scene, Case is fencing a valuable contraband of three megabytes of RAM. Well, I remember in 1984 three meg of RAM was like ten Yottabytes now. It was a huge amount. We were creating pioneering samplers using an Apple IIe with, wait for it, 64k of memory. My car key's probably got 3 meg in it.

In another technoflub, Case uses a payphone. Cute. But that just added to the fun for me, a little like playing a vintage synth that still sounds better than today's smartest sampler. This book is truly a classic and I'm very glad indeed I picked it up in a 'don't know what to put on the Kindle next' random moment.

If you hadn't got the message by now, let me just add I can't recommend it highly enough.

Five Stars.

Here's the Kindle book at Amazon.co.uk.

Salmon Fishing In The Emirates

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So it's official. A company is to develop an on-shore salmon farm in Western Abu Dhabi, chilling sea water and using 'recirculating aquaculture' techniques to farm the fish in tanks cooled to 13 celsius. Reuters reports on the story here.

The 500,000 square metre farm is to be developed in two phases at a cost of a tad over $27 million and will produce 4,000 tonnes of fish a year in its final phase.

They're looking at a UAE market of around 1,000 tonnes of salmon a year, currently airfreighted here from Norway and Ireland at a cost of something like $4-5 per kilo. Other gulf countries will take up the rest of the crop.

The company behind the scheme, Abu Dhabi fish farming and production company 'Asmak', isn't kidding. It already has major farming operations in the Gulf, with farms in Saudi Arabia and the UAE currently producing over 2,000 tonnes of fish a year - and a processing, distribution and 'value-added products' business.

There are major concerns about the health risks associated with consuming farmed salmon, particularly given the diet farmed fish are fed and the way it introduces toxins into the fish which we, in turn, consume. The furore really kicked off ten years ago with a scary study by Albany University which recommended eating very little farmed salmon indeed to avoid increased risk of cancer. There has been huge debate recently in Norway following advice issued to pregnant mothers to avoid eating farmed salmon - which brings the Norwegians in line with UK health advice, incidentally.

I give you this link to the story in the Shetland News. I love the Shetland News strapline "Great is the truth and it shall prevail".

Some of the media round here could do with a touch of that...

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what Asmak intends to feed its fishies. Shame none of the local media covering the story asked... but then they just hacked the Reuters piece into make-up.

Anyone Fancy A Change? Etisalat Doesn't!

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The UAE's 'incumbent' telco, Etisalat, has managed to neatly underline quite how fearful it is of mobile number portability by trying to block its competitor's 'change' campaign.

Mobile number portability - the ability to change operator without changing your number - should arguably have come to the UAE much sooner: it's a key element of any sensible competitive market and regulatory regime. It was first talked about back in 2009, in fact. Du has always said it wasn't the one dragging heels around here and that makes perfect sense - incumbents always face the challenge of 'churn', the process whereby harried and fed up customers migrate to competitors, so the longer they can delay MNP and preserve that barrier to entry, the better.

Worse, many, many people in the UAE already carry two devices - one Du and one Etisalat. It's one reason behind the country's remarkably high mobile penetration. But it also gives subscribers a taste of the service offered by the competitor.

So Du, on the news that MNP would finally be brought in, started a natty little campaign offering to provide information to people who text CHANGE to 3553. Etisalat responded by blocking that number. Regulator TRA promptly fined Etisalat (sum, of course, undisclosed) which then grudgingly unblocked the number. The National reports on the whole farago with glee - as does Kipp.

Great service, great value, consumer choice. These are all good things, no? Values for any company to aspire to! It's just that, well, someone doesn't really seem to be entering into the spirit of things around here, do they?

Given the choice, keeping your number, would you change?

Who Moved My Shiny?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Oi! You! Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm moving in to my new place. I've got a Shiny, I have!"
"Not without a moving in/moving out form you haven't! Where is it?"
"I haven't got 'it' whatever 'it' is!"
"Well then, you can't move in, can you? If you haven't got a moving in/moving out form, duly completed and submitted five days before you move, you can't move. It's quite clear."
"What's quite clear? Nobody told me about this!"
"It's in black and white, in the regulations. Duly available to any member of the public who presents himself to the regulation archive and requests a copy."
"Where's the regulation archive?"
"We don't know. We lost it. We'd have put it in The Archive, but we're turning that into a shopping mall. Anyway, that's beside the point. No moving in/moving out form, no move."
"But this is mine. I bought it. Freehold."
"Usufruct."
"I'm sorry?"
"Usufruct. Not freehold. That's in the regulations, too. Which gives us the right to insist on you completing a moving in/moving out form before you move in. And tell you what colour you can paint your Shiny and all the other stuff we get up to when we conjure up daft new schemes and ideas."
"In the advert, it didn't say 'Dare to dream, live to love, enjoy a scintillating lifestyle in paradisical sunshine by the way it's usufruct so you can't even move in without filling in some arbitrary form to pander to some odious jobsworth who couldn't even organise a shawarma stand."
"Okay, that's it, mate. You can't say shawarma to me like that. I'm only doing my job and I won't have random strangers throwing obscenities at me. I'm calling the law, I am."
"What about this lorry and all my stuff?"
"Take 'em back. You'll not need 'em for a while anyway once the law get hold of you. Your feet aren't going to touch the floor. 'Hello, police? I'd like to lodge a complaint against someone who just said 'shawarma' to me. I know, I know. I am indeed grievously insulted. Right away. Thank you, officer.' Right, mate, I'll give you shawarma, so'n I will."
"Have you seriously just called the police and complained I said 'shawarma' to you?"
"You can pick up a copy of the moving in/moving out form on your way down to the nick or you can fill in the online form and print that out to submit an application for the moving in/moving out form at the same office. You can suit yourself, I've had enough of standing around being insulted by the likes of you. Good day to you."

In case the above doesn't make much sense this link to the moving/in moving out form story might help and this one to the shawarma insult story may shed further light in the gloom. 

Expo 2020: Dubai's 'Social Bid'

(Photo credit: @cpe)

This is the week Dubai goes Expo 2020 bonkers and if you thought the noise level was already high, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Five cities originally launched bids to host Expo 2020 - the latest in a long string of 'World Fairs' that started with the original World's Fair, the 1851 Great Exhibition in London's Hyde Park. The bids are evaluated by the body governing Expo, the BIE (Bureau of International Expositions) and voted on by the 167 member states. This vote, as anyone in Dubai except the most dedicated of ostriches will know, takes place Wednesday 27th November and will pick a winner from Dubai, Sao Paolo, Yekaterinburg and Izmir. Thailand's bid, the city of Ayutthaya, was withdrawn earlier this year.

Dubai has been pretty hardcore with its bid. The city's made no secret of the fact it wants this and intends to get it - and a remarkable package of infrastructure and a relentless tide of promotional activity have been flung into the fray. The stakes are high - expo sites typically span hundreds of acres and the events attract tens of millions of visitors. Has Dubai got what it takes?

If social media is anything to go by, yes it has. Because its competition doesn't seem to have got the hang of the whole 'inclusion' concept.

Let's take Turkey's Izmir. The city has a website with all the right buttons, as well as quite an annoying interstitial that promotes its Facebook page. With over 73,000 likes, there's precious little sign of engagement but a high octane broadcast of 'support our bid' type messages rather than any attempt to foster or encourage a debate around the Izmir bid's theme of improving healthcare. Izmir's YouTube Channel is also on broadcast with a lot of 'talking heads' garnering typical views in the low tens and a couple of slick ads with higher views. Again, it's all about mememe.  It's hardly any better over on Twitter, where a tad over 6,000 followers receive broadcasts on supporting the bid. The Izmir Twitter profile does suggest you might like to sign the 'Health For All Manifesto', which on cursory inspection appears to reason that if you support Izmir's bid, it would be good for global health. Hosted on WeSignIt, the manifesto has attracted 522 signatures.

It's hardly compelling, is it?

Yekaterinburg is arguably Dubai's toughest competitor. It's Russia's fourth largest city and has a complex and diverse history, including being the site of the murder of the Romanovs. The vanilla template website doesn't really sparkle and isn't even particularly informative. Facebook offers 1,459 likes and again is more of a tourist board broadcast than any attempt to foster engagement around the bid's theme of The Global Mind. There is, for some odd reason, a picture of a squirrel. With under 500 followers, the city's Twitter account is just posting the same images as Facebook. YouTube hasn't really sparked inspiration, not even the slickly produced 'Global Mind Adventure'. There's certainly no sign of community involvement - or any invitation to involvement.

As far as I can tell, Sao Paolo's website is down or dead and its Facebook page, with a tad over 4,000 likes, hasn't seen a post since June. YouTube hasn't been fed a new video in five months, either. And its 162 Twitter followers have also lacked companionship since June. If you just saw Sao Paolo's online presence, you'd be forgiven for thinking they've given up and gone home for a Feijoada.

And so on to The City That Gave The World Modhesh. How's Dubai shaping up in the online stakes - and, more importantly, is there any sign that the city actually wants to talk about its theme rather than just nag people to support its bid?

Over 58,000 followers on Twitter and 721,000 likes on Facebook appear to be saying something. Yes, we know it's not all about the numbers, but there's a question of scale here. Uniquely, Dubai's using Instagram, with over 9,000 followers. There's participation, community and engagement going on over at the Twitter account, including a couple of cheeky tweets from 'Our Dave'. Facebook's similarly lively, with community events, stunts (the inevitable Guinness book of records stunt) and widespread public participation very much in evidence. The Dubai bid's theme is 'Connecting Minds, Creating the Future', with sustainability, mobility and opportunity as sub-themes. The website features a number of thinkers talking about these themes. YouTube hasn't seen an upload in a while, but the content there again goes beyond tourist board images and 'back our bid' calls.

In fact, of all four bids, it has to be said that Dubai Expo 2020 online has the strongest sense of community and broad public participation of any of 'em. It's by far the most active and popular campaign on social platforms by a huge margin. It could do more and be a great deal slicker, without doubt. There is a huge opportunity to build further on what has already been established. But what's there is streets ahead of its rivals.

From its online presence alone, Dubai's the only Expo 2020 bidder that has clear evidence of coming together as a community in support of the city's bid - and a genuine interest in fostering discussion, debate and thought around its theme.

I must have mislaid my cynicism pills. Where did I put those blasted things?