Everyone's going crazy about National Day. Not me. I'm going camping. But I'm still generally happy for them all and do derive a great deal of enjoyment from their frenetic (and often quite insane - I mean who, in their right mind, PAINTS their car with a flag for national day?) celebration of nationhood.
I love the story of the formation of the Emirates: the transition from the Trucial States (the Brits made them all sign up to stop bashing each other and raiding unsuspecting passing dhows, hence 'trucial') to the UAE was accomplished in less than three years after a Brit in a bowler hat landed at Sharjah Airport with the news that Her Majesty's Government had (finally) realised the game was up, the Empire was no more and we were generally doing a Pontius Pilate on every obligation East of Suez.
This gave these guys a couple of years to define the constitution, acceptable system of governance, administration and identity of a modern nation state. They hadn't really been, errr, trained for it. The remarkable figures of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed were to play a critical role in forging the United Arab Emirates out of the messy and time consuming negotiations that at one time or another involved Oman, Qatar and Bahrain too.
It was all made worse by the fact that the dirty deed had been done by a Labour government - and the Tories had hinted strongly that they'd undo it. So the Trucial chappies didn't get down to it as seriously as they might right up until it became clear that the Tories were as full of it as the average backed-up septic tank.
The result has been the Federation of states that make up the UAE - clockwise: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain Ras Al Khaimah (which didn't sign up 'till a year after the others) and Fujairah. All have coastal and inland holdings, all have territory nested in each other (Go to Hatta, the inland town of Dubai, and you'll likely cross Sharjah, Ajman and Oman on your way) because the territorial division was done along the lines of tribal affiliations and all have totally separate police forces, municipalities and, in the main, public services. The result is often quixotic at best - but it works, somehow. Eventually. Mostly.
So what if they struggle at times to get things like the legal system to work properly (or even... sharp intake of breath... Salik). They defined a nation in three years and built it in 30 - an infrastructure that is still, of course, being built out in breathtaking, if sometimes slightly crass, style. The Brits were decimalising and worrying about Europe when the UAE was being born. I was personally involved in making my first ginger beer plants and hating girls at the time. I have since, by the way, continued to like ginger beer and considerably improved my opinion of girls. But I can't claim to have built a nation...
So here's a National Day toast: good luck to them, warts and all. We're here because it's better than there, after all.
Aren't we?
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Cometh the lift, cometh the hour
What would appear to be a substantial part of Dubai's community appears to believe that, if you are on the ground floor, you call a lift by pressing the down arrow. This is, if you stop to think about it, quite logical. If you are on the ground floor and the building is three stories high (as is our office building), then the lift is three times more likely to be up than down. So you press down to call it down.
No?
In life's game of chance, of course, it is always possible that the lift is in the basement. In which case, pressing the up button will improve the odds significantly. Now you have supplemented your three in four chance of bringing the lift to you with a one in four chance of bringing it up. It's a dead cert that the lift is in the bag!
This is the reason why I often find the lift door opening in the basement, revealing a sea of puzzled faces. "Why?" They seem to be saying, "Why are we here?"
A question that I tend to relate to. Particularly when the lift arrives too full to accommodate one slightly irascible addition. I even, on one occasion when overdue leave, put the question to the assembled company. I am ashamed to admit I shouted it. But they just stared silently and large-eyed back at me until the doors closed and took them away.
But this is not the end of the story. Because lifts are not the smartest of devices. A lift, when it has been called to go down using the down button and then arrives at the basement, not unnaturally believes that it has fulfilled its purpose in life. And so whatever floor you have selected before the lift arrived at the basement is therefore cancelled, waiting for the next satisfied customer to select a floor. This often means that travelling, say, to the third floor from the basement, the people who were already in the lift when it arrived in the basement end up missing their intended floor on the way up, too. I am sure there are people who have spent the whole day in the lift, wondering how come their floor never seems to appear.
When you add to this the fatal attraction of the comb, you start to understand how it's so hard to get a lift in so many of Dubai's buildings.
Many lifts have mirrored back walls. And that would be fine except for the fact that many people can't look at a mirror for more than a few milliseconds without suffering from the sudden urge to whip a comb out of their back pockets and tidy their coiffure. This urge is deeply seated at a Pavlovian, even genetic level and far stronger than the urge to select a destination. I once shared a lift with a gentleman who noticed a spot and subsequently happily went about squeezing it, to the intense discomfort of those around him.
A colleague cracked some time ago and posted 'How to use a lift' posters next to all the lifts in the building. This was a noble, if ultimately futile, gesture. Any fule no that you press 'down' to call the lift down to you, after all.
They'd better have upwards of 50 lifts in the Burj Dubai. You could be stuck for days waiting for a lift otherwise...
No?
In life's game of chance, of course, it is always possible that the lift is in the basement. In which case, pressing the up button will improve the odds significantly. Now you have supplemented your three in four chance of bringing the lift to you with a one in four chance of bringing it up. It's a dead cert that the lift is in the bag!
This is the reason why I often find the lift door opening in the basement, revealing a sea of puzzled faces. "Why?" They seem to be saying, "Why are we here?"
A question that I tend to relate to. Particularly when the lift arrives too full to accommodate one slightly irascible addition. I even, on one occasion when overdue leave, put the question to the assembled company. I am ashamed to admit I shouted it. But they just stared silently and large-eyed back at me until the doors closed and took them away.
But this is not the end of the story. Because lifts are not the smartest of devices. A lift, when it has been called to go down using the down button and then arrives at the basement, not unnaturally believes that it has fulfilled its purpose in life. And so whatever floor you have selected before the lift arrived at the basement is therefore cancelled, waiting for the next satisfied customer to select a floor. This often means that travelling, say, to the third floor from the basement, the people who were already in the lift when it arrived in the basement end up missing their intended floor on the way up, too. I am sure there are people who have spent the whole day in the lift, wondering how come their floor never seems to appear.
When you add to this the fatal attraction of the comb, you start to understand how it's so hard to get a lift in so many of Dubai's buildings.
Many lifts have mirrored back walls. And that would be fine except for the fact that many people can't look at a mirror for more than a few milliseconds without suffering from the sudden urge to whip a comb out of their back pockets and tidy their coiffure. This urge is deeply seated at a Pavlovian, even genetic level and far stronger than the urge to select a destination. I once shared a lift with a gentleman who noticed a spot and subsequently happily went about squeezing it, to the intense discomfort of those around him.
A colleague cracked some time ago and posted 'How to use a lift' posters next to all the lifts in the building. This was a noble, if ultimately futile, gesture. Any fule no that you press 'down' to call the lift down to you, after all.
They'd better have upwards of 50 lifts in the Burj Dubai. You could be stuck for days waiting for a lift otherwise...
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Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Bad News Day
It was British Labour government spin doctorette Jo Moore who famously sent out a memo suggesting that government departments might find that 9/11 was a good day to put news out if they wanted to bury it. Moore was found out and ended up getting her career pretty effectively buried, of course.
Which has little to do with this post except that some terrifying news has come our way but the government seems to have buried it during a period when news has been dominated by the air-show, the Big 5 exhibition, the Red Bull FlugTag (good fun, great PR) and, of course, the upcoming Rugby 7s, the annual event where 10,000 animals are herded into a pen and fed alcohol until they become anti-social and leery.
What news could be so sinister, so awful? Wait'll I tell yer...
The government is going to 'regenerate' ageing areas of Dubai, according to the report we found in Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), including Sheikh Zayed Road and *sob* Satwa. You can view the full appalling story at Arabian Business.
Dammit. Satwa is where our office is. We like it here.
So the news has resulted in much amusing speculation from colleagues, including new names for the 'regenerated' Satwa: New, New, Old, Old Town; Satwa Boulevard; Satwa Lakes or Satwa City. Some other ideas could include 'JustbehindJumeirahOneCityofWonders' or how about 'Satwa Community'?
We're expecting ski-slopes, dolphinariums and theme parks where before there was a plant souk, a bus station and myriad shawarma joints, shoe repairers, car upholstery shops and all those other diverse little shops that make a city, well, human.
Now we're going to be bulldozed and replaced with faceless skyscrapers and shopping malls coloured that Dubai Dun colour that has taken over everywhere; we're going to be bombarded with the usual realtors Prozac-speak: "Elegant Living in the Old City" and all the rest of the tosh they push out. Golly, there's probably going to be some sort of Old Satwa display in one of the new shopping malls.
Dowdy, down at heel and raggle-taggle, Satwa is one of the last few truly human places left Dubai-side. And now it's going to get morphed, like everything else, into The Projects.
*sigh*
Which has little to do with this post except that some terrifying news has come our way but the government seems to have buried it during a period when news has been dominated by the air-show, the Big 5 exhibition, the Red Bull FlugTag (good fun, great PR) and, of course, the upcoming Rugby 7s, the annual event where 10,000 animals are herded into a pen and fed alcohol until they become anti-social and leery.
What news could be so sinister, so awful? Wait'll I tell yer...
The government is going to 'regenerate' ageing areas of Dubai, according to the report we found in Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), including Sheikh Zayed Road and *sob* Satwa. You can view the full appalling story at Arabian Business.
Dammit. Satwa is where our office is. We like it here.
So the news has resulted in much amusing speculation from colleagues, including new names for the 'regenerated' Satwa: New, New, Old, Old Town; Satwa Boulevard; Satwa Lakes or Satwa City. Some other ideas could include 'JustbehindJumeirahOneCityofWonders' or how about 'Satwa Community'?
We're expecting ski-slopes, dolphinariums and theme parks where before there was a plant souk, a bus station and myriad shawarma joints, shoe repairers, car upholstery shops and all those other diverse little shops that make a city, well, human.
Now we're going to be bulldozed and replaced with faceless skyscrapers and shopping malls coloured that Dubai Dun colour that has taken over everywhere; we're going to be bombarded with the usual realtors Prozac-speak: "Elegant Living in the Old City" and all the rest of the tosh they push out. Golly, there's probably going to be some sort of Old Satwa display in one of the new shopping malls.
Dowdy, down at heel and raggle-taggle, Satwa is one of the last few truly human places left Dubai-side. And now it's going to get morphed, like everything else, into The Projects.
*sigh*
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Monday, 26 November 2007
Moaning Minnies
A number of people have complained that I haven't been posting here but that I have been posting there and they don't like it because the food stuff is boring.
How can food be boring? Philistines!
Anyway. I'll try and post here some more as well. But don't blame me if it's not funny, mature or clever.
How can food be boring? Philistines!
Anyway. I'll try and post here some more as well. But don't blame me if it's not funny, mature or clever.
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Thursday, 8 November 2007
Money Can't Buy Me Salik
The potty Salik road toll system continues to amaze me. I ran out of credit a couple of weeks ago and, for one reason or another, I haven't managed to top it up. It's just been a mad time and every time I remember or am near a service station I've either been in a mad tear to get to a meeting or I haven't had cash on me. Because, of course, you can only pay for the blasted toll in cash.
A while ago they announced that you could pay online, so I toddled off to their website (www.salik.ae) to do just that. Imagine my delight when I saw that the module was up and running!
So I entered my account number, PIN code and mobile number and then went downstairs to the car to find the tag number because for some reason the system doesn't know my tag number automatically (a miracle of technology integration, is Salik). And then went to the 'Recharge' option on the menu, entered Dhs 250 as my recharge amount and pressed 'Next' to take me to the egovernment epay service and make my payment.
Nothing happened. Because it doesn't work. It's not broken or anything like that: it simply just isn't working. And I've been going back over the past week or so just to check that it still doesn't work.
So I checked my balance (32 Dhs apparently, but I know that it is -32 Dhs) and my violations (no violations).
No violations? Yes! No violations!
Genius. You can't pay for it, but it doesn't matter because nothing happens when you don't pay for it. Which makes it completely, utterly and totally pointless.
Which is what so many of us have been saying all along, I know...
A while ago they announced that you could pay online, so I toddled off to their website (www.salik.ae) to do just that. Imagine my delight when I saw that the module was up and running!
So I entered my account number, PIN code and mobile number and then went downstairs to the car to find the tag number because for some reason the system doesn't know my tag number automatically (a miracle of technology integration, is Salik). And then went to the 'Recharge' option on the menu, entered Dhs 250 as my recharge amount and pressed 'Next' to take me to the egovernment epay service and make my payment.
Nothing happened. Because it doesn't work. It's not broken or anything like that: it simply just isn't working. And I've been going back over the past week or so just to check that it still doesn't work.
So I checked my balance (32 Dhs apparently, but I know that it is -32 Dhs) and my violations (no violations).
No violations? Yes! No violations!
Genius. You can't pay for it, but it doesn't matter because nothing happens when you don't pay for it. Which makes it completely, utterly and totally pointless.
Which is what so many of us have been saying all along, I know...
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Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Sharjah Bad Traffic Day
Dubai traffic is normally bad, but Sharjah definitely took the biscuit this morning. The airport road was jammed, the Emirates road gridlocked back from the notorious National Paints to the airport road exit (RAK to Dubai in 45 minutes! Yeah, right). If you could have bottled all that misery and frustration then you'd have a bottle of misery and frustration.
We sailed through it in the main, thanks to many years' experience of snickets, back-routes and sneaky little hops, although even out in the desert roads there were cars backed up left, right and centre. But the biggest surprise of the day was yet to come.
The little bit of desert I hop across on the way to work was absolutely heaving with cars: every kind of four wheel drive imaginable was bogged down and they all had one thing in common.
They were all locals.
Now I can remember pal Matthew getting his Wrangler bogged on a beach in Umm Al Qawain and a local bloke sailing past him, laughing, shouting in glee and waving his arms at the helpless Matt as he gunned the engine of his Nissan Sunny.
I can remember in Falaj Al Moalla seeing a Chevrolet Brougham beating a Land Cruiser up a dune in a straight race, the Chevy absolutely bog standard except for its local driver, who must have killed the clutch in that one victorious impossibility.
I can remember seeing a local driving a Mercedes up Big Red - and many other unfeasible sights did Big Red (now, thanks to the volume of cars that ply its slopes, reduced to Little Red) give up over the years - and every time there was a local at the wheel, making cars do what they're simply not supposed to do on the sand.
In fact, I have many years of happy memories of locals driving cars in the desert with incredible skill, breakneck derring-do and a seeming disregard for life and limb that has never been less than jaw-droppingly impressive.
But I can never remember seeing so many nationals bogged down in any piece of sand, let alone a straightforward set of small dunes and tracks - in winter, too, when the sand is harder. It has forced me to reach a conclusion.
They don't make locals like they used to...
We sailed through it in the main, thanks to many years' experience of snickets, back-routes and sneaky little hops, although even out in the desert roads there were cars backed up left, right and centre. But the biggest surprise of the day was yet to come.
The little bit of desert I hop across on the way to work was absolutely heaving with cars: every kind of four wheel drive imaginable was bogged down and they all had one thing in common.
They were all locals.
Now I can remember pal Matthew getting his Wrangler bogged on a beach in Umm Al Qawain and a local bloke sailing past him, laughing, shouting in glee and waving his arms at the helpless Matt as he gunned the engine of his Nissan Sunny.
I can remember in Falaj Al Moalla seeing a Chevrolet Brougham beating a Land Cruiser up a dune in a straight race, the Chevy absolutely bog standard except for its local driver, who must have killed the clutch in that one victorious impossibility.
I can remember seeing a local driving a Mercedes up Big Red - and many other unfeasible sights did Big Red (now, thanks to the volume of cars that ply its slopes, reduced to Little Red) give up over the years - and every time there was a local at the wheel, making cars do what they're simply not supposed to do on the sand.
In fact, I have many years of happy memories of locals driving cars in the desert with incredible skill, breakneck derring-do and a seeming disregard for life and limb that has never been less than jaw-droppingly impressive.
But I can never remember seeing so many nationals bogged down in any piece of sand, let alone a straightforward set of small dunes and tracks - in winter, too, when the sand is harder. It has forced me to reach a conclusion.
They don't make locals like they used to...
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Thursday, 1 November 2007
UAE Car Crash Nationality Chart
If you’re tempted to have a car crash, then do keep this handy chart so that you know where you’re likely to stand.
- Khaleeji
- Brit
- Aussie/South African
- Yank
- Other Euro
- French
- Korean
- Japanese
- Lebanese/Jordanian
- Syrian
- Iraqi
- Egyptian
- Palestinian
- Other Arab
- Sudanese
- Philipina
- Philipino
- Indian
- Pakistani
- Chinese
- Nepalese
- Bangladeshi
- Pathan
- Tibetan
- Afghan
Notes
Does not take into account relative status ie: British shop assistant vs Chinese Ambassador. This complicates things, obviously.
Does not take into account ethnic origin. So, for instance, South African passport holder of Goan extraction tends to confuse things a little. Nobody’s fooled by a Lebanese name holding a Canadian passport, so it’s probably best not to try.
Does not take into account linguistic ability. If you’re able to speak Arabic, move yourself up a couple of notches.
Does not take recent world events into account. If you’re Pakistani and you’ve just lost to
Does not take personality into account. Move down three notches if you’re an argumentative, arrogant twat. It’s OK, you’ll still be just ahead of the rest of
Does not take the facts of what happened into account. However, this doesn’t really matter as a) the other person will lie outrageously, b) the copper will in all likelihood refuse to understand the blindingly obvious evidence burnt into the tarmac in front of him and c) nobody really wants the inconvenience of prolonging the whole sorry episode and if you get all dogmatic you’ll just end up down at the cop shop being told you’ll have to lodge a civil suit.
Does not take alcohol into account. You really don’t want to have had a couple of sundowners before this happened. Go to the bottom of the pile instantly and get mentally prepared to dine on biryani.
If your country of origin is not listed above, use the country nearest to yours.
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Sunday, 28 October 2007
Ships of the Desert!
The story is that of Egyptian journalist Amer Sulaiman, fined by a court for offending the 'Tarabin' tribe. The fine was a thousand camels. The spotter, Gianni, delighted by the barminess of the story and the picture that illustrated it in La Stampa, above, duly shared.
A thousand camels. That's an awful lot of fleas to infest a chap's armpits...
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Thursday, 25 October 2007
How Green Was My Valley
Now this one gets a bit involved, but do bear with me.
It’s in all the papers today. Sheikh Mohammad has announced that all buildings inDubai
Today also sees the announcement of the inauguration of the Middle East Centre for Sustainable Development, an initiative backed by The Environment Health and Safety (EHS) and Pacific Controls. If you were wondering who EHS were, according to the 1st September story on the announcement of the MCSD in Arabianbusiness.com, it’s the environment, health and safety division of Dubai World (whose CEO, Sultan bin Sulayem, patronised the launch). The ‘establishment will facilitate the roll out of green buildings to developers in Dubai World and the Middle East, provide service and systems that will establish guidelines for all development projects, assist them to achieve LEED certification, under USGBC/EGBC Guidelines and/or certification, established under the guidelines of MCSD, thus enabling sustainable development in the whole Middle East region.’
This must be all be regarded as something of a PR coup for Pacific Controls which, of course, supplies consulting and engineering for intelligent and ‘green’ buildings. And which first launched the Middle East Centre for Sustainable Development back in August. So this is a pretty neat second hit at the story!
Pacific is an interesting company, originally headquartered in Australia, it appears to have moved its head office to Dubai - and CEO Dilip Rahulman is also chairman of Solar Technologies, a Free Zone company that, back in 2006, announced the establishment of a Dhs50 million solar power energy facility in Dubai Techno Zone. So quite a commitment to Dubai from Pacific...
The company's green HQ was originally intended to be opened in April 2006, according to this company release dated February 9th 2006, but perhaps more interesting is that the building was originally to be certified by a completely different body to the USGBC - in fact, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was originally to provide certification. Both of these facts perhaps would arguably merit further investigation, but our investigative media would appear to be too busy fighting over cash awards from the government.
In news completely unrelated to the sudden outbreak of green angst inDubai , an international UN-backed conference on the global environment today opened in Abu Dhabi , organised by The Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi
It’s in all the papers today. Sheikh Mohammad has announced that all buildings in
Today also sees the announcement of the inauguration of the Middle East Centre for Sustainable Development, an initiative backed by The Environment Health and Safety (EHS) and Pacific Controls. If you were wondering who EHS were, according to the 1st September story on the announcement of the MCSD in Arabianbusiness.com, it’s the environment, health and safety division of Dubai World (whose CEO, Sultan bin Sulayem, patronised the launch). The ‘establishment will facilitate the roll out of green buildings to developers in Dubai World and the Middle East, provide service and systems that will establish guidelines for all development projects, assist them to achieve LEED certification, under USGBC/EGBC Guidelines and/or certification, established under the guidelines of MCSD, thus enabling sustainable development in the whole Middle East region.’
This must be all be regarded as something of a PR coup for Pacific Controls which, of course, supplies consulting and engineering for intelligent and ‘green’ buildings. And which first launched the Middle East Centre for Sustainable Development back in August. So this is a pretty neat second hit at the story!
Pacific is an interesting company, originally headquartered in Australia, it appears to have moved its head office to Dubai - and CEO Dilip Rahulman is also chairman of Solar Technologies, a Free Zone company that, back in 2006, announced the establishment of a Dhs50 million solar power energy facility in Dubai Techno Zone. So quite a commitment to Dubai from Pacific...
The company's green HQ was originally intended to be opened in April 2006, according to this company release dated February 9th 2006, but perhaps more interesting is that the building was originally to be certified by a completely different body to the USGBC - in fact, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was originally to provide certification. Both of these facts perhaps would arguably merit further investigation, but our investigative media would appear to be too busy fighting over cash awards from the government.
In news completely unrelated to the sudden outbreak of green angst in
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Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Biting The Hand That Feeds
As we continue to applaud Sheikh Mohammad's wise intervention in the Khaleej Times journalists threatened with jail case and his Undertaking That Journalists In The UAE Will Not Face Prison As A Potential Consequence Of The Pursuit Of Their Profession (with certain caveats as confirmed by certain authorities in a certain way), media and the law are something of a focus around here at the moment. It is perhaps timely and even mildly amusing to see the news that a journalist is suing the government-owned Dubai Press Club, his former managing editor and his former employer, the enormous Saudi Research and Marketing Group over an award for journalism.
The problem, apparently, is that the journalist feels that a $15,000 award for investigative reporting was wrongly presented by Dubai Press Club to his managing editor, as the journalist claims that he contributed to the report. He is suing for just under $137,000.
Litigious hack slaps back indeed.
The Gulf News report of the scrap details the slightly complex nature of the suit, which has now gone to appeal having been thrown out by the Civil Court for 'lack of evidence'.
None of the investigative reporters involved appear to have seen fit to question scrabbling in the dust for a cash award for journalism made by a government-backed entity. Strange, that...
The problem, apparently, is that the journalist feels that a $15,000 award for investigative reporting was wrongly presented by Dubai Press Club to his managing editor, as the journalist claims that he contributed to the report. He is suing for just under $137,000.
Litigious hack slaps back indeed.
The Gulf News report of the scrap details the slightly complex nature of the suit, which has now gone to appeal having been thrown out by the Civil Court for 'lack of evidence'.
None of the investigative reporters involved appear to have seen fit to question scrabbling in the dust for a cash award for journalism made by a government-backed entity. Strange, that...
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