How To Sell To UAE Bloggers

I'm doing quite a lot of 'how to'ing recently, am't I? Don't worry, this isn't a book post...

This advice doesn't come from someone that runs amazing professional 'blogger outreach' programs because I don't really do very much of that. It comes from the other end of the horse - the blogger at the receiving end end.

While it's lovely to find you have been added to the Cision media distribution list and positively feted by PR people, many of the approaches seem to miss some reasonably basic thinking when it comes to seeking the engagement of people with blogs, popular Twitter accounts or much-liked Facebook pages. So these pointers might be helpful for future approaches.

1) Bloggers are people too.
I almost fell into the trap of labelling this one 'bloggers are not journalists' but this misses the fact that journalists (no matter how it goes against the grain to admit this) are also people. Little I have to say about approaching bloggers doesn't also apply to approaching journalists.

So by saying we're people too, what do I mean? I mean, for instance, that it would be nice if the approach were individual to me rather than generic. Saying you enjoy my thought-provoking blog is all very nice, but that hardly tells me you actually give a hoot or have ever read anything I have written.

If you had, you'd be aware that I'm much more likely to bite you than let you pat me on the head.

I am naturally going to feel more interested in helping you out if you've been a regular reader/commenter on this blog. Even a few words referring to why you think this blog would be interested in your new perfume line for dogs - ideally linked to some content I have posted here - would let me know you've at least had a stab at mapping the relevance of what you do to what I do. Shared interest is good. Irrelevance is bad.

2) Bloggers aren't there to cover your products
I know, it's amazing isn't it? But the majority of what I write in this blog is peculiar to me and the world around me. Inviting me to the Armani hotel to attend the launch of a new range of bamboo shopping trolleys will not have me gushing and bright-eyed at the prospect of going to such a wonderful place. I have never written about bamboo shopping trolleys before and have exhibited no interest in these items in the past (although now I'm quite sure Klout will include it in my areas of expertise and I'll own the category in search).    I don't write about products or review products. Ten minutes spent browsing the blog would mark me as a non-target for shopping trolley launches.

Fashion and food bloggers are more susceptible to these types of invitation if they relate to fashion or food and if they are somehow interesting and/or innovative. Food product launches are not likely to cut it. Fashion bloggers are (sorry guys, but you are) incredibly spoiled and will need something out of the ordinary or a great relationship having been established.

3) Bloggers have day jobs
There are few people in the Middle East making money out of blogging to the extent they don't have to earn money by doing something conventional like, say, working. So a Tuesday afternoon event is likely to be out of the question - an all-day gig mid-week, even if it's exciting and deeply tempting, will likely not cut ze mustard. We have jobs to go to. That means if you want to organise an amazing all-day event targeting bloggers, you'll probably have to work on a Friday. Altogether now? Aaaahhh.

4) Slowly slowly catchee monkey
An individual approach that is contextual will be much more likely to reap rewards than scatter-gun event invites. A great example here is how Nokia's PR agency, d'Abo & Co, used my recent highly public Twitter meltdown with my HTC Android mobile (there's nothing like a mobile perma-crashing and telling you it's 'quietly brilliant' every time it staggers back to its feet to get a chap's goat) to slip a Nokia Lumia into my life. It was a risky strategy, they had to have had real confidence in that product - but, having the expectation I'd hate the Lumia I actually loved it and didn't mind saying so. I don't feel beholden to them for lending me a mobile, but I did think their timing and smart approach was very well managed. I don't mean to be difficult, but I am generally brand antithetic. Some bloggers I am sure will love brands. Love 'em to death. Positively fawn over  'em. Let me know when you find one, eh?

So it's a matter of monitoring conversations (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, whatever) and mapping out your influencers (who IS an influencer?) before making an approach that is generally, as with any conversation, led by a contribution of some sort. Give forward to earn a place at the table.

By the way, most UAE blogs have relatively small readerships.

5) Build a community by being a member of the community
What is an influencer? A Klout score? Number of followers? Number of comments? You need to establish some metrics to decide at what level of influence it's worthwhile bringing someone onside - because you'll need to invest in the relationship. It's not a one-hit thing, the key word is the R one - relationship. Approaching a person, inviting their involvement and engagement with you, facilitating that engagement and maintaining a respectful (ie not 'we're targeting product messages at you because we think people listen to you') dialogue. That way you can bring influencers on board, typically one by one, and maintain that conversation to the point where you actually could organise a tweetup or other event and people would be happy to come. That'll take time and investment, but it's so much more effective than pumping out generic materials in the hope that bloggers will slavishly act as botnets for your product messages.

That's my 2p worth. I genuinely hope marketers out there find it useful.

How To Find An Agent? How To Self Publish in the UAE?

 (Photo credit: jm3)

Or, in short, what to do? You're in the United Arab Emirates and you're thinking of writing a book. You may have started. You may have finished it. But now you want to know what to do next. You have two options - find a publisher (which pretty much means get an agent) or become a publisher.

I can help. For a start, I know exactly how NOT to find an agent, I got rejected over 250 times. Believe me, I can tell you how to withstand the knock-backs. I signed with Robin Wade of that finest of London's literary agencies Wade & Doherty. How did I do it? What was the secret to my success? More to the point, how can YOU do it for yourself?

This Wednesday night, from 6-8pm at Dubai's gloriously funky uber-hangout The Archive, I shall share.

Promise.

I'll also be taking workshop attendees through how they can 'go it alone' and self-publish. Once the stuff of vanity and now an increasingly important avenue for writers, self publishing can be a road to riches, a source of immense satisfaction or an eyeball full of broken glass. How you approach it will, in many ways, define which of these is your most likely outcome. From picking platforms through formatting your manuscript and getting word out there to printing a physical edition, I'll take attendees through the easiest possible ways to get their work in people's hands.

Places are really, really limited - the room was full last time and most people booked for all four of the sessions in the Umbrella Series of wordy workshops, so do call or email Sarah at The Archive and ensure there's a place for you - sarah@thearchive.ae or phone The Archive on 04 349 4033.

If you want to get your hands on the presentations, resources and other stuff from the workshops, sign up to the emailer list using the form to the top right of this 'ere blog and I'll be sharing links an' stuff.

Sharjah's Big Bus Tour. An Odd Little Thing...

London bus - London eye (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

So a friend has her mum out for a couple of weeks, right? And she decides to take her on the Big Bus Tour of Sharjah (only it's not called that, it's called something else. But you know what I mean). So she nips down to that most classic of Sharjah hotels, The Coral Beach, and she asks 'em if they've got any information on the big bus tour thingy.

She was given a piece of paper with, her words, my face on it.

Disconcerting stuff, eh? In fact she was given a printout of this here post I did on the City Sightseeing Tour of Sharjah. Being one of the few people in the world who don't avidly log in every day to see what half-thought I've jotted down and flung at the wall of this very blog - in fact, being unaware that I even had a blog - she found the whole experience bordering on the alarming.

I think it's quite charming, really. The post wasn't by any means a gushy endorsement of the tour - in fact I went to some length to point out the things it should encompass but in fact misses out. And yet that's what they're using to promote the gig.

I'm thinking of a book now. 101 uses for a marginal blog...

Overhead At The Radio Station

Big Shiny Tunes 2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Hello, didn't expect to see you here!"
"Well, you know, like to pop in and say hi now and then. How's tricks?"
"Fine, thanks, bumping along quite nicely, actually."
"How's the Shiny?"
"Oh, you know, can't really complain. Because every time I do your secretary drops the line."
"Oh, gosh. Sorry to hear that. I'll have a word with her. Anyway, I didn't come here to talk about Shinies."
"Oh, right?"
"No. I came to talk to you about Ferris wheels."
"Ferris wheels? You mean like big wheels? The London Eye and all that? Why are you wincing?"
"If we could avoid talking about The Competition, that'd be great."
"Competition? For what?"
"The Dubai Eye of course. The world's largest Ferris wheel. It's going ahead. 210 metres of rotating circular wonderfulness with a ginormous LCD screen displaying premium advertising. It's a beezer scheme. We reckon it's worth a good three million tourists a year. What a marvel, eh?"
"Well, yes, I suppose so."
"Only there's a problem."
"Really? I'm not sure how I can help with that sort of thing. I do radio, not Ferris wheels."
"Well, that's the point, actually. It's your radio station. We can't have two Dubai Eyes, you see? And I'm afraid 103.8 is going to have to, well, you know, rebrand."
"Rebrand? But we're Dubai Eye Radio! The UAE's first and only talk radio station! We're news! Talk! Sport! We've been called Dubai Eye for simply ages! We were here first!"
"Yes, yes, all very interesting. But we've called the big wheel Dubai Eye and you're going to have to change. You can't have two Dubai Eyes when people Google us, let alone look us up on Google maps. We want 'em to be offshore from JBR, not hooning around out by Arabian Ranches."
"Call it something else. Weren't you going to call it the Great Dubai Wheel? Call it that again!"
"Look, that's a project that got cancelled. We don't go raking up Projects That Got Cancelled, right? It might remind people of the Shinies that didn't get finished. You're just going to have change your radio station's name and that's that. In fact, we want to help, so we've picked a name for you. You don't have to thank me, it's all part of the service. They're putting up the new signs outside now, actually."
"This is all rather out of the blue, I must say. Change our name to what?"
"Dubai Ear."
"Are you mad? Dubai Ear? That's the worst thing I've heard since the last ad break!"
"Well you are a radio station. Never quite saw eye to eye with the whole Dubai Eye thing myself. Dubai Ear is much more appropriate for a radio station. The listeners will be all ears! Hahaha! Geddit? "
"What if we hate the idea?"
"Oh come, come. Here are your new business cards. You'll get used to it. We've had a production company in London do you all new sweepers and stuff. 'Dubai Ear. You'll love what you hear!' Great isn't it?"
"You're barmy, you are. Completely barmy."
"Calm down, now. You'd hate to find your Shiny's been painted pink again because of a new Mandatory Pinking Order. Have a nice day. And give my best to the team at Dubai Ear, will you?"

(Part of an occasional series of Shiny dialogues. What's a Shiny? You'll have to read these to find out! :)

Eye eye! The Bluewaters Dubai Eye Ferris Wheel

The first Ferris wheel from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Funny thing to name a giant Ferris wheel after, a radio station, but there's no telling what folk will get up to these days.

National news agency WAM carries the news Dubai Ltd has announced another megaproject, the latest in a clearly signalled campaign of 'We're back' announcements. Braggadocio or bravado? You tell me. The Bluewaters plan will see a £1 billion island development off the beach by 'live the lifestyle' Jumeirah Beach Residence. On said island, developers Meeras are plonking an hotel (five star, natch), residences, a souq, an entertainment zone and the world's largest Ferris wheel.

Of course it couldn't just be a big Ferris wheel. It has to be a jaw-dropping, eye-popping 210 meter billion Dirham Ferris wheel. Ideally, scattered with hundreds and thousands and topped with glacé cherries.

It's all based on market studies that indicate the project can expect three million tourists a year to flock to its candy-floss stores and queue up to get a ride

Ferris wheel watchers will likely think this baby will be pipping the London Eye to the biggest Ferris wheel in the world post, but they'd be wrong. It's already been pipped twice - at a mere 135 metres, the London Eye is the mini-me of Ferris wheels (named after their inventor, a Mr. George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr) and was outstripped just six years after its opening by The Star Of Nanchang, a 160 metre behemoth. Just two years later, Singapore ripped the rug from under Nanchang's feet with the Singapore Flyer, which sneaked past the Star to take the Guinness Book entry with a mere five metres' lead.

The Flyer cost Dhs 876 million to build, so it looks like Meeras is getting a bargain from Hyundai Contracting, which will build the Dubai Eye wheel. If the Dubai Eye takes after the Star and the Flyer, it'll rotate once every 30 minutes, be in constant motion (no stopping to get on and off) and have gondolas with a capacity of 28 people.

Those with the memory span of a Higgs Boson will recall The Great Dubai Wheel, which was to have been built in DubaiLand by the Great Wheel Corporation. The project gained planning permission in 2006 and was officially announced as kaputski in 2012 after GWC had gone belly-up with a trail of failed Ferris wheel projects behind it. The Great Dubai Wheel was to have been a 185 metre wheel.

The fate of the Great Wheel Corporation is a fascinating one. It reeled from merger to acquisition to bankruptcy to collapse, through a number of iterations right up until 2012, when it finally folded. By then it was called Great City Attractions Global. GCAG's assets were acquired by Dubai-based Freij Entertainment International which operates GCAG's UK assets through its UK subsidiary Wheels Entertainments Ltd - including the controversial 53-metre York big wheel.

Freij bills itself as 'The world's biggest operator of Amusement Rides' although taking a look at www.freij.com you could also call it the world's biggest operator of a totally rubbish web presence.

Freij operates Dubai's Global Village, the site of the recent fatality when a part fell off the 60 metre Ferris wheel there - it was subsequently revealed this travelling wheel had been linked to the deaths of five people under previous ownership.

And in fact it was Freij CEO Freij Al Zein who first talked to media in April last year about a billion Dirham giant Ferris wheel to be called the Dubai Eye. Slated at the time to be a 170 metre wheel as part of a major 93,000 metre indoor amusement park complex, the project would appear to have finally come to fruition.

Quite whether Freij is still involved is pure speculation - developer Meeras hasn't updated a press release on its website since 2011, so any reliable information on the Bluewaters project beyond the WAM story is scant right now.

But it's interesting, isn't it, the way in which the Great Dubai Wheel dream never really went away but became a baton to be passed from hand to hand?

I wonder when the undersea hotel scheme will bob up to surface again...

PS - It seems to be a coincidence, as the WAM story doesn't mention it, but the story broke on George Ferris' birthday, as celebrated by today's Google doodle! Eerie!

What Have You Had In Your Mouth Lately?

A butcher shop specializing in horse meat in Pezenas (languedoc, France) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The horsemeat scandal gripping the UK and Ireland has been a fascinating story to watch unfolding - samples of processed meats in Ireland  tested positive for traces of horse DNA, with Dunnes Stores as well as cut price chains Lidl and Aldi stocking contaminated products.

The story spread quickly, with Tesco's 'Everyday Value' burgers found to contain 29% of everyday horsemeat and 'Everyday Value' spaghetti bolognese some 60% geegee. Findus was doubtless horrified  to find itself dragged into the controversy as tests found its beef lasagne contained from 60 to 100% horsemeat.

This is an investigative journalist's dream. The UK's press fell on the story, baying with glee at the chance to uncover more horsing around with our food - and they've come up trumps. At the heart of early investigations was Irish meat processor Silvercrest and French food processor Comigel.

Silvercrest's now-shuttered meat processing plant in Monaghan produced 3.7 million burgers a day - 9 out of 13 tested contained horse meat. Comigel is a huge supplier of 'white label' frozen ready meals  and the company that supplied the products to Findus and Tesco - as well as Aldi whose 'Today's Special' lasagne and spag bog were also found to contain 'Newmarket steak' instead of beef.

In fact Comigel produces some 30,000 tonnes of white label frozen ready meals a year, which it sells to companies across Europe. It's the Nike of nosh - and the companies that glibly bought low-cost products from Comigel  appear to have sacrificed consumers' interests for competitive advantage and profitability. Hands up if you're surprised. The company's customers included French chains and these have recalled products - the recalls include removals from the shelves of Carrefour, probably the biggest supermarket retailer in the UAE.

British authorities have raided an abbatoir and a meat production company over concerns at horsemeat finding its way into meat for 'burgers and kebabs' - Peter Boddy Licensed Slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and Farmbox Meats Ltd are both facing the high jump. Sorry.

Now the latest twist in the tale is that high-end UK supermarket brand Waitrose has been found to be selling meatballs contaminated with pork - in fact up to 30% of the company's 'Essentials' meatballs are pork meat. Waitrose buys the meat from, wait for it, Silvercrest.

Gulf News ran a piece today on the ongoing scandal, reporting on the news coverage that has rolled and rolled throughout the past couple of weeks in the UK and Ireland. Gulf News' attempt to get comment from the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority confirmed they were carrying out checks, but weren't going to 'comment at this time'.

Which is a shame as there is certainly some room for consumer concern here in the UAE. British and European supermarkets and brands are a dominant force in retail - and those levels of concern are hardly likely to get any lower as investigations unearth more and more consequences of supermarkets and brands abandoning traceability for profit. This is one story that's certainly not going away any time soon.

Can the UAE's supermarkets and food processors assure their customers of full traceability and that the foods they are selling are not contaminated by this scandal? Who's asking them? It's at a time like this you'd really want to be well served by your media. And no comment is not really what we need to hear.

Update: This excellent report on The National website today talks to retailers, processors and authorities alike to answer the very question I ask above - at least regarding locally processed meat if not imported ready meals. You can be the judge of the differential standards of journalism represented by the two newspapers' treatment of the same story.

Mobile Madness - The Middle East's Smartphone Spring

(Photo credit: Kalense Kid)

Got a lovely ring to it, hasn't it? Smartphone spring. If you wanted it to sound really cool, chuck an 'i' on it - Smartphone iSpring. Ah, what the hell, let's go for broke - The Arab Smartphone iSpring 2.0!

All the UAE's English papers have stories today on BlackBerry's Z10 and the high demand (and low supply) of the Handset That Could Save The Company. Tuesday is technology supplement day for Gulf News, so its coverage of the relative merits of the various handset choices is more in-depth - laced with original editorial and locally sourced comment, which is great to see. Retailer Axiom got a couple of smart media hits by sending out pictures of customers at its outlets.

Compared to Nokia's relatively low-key entry with the Lumia, BlackBerry has certainly managed to create some headlines, although not everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid. There are major unanswered questions over quite what services will be supported in the UAE - and users are going to have to pay more for data packages and  effectively lose the free roaming benefits the 'old' BlackBerry BIS brought - as I point out in this here post the other day. Quite why you'd queue up to buy a mobile without knowing what services it'll support is a mystery to me.

Mind you, it's funny how media-friendly the smartphone story has become. While other areas of technology are considered most definitely un-sexy, anything to do with mobiles or tablets is a sure-fire winner. One is left wondering how long this love affair will last and when the media will simply tire of trotting out new smartphone features and speculation about who's going to launch what when.

The mobile handset has undoubtedly been transformed - and done more than its fair share of disintermediating on the way. The first thing to go was the radio pager, killed off by SMS - the world's most accidental killer app (SMS was originally only intended as an engineering tool). But how many people have bedside alarm clocks these days? The 'point and shoot' camera has been rendered virtually redundant, mobiles are now music players, video players, personal trainers and all sorts of other things. How many payphones are out there these days? When you start adding payment capabilities, you've got a transactional network access device that will be a wallet, ID card and a window to information and content of quite stunning capability - so mobiles will continue to play an ever-increasingly important role in our lives.

Behind the handset, though, there are important ecosystem choices to be made - and each of those ecosystems is working hard to lock you in. If you buy your content and apps from Apple, you'll effectively lose it all by going Android - a situation you'll experience with any ecosystem hopping you do unless you go Kindle, in which case you can install reader apps on any of the devices. There's a Kindle app for the old BlackBerry, I'm not sure whether there's one for the BB10 yet. That's one problem with the new BB - it's a new operating system so its ecosystem is effectively being bootstrapped from scratch. And BlackBerry has little of the sheer grunt of Microsoft, Apple or Google when it comes to developers. Those third party innovations are key to making today's mobiles work.

It's one reason why Amazon has perhaps stayed clear of the handset market while being so happy to dive into the tablet wars with its fists flailing - the Kindle app lets Amazon support any of the players and effectively place a cuckoo in each ecosystem's devices.

How long that will continue to be Amazon's sole interest in mobile remains to be seen - it's the only major ecosystem player without a mobile handset. My money says it won't be able to stay away. The rewards are irresistible and Amazon has an enormous vested interest in putting content in your hands...

Strange Searches

Strange (Photo credit: KellBailey)

It's been a while since I last did this. Every now and then I amuse myself by taking a look at some of the search phrases that have brought people to this dusty corner of the interwebs. Along with the usual round of sensible landings there are always some oddities.

This harmless activity is made possible by a little doohickey called SiteMeter, which gives deeper metrics than Google Analytics. If anyone thought they were truly anonymous on the Internet, a few minutes with SiteMeter usually puts them right - I know your IP, your landing page, your leaving page, where you came from to get here, your OS and lots of other stuff.

So behave and wipe your feet next time.

Anyway. Strange searches.

Nude men wearing plastic macs 
This was a strong start. Quite why they landed here I don't know. But I can only imagine their disappointment must have been a joy to see. Equally, I can't tell how someone landed here from Bing having searched, worryingly, for "watertank sensory deprivation experiment"!!!

Fake droopy nuts 
Quite a lot of 'fake' searches lead here, but this one could hardly have expected a blog post about brainstorming a coated nut brand. The party must have been a hoot when Lou finally got his hands on that little speciality joke item.

Lick an ax murderer from crawley 
The post was a howl of rage at HSBC's famously woeful call centre, but you can only hope that someone wanted to find the article again and found that phrase more memorable than the blog's name. Because if that wasn't the case, there's someone out there who wants to lick axe murderers from Crawley. And that's pretty strange, if you ask me.

Download alexander mcnabb 
Most people I know go to considerable effort to avoid me, which can be difficult at times, I agree. As for downloading me, I haven't uploaded yet, so you'll have to wait...

Why people go mad in UAE during the national day 
Why, indeed? I have frequently commented that this is the only place in the Middle East in the last three years where the people have taken to the streets - in support of the government and nation.

Literary agents of Dubai 
elf publishing in emirates 
Both of these searches are doomed to failure - because there are as many literary agents in Dubai as there are elves in the UAE publishing industry.

louisbouiton fake shoes dubai souks 
There's nothing like someone who can't spell the brand they're looking for knock-off copies of, is there? In this case, a search for hooky Louboutins gets you this here post.

i hate pr 
You wouldn't believe how much empathy I feel for this searcher in his/her moment of Googly angst.

make fake nol card 
This is one of a number of searches that land on the blog with clearly criminal intent in mind. One is shocked, shocked I tell you. Another recent search was 'discreet bars in Dubai'!!!

Cow's aorta
I am pleased to be able to tell you that I rank numero uno for this search phrase. It's a funny world, people...

PS
Dirigible Repair Specialist
As Mr Goat points out in the comments, a search for "Digible Repair Specialist" gets you to this post. I have to report, sadly, I am not aware of any search for this string actually landing someone on the blog. One day I might land a slightly puzzled steampunk author, you never know...

UAE BlackBerry 10s Need A Data Plan

BlackBerry Employees Count Down to BlackBerry 10 (Photo credit: Official BlackBerry Images)

There has been quite a lot of confusion globally about the new BlackBerry 10 smartphone and how you access BlackBerry services. In the good old days, your BB worked seamlessly and gave you access to roaming data and messaging - a key reason for its wild popularity in the Gulf. The new BB Z10 will NOT do that. You're going to need to join the riff-raff and subscribe to a data plan. If you try and use that puppy when you're roaming, heaven alone knows what the consequences will be, but standard roaming data rates with both Etisalat and Du are a whopping Dhs 1 per 30 kilobytes of data.

To put that in perspective - a Gigabyte is a thousand Megabytes and a Megabyte is a thousand Kilobytes. So 1 Gig of data at that rate would be around Dhs 33,000. Bargain, huh?

A smartphone will happily gorge its way through thirty kilobytes of data in about the time it takes a fly to hit a windscreen (What's the last thing to go through a fly's mind when it hits the windscreen? Its bum). I've got a 1 GB data plan and manage to keep a lid on it, but I'm by no means a heavy user. And I frequently find myself bobbing up towards the limit by the end of the month. Smartphones are constantly online, downloading this, checking that, updating the other. When you hit YouTube with a vengeance or start using them as a tethered wireless hotspot, the old byteometer starts whizzing around. It's why having a mobile that defaults automatically to WiFi is a godsend - particularly when all your apps decide they need to be updated at once, which happens every other day as far as I can see.

So to be clear, if you've bought the BB10, you're not covered by BIS any more - you need to get a data plan.

Luckily, both of the UAE's operators have BB10 ready plans, although Etisalat seems more ready than its rival - it offers four BB packages ranging from Dhs 49 to Dhs 299. The Dhs 49 package doesn't work with the Z10, so you'll need to start with the 'BlackBerry Complete' plan at Dhs 79. If you want roaming, the most expensive plan, the Dhs 299 'BlackBerry global' will give you 20 MB of roaming data. With roaming data speeds on offer of 2 Mbps, you're looking at using that abundant allowance of data in a little over a minute's access.

Du's plans seem a great deal more sketchy - at least the way they're presented online makes it look that way. And Du's roaming data is via its roaming data daily bundle - a one-time charge of Dhs50 which is valid for 24 hours and buys between 3 and 8 MB of data, depending where you are. Which is even less than Etisalat and a pretty useless amount of data.

At least Etisalat has started sending warning messages out when you hit your data plan limit, but the chances are we can look forward to puzzled UAE BlackBerry users wondering why their lovely new BB Z10 smartphone is suddenly gobbling credits like a PacMan on crack. There's an argument the operators should be louder and clearer on the new arrangement, communicating it effectively to consumers before they make the decision to buy the new handset.

But that would be far too sensible, wouldn't it?

(This post is thanks to Gerald Donovan, who originally brought this issue to light)

Book Post - Which Beirut Is Beirut Set In?

Cafés in downtown Beirut (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's an interesting conundrum. I thought I had written a novel set, at least in the parts of the book that aren't racing across Europe, in modern Beirut.

In fact, Beirut - An Explosive Thriller celebrates a city I have huge time for, even as it recognises that very city is by far from being a perfect place. Beirut, as so much in life, is like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight - it both shines and stinks.

I happen to agree with Lebanese blogger Jad Aoun and his spirited campaign to award a 'looks like Beirut' certificate to people who persist on using that amazingly outdated and lazy simile. His Lebanon - Under Rug Swept blog is linked here - pop over and take a look, it's a hoot. The civil war is long past us and Lebanon is not a country at war. And yet neither is it a stable place right now, with the awful conflict in Syria on its very borders and its own tensions only barely kept at bay.

Gouraud’s bars, as ever, welcomed those who wanted to party and forget the woes of a world where violence and conflict were a distant memory but a constant worry. Orphaned by Belfast’s troubles, Lynch appreciated Beirut’s fragile peace and sectarian divides, the hot embers under the white ash on the surface of a fire that looked, to the casual observer, as if it had gone out. Lynch scowled as he passed a poster carrying Michel Freij’s smiling face, encircled in strong black script: ‘One Leader. One Lebanon.’
From Beirut - An Explosive Thriller

I wrote over on the Beirut The Book website about how annoying I found it when one of London's Fine Editors rejected Beirut with a comment about the book being set in a war torn country. I wanted my Beirut to reflect the city I enjoy so much, as I said over on the website, "Beirut today is a complex city, sexy and shabby, filled with promise and hopeless, vibrant and drab, it rarely fails to entertain and challenge. Plagued by power cuts, creaking infrastructure and endemic corruption, Beirut is full of life, creativity and celebration – even if that celebration sometimes takes on a brittle, desperate air."

So I was slightly taken aback when the book attracted a review on Amazon.com that said, "Olives did a great job of putting you in the middle of Palestinian/Israeli conflict with all its nuances, and Beirut continues the tradition by putting you in the middle of the current sectarian conflict in Lebanon...except it doesn't. As someone familiar with the Lebanese culture, I would argue that the conflicts in the book were far more accurate in the 80s as opposed to the current day. It was a fun read (thus the four stars), but it didn't quite match the Beirut I know."

Yet on Goodreads, one Lebanese reviewer says, "Insightful understanding of the Middle East and Beirut in particular, with details of everyday life only someone very familiar with the country can highlight."

Magda Abu-Fadil (a highly respected Lebanese journalist) reviewed the book in the Huffington Post with this to say, "The author has an uncanny understanding of the country's dynamics and power plays between the belligerent factions, post-civil war of 1975-1990.... Beirut is a gripping, fast-paced exciting book that may well jar Lebanese and others familiar with the city and its heavy legacy. But it's a must read."

Is Beirut - An Explosive Thriller reflective of modern Beirut? I had thought so, particularly in light of my hangup about the city being portrayed as still in the grip of that awful civil war. But it appears to be a subject of debate - which Beirut is portrayed in Beirut?

You never know. If this develops into a ding-dong, I might even sell a couple of books! Beirut has remained controversy-free so far, unlike Libro Non Grata novel Olives. And as Albawaba pointed out in this here article, there's nothing like the sniff of a whiff of controversy!

BY THE WAY if you'd like to get a FREE copy of Olives - A Violent Romance as an ebook, just sign up to the emailer on the top right of this page and get inside track articles, giveaways, event info, updates and other occasional bits and bobs from scandalous me...