Cross Cultural Exchange She Too Much For Good

Having just spent a most pleasant and productive three days with our European colleagues at the annual uber-klatch, this year's was in Vienna, I can now say that I have propelled a pedalo across the Danube, which wasn’t honestly in my list of 100 Things to Do Before I Die.

The frank, friendly-natured chat and goodwill of something like 150 smart people is a wonderful thing, although the rapid expansion of the companies in the network has meant many new faces and the necessity of going through the same explanations and conversations time and again: no, I’m not a ‘Dubaian’ (What is a Dubaian? As I explained once in the long-missed Campaign Middle East, it’s an alien from the planet Dubya), I’ve lived there for 15 years and I’m white because the sun’s too intense to go out burning yourself every week unless you want early ‘rhino skin’. No, it's not all Palm Islands and ski slopes; well, OK, it's mostly Palm Islands and ski slopes. And so on. So many similar questions and answers! Two of the home team were with me and they, at times, had it harder. No, they’re not forced to wear a chador or ‘full hejab’ at home was one response, politely enough delivered but through gritted teeth.

The curiosity and desire to hear more about the region, us and our lives is genuine. They’re smart people, our European colleagues, and the chance to get together, to clear things like that up and high-spot our market is always one that’s gleefully taken on my part. The fact that so many misconceptions still exist is an opportunity to put things right rather than an annoyance to rail at. New friends and contacts made, many things cleared up and new opportunities to explore. Truly a good investment and much fun.

But I was truly delighted and touched when one Bright Young Thing, hearing I was there from the Dubai office and representing the Middle East, congratulated me on the standard of my English.

Chador indeed…

Vienna, Vienna

Q: How do you know when the maid who cleans your hotel room is unhappy with her employer?
A: When the shower is set to cold and the shower head twisted round so that it hits you in the face every time you turn it on.

It must be a bitch working for the Hilton and knowing that you're funding that silly girl's OTT lifestyle. I sympathise. But I keep forgetting to redirect the shower in the morning and I'm getting caught every time. Paranoia? No. The shower head's natural inclination is to twist left towards the wall. This is sabotage and I keep getting sabotted.

*sigh*

Proof of Concept Silliness

So this is a horrible picture of 'Geek in chief' Gianni Catalfamo (of course only horrible pictures can be taken of Gianni) from the Pleon klatch in rainy Vienna just to show you can post piccies to your blog using the superior and sleek Nokia N93 Music Edition.

Ha, Catalfamo!

Salik. Who’s Buying the Taxi’s Tags, Then?

Mr. Ghulam the taxi driver is not at all happy about the Salik congestion charge (although, if we’re to believe Gulf News, neither’s anyone else except ‘traffic expert’ Mattar Al Tayer). Apart from anything else, he wants to know who’s going to pay the Dhs100 upfront cost of the Salik RFID tag itself. As a taxi driver, he’s pretty sure his Sharjah company isn’t going to spring for it. Although the TRA has been clear that passengers should pay the Dhs4 ($1) for the toll itself if they insist on passing a toll gate, nobody’s said who should pay for the tag itself. And Dhs100 is a lot of money to a taxi driver here in the city of dreams.

Meanwhile, signs for Salik gates are springing up on access roads to Dubai – spotted so far in Qusais and the Sheikh Zayed Road by Jebel Ali. Does that mean more Salik gates are on the way? Fans of early announcements remember promises of gates on every access road to Dubai and a figure of 70 gates was being bandied about at one stage.

Watch those spaces!!!

QE2 Du-Bought! All Your Boat Are Belong to Us!

We got the Guggenheim and the Louvre. We're building our own Eiffel Tower and Pyramids. Now we got the QE2!

No icon is safe! Haha! All your base are belong to us!

Face it: if you're going to buy a boat, you might as well buy a really, really big boat. Refurbished in 2000 at a total cost to Cunard of something like $40 million, following a $25mn refit in 1996 and a $60mn refit in 1994, (all calculated, incidentally, at today's $/£ rates) the ship then sells for less than it's cost Cunard in refits over the past 15 years.

A canny bargain for Dubai!

One Black Acer Promotional Stone

Remember One Red Paperclip? The kid (Kyle MacDonald) that bartered a paperclip in a series of increasingly unlikely and jaw-dropping swaps that saw him eventually get a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan out of it all? Put aside, for a second, the question of whether you'd want to live in Kipling Sakatchewan. Because I’ve had an idea.

It started with the Acer Pointless Promotional Stone, pictured above in loving TechniColour. You see, it was sitting there on my desk after I wrote the grumpy post about the (s) ad campaign that was supposed to promote the Acer Gemstone laptop. I tried giving it away, but colleagues wouldn’t take it – they kept giving it back. One pointed out, quite correctly, that the stone in question had a flaw in it (true) and that it wasn’t a gemstone anyway so what on earth did it have to do with a computer called Gemstone?

Which, I have say, I could only agree with.

So the thing remains sat there on my desk, an object so utterly useless that I can’t even give it away. Which spawned the idea of going one step further than ‘one red paperclip’. I am going to set out to swap my totally useless and fundamentally undesirable stone (an object even less valuable, anyone reasonable would agree, than a paperclip), with the ultimate objective of owning the moon.

I know it might seem like a big leap, but if you think of it more as just a giant step it doesn’t look so daunting. Just to make it more attractive, I am prepared to offer the stone along with the promotional text that accompanied it at no extra charge.

Anyone want to make the first offer?

Public Relations Quote of the Year

My personal favourite public relations quote of the year so far comes from Andrew Lee Butters, posting a story on the Kurdish PKK on the most excellent Time Middle East blog:

"If radical guerillas stuck in the mountains had good media advisors, perhaps they wouldn't be be radical guerillas stuck in the mountains."

It's so good that I'm going to have it made into a T-shirt.

Dubai Summer Surprises - Lift Surprises

I am daily reminded of the joys of unfettered multiculturalism. I’m not sure if there are many places on earth that are quite so polyglot as Dubai, the city that, more than any other, sits on the cultural tectonic between East and West. It is here that cheap sub-continental and Asian labour rubs shoulders with Western White Collars, where retail staff earning $200 a month serve shoppers earning $200,000 a year and more and where Indian labourers working for Irish contractors build Australian designed towers for Arab companies to sell to Indian investors.

And, let us forget the important stuff that is the lifeblood of this odd multinational mixture, we’re all of us better off for being here. Tens of nationalities co-exist here, at times uncomfortably but at least in broad consensus. The oddities and differences, however, can provide fascinating anthropological material.

Take lifts. In this part of the world, lifts often have mirrored back panels. This can provide much amusement for the amusedly inclined.

If you are ever moved to touch a Balinese person on the head, restrain yourself. It’s the worst insult and you’ll end up, if you’re lucky, with a black eye. If you’re Dutch, you’ll likely end up with a rice sickle buried in your chest. A strong veneration for the head appears to be core to Bali’s animistic Hinduism, as well as forming something of a preoccupation for Hindus in general.

So, when in Dubai, do expect Indian chaps entering a lift to notice the mirror, admire themselves fleetingly and then whip out a comb and start to re-shape the super-cranial keratin (hair). Perhaps amusingly, this ritual grooming invariably takes precedence over selecting a destination floor, leaving one’s fleeting travelling companion impeccably groomed but unfloored.

For some reason, many people from the East see the process of calling a lift differently from Europeans. In Europe, and many parts of East Asia, one presses the ‘up’ button if one wishes to go up and the ‘down’ button if one wishes to go down. In Asia, particularly India, it seems that one presses the ‘up’ button to summon a lift up and the ‘down’ button to summon a lift down.

So, if on the ground floor of a 10 story building, many people in Dubai press the down button to call the lift down to them. If you’re on the 8^th story of a 10 story building and aiming to go down, the best thing to do is call the ‘up’ button on the grounds that the lifts are more likely to be below you than above. Often people press both ‘up’ and ‘down’ buttons as this increases the statistical likelihood of the lift coming more quickly. Because this is at odds with the way lifts are programmed, this results in many people being transported in the contrary vertical direction to that desired.

All of which explains why, occasionally, I call the lift from our basement carparking to find it already filled with people grinning out at me as I gape at them. Then the doors close again and they are taken away from me. Which, as summer has arrived and the humidity has rendered the air moist, thick and soupy (I swear I saw a wadi fish swimming past my head the other day), is lucky because people can become subject to violent irritability in these conditions.

Incidentally, I declare Summer upon us with some trepidation as Gulf News has not marked its official advent with a picture of a pigeon drinking from a standpipe or labourers resting in the shade. But I do feel I'm on the right lines and offical confirmation should come soon...

Salik Triggers Toll Gate Tetris

I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. Apologies to Gulf News, whose photo triggered this unworthy Friday thought. :)

Warning! Swimming Pools Cause Premature Ageing!

Al Sharq Al Awsat today published a story on how swimming pools could be dangerous for children, an excellent piece of timing as the thermometers of the Middle East start their annual soar to the dizzy heights of the forties and fifties and everyone takes to the pools and aquaparks.

The piece, carried on page 11 of the healthcare section, is headlined 'Pools Dangerous For Kids' Lungs' and is neatly illustrated with a very large picture of a slightly portly, silver-haired man in his late fifties tripping up in a swimming pool.

A splash indeed. Woopsie!