Jay Wud To Play GeekFest Dubai REUNION

Okay, so we've been conspiring merrily with the team at Red Bull and they're coming to play at GeekFest REUNION and bringing heavy rock act Jay Wud to play a free gig from 9pm. For those of you who haven't heard of Jay, his band opened for Guns And Roses last year and you can hear his music using this here handy link to Jay's website which includes downloads an' all!

It's high energy stuff and I for one am looking forward to this enormously. I've been envious of that crowd over in Beirut ever since I sat in Gemmayze's Angry Monkey quaffing 961 and listening to a live gig at GeekFest Beirut last year. Now we're quits, Beirut Geeks!

The Red Bull Wings team will be at GeekFest too. Geeks with wings! Whatever NEXT?

GEEKTALKS CONFIRMED SHOCK HORROR

From 8-9pm we have four talks and they'll be kept to a tight time schedule by a bunch of metalheads waiting to come on stage, so we've at last found an appropriate replacement to the timekeeping discipline introduced by Monsignor R. Bumfrey!

The talks are:

8pm Money For Nothing
So you've got nothing but a great idea. How are you going to raise the cash you need to make it work? Not the banks, they're useless. We all know that. From VCs? They'll take all your equity for pennies. What about crowdfunding? Or better, what about crowdfunding backed by equity participation? Eureeca.com is the first equity crowdfunding platform offering a global solution. People give you money, you give them equity. Eureeca's speaker explains how it works - and how it's already worked for young UAE startups who needed cash to make that idea a reality.

8.15pm How Google broke search. And what that means to you.
Getting ranked by search engine Google is about the right keywords and building lots of links, right? Wrong. That used to work, but now it's last year's thing - because Google just broke search - the giant's new hummingbird search algorithm changes the game and means engagement and quality content matter more than links from loads of sites. Lee Mancini is CEO of search consultancy Sekari and he'll be explaining what's going on and how you can fix your broken search results.

8.30pm Social change and sameness
The [sameness] project is a Dubai-based social initiative that facilitates moments of sameness. The "sameness" is in understanding that we are all worth the same amount in our humanity, and the "project" comes through the on-the-ground initiatives like Water for Workers, The Conversation Chair, and We've Got Your Back, that bring the sameness to life. Jonny and Fiona from the sameness project will be explaining what it is, how it works and why diversity backwards is the way forwards.

8.45pm Make money at home doing what you like
It's the perennial promise of freelancing, isn't it? And while there's undoubtedly opportunity and need out there, we've also got unprofessional clients, rip-off merchants and the like. So how can you promote a freelance community of talented people willing to exchange skills with employers who need resources and talent now - and keep that community protected and the wheels of commerce in smooth motion? It's a big ask and Nabbesh.com CEO LouLou Khazen is doing the asking - backed by winning du's The Entrepreneur and a $100,000 investment round using none other than eureeca.

THERE'S MORE! This linked post details everything, today's post is just an update!

Here's the PDF map or you can use Google Maps like so. GeekFest will start, as usual, when you get there (if you come!) but about 7pmish is a guideline if you want to know what time to arrive late after. The talks will start around 8ish.

There's no registration, no age limit, no height restriction or any other form of organisation. If you'd like to come along, you're splendidly welcome. If you'd like to perform a plate spinning act or share your collection of left-handed Manga comics or old Adobe Acrobat SKUs get in touch with @alexandermcnabb or @saadia and we'll give you some space and power or whatever you need.

This may well be fun, people...

GeekFest Dubai REUNION

The time has come, the walrus said...

Saadia Zahid was the reason GeekFest ever started happening. She was running Dubai's uber-funky workplace/hangout The Shelter at the time and we had a coffee to talk about doing something together back in 2009. We weren't sure, just that, well you know, something.

That something turned, in time, into GeekFest. And for a while, in the heyday of social media's initial impact on Dubai society (and, of course, in time in Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Jeddah), we played around with the whole non-event - an UNorganised gathering of people with no rules, no restrictions, No Logo and no gatekeepers. Just people, smart people, who wanted to be together and share stuff they were just WAY too interested in to be considered normal - geeks, in short.

But Saadia left Dubai for New York and although GeekFest sort of survived her, it didn't survive the demise of The Shelter as it was - that was the straw that made the camel throw up its hooves and give up the ghost. It simply wasn't as fun anymore and I had always said if it became a burden or too important, I'd chuck in the towel. And so I did.

But then Saadia came back to Dubai. And lo, she got in touch. And she said "I'm involved in this whole container city retail thingy concept park gig as part of DSF. I've got a sound stage, food, seating, areas. Fancy doing a GeekFest?"

And I ummed and aahed. But she bullied me. I swear she did. So...

Wednesday January 29th at 7pm, at Market OTB (Out Of the Box) will mark GeekFest Dubai REUNION. A return to all the fun and sheer lack of structure that made GeekFest, for me at least, so attractive.

Market OTB is running from 23rd January to the 1st February at the Burj Park, the island by the 'dancing fountain' in the shadow of the Burj Khalifa and is a market run out of refurbished shipping containers, dedicated to sustainable independent retail in the sort of direction of food, fashion and lifestyle. It's got a sound stage, bands, cafes and other funky stuff. It should be a pretty cool venue for GeekFest REUNION.

What's the skinny? It goes something like this:

JAY WUD PLAYS GEEKFEST

Okay, so we've been conspiring merrily with the team at Red Bull and they're coming to play at GeekFest REUNION and bringing Jay Wud to play a free gig from 9pm. For those of you who haven't heard of Jay, his band opened for Guns And Roses in Abu Dhabi last year and you can hear his music using this here handy link.

It's high energy stuff and I for one am looking forward to this enormously. I've been envious of that crowd over in Beirut ever since I sat in Gemayze's Angry Monkey quaffing 961 and listening to a live gig at GeekFest Beirut. Now we're quits, Beirut Geeks!

The Red Bull Wings team will be at GeekFest too. Geeks with wings! Whatever next?

GEEKTALKS CONFIRMED SHOCK HORROR

From 8-9pm we have four talks and they'll be kept to a tight time schedule by a bunch of metalheads waiting to come on stage, so we've at last found an appropriate replacement to the timekeeping discipline introduced by Monsignor R. Bumfrey!

The talks are:

8pm Money For Nothing
So you've got nothing but a great idea. How are you going to raise the cash you need to make it work? Not the banks, they're useless. We all know that. From VCs? They'll take all your equity for pennies. What about crowdfunding? Or better, what about crowdfunding backed by equity participation? Eureeca.com is the first equity crowdfunding platform offering a global solution. People give you money, you give them equity. Eureeca's speaker explains how it works - and how it's already worked for young UAE startups who needed cash to make that idea a reality.

8.15pm How Google broke search. And what that means to you.
Getting ranked by search engine Google is about the right keywords and building lots of links, right? Wrong. That used to work, but now it's last year's thing - because Google just broke search - the giant's new hummingbird search algorithm changes the game and means engagement and quality content matter more than links from loads of sites. Lee Mancini is CEO of search consultancy Sekari and he'll be explaining what's going on and how you can fix your broken search results.

8.30pm Social change and sameness
The [sameness] project is a Dubai-based social initiative that facilitates moments of sameness. The "sameness" is in understanding that we are all worth the same amount in our humanity, and the "project" comes through the on-the-ground initiatives like Water for Workers, The Conversation Chair, and We've Got Your Back, that bring the sameness to life. Jonny and Fiona from the sameness project will be explaining what it is, how it works and why diversity backwards is the way forwards.

8.45pm Make money at home doing what you like
It's the perennial promise of freelancing, isn't it? And while there's undoubtedly opportunity and need out there, we've also got unprofessional clients, rip-off merchants and the like. So how can you promote a freelance community of talented people willing to exchange skills with employers who need resources and talent now - and keep that community protected and the wheels of commerce in smooth motion? It's a big ask and Nabbesh CEO LouLou Khazen is doing the asking - backed by winning du's The Entrepreneur and a $100,000 investment round using none other than eureeca.

TECHNOCASES

3D Printers UNLEASHED
The wild men from Jackys will be showing LIVE and IN THE FLESH the sexiest printers since someone said 'Can we print Hovis?' and someone else said, 'Sure'...

Green Gadgets
Heard of The Change Initiative? They're green. They're so green you'd be greenly envious of their greenness if you were a Martian. And they've got gadgets. Oh yeah. Fancy the idea of a recycled cardboard boombox, say? This is something you wouldn't want to miss, then...

Lenovo
Will be showcasing cool mobile stuff, including their buzz-inspiring VibeX mobile handsets and super-lightweight clamshelly things!!!

GAMEFEST MADNESS!

We've got an Oculus Rift and we're gonna use it! This is a hyper-cool virtual reality headset the drooling gamer goons lovely chaps from t-break are bringing to GameFest. It's apparently the latest in puke-inducing immersive gaming gadgets. Apparently there are not only brain-spinning demos to play with but also @MrNexyMedia will be demoing his game in-development, so we're talking cutting edge beta type experience things here!!!

There'll also be a PS3 multiplayer area where people can make complete goons of themselves - always a popular element of GeekFest.

COLLECTING OLD NOTEBOOK PCs

You got an old laptop you don't use any more? Clean it up and bring it along and we'll make sure it gets sent to Sri Lanka where poor young medical students from rural areas simply don't have access to their own machines to use in studying for their exams. I got involved in this after finding out about one such student, then we uncovered another four. Now we have a distribution system set up thanks to a philanthropically minded doctor in Kandy and we can use more machines. So bring that old PC down to GeekFest and we'll make sure it gets a useful - and potentially life-saving - second life. Alternatively, you can always bring those old machines to The Archive and ask for Bethany or Sarah.

FOOD, DRINK, ARRANGEMENTS. STUFF.

There are cafés, there is seating, there is a soundstage (hence Jay and the boys) and stuff aplenty. There is a hospitality area we're not quite sure what to do with yet, but rest assured someone will come up with something.

My books will be on sale there. Clearly.

WEBSITE

Thanks to @AqeelFikree, GeekFest now has a website! Check out GeekFestME.com!

GETTING THERE

Here's the PDF map or you can use Google Maps like so. GeekFest will start, as usual, when you get there (if you come!) but about 7pmish is a guideline if you want to know what time to arrive late after. The talks will start around 8ish.

There's no registration, no age limit, no height restriction or any other form of organisation. If you'd like to come along, you're splendidly welcome. If you'd like to perform a plate spinning act or share your collection of left-handed Manga comics or old Adobe Acrobat SKUs get in touch with @alexandermcnabb or @saadia and we'll give you some space and power or whatever you need.

This may well be fun, people...

Book Post: Twits

(Photo credit: sharnik)

People's approach to censorship is strange. In a country that brought in copies of '50 Shades of Grey' I had someone concerned at my answer to an interview question, "Why did you start writing?" to which I responded, "I gave up smoking in 2001 and needed to find something publicly acceptable to do with my hands".

They weren't sure whether that could run or not.

The discussion started off today's Twitter Book Club meeting. We talked about Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy, of course - but also Olives and Beirut.

What made you focus on Shemlan - how had you found out about MECAS and its role in the little village? 
I'd known about it for years, but only relatively recently found it becoming an itch I had to scratch, buying up esoteric books about MECAS and others peripheral to it but which mentioned the Centre, including Ivor Lucas' memoir of an unexceptional life of a diplomat, which was to inform much of Jason Hartmoor's backstory. And then, of course, I had to go up there - a first visit with pal Maha found the centre, subsequent visits saw me lunching like a little pasha with friends at the glorious Al Sakhra (Cliff House) restaurant which is so central to the plot of the book. It is a truly beautiful place, BTW...

Olives was a novel whereas Beirut and Shemlan went more robustly down the Tom Clancy route. Guilty as charged, but I think (IMHO) Shemlan is more nuanced and closer in spirit to Olives than Beirut.

How can Lynch kill a trained killer with his bare hands? 
He gets lucky a couple of times, that's all. He's not fit and drinks too much. In fact, Lynch drinks when he's happy and drinks when he's sad. At least he's given up the fags.

Where did you get Gerald from? 
He was the result of a meeting I had with a prominent businessman who gave me the "I've been 20 years escaping being Gerry" line. I left the meeting punching the air as I built my spy in Olives around that memorable quote - a negation of a humble Irish upbringing.

Will there be more Lynch books? 
Not right now, not the next book. But possibly in the future. He was never actually meant to be in Shemlan, he gatecrashed it. I don't know how the book would have turned out if he hadn't.

Why do you do messy murders of characters we like? 
Because I can. I'm laughing when I do it. I enjoy the idea that I can, occasionally, shock my readers. If you're not expecting it, the unexpected can be quite a powerful thing - particularly when books follow a 'formula'.

Lynch. He's an SOB in Olives, a hero figure in Beirut and a nice guy in Shemlan. 
Not sure about nice guy, but as I've often said, Olives is told in the first person by the young man who Lynch is blackmailing. He's hardly about to tell us what a great guy our Gerald is. In all three books, Lynch is a self-serving maverick who does his own sweet thing but manipulates and bullies those around him to get results.

Olives and the narrative arc. Is Paul too passive? 
I've just finished writing the screenplay for Olives, which I've given When The Olives Weep as a working title, and it's been a fascinating exercise. And it's shown me there's a clear narrative arc in there, it's just not obviously based on the compelling need of one character and that characters odyssey to fulfil that need. Paul is a more passive player, but he still embarks on a journey to fulfil his purpose. It's just he doesn't know what it is. His confusion shouldn't hide the fact he's got to act to get though all this.

And he makes choices we think we would be better than to make. 
Sure, which is what I set out to do with the book. We all like to think we'd be altruistic and heroic and not weak or vacillate when the chips are down. Which is where we're kidding ourselves.

How long did Shemlan take to write? 
It was done in two tranches - about halfway finished (but relatively clearly plotted) when I published Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and finished subsequent to that. The last portion of the book  the Estonian scenes especially, was finished at incredible speed as I smashed away at the keyboard with my Bose Wife Cancelling Headphones pumping high volume death metal straight into my cortex. It took a bit of editing afterwards, but it was really fun to write.

We talked about more, of course, lots more: about my rejections and why I finally turned my back on 'traditional' publishing and let my agent go, about characterisation and the body count in Shemlan, about selling books, online and offline distribution and about what I'm up to next. We talked a lot about the souq in Aleppo and how beautiful it was in a very in your face sort of way and how it had, eventually after much soul searching, to find its way into the book untouched by the war that, of course, has utterly destroyed the huge Ottoman maze that was the world's largest covered souq and one of its oldest. Well, at least I did...

As always, great fun. I love book clubs.

Book Post: Shemlan's First Outing

I'm going to be meeting the Twitter Book Club (@TwitBookClub or twitbookclub.org) tomorrow to talk about Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy. It'll be the first time I meet people who've read it who aren't close friends, family or beta readers.

I'm a tad apprehensive, tell the truth. Readers are a funny lot and their perceptions, thoughts and questions never fail to have me rethinking things from a totally different perspective. I suppose I'm lucky in that so far (touch wood) people have generally played nicely, even my protesters have been gentle in their remonstration.

I'm not expecting any protests about Shemlan, although I can't say I was necessarily expecting the controversies of Olives. The book was championed in the year's first edition of Dubai Eye Radio's 'Talking of Books' earlier this month, which was all very nice (the podcast is linked here for your listening pleasure) and the genteel members of the TOB team seem to have enjoyed the read. It'll be interesting to find out what the booky twits all made of it.

If you want to come along tomorrow, I'm assured you're more than welcome. I'll have a couple of copies of Shemlan with me if anyone wants to buy 'em, too! The TwitBookClub meets at 11am Saturday the 18th January (and every third Saturday each month) at Coffeol Emaar Boulevard, Boulevard Plaza, Tower 1, Ground Floor - here's a handy map. There's even 50% off food and 20% off drinks for book club attendees. Yes, you did hear that right. 50% off! Where are you going? Wait for me! Sorry, Dubai radio ad scriptwritis.

I'll let you know how it all goes... In the meantime, if you want to get your own copy, you'll find all the links to buy Shemlan as an ebook or paperback right here.

The UAE Mobile Market. Some Numbers

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority is set to end its 'My number, my identity' campaign tomorrow. The campaign saw all mobile users in the Emirates being sent texts to go into their telcos offices and register their SIM cards against their passports or national IDs.

It's unclear whether this is something we'll have to repeat every two years as we renew visas, but the campaign's drawing to a close certainly means a weeding out of the 'dead' SIMs in the market. Operators tend not to count unused SIMs when they publish claims of network size and penetration, often giving exaggerated market size numbers as a result. The UAE, for instance, is a market of 14.1 million mobile subscribers, a penetration of 171%.

Gulf News reports today that Du will suspend unregistered lines from January 17th with a 90-day period in which subscribers will be able to re-register before the line is deleted. Presumably Etisalat will follow suit. And an awful lot of people who haven't moved to re-register their lines are going to go into a last minute tailspin and dash to get the job done when they find their mobiles stop working.

So what has been the impact of the campaign so far? According to GN, TRA director general Mohammed Al Ghanem has said 3.82 million SIMs were cut off and 1.35 million suspended after the fifth phase - we don't know if that's a total for the whole campaign and, if not, about the first four phases or, indeed, how many SIMs remain unregistered, but that figure would mean something like 26% of the market was wiped out in the campaign so far.

Which is quite a chunk of any market, I'm sure you'd agree...

Is Microsoft Clutching A One Way Ticket To Nowhere?

Image via CrunchBase

Microsoft isn't really as smart as people think and it probably isn't as smart as it thinks it is, either. Its fortunes were set by being in the right place at the right time with a piece of operating system software it didn't actually code - it bought it in. Seattle Computer Products' QDOS was to become PC-DOS and, in a moment of brilliance, was licensed rather than sold outright to IBM for the company's new Personal Computer.

The result was a gravy train for Microsoft, which promptly did the dirty on IBM by licensing MS-DOS to makers of PC clones. Why IBM put up with it is anyone's guess. but by the time Compaq released an 80386 based machine ahead of IBM and took effective leadership of the PC market, Microsoft had its own version of a goose in every pot and a wagon in every barn - pretty much every PC in the world had Windows and Office installed and MS was printing money.

The OS/2 body swerve was a final blow to IBM's dream of getting back dominance of the desktop and was to start the chapter in the company's history where it exited the PC market Jobs' Apple had cheekily welcomed it to in 1981. IBM eventually sold the business - saved, in the meantime, by its ThinkPad laptops - to Lenovo just in time to avoid the current spiralling decline of the PC.

Microsoft was so busy thinking it was smart, rather than being merely an accomplished rider on the PC clone gravy train, it missed the Internet. Entirely. Netscape nearly pulled off its coup - creating a platform for third party software that would disintermediate Windows. But Gates turned MS on a sixpence and brought the company's crushing market dominance to triumph in the 'browser war' that followed. They got in late, but they got in with such venom it appeared they were unstoppable. They weren't.

The win cost Microsoft a punishing - and embarrassing - trial at the hands of the US Department of Justice. Reeling from the whole bruising process, a four year trial ending in 2002, Microsoft found itself fighting a number of persistent enemies, including Sun Microsystems, Oracle and a growing horde of passionate Linux backers - a party that IBM joined with a $10 billion investment in the open source software. By the time the next big thing came, Microsoft missed it as badly as it had the Internet - the trouble was, it wasn't one big thing but several.

Google's IPO in 2004 showed an astonished world how very big the company had grown from absolutely nowhere (today, ten short years later, it's a more valuable company than Microsoft, BTW). Three years later, Steve Jobs launched the iPhone and then Google bought in a piece of software that was to achieve precisely what MS-DOS had achieved almost twenty years earlier for Microsoft. Android.

Meanwhile, Microsoft was busy screwing up Windows in an attempt to rekindle the 'must have this year's version' of the WinTel heyday. The awful Windows Vista stalled adoption, many electing to stay with the stable and 'not broke' Windows XP. Windows 7 rectified the awfulness of Vista, but arguably it was already too late. People were playing with new toys: tablets. And Microsoft had no way to compete with iOS or Android - and no plan to, either.

Why didn't Microsoft turn on a sixpence again? Because it had nowhere to turn - its dominance of the desktop didn't stretch to the new wireless world of smartphones and tablets. And its eventual attempt to face the conundrum is all too clear from the schizophrenic Windows 8.

But it's bought Nokia - and it has the chance now to join the smartphone and tablet market with a better version of Windows that'll put the faults of Windows 8 (which is an absolutely fabulous mobile OS, strangely enough given Microsoft's long history of awful mobile OSs. Windows CE anyone?) behind it.

Only Microsoft hasn't got a huge and successful content-rich ecosystem like Amazon, Google or Apple. And it doesn't have the support of a wide enough base of applications developers. It's got Bing losing to Google, Azure losing to Amazon - too many fights on too many fronts. And too many innovations taking place away from the source of the majority of Microsoft's revenue - the desktop.

Is the party over? Yes. But does Microsoft have a ticket to the next party?

Book Post - A Truckle Of 'Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy' Trivia

For no particularly good reason, a handful of things you probably didn't know (or even want to know) about Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy. Which is a book I've written. Don't know if I mentioned that before or not...

The wooden Estonian orthodox church is real
Dennis Wye meets Jaan Kallas outside a wooden church with an ageing congregation. It's real, down near the port in Tallinn (just across the road, in fact, from the Museum Of Soviet Uselessness) and rather beautiful. It's one of few surviving churches in Tallinn - Estonia seems quite proud of being the most secular country in Europe and most churches have been deconsecrated and are being used as concert halls or Irish pubs. Hence the ageing congregation. The music in these churches, by the way, is beautiful and forms a connection to the Syrian Urfalee church.

So's the ice road
And you genuinely are told not to wear a seat belt and to travel within the minimum and maximum speed limit for fear of creating resonance and cracking the ice.

Marwan Nimr is back
He was inspired by a box of fruit. There's a company that airfreights fruit out of Lebanon called 'Marwan' and its logo is a little dakota-like aeroplane whizzing through the air. And so Marwan Nimr was born. He makes a cameo in Shemlan - having survived Beirut - and he's not best pleased with our Gerald.

Talking of cameos...
Lamiable extra brut champagne makes a brief appearance, following its excellent debut in Beirut. It's actually hard to make great extra brut champagne (with little or no added sugar, or 'dosage', it's easy to make sour extra brut, hard to make flinty, dry but rounded extra brut) The family that produces this exquisite single grower grand cru champagne appear to have forgiven me for using their delicious product to kill a chap in Beirut. I know they've read it because their UK importer sent them the relevant passage. Snitch.

The Puss In Boots
Marcelle's rather outré establishment in Monot, Le Chat Botté, is actually named after a Belgian hotel I stayed in as a kid. It just seemed like a good name and I've always liked that Marcelle insists on using its French name rather than the English version. How very Lebanese, darling!

Lance Browning
The nature of Lance Browning's fate and the fact he works for a certain bank are by no means intended to be some sort of revenge on my bank and certainly not written with ferocious relish. I can state that categorically.

The baddies are really bad...
The Ühiskassa, the umbrella organisation of the Estonian mafia is real, although apparently less active these days than in its heyday before Estonia's accession to the European Union.

The goodies are hardly better - and no, the whole CIA scheme in the book is by no means far fetched
In fact, the precise scheme they're up to in Shemlan is documented as having been seriously evaluated as an operation by the CIA. There are many recorded instances of US intelligence having become involved in the international arms and drugs trades, including the ill-fated Iran contra scandal, as well as money laundering drug related funds. So now you know...

You can buy the book here. 

There's also more stuff about the book and the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies there, too!

Emirates ID To Function As Bank Card? Oh Horrors...

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There's no end to the things you can do with a smart card and the Emirates ID card is no exception. Gulf News reports today, in all seriosity, on a banking executive from Noor Bank who has commented on the announcement, made apparently on December 31st, that the Emirates ID card will be integrated with bank cards to create a single, seamless customer service experience paradigm excellence luminance entity.

Given my UAE bank has over the years managed to screw up every single service it offers, from failing to make transfers through to issuing cards, from honouring cheques through to failing to call me before blocking Visa transactions and so on through a litany of incompetence and befuddling idiocy, the very idea of integrating such a bunch of hooning nitwits with my biometric identity chills me to the marrow.

And while it may sound attractive to pool a range of services into a single smart card, the practicality of it all is that the more things you load onto a single transactional device, the more shocking the consequence of that device's failure are. It's a little like passwords - we're constantly told by security experts that we shouldn't have a single password for every service we use. Similarly, a single card with multiple functions is inherently less secure and more prone to visits from Mr Cockup.

Added to that, the ID card now requires renewal every two years, which would mean that you forsake access to your bank account for the period between expiry and renewal. And - as we all full well know - when you for some reason fall off the rails and become an exception to the system for some reason, you could well find yourself bereft not only of identity but funds as well.

This whole integration thing comes hot on the heels of the recent ATM outage in the UAE, where customers from at least two banks found themselves unable to withdraw money from ATMs but - in many cases - found their accounts debited by the amount of the failed withdrawals.

The executive quoted by GN apparently "Admitted that there could be certain issues". You can sing that, buddy...

UAE Anti-Smoking Law. Genius Or Just A Fag?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The UAE is to implement a smoking law banning tobacco advertisements, smoking in schools, universities and places of worship and smoking in cars with kids of less than 12 years of age. Oh, and making under-age smoking illegal with a fine of up to Dhs10,000.

The National reports on the story today. The implementation of the Federal law is to take place on January 21st. Strangely, the law itself dates back to 2009 - but crafting regulations, by-laws and compliance with many shades of red tape have delayed its implementation.

There's no tax on cigarettes in the UAE, so a pack costs less than £1. Something like 40% of teens in the UAE smoke.

There's no effective ban on smoking in public places (offices, restaurants and other outlets), despite early talk of the by-laws to the Federal smoking law including such provisions. The Ministry of Health has, according to The National's piece, just 'prepared a draft resolution to ban smoking in the ministry’s hospitals, primary health centres and specialised treatment centres.'

So despite that early sabre-rattling, there's to be no UAE blanket ban on smoking in public. It would appear that whatever the intentions of the law originally were, the process of negotiating its implementation have drawn many of its teeth. Does the implementation go far enough? Well, if you believe smoking is a bad thing, no it doesn't.

I speak as someone who used to smoke for England. I chugged my way through about sixty a day until finally coming to the realisation that I was manipulating the people around me so that I could be sure of finding myself in a situation where I could smoke. I didn't like that in myself. But I did promise myself I'd never become one of those rabidly anti-smoking ex-smokers.

It's a promise I'm finding increasingly hard to keep, to be honest with you. I gave up the fags back in 2001 and find it harder each day to remember why I ever thought what I was doing to myself was anything other than insane and suicidal.

Which is why I'm mildly horrified to realise I don't think the implementation of the law on 21st January is enough. A UK/Ireland style blanket ban of smoking in all public places is what is required, not a range of halfway house resolutions.

If the me from before 2001 could hear me now, he'd kick my arse...

Book Post: Shemlan, Newgale, Pembrokeshire And Floods

Jason Hartmoor has been alive a little over an hour. He has recovered from his recurring nightmare and turned the damp side of his pillow to face the mattress. He luxuriates in the bright light streaming through the window overlooking the sea. It takes up most of the length of the room.

The bed sheets are white and crisp. Every opening of the eyes is a bonus, a thrill of pleasure. Sometimes he tries to stave off sleep, lying and fighting exhaustion until the early hours. It is becoming increasingly hard to push back the darkness. These days he’s lucky to hold out beyond midnight.

Throwing the lightweight duvet aside, he pauses for breath before sliding himself into a sitting position, looking out over Newgale’s glorious sandy mile, the breakers cascading. The dots of shivering early surfers bob in the glistening waves.

The pain starts to creep back, like a slinking dog.

He stands by the window, gazing out over the hazy beach, the fine misty spray thrown up by the incoming tide. His face in the morning light is lined and wan, pain etched into his still-handsome features, a face that would seem haughty but for the humour in the blue eyes nestled in the bruised-looking shadows. His hair is white, his forehead prominent and his nose aquiline. He draws himself up unconsciously; the slight puff of his chest brings a twinge of discomfort.
From Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy

What's the connection between the Lebanese mountain village of Shemlan and the Pembrokeshire coast? Absolutely none, unless you count me. Retired diplomat Jason Hartmoor was always going to have holed up either in Newgale or Pendine, it was touch and go which until I actually started writing the words above. I just wanted a long beach.

I spent many idyllic childhood holidays just around the corner from Newgale, the family stayed in the village of Pen Y Cwm (Welsh for 'top of the valley') and we'd often walk over the headlands to the village shop. When the tide is low you can walk from the beach at the end of the valley to Newgale, a mile and more of golden strand stretching out before you and a huge sea wall of slithering grey sea-worn stones protecting the pub and campsite that, apart from a handful of houses scattered on the hillside, make up Newgale itself.

The recent bad weather in the UK saw the Pembrokeshire coast taking something of a battering and Newgale was no exception: for the first time in living memory, that huge mound of stones was breached by the tide and wind-blown sea, flooding the campsite and pub beyond.

My parents never lost their love of this majestic coast and - arguably too late in life - chose to move there in their retirement. It was more my father's choice, he had a hankering to live by the sea. They ended up inland, a little down the road from Newgale and so we travel there frequently enough. The beach remains a favourite walk and yes, even in the winter months that mercilessly cold grey sea is dotted with the figures of surfers. I've always thought them quite, quite mad.

Anyway, as you travel uphill out of Newgale towards Pen Y Cym and Solva there's a bungalow with blue windows. Stand below it and look out across the vast expanse of shining sand at low tide and you'll see the view Jason took in on the day he pushed his x-rays into the kitchen dustbin and trundled his wheelie bag out to the taxi on his way to Beirut and his date with destiny...