Burj Dubai Not Going to Fall Over Shock Horror

It was interesting to see the piece in Arabian Business magazine this week by Editor James Bennett, who got taken up to the top of the Burj Dubai by Emaar’s Peeaars so that his photographer could snap some neat panoramics.

James’ obvious excitement at his vertiginous treat was refreshing. You spend so much time being told that this or that project is cracking, sinking, broken, over-budget and so on that it was a pleasure to read a straightforward Boy’s Own style account of what it’s like to stand on top of one of the world’s greatest ever pieces of engineering.

We’ve had them, of course: the rumours. That the rock substrate was full of caves, that there are cracks in the base, that the water levels are all screwed up. But at the end of the day, the world’s tallest building is still piling on a floor every three days. And it is now, whatever else ye say about it, the world’s tallest building.

And it hasn’t fallen over yet, either.

But then the Burj Al Arab hasn’t sunk or rusted. And the Palm Islands haven’t been washed away. And the airport terminal hasn’t blown over. And and and.

Much as we like to enjoy the vicarious thrill of the ‘They’ve come a cropper on this one, I can tell you…’ story, you have to admit that we haven’t actually seen many of the dire prophecies fulfilled. Or any, in fact.

Which perhaps makes one wonder why we continue to be so interested in, and ready to believe, these little tales of woe to come from Jim whose mate Phil knows a consultant on the first phase of the blablabla project and they’ve bought all the wrong sort of rawlplugs…

Out of Control

Oh dear. I don't seem to be able to stop myself! All sorts of naughty 'Modhesh is Evil' scenarios are unfolding in front of me!!!

It's deep in mid-summer and I need a holiday. That's my only excuse your honour...

Proof that it IS Evil!

In celebration of the 1000th member of the chucklesome Facebook Group: proof that he is, indeed, evil.

Hmmm... I can feel a meme coming on...

PARTY PARTY PARTY PARTY

Like many other people who write blogs, I started this so that I could be witty, frothy and generally entertaining. There's little doubt that blogging is, indeed, an adult version of that horrible urge that precocious children have to play the piano or show off your ability to do break dancing in the middle of mum and dad's dinner party.

But I have to hold up my hands and admit that today's post comes to you from a narrative, comedic and linguistic talent that so far eclipses my own pathetic efforts that I bring it to you unedited, unexpurgated (and un-spellchecked!). It was shared with me, for which I thank him deeply and humbly, by pal Sherif The Killer of Yellow Things... It was sent to him, genuinely, as an email...

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Who doesn’t like to celebrate! All moments can be JOYFUL moments … YOU ONLY NEED THE RIGHT TEAM TO HELP YOU CELEBRATE!!!

Summer is here and the heat has drained everyone … But why not find the time to have some fun? Enjoyment & Pleasure is what we can supply you with… from the food to lights & music … from the simplest to the most sophisticated detail … we can plan and deliver all…

- Are you preparing for your WEDDING??? With all your wedding stress do you have the time to plan??? Why not enjoy and relax, while we plan for your wedding?

- From your BACHELOR or BACHELORETTE party … to the smallest and refine detail … we are pleased to do it all for you… To make your night a memorable evening !!!

- Your wife is PREGNANT and doesn’t feel like outing, the heat, the loud music, the cigarette smoke all would be things that bother her… why not do something SPEICAL for her just because you love her… but with a clean environment… and let us take care of the simplest details for you…

- You had a FIGHT with your lover… and you think everything is collapsing around you … why go for a cliché dinner??? Wouldn’t that be something you will expect ??? why not do something extraordinary… forget about the details just have the day to re-fresh and prepare yourself for the makeup night… and we will do it all for you…

- Are you getting a DIVORCE??? Why feel sorry about it??? Enjoy it and celebrate your new beginning??? We can plan your divorce party in way that you will enjoy it even better than your wedding…

- Your wife left for the summer vacation but you are still here working and feeling LONLEY missing her HOMEMADE FOOD… why feel lonely when you can have it all even if you are left alone??? Invite a couple of friends and lets us cook for you and celebrate your loneliness …

- Your best friend doesn’t feel like celebrating his/her BIRTHDAY??? Why not to come with the right plan to make him/her enjoy what was thought it would be a boring night??? We can come up with the idea and the plan and make your friends night a memorable one…

You just past your EXAMS and you think that’s something simple??? No its not !!! its another reason to celebrate… Let us organize it for you…

We at Cateriya Catering Services do it all… from your HAPPY MOMENTS to UNFORGETABLE MEMORIES … From your WORSE DAYS to days that will only be kept as HAPPY reminiscences … We make you forget that you even went through the stress… contact us and we will take care of everything … cause you deserve to be treated like a QUEEN / KING at all times and all occasions…

If non of the above exist and IS part of your life… Than for sure you need us … we will add the spices to your life with planning an unforgettable event for you…

Rendered speechless, for once, I have no comment...

Naked

Gulf News’ report that Dubai now has a Nudist Labour Camp made me laugh until the tears ran down my face. The thought of a number of these blokes making it home from the dusty building sites and then whizzing around the stacked rabbit hutches of the labour camps like the naked bloke with the juniper bushes in The Life of Brian really appealed to me.

It really is time to go on leave, isn't it?

RTA Quote of The Year

No sooner had I finished posting up a grumpy slice of whingeing about Salik than the morning papers landed with their customary 'thud' and with them the news that the new Floating Bridge over Dubai creek was shut yesterday morning for hours, causing massive and widespread chaos and misery on the roads.

Why?

According to Dubai's RTA (Roads and Transport Authority), quoted by Gulf News: "The bridge was closed for about two hours as part of the contingency plan to conduct some technical experiments during the peak hours so as to ensure that the emergency system works effectively using the smart traffic systems."

This is the finest, rarest, premium quality doublespeak. Not even Sir Humphrey Applebey could ever have reached these heights. This obfuscatory blither is the result of the hard work of a truly brilliant team of communications professionals and I salute them all individually and collectively.

Salik Surprises

So much has been written about Dubai’s congestion charge, Salik, that it’s difficult to contemplate adding to what’s already out there without a certain sense of resignation and perhaps a touch of fear that it’s just going to be a repetition of the considerable volume of incredulity, indignation, anger and exasperated invective that has peppered so many blogs over the past couple of months. Even the media, ever-aware of the burden of governmental disapproval, has tried to reflect the broad public dislike of the scheme. Strangely, few of the people who have complained appear to have been motivated to do so by the financial impact: it has been the apparent lack of a clear objective or a well-communicated plan of any sort that has drawn much of the negative comment in both on and off-line media. The response of the RTA, to the broad public concern has, at its least helpful, been to tell the public to stow it because they’re ‘not traffic experts’. The flow of information regarding the scheme and the ‘traffic management objectives’ that we’re told about as we hold for the Salik call centre to finish ‘helping’ other callers has hardly ever been more than a grudging trickle.

I am one of those people whose mobile numbers were ‘given wrongly’: I still have the copy of the form in which my mobile number is given with perfect clarity. I corrected the error over the ‘phone last week when I got through to their call centre. Today I got an SMS telling me that my balance of Dhs 2 was insufficient and that I should top up or face a fine. Now, forgive me, but I thought that one of the ideas was that you’d get an SMS warning you that your balance was low. Apparently not.

So I went to top up. I have to confess I was a little annoyed at having to do this on the spur of the moment rather than with a couple of crossings’ notice, but never mind. The Emarat station just prior to the Garhoud toll only has one till that can take Salik top-ups because they only have one pad of Salik top up forms – a rather analogue, multipart book of slips.

I can pay my phone bill using online and telephone banking, as well as my electricity and water bill. I can pay my traffic fines and I can even renew my PO box online.

But I have to top up my Salik account by filling in a cloakroom slip? So be it. I aimed to top up with a nice Dhs250 so that I wouldn't have to do it again for a good while. So I gave the girl my Visa card. Which is when I discovered you can only pay for Salik by cash.

What a muckle-headed slice of totally incompetent daftness.

But I’m not finished by a long chalk. You see, I then drove over Garhoud to hit the tailback immediately after the bridge. Because it’s gridlocked over Maktoum and the new Floating Bridge through City Centre and up the Ittihad Road to Sharjah. Because the traffic that’s crossed Business Bay to avoid Salik joins Garhoud a couple of hundred meters after the very bridge that this Salik scheme was meant to keep clear. It’s caused worse traffic congestion in the whole Deira area than we have every seen before and THIS IS SUMMER TRAFFIC – the number of cars on the road is something like 25% less than normal.

I thought I’d get a few laughs out of Salik but I, along with a lot of other people, have stopped laughing. Come September, when the traffic levels ramp back up to their usual heaving stock car race levels, there’ll be a whole lot more people not laughing.

Someone should really start doing some explaining.

Sky - That's Better!

Sky was getting properly into the swing of things last night: lots of stories on how communities were coming together and managing to cope with the flooding disaster.

I can only hope that my profound indignation, in the spirit of a butterfly in Beijing, somehow transmitted itself to London and changed a few synapses in the mind of a senior production team member. But sadly I have to admit that it's more likely that they simply came to their senses...

Shopper's Paradise

Today's Emarat Al Youm has a news story blaring the great news that retail sales in Dubai have gone through the roof this summer, obviously thanks to the Dubai Summer Surprises festival which is headed, as over 900 Facebook Group joining (it's going to hit the 1,000 by the weekend) people know, by the infinite-eyed grinning yellow evil that is Modhesh Al Modhesh.

25% increase in shoppers shrills the page 18 headline, backed up by the picture caption, Boutiques and accessory shops had the highest share of Festival sales.

Delightfully, the huge image used to illustrate the story is that of an completely empty shop.

One can only conjecture that they had been scared away temporarily by the appearance of a hungry, ravening Modhesh...

Ainsworth 1 Sky News 0 - They're Still Getting the Tone Wrong!

Following my wee rant about Sky News and how I think they’re getting the tone of their reporting on the floods in the UK wrong, I was delighted to watch Sky’s Jeremy Thompson interviewing Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment Peter Ainsworth last night. Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m no Tory. But long-time anchor figure Bowen started to rag Ainsworth about David ‘I wash regularly, actually’ Cameron going to Africa while his constituency was underwater. And that brought Ainsworth out of his corner fighting like Tyson on crack cocaine. Ainsworth slammed Thompson for Sky’s ‘blame game’ reporting, pointed out that we all had more important things to worry about and that the community was getting itself together and didn’t need Sky carping and pointing fingers right now thank you very much.

Thompson (whom I respect, incidentally) took a huge whack to the chin. And there I was cheering a spokesperson on again…

Meanwhile, talking about the weather, as the deliciously eccentric Alison Goldfrapp tells us: “It’s a strange day, no colours no shapes”. Today we woke up to the washed out colours of a summer Shamal, everything around rendered indistinct by the whirling sand, the air thick with the fine, pale dust. It gets up your nose, in your ears, in your hair, dries your skin and enervates your spirit.

The Mistral, the Khamsin, the Scirocco – the great seasonal winds of the world. And all we get is the miserable old Shamal.

The UAE’s Shamal whips up the desert and dumps it on the cities: sand streams across the roads and visibility drops, sometimes alarmingly. Shamal is Arabic for North and, perhaps interestingly, many people in the Arab World use shamal to mean left as well as yassar (right is yemin). Quite why North is synonymous with left is a mystery to me...

The beating hot wind, stinging with sand particles, is just what you need to add to that cheery summer feeling. Mind you, it could be worse. We could be 30 feet under in water.

Which is as neat a link as you’re ever going to get on this blog.