Worth Its Weight In Gold?

English: A 1st generation Apple iPad. This is the 32GB WiFi model and shows the home screen. Please check my Wikimedia User Gallery for all of my public domain works. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back in the distant past, when Dubai was all sand and mobile phones a novelty (and dinosaurs ruled the earth), we were regularly beaten down with offers to win a bar of gold. It was all Dubai's ad agencies could seem to think of, win gold was a sort of promotional catechism and nothing else seemed to matter.

'We want an ad campaign.'
'Sure. How much gold can people win?'
'We were thinking of five ten tola bars for runners up and a kilo as the first prize?'
'That should do it. We'll get cracking on the creative.'

The 'creative' usually included The Dubai Radio Ad, where Bob would meet Jim at the lights and wonder where Jim was in such a hurry to get to. Jim would reply that the Khara Centre is giving away a bar of gold. It is mandatory at this stage to have Bob and Jim repeat the phrases 'A bar of gold?' and 'Yes, a bar of gold!'. Preferably breathlessly and in the excited tones of someone who has just discovered that snorting cocaine and breathing helium are quite fun when done in unison. Bob would then speed off, with Jim wondering where he is in such a rush to get to. The Khara Centre, of course.

I once knew a successful ad executive who come here from Hong Kong. Over the months I watched his slow decline into chronic alcoholism as every idea, scheme and stunt he came up with was met with, 'Yes, that's all very nice. And the bar of gold?'. I had to stop meeting him in the end, my liver couldn't take the lunches. I lost track of him, but believe he eventually left. It's the only time in my life I've sympathised with someone in advertising.

Now there's a worrying trend emerging. I'm starting to hear those self same radio ads again, but this time there's no bar of gold. It's iPads. Yes, win an iPad! An iPad? Yes! An iPad! What do I have to do?

It's confirmation that the iPad is now widely seen as a Most Desirable Thing, as desirable in fact as a bar of gold. You'd have thought that was all a bit behind the curve, but then look at the increasing number of stupid ways people are finding to try and have some of that Apple 'halo brand' spangle dust stick to their sloppy brands.

I posted a short while ago about the pointless restaurant that doled out iPads instead of menus. Colleague Carriington reports of a restaurant in the Ramada that goes one step further than using an iPad as a like for like dumb replacement for paper - this restaurant lets you select what you want using the iPad and the application has an 'order' button so your order can be placed with the kitchen. Guests are asked not to press this button but hand the tablet back to staff so they can place the order. Brilliant.

Beirut, Beirut and GeekFest Beirut

The Salim Slam tunnel is arguably the most polluted place on earth. Well, apart from the Aral Sea. It's a brilliantly designed long road tunnel that crests a hump and has no ventilation so the concentration of exhaust fumes literally forms into billowing, choking clouds of noxious grey gases. I'm stuck in the back of a hot taxi with cracked leather seats, no AC and the windows open as we hit the traffic jam. As usual, I held my breath as we entered the tunnel, a 47 year-old man playing an eight year old's game of holding my breath until we get to the other side. As we draw to a halt, I realise I'm about to fast track my way to a powerful hit of carboxyhaemoglobin. And I don't care. I'm back in Beirut.

Catching up with friends, wrangling with Virgin (who, like Virgin in Dubai for various reasons of their own devising, won't sell my books) and generally mooching around the city take up my time, but I still have time to finish editing the last few pages of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and send it off to its editor. I hadn't planned to finish Beirut in Beirut, but it's worked out that way and I am glad. I'd just like to say thanks to the Ministry of ICT for the awful Internet, which went down totally for a day and more. A nation offline, but a man with nothing to distract him from editing!

Sara, Eman and I went for lunch to one of my favourite places, the Cliffhouse restaurant in the tiny village of Shemlan up in the Chouf overlooking Beirut. The traffic in Hamra is broken and we spend an hour in hot, snarling lines of lane-swapping, jostling cars and vans. More mad traffic on the Saida road and then we're free, breaking upwards into the cool, clean mountain air. We're much later than we'd planned, but never mind. A seat by the open window and sunny warmth, beige stone walls and the sound of music, chattering and argileh soothe. A quick toast to absent Michelines and we start to tuck into the plates of food pouring out of the kitchen in a tide of riotous colours, the dark red muhammarah, the creamy houmous piled up around little pieces of grilled lamb, the fattoush. Ah, you know.

Then sitting back with chai nana (and an argileh nana for part time caterpillar Eman) and full stomachs, enjoying the breeze and the sight of Beirut turned golden by the waning afternoon sun. It really doesn't get much better.

GeekFest Beirut in the evening. I love The Angry Monkey, from its daft logo to its wireless internet. The Alleyway is literally that and the peeps at the Online Collaborative have set up a stage there. Something like four hundred people pitch up, a big cheery crowd of lively, chattering geeks spilled out onto the busy thoroughfare of Gemmayzeh, Rue Gouraud. The talks are talked, the fashion show is catwalked - both are enjoyed by the crowd, hands in the air clutching mobiles to snap the occasion. It's all impeccably done, if a tad hot out there. Four hundred beaming geeks is a lovely sight...

I take refuge in the air-conditioned Angry Monkey where later on the bands excel themselves, combining with pints of 961 to induce a warm, happy perma-grin.

GeekFest Beirut 5.0 was the most ambitious, diverse and stunningly put together event that has ever been held under the GeekFest name. Darine, Mohammed and the team produced something wonderful, a community-driven event that was slick, diverse and gloriously exuberant.

And so to home. I do so very much like Beirut...

GeekFest Beirut 5.0

I have a confession to make.

GeekFest Beirut started because I had to find a reason to go to Beirut in order to research Beirut - An Explosive Thriller, my second novel. Although I've been travelling to that most sexy of cities since 1997, I hadn't been back in a few years and needed to get to grips with the city again before filling it with my characters and their antics.

So I called the delightful Alexandra Tohme and said 'GeekFest Beirut - what about it?' - the rest, as they say, is the rest. Since then, Alex, Naeema, Lilliane, George (and the Maniachi) and many, many others have been responsible for putting together GeekFest events that have been arty, gamesy (boozy!) and generally suffused with that Yahooooo! sound that is Beirut having fun.

GeekFest Beirut has never been less than fabulous. And its fifth iteration, UNorganised by The Online Collaborative, looks set to be the most amazing GeekFest of all time. It's all built around the twin themes of Fashion and Music and was the brainchild of Darine Sabbagh and Mohammad Hijazi.

The Online Collaborative is an organisation centred around AUB, containing a number of very lovely folk (including HM Ambassador and my favourite funky lecturer, @LeilaKhauli)  and dedicated to the promotion of digital citizenship. To be fair, they have actually organised GFB5.0 rather than UNorganised it - it's set to be one heck of an event, with music and comedy performances, fashion shows and all sorts of things going on, as well as the traditional talks. It's even got sponsors and logos and things!

Oh, the shock of it!

GEEKTALKS

Maya Metni
Le Geek, C’est Chic! How to dress like a Geek? A practical guide
Maya is a visual communication consultant. She gathers her musings & inspirations in her blog www.mayametni.com  @mayametni

Toni Yammine 
Crowdsourcing Music Videos – Meen the Band
Toni is a Lebanese musician/director. He likes chocolate  and knows how to count very well in both Lebanese and English. He also has an RC plane and tweets on @toniyammine.

Hind Hobeika
Smart/tech clothing and where that’s all heading?
Hind is an engineer, swimmer and a self-tracking geek at its most!

Beshr Kayyali
Making Arabic Indie Music Popular Sawt.com
Beshr is a true Geek through and through. He has worked on many successful web projects for geeks apart from his day job as a developer.

Bassam Jalgha
Live Demo How to Build an Audio Synthesizer in 10 minutes Using Open Source Information
Bassam is a maker by heart. Always high on solder fumes, he works with electronics, build robots. He is into the DIY cult and tries to annoyingly spread it among his entourage. Check him out on www.depotbassam.com.

Elie Habib
Tools that allow developers to build Social features on top of Music
Elie is the co-founder of Anghami.

Loryne Atoui
Fashion for a cause
Loryne is a graphic designer impassioned by a crusade against breast cancer as well as travel and photography.

FASHION SHOW

Using real people and geeks as models!

Fashion for fundraising – Bras for a Cause by One Wig Stand 
Up & Coming Lebanese and Middle Eastern Geeky/Urban fashion Designers staged by Fishy Nation
An Online Collaborative line designed by our own Joseph Maalouf
Geeky Tshirts by Maya Zankoul
Looks from top Lebanese Fashion Bloggers
Geeky Tshirts by NOBRAND
DJing the show is DJ Beats

GIG

Alternative Rock Performance by Near Surface
Special Vocal Performance by Hiba Kadri
Acoustic Cover Performance by John Nurpetlian
A Stand Up Comedy Performance by Malek Teffaha
House Music by DJ G. Real Party Time featuring a DJ set by Underrated
And more...

STUFF

There's an ongoing art show. There are swag bags. There are other things happening. There's a posh dinner menu or a 961-fuelled bar snacks package. There's REGISTRATION!!!

Go here to sign up and reserve a place and a 'formula' at The Angry Monkey or Couqley or just reserve a place at GeekFest. If you've got any questions, hit up @geekfestbeirut or get 'em on Facebook!

I'll see you there!

The Fast Service

English: Sharjah, UAE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For some reason officialdom has all happened at once this year. Hot on the heels of the great health test and residence visa renewing, I've had to renew my tenancy, which means getting it attested.

As eny fule no, the UAE is a tax free country. This is a good thing, IMHO. It is not 'fee free' however and tenants must pay a 'fee' of 2% of their annual rent to the government and have their tenancy contract attested, which validates it in the eye of the law.

I duly presented myself at the appointed place and was given a queue ticket by one of the harried-looking chaps at the information desk. Clutching ticket 271, I couldn't help but notice the number on the board was 22 - and the hall was full of men standing around with tenancy contracts in their hands. After ten minutes, 22 had become 23 and I was starting to worry about the likelihood I'd be renewing my visa again before my number came up. I waited some more, starting to get that nasty feeling you get when you don't understand a system and are actually in the wrong place. Maybe the 271 related to another area or procedure? Surely I wasn't in a queue of 250-odd that was moving at one every few minutes?

By the time we got to 24, I went back to the information desk to check this was, indeed, my queue. Oh yes, said the chap. You have to wait unless you take the fast service. The what? The fast service. It costs 150 Dirhams. Right, I'll have one of those, please.

Ten minutes later, I'm out of there, clutching my attested contract. And while I am duly grateful for the fast service, I am left with two thoughts.

For one, rather than charge for a fast service, why not fix the system that's so broken that you need a fast service?

And thought the second is why did I sit and watch a man at Deyaar type my details into a PC, print them out on a form and hand it to me, which I duly took to the government office and watched a lady scan to input into some type of document management system? Surely, he could have filled out an online form - in fact, the entire process could take place online in a fraction of the time it's currently taking.

It's at that point I cast my mind back to 'the old days', when attesting a tenancy contract was a ten-step process of jostling queues and men who unpicked the staples from each bundle of papers before shuffling them around in a different order and restapling them and grunting 'seven' at you. This meant 'go and stand in queue number seven now for twenty minutes and he'll unpick the staple and reshuffle the papers back into their original order before grunting 'twelve' at you' and so on in the time honoured tradition of 10 PRINT ABANDON ALL HOPE; 20 GOTO 10.

The Fast Service is progress of sorts. I'll take it, with thanks...

Where's My Identity Card?

English: Letters in a post office box in a US post office lobby. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I renewed my UAE residence visa last month. Visas used to last for three years, now they last for two. This is apparently to improve the flexibility of the labour market. Sure enough, a new Emirates Identity Card is also part of the fun and games.

Yesterday marked the passing of The Last Great Deadline for applying for an ID card in Dubai. The Emirates Identity Authority, or EIDA, has been issuing dire warnings and waffling about deadlines since the whole thing started back in 2007. Five years later, the card issuing process is finally linked (or at least, operating in parallel) with the visa application process and a deadline has passed without being extended, clarified or otherwise obfuscated.

I had to go to Sharjah's Central Post Office yesterday. I wanted to wait around for fifteen minutes waiting for a listless youth, who had apparently had all the bones removed from his body, to find my registered letter and experience tells me this is the best place to do it. While I was waiting for the aforementioned youth to bother turning up, I noticed a long, shuffling queue which led to a counter labelled "ID Card Collection Counter". Behind this, there were floor to ceiling racks stacked of cardboard mail boxes stuffed with envelopes and two grumpy looking blokes flopping around and grugingly doling out envelopes to supplicants. Because your ID card isn't actually sent to your PO Box, it's sent to the post office where your PO Box is and then handed out individually. There are in fact two queues - the one with no people queuing in it is marked 'Ladies and Locals'. There must have been thousands of envelopes in all.

This dystopian little scene reminded my of my own, as yet undelivered, ID card. It's been nearly a month since the visa was issued and there's been no sign of any ID card. I asked around. A pal with a visa issued last December is still waiting for her ID card. Another who applied in May is set to go for fingerprinting late in July.

Anybody with a less charitable outlook would conclude that the EIDA people are swamped and the whole system is totally backed up trying to manage the tide of last minute applications. If the scenes in the EIDA back office are in any way parallel to the communications side of things, it must be a tottering, Heath-Robinson style system creaking dangerously under the pressure.

I prefer to think of it as a well oiled machine snapping into action. And anyway, I'm in no hurry to join that long, hopeless-looking queue in the post office...

Has anybody out there actually received an ID card recently?

The Definite Article

English: The first Qatar Airways Cargo Boeing 777F (A7-BFA) in Frankfurt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The is the definite article. It is used in front of definite nouns, for instance, the world. So if you want to be known as the world's five star airline, you need a definite article.

Someone forgot to tell Qatar Airways. Which is a shame as every night I try to catch the news on Sky before going to bed, my only regular TV consuming habit as otherwise I tend to shun TV like a rabid dog. And every night the weather sponsored by Qatar Airways plays out some cheesy image of someone being unfeasibly cosseted together with the tagline, "Qatar Airways. World's Five Star Airline."

I find this annoying. Not in a life-threatening call the anger management guys he's about to chew off Akbar Baker's face sort of way, but in a sort of itchy animal bite sort of way. I do often wonder if the ad agency responsible are client doormats or simply stupid and incapable of stringing together a five word sentence. Alternatively, I suppose, they might think it's clever or in some way 'disruptive' to intentionally mangle the sentence. I can actually see some pony-tailed, yo-yo toting cretin presenting this new way of getting the consumers' attention. It could catch on. Imagine: "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and marmoset". See? Disruptive to the max, baby.

And then in today's Gulf News I spot an advertisement for Qatar Airways to Perth. And lo and behold, the headline's RIGHT! "Fly to the capital of Western Australia with the world's 5-star airline" it says.

I bet someone's gonna cop it for that one.

"You're sacked."
"But it's right!"
"Yes, that's what's wrong. It's not supposed to be right."

Cue Another Farce?

Two cellphone SIM cards (bottom and top) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Did  you catch this one? I, for one, didn't I've missed it until I finally tumbled today.

The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) last week launched a new campaign, 'My number, my identity'. It's probably my fault and certainly not the almost impenetrably obtuse language of the announcement which is clarified by Gulf News today in a story that, try as I might, I could not find online.

We're all going to have to trot off and re-register our mobile SIMs with whichever operator we're with. From July 17th, Etisalat will have over 100 registration points around the country where you can go, eagerly clutching your national ID or passport with visa, and complete an application form to, effectively, re-apply for your mobile phone number. Du didn't confirm its re-registration arrangement intentions to GN in order to make the story, but CEO Osman Sultan, quoted in the TRA release lauding the TRA's campaign, did say customers could go to Du shops.

Many of you will recognise July 17th as the likely starting point for Ramadan, the ideal time to conduct a national campaign of this sort.

Unregistered SIM cards will be cancelled "once the registration period expires" according to the GN story. We haven't been told when that is, or what likely timescale they have in mind.

There are 12.36 million mobile lines out there. It's taken five years for the Emirates ID Authority to 'roll out' the national ID card. How long will it take this campaign I wonder? How many needless frustrations, queues, visits to physical locations and extended deadlines, empty threats, retracted announcements and 'clarifications' are we set to see?

But believe me folks, take this one seriously and get in there early. Because if there's one thing these bohos can do well, it's cut people off...

The "Nutella Needle" Story

I'm not sure where to put today's Nutella syringe story. All of the UAE's English language papers have faithfully reported on a warning issued by Dubai Municipality - apparently some people have been circulating pictures online of hypodermic syringes filled with Nutella, that mixture of chocolate, hazelnut and vegetable oil that is as beloved to the Gulf as that gloopy processed cream cheese.

Newspaper language for some people have been circulating images, BTW, is 'viral'.

But it would appear Dubai Municipality has taken the images seriously, with GN's story calling the syringes 'illegal' and claiming they have sparked a 'sharp response'. Geddit? Syringe? Sharp response? You gotta love those GN subs, they nail it every time!

A spokesman for 'the company' (Gulf News is too precious to name distributor Arabian Oasis or manufacturer Nutella. The National cites both) said "It could seriously tarnish brand image and we will take action against it", according to GN's somewhat breathless report.

I'd like to see them do that. What are they going to do, sue the Internet?

I can't argue with Dubai Municipality's action in the name of protecting the public, although the words storm, tea and cup do tend to spring to mind. You can never be too careful and some nutter deciding to pack medical syringes with Nutella is just the kind of thing that could only happen here.

It's not the first time this type of image has been made, a simple Google Image Search will confirm that. In fact, the first search result is a popular image that's altogether more graphic, showing a man 'shooting up' Nutella. The gag's a simple one, 'I need a fix of Nutella'. If the local image were 'viral', it'd show up on image search, incidentally. And it doesn't.

What does show up if you do a comparative image search is an classified entry on Arabic website souq.dubaimoon.com advertising the syringes at a price of Dhs10 each. That post, linked here, hadn't been taken down at the time of writing and does, indeed, seem to confirm that some nutter is selling Nutella repacked in syringes. Of course, it could well be a hoax or prank, but the entry has a phone number against it and it would presumably be well worth a follow-up by a journalist with half an ounce of enquiring mind.

But then again, such a journalist would already have looked into the origins of the image and... oh, never mind.

Would You Like An App With That, Sir?

English: Apple iPad Event (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had sworn off going out to eat following my last pocket-emptying plate of Dubai restaurant mediocrity, but was talked around and so the weekend saw us once again approaching a crisp linen table in a mood-lit temple to gastronomic indulgence. I feel compelled to write about it and as The Fat Expat is dead, you'll just have to put up with it being posted here.

The restaurant was called Terra Firma and pals had found it in that timeless tome for the cost-conscious consumer, The Entertainer. For those who don't know it, The Entertainer comes in many editions, all of which are basically books of special offer coupons, typically of the 'one main course free when two dine' variety.

The first hitch was the fact the restaurant had moved. Nobody had thought to mention this when we booked, so there was a certain amount of confusion at the Al Badia Golf Course when we tried to find a restaurant that had, in fact, been moved to the Intercontinental Festival City late last year. The second was the menu was significantly more expensive than the sample menu in The Entertainer. The third was it came on an iPad.

Yes, an iPad.

So you swipe your way through the menu, with an illustration of each dish against it available by tapping on a button on the screen. There's a wine list, too. You can't actually order from the iPad, you just browse using it. I confess to finding the idea gimmicky to the point of being mildly offended by it. There is no earthly reason to present a menu on an iPad, except perhaps that the restaurant lighting is so gloomy you couldn't read print. It's actually more onerous to navigate the screens than hold paper.

And then we get to the prices. Dhs150 and more for a starter. One of the starters, the Beluga caviar, was almost Dhs 1,000. Mains were similarly hefty on the wallet, with steaks starting in at around the Dhs 250 mark and climbing steeply. And the wine list was outrageous, kicking off at Dhs200-odd for the stuff they slosh out at cheap brunches, typically Dhs25 at 'street' prices. I can live with five times cost (grudgingly) but this was way beyond that. At least you find out how they managed to pay for all those iPads...

It was here I was on the point of leaving and striking out for the Belgian Cafe. It was a touch and go thing for a while. We stayed, but only because of the vouchers. I had a very nice smoked haddock saffron chowder, probably the most affordable starter on the menu at Dhs60. We all had steaks and sides and these were truly excellent (although one didn't come as ordered, which as Gregg Wallace would say, 'isn't good enough at this level'), if slightly pricey. The Entertainer vouchers took care of that, though. If the selection of salts and mustards was trying a little too hard, it was so overshadowed by the iPad stunt it didn't stand out. The mustards were very nice, in fact.

And then back to the iPad farce for dessert. I wanted cheese, but balked at paying Dhs150 for a cheese platter. That's twenty five quid for some cheese! Are these people mad? We asked for the maitre d' and enquired what was so special about the cheeses? Washed with virgins' tears? Made of milk from cows fed on cheese? Imported from the Scapa Flow Ice Cheesery? Nope, just some Brie and stuff with quince jelly. Now you feel free to tell me I'm being unreasonable about this, but I can't see it. I'm not a mean person, at least I think I'm not, but I can't see where Dhs150 for a plate of cheese works at all. I asked if I was the first person to complain and apparently I am.

Deciding we couldn't face dessert in the face of The Great Cheese Disaster, two of us went for Irish coffees. These were made by someone who has never seen an Irish coffee - two lukewarm white coffees with foamed cream on top and some undissolved brown sugar on the bottom. They might have contained the magical ingredient, they might have not. They were the worst Irish coffee I have ever seen, although Sarah assures me she was served a worse one once in Kenya in 1988. Apparently the chef is Irish, which just makes the insult to Shannon International Airport's gift to its American visitors even worse.

We got the check, which didn't come on an iPad. The vouchers meant it added up to Dhs1,800 for four. We had eaten well and hadn't stinted on the sauce. The food had been very good indeed. But we had picked our way carefully around an outrageously expensive menu and wine list - you could easily have burned through a thousand dollar dinner for four.

And I'm simply not paying that. I was right the first time. I can cook. I'm staying home.

Anti Social Media

Khanjar, Saidi-type, circa 1924, from Oman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oman's National Human Rights Commission has come out against the online commentators and activists who have been irking the government to the point where there have been a significant number of arrests recently.

The Commission's statement, linked here, is a model of clarity. For instance: "NHRC pointed out that there is a difference between the freedom of opinion as a right and the practice of this right in reality. The dividing line makes the practice of this right legal and going beyond it a crime punishable by the law. The rule in this issue is that the freedom of individuals stops when the freedom of other individuals starts."

Right.

The Omani public prosecution issued a statement last week that clarified its position on the issue of opinion expressed online and "calls upon all citizens on the importance of following the legal methods and means for the expression of opinion in line with the legal concept for the freedom of expression."

The problem is, of course, as Omani columnist Susan Mubarak points out in Muscat Daily, there is no official 'line' that defines quite where " the freedom of individuals stops" and "the freedom of other individuals starts". Her excellent piece on the issue is balanced by the Uriah Heep tones of the Oman Tribune.

Article 29 of Oman's 'Basic Statute of the State' guarantees "The freedom of opinion and expression thereof through speech, writing or other forms of expression is guaranteed within the limits of the Law." Those limits are, of course, nowhere defined.

Further clarifying its statement, the NHRC said that "It affirmed that it supports the freedom of opinion, which seeks to achieve the public interests rather than those harming or insulting others."

The 'About Human Rights' page on the NHRC's lovely, retro-style website is "under construction". You'd have thought it would have been 404, wouldn't you?

(Update: I've just learned from @muscati that a female member of the NHRC has resigned from the commission as a result of its decision to make this statement.)