Adventures in Dubai - Your Favourite Number One Blog

Happy Birthday UAE

2011-12-02T20:37:00.001+04:00

40, eh? Almost time to break out the pipe and slippers, put your feet up on the dog and fall asleep watching News at Ten. As if.

Congratulations!

Egypt

2011-02-04T06:08:00.002+04:00

As if Mubarak's refusal to just go away, and the murder of several protesters yesterday weren't enough, the Egyptian 'government' has ordered mobile phone operators in the country to send this message to all of their subscribers: “The Armed Forces urge Egypt’s loyal men to confront the traitors and the criminals and to protect our families, our honor and our precious Egypt.”

Traitors? Criminals? Come on guys, get a life, will you. Outside of politics would be good, and definitely not in PR. Morons.

Dubai Furnished Property

2010-10-05T21:34:00.000+04:00

Dubai Rental Property have been comment spamming this blog and my Madrid blog, neither of which are about property rental, at least in Dubai. I asked them to desist yesterday, and in response they left me five fresh comments. I know that off-site links from other blogs and websites are good for search engine rankings, but this is going too far. I will be watching the results for Dubai Furnished Property quite closely over the next few days, and also reporting the company to Google if they persist in their extremely irritating action. Foolishly, they publish a mobile, landline and fax number on their website. It may become necessary to make a few phone calls.

Doesn't The World Have Enough Madmen?

2010-09-09T21:57:00.000+04:00

So, Pastor Terry Jones, a Florida-based leader of A Very Small Church Of Nutters, has declared this coming September 11th to be 'International Burn a Koran Day'. Despite massive condemnation from Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the Pope and Tony Blair, he is still planning to go ahead and throw 200 Qurans onto a bonfire. I find it incredibly hard to believe that, in a country where pretty much anyone can be arrested for pretty much anything, this moron from hell cannot be stopped from carrying out this vile act. Sadly, there's also no way you can explain that to the proto-rioters in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East and bits of North Africa, who are so used to a lack of freedom they think if your Government knows you are about to do something insanely stupid and doesn't stop you from doing it, then that government implicitly supports your actions.

In this case, bollocks to freedom of speech. Pastor Jones must know the impact of what he is planning, and the likely consequences thereof. If the US government cannot stop him, then there is something seriously wrong with the system.

Israel Attacks Aid Convoy

2010-05-31T19:58:00.000+04:00

Early this morning, the Israeli Defence Force boarded one of six ships carrying humanitarian aid from Turkey to Gaza and killed at least 10, possibly 19 unarmed activists. This happened about 50 miles offshore, in international waters. By any reckoning, that's an act of war. And yet, there is hardly any international condemnation (half a dozen ambassadors called in for a slap on the wrists), and the silence from the US has been deafening.

Israel behaves more like the rogue state it is with every passing day. Arab states continue to prevaricate and tremble at the knees, while the US not only refuses to condemn Israel's actions, but actively enables them with billions of dollars of aid every year. I would have expected Obama to take a very firm line with Israel, but it seems he's lost his bottle.

Had the Israeli government sat down and brainstormed what was the worst, most revolting, sickening and disgusting thing they could do, I doubt they could have dreamt up anything to beat murdering a dozen or so peace campaigners whose sole aim was to bring some relief to the Palestinians. I am sure that most Israelis are fundamentally decent people, but that cannot be said for their leadership. Human decency features nowhere on their agenda.

Will no-one stop these bastards?

Confession

2010-05-02T22:51:00.000+04:00

For about my last five years in Dubai, I had an officette in Dubai Media City. DMC was quite a pleasant place to work. On one side we had the Arabian/Persian Gulf, and on the land side we had an artificial lake and a bit of parkland beyond that. There was this wiggly bridge thing that crossed the lake, with a square bulge in the middle that had a kiosky/kitchenny thing that could be used for a teeny-weeny cafe. I think it had one tenant for about two months during all the time I was there.

I used to like to go out on the bridge several times a day. I would stand on the cafe platform and stare into the water, lost in my thoughts. One day in high summer, I noticed there were thousands of little fish lurking in the shade provided by the bridge and the platform. I also noticed that the sun was at such an angle it cast a shadow of my upper body onto the water. And then I noticed the little fish were moving into the shaded area provided by me.

So, here's the confession; I would wait until my shadow was full of fish. And then I would deliberately move several steps to the left or right, thereby exposing the fish to the full heat of the sun, causing stress, trauma, and goodness knows what else to the poor little blighters.

Sorry, fish.

Is This Justice?

2010-04-04T17:55:00.000+04:00

During my thirteen years in Dubai, I usually had at least one friend or acquaintance who was in jail at any one time. Usually, they were found to be innocent of whatever it was they were accused of.

Farting in lifts, middle-finger-waving, driving with a miniscule amount of alcohol in your blood, having a poppy seed from a bread roll stuck to your jacket, even having smoked a spliff in a different country, not having the actual prescription (translated into Arabic) for the medications you have to take: these were all considered 'crimes' so serious as to justify a month in jail followed by deportation.

I consider myself very lucky to have avoided any personal incarceration during my time there (although I did have a scare when I once told an Iranian client to 'just pay the sodding bill' and a few days later received a letter from their lawyer).

So, the latest blot on Dubai's travesty of a legal system. A couple accused of kissing in public sentenced to a month in Al Slammer followed by a one-way flight home. The evidence in this case seems to be vague, contradictory and/or non-existent. It was the word of one Emirati woman, who didn't even turn up to any of the hearings. And who said, variously, the kissing was witnessed by her 2-year-old daughter (at 2am in a burger joint); or that she'd seen it herself.

Of course, the UAE is a sovereign country, and has the perfect right to make any laws it cares to. However, I do think the government (especially in Dubai) needs to think about the contradictory and negative image that cases like these are creating. On the one hand, they are desperate for tourist dollars, but on the other hand these stupid little 'crimes' (which are just normal behaviour elsewhere) are punished out of all proportion to their severity.

And you can say 'well, tourists should learn about these things before they come', but it is not actually possible to do so. And if it was, I think a lot of people would just be too scared to visit.

Arrest Netanyahu. Yeah Right.

2010-03-03T02:36:00.003+04:00

You've got to love Dubai's police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim. I always found him very entertaining when I lived in Dubai. And now there's this:

Dubai police chief to seek Netanyahu arrest

Burj Khalifa!

2010-01-05T19:46:00.003+04:00

So, they finally managed to complete the Burj Dubai and get the thing open. Congratulations to Emaar and Dubai on a stunning achievement - and a truly mind-blowing fireworks display - search for it on YouTube if you haven't seen it.

Like most people, I had a WTF moment on hearing its new name for the first time (let's just say, 'Dubai' sounded pretty good, and even 'Zayed' would have had a nice ring to it). And I had a good laugh at hearing somebody has registered 'burjkhalifa.com' - how I wish I'd thought of doing that!

I won't bore you with speculation about what I think the name change actually means.

Happy New Year!

That Wraps it up for Dubai, Then

2009-11-26T02:36:00.002+04:00

What do I know? Reuters thinks Dubai is in a bit of a financial pickle. Dubai faces financial sheikh-up. If I was the boss, I think I'd just give the place to Abu Dhabi and bugger off to retire in Spain. Cordoba, probably, or Granada - some nice Islamic architecture there. Bits of it look like Ibn Batutta Mall. And it's sunny most of the time.

Nuclear UAE

2009-10-05T15:33:00.003+04:00

Yikes, they're doing it! This is wrong on so many levels. The money spent building a nuclear power station would be better used in developing solar power. The risk of terrorist attack is high, but the risk of another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island catastrophe is greater (based on past experience of how the power sector in the UAE has performed). It's just too scary for words: I wonder which Northern Emirate will be lucky enough to play host to this baby.

Story here.

DEWA Sent Me An Email

2009-07-29T01:38:00.004+04:00

...about the impending closure of Al Safia Service Centre. At dirst I misread this as Al Safa, which used to be my lifeline whenever they cut me off because I'd forgotten to pay them. But then I read further on in the email that the closest alternatives are Al Twar and Burj Nahar. I could be giving DEWA the benefit of the doubt here, because they never did believe people lived on the Dubai side of the Creek - that's where the power stations are.

Whatever. I was deeply amused by the footer of the message, which I reproduce here for your entertainment:

Our Vision: A recognized World-Class Utility
Our Mission: Meeting customer satisfaction and promoting Dubai’s vision through delivering water & electricity services by a competent workforce at world-class level of reliability, efficiency, safety and environment, supporting Resources Sustainability.

They still haven't returned my deposit.

Official: DXB, AUD Getting More Expensive

2009-07-07T19:00:00.001+04:00

A survey out today shows that Tokyo is now the world's most expensive city for an expat to live (it was number 2 last year). London has dropped from last year's 3rd to this year's 16th.

Of particular interest to me (this year's rank first, last year's in brackets):
20 (52) Dubai
26 (65) Abu Dhabi
37 (28) Madrid
38 (31) Barcelona

Full story here.

Kosher Paella

2009-06-02T23:04:00.002+04:00

I made a paella tonight, and Googled 'paella recipes' to check a few things. I stumbled upon a recipre that totally blew me away. The list of ingredients mentioned 'kosher salt and pepper'. A few items later, it mentions 'Chorizo.' Now, as far as I know, kosher-ness means no pork. And chorizo is a red sausage made almost entirely from pork.

Confused, I was. So I Wikipedia'ed the hell out of the subject. It seems the term 'kosher salt' is used more or less exclusively in the USA to refer to coarse-grained sea-salt, because it can draw more blood out of meat than common-or-garden salt. (Might write a book sometime about a Jewish vampire). So the kosherosity or not is a complete misnomer.

Just sayin'.

Here's the recipe, obviously by someone who has never been close to the real thing.

Snow Modhesh

2009-01-13T13:49:00.004+04:00

We had a load of snow in Madrid a few days ago. Imagine our surprise when we went to the park and found lots of snowmen and a snow Modhesh.

The little sod gets everywhere, and I swear I did not make this snow-worm.

Spaced Out

2008-10-30T20:36:00.004+04:00

Look. You know about this Authonomy website for aspiring writers, yes? I'm on it, and so is Alexander McNabb, Mr Fake Plastic Souks. He's a great writer, and he's got this really great, outrageously funny book called Space. For the last two or three weeks it has been in the Top 5 of the Editor's Desk. This means you get a proper review from a HarperCollins editor, and maybe even a publishing contract. But only if you're in the Top 5 at midnight tomorrow (31st Oct).

Here's the thing: Space has just slipped down to number 6. So, all you literaties, glitteraties and arty-farties, get along to Authonomy.com, and have a read. If you like it (and how could you not?), do a very quick sign-up and put it on your bookshelf (the link that says 'Back The Book').

While you're at it, you could do the same thing for Tybalt & Theo, by a slightly more modest author.

Thank youse.

Me New Book

2008-10-22T22:24:00.003+04:00

I mentioned Authonomy in my last post. A couple of weeks ago, I started a new novel, Tybalt & Theo. I've uploaded the first six chapters to Authonomy, and had loads of brilliant comments from members of the site. You can read the book sample and the comments here. But if you can't be bothered to do that, here's a selection of comments:

You're right. It's funny. It is very ,very funny indeed! It's a terrific idea but that doesn't matter doodlesquat if the writer louses it up which you certainly don't.

- JAK

My comments are - eggy, eggy eggy! That means fantastic, by the way.

- Zoeb

Great start. Instantly reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Blackadder, which is good on both accounts.

- The Real Nick

Thanks for making me laugh...It's a great farce...I can't fault it.

- Richard P-S

Laughing like a veritable drain and looking forward to more.

- Max Brandt

Now this, I loved... I adore the quick back-and-forth between Tybalt in the 21st century and Theo in the past...SO many gems, like "Crap, he hadn't got caught up in one of those time-travelling larks, had he?" and "...like it wasn't properly rotted," made me laugh out loud... This is one that I expect to see in print. Funny!

-Melissa Conway

I think you have a lovely feel for dialogue. Have you tried any scriptwriting, I wonder?

- DeniseJane

Overall, I really liked this. You've taken on a huge task with the seventeenth century dialogue, but my, it works. Love the plot, the situations the two protags find themselves in...Stuff that made me laugh out aloud:

"….Thee Papist bastards wilt have thy grunions around thy necke afore thee canst say--"

"In-vest-meant wanker…"

Great fun and I'll be back for more.

- Diane Oliver

Great start in a style which lets readers know there's not likely to be much messing about. Great, mate, will add more as and when I get through a little more, cheers.

- Josh Rogan

...I chuckled my butt off consistently all the way through [to] chapter 6, not only is this entertaining, but I think it should prove popular too!). We zip along merrily from scene to scene, with just enough description given for the purposes of mockery, and just enough characterization for the same.

I thought the fake, unbelievably agrammatical Elizabethan was very funny. I mean, you're not even TRYING to make it remotely real -- "drefs" is a purely VISUAL joke, not even an auditory one!

- Kate Kasserman

This is a very funny book. Trust me, I read it. Or most of it. I'll read the rest very soon. So original, Keef. And with a few prescient..or pressy ant.... lines...e.g. Investment banker...'No, what thou dost is steal from thee poor'... Bliss.

- Scott Kenny

Brilliant, sharp, witty, with a touch of Blackadder for those who like it.

- Maria Golubeva

I really like this one - being a history graduate I usually hate historical novels and especially anything where people try and use the speech of the time, but this is very funny, and the plot idea is particularly unusual.

- Sheila

Funny and witty in equal measure. Grunions, indeed!

- Peter Booth

Love the fast pace and funny commentary/dialogue. An enjoyable read already in the first few paragraphs.

- Dave King

Hi Keef - this is great fun and I am going to bookshelf it. The premise is hilarious and I have to say the opening section is eeeeerily prescient, aside from being hilarious.

- Robin Duff

Okay, that was hilarious. You made me laugh more than once. Especially the part about forgetting to tell Theo his task. Elizabethan sarcasm is ten times funnier, for some reason.

I'm really intrigued at the hints that Theo may not be the only time-traveller in Elizabethan England (am I reading that right?). Nice, job Keefieboy. I wish I had it now, to find out Theo's role in the new Gunpowder Plot.

- S.F. Winser

This is a great idea. I loved the switches in time and Tybalt's introduction to (presumably) McDonald's.

A brilliantly funny read.

- Berni Stevens

Authonomy

2008-09-05T18:08:00.001+04:00

I was alerted to a new website yesterday: authonomy.com. It's run by publishers HarperCollins, and lets authors upload samples of their work and then suffer utter humiliation by being reviewed by other members of the site. Each month, the top five manuscripts are promised a perusal by HarperCollins editors. Cool idea, methinks.

I signed up yesterday and uploaded about 12,000 words of my book (10,000 is the minimum for you to have your work made public, but it's an achingly difficult process to upload the stuff - you have to make each chapter into a separate Word file, and the upload process frequently falls over for no apparent reason).

So get on over there and say nice things about my book.

One Year, Already

2008-07-07T11:39:00.002+04:00

One year ago to the day, MamaDuck and I headed for Abu Dhabi Airport and left the Sandlands. We have not been back, and really have no intention of returning. There's not much we miss about the place - although I haven't had a decent curry since we left. We do miss our friends though.

All things considered, I think leaving was the best thing to do. I just wish we'd done it a few years sooner.

Worrying

2008-06-16T18:42:00.002+04:00

When I lived in the UAE, my family and friends in Europe worried that
a) I wasn't getting enough beer and bacon
and
b) I might be blown up in a terrorist attack.

I repeatedly told them there was no cause for alarm - beer and bacon are readily available to non-Muslims (I think it's about time the UAE tourist authorities came out with a definitive statement, along the lines of 'this is not Saudi Arabia, you can get as much beer and bacon as you want!'), and the UAE has never suffered a succesful terrorist attack (although there have been at least two credible attempts that I know of).

I bring this up today because the British Foreign Office has raised it's terrorist threat level to 'as high as it can go'. Conspiracy theories abound as to why the UAE has been safe up until now; it's generally reckoned that the enemy are paid good hard cash to stay away. So why is it now thought there's a serious threat? Has the money dried up, or what?

Travels in Xanadu-du: The Book, it has Landed!

2008-03-26T00:45:00.003+04:00

I know most of you are desperate to know about the progress of my novel, Travels in Xanadu-du. Not least because some of you have actually paid good, hard cash money to get a hold of a copy. Only a month late, I am pleased to announce that it is shipping! Not without glitches, of course. Life would be so boring if everything went to plan, now wouldn't it? The plan was that the printers would make a big pile of books. The bulk of these would be shipped to Liverpool where my publisher is based, and ten copies would be delivered to me in sunny Madrid to do with whatever I like. Hmm. Some bugger got it wrong. The doorbell rang at about noon today, and the nice (but sweaty) young man from UPS delivered box upon box of books into our micro-piso (if you've been following the plot, you'll know that we live in the world's smallest flat, but we love it because it's right in the middle of Madrid).

I've seen my name in print many times. But to stack up a bunch of books like this, well; it's a bit unusual.

So, I spent the afternoon printing shipping notes and address labels, printing and signing maps of Xanadu-du, signing the books themselves, and then packing up the pre-ordered books and taking them to the Post Office to wave goodbye to them. Please take note: no author that you've ever heard of went to such great lengths to keep his punters happy!

Actually, this cock-up didn't work out too badly: we saved a good old British pound on postage to the UAE. But we gained an extra one on postage to the UK.

Until the current stock is exhausted, you can get your book signed and personally taken to the Post Office by the author, and a signed colour map if I feel like it. So get on over to Xanadu-du, and place your order NOW!!!

I love you all.

Hard Rock To Close in Three Months

2008-03-17T22:15:00.001+04:00

Apparently the land that the Hard Rock Café stands on has been sold to somebody who wants to build a skyscraper, and we know how desperately Dubai needs more of those. So yet another Dubai landmark will be pulled down. There's a Facebook Group. As I remarked on there:

What a shock! I remember when HRC was first built, and I thought 'what a crap location'. Now it's in the heart of New Dubai. I think I left Dubai at the right time: the powers that be have no idea how to build a city: they only know how to build buildings (well, some of them know how to build buildings). But cities are about much more than the buildings that they are made of: they're about soul and culture and character. Dammit.

Anyone can join this group: I wouldn't expect it to make a difference, but it would be nice to think that the authorities do take a bit of notice. Not that the evidence bears this out, of course: the Exiles and Country Club gone, Satwa and Safa Park under threat. Surely there must come a point where you stop throwing away the good stuff that you have and replacing it with tacky and soulless rubbish? Oh, sorry, this is Dubai.

Travels in Xanadu-du

2008-03-13T22:08:00.000+04:00

Aaargh. We've had a couple of weeks of completely unexpected delay in the production of my wonderful novel. Firstly, I thought I had uploaded the files to the printer's website. There was no obvious way to verify this, so I emailed my 'client services representative', who ignored me for a few days and finally, after a whole wasted week, said the files had not been received by them, and explained the completely impossible-to-find way to find out what the situation is on their (absolutely bloody horrible) website. Marvlious.

So I uploaded the files again, and after a three-day wait the pre-flight crew in the US complained about 'multiple missing fonts'. We're talking about PDF files here, and standard practice when creaing PDFs is to embed any unusual fonts, but not to embed things like Arial or Times New Roman which are present on every PC and have direct equivalents on Macs, Linux boxes, etc. So these #$%#$^ in the US were quibbling about the absence of Arial and Times New Roman. Arial is actually used in the headers of the bookblock, but TNR appears nowhere. Anyhow, I had to produce and upload another file for the bookblock, and force the embedding of these common-as-muck fonts, and then wait another three days while they got around to opening it. Finally: two days ago the status was 'printing'. Yesterday, the status was 'shipped'.

Hopefully I will receive the proof copy tomorrow or the day after. If it's ok I can order the initial print run and fulfill the pre-orders that we have. So those of you who have not yet ordered your copy: the special offer of a full-colour map of Xanadu-du, signed by moi, still stands, but only until the point where the book goes into production. So get thee over to the Xanadu-du website and place thy order.

Carnage On Sheikh Zayed Road

2008-03-12T00:28:00.003+04:00

Driving on SZR always used to give me the willies, even in clear weather. Driving on it in fog had me turning religious and hoping there actually was a God who was listening to my prayers. Because the sad fact is that 99% of people on that road have no clue whatsoever about how you should drive in fog. This morning there has been absolute carnage on SZR. Accurate figures are yet to arrive, but we can say at least six dead, 300 injured, and 200 cars trashed. In one out of about five incidents. This is completely insane. Nobody seems to know or understand why this happened. I hate to be a smart-arse, but this is why it happened: they were going too fucking fast.

Simplissimo.

Gulf News gives some tips for driving in fog. Not bad, not wrong, but they missed the absolute crucial point. It's all to do with visibility and stopping distance. The GN article says 'slow down'. This needs to be expanded upon. What it should say is 'slow down so that you are confident that you can stop within the range of your visibility'. In dense fog, this can mean that you are travelling at 10 kmph. Or less. But it means that if you suddenly encounter a pile of 200 blazing wrecks, emerging out of the fog 6 metres ahead of you, you will be able to stop or avoid becoming wreck #201. It also means, of course, that there's a good strong chance of some other moron hitting you from behind. The only consolation is that they might be in the outer lanes while you are sticking to the inside one. If you possibly have the option: don't drive in fog.

Let me get really boring and repeat: if you can only see 10 metres ahead of you, you should not be travelling so fast that you cannot stop within, say, eight metres. Got it? Your car is probably no longer than 2.5 or 3 metres long. To be able to stop in such a short distance, you should be crawling at less than 10 kmph (166 metres per minute). And forget about being late for work. You are going to be late for work. And so is your boss and so are your colleagues. You will not score any Brownie points for beating them. Especially if you are dead.

The point is that in seriously thick fog, you must think like this: can I stop within the bounds of the wall of fog I see before me? If you don't think you can, SLOW DOWN!

A Bridge

2008-02-20T19:32:00.006+04:00

Looking at my last few posts here, you could be forgiven that I've turned this blog into nothing more than an advert for my book (which you can buy here). Sorry an' all that. Here's a proper post.

The majority of the world's great cities are built on or near water: rivers, canals or creeks. And where you get a body of water dividing a city, you need to build the means to cross it. Ferries and tunnels are fine, but nearly invisible. Some cities have become defined by their bridges. Think of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Tower Bridge in London, the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol or the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh. They are all marvels of engineering design.

More recently we have the Millenium Bridge in London, which is purely for pedestrians. And what a beauty it is. It opens up a vista between St Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern Gallery, and is a superb example of what city governments can do to improve the environment for citizens.

So, I was very pleased today to come across images of a new bridge to be built across the Creek in Dubai on the UAE Community Blog. I've always thought that Dubai needed landmark bridges. The Maktoum and Garhoud Bridges are nothing to write home about: they are utilitarian devices for getting vehicles across the Creek without them getting wet. The Business Bay Crossing is also nothing more than a road over water. The new one, as yet unnamed, although I suggest that The Keefieboy Krossing would be a suitable name, is sexy, curvy, big and bouncy, and I love it! Kudos to the designers, FXFowle of New York and even to the RTA for commissioning it.

Images from Popular Mechanics

Travels in Xanadu-du: Update

2008-02-20T19:26:00.000+04:00

To those of you who have already pre-ordered a copy of my book: thank you, thank you! To the rest of you, here's a little incentive. Several of my buddies have expressed a wish that I sign their copy (in the mercenary and entirely unlikely hope that I turn out to be the next J.K. Rowling). Sadly this is not possible, because the books will be printed in Milton Keynes and sent out from Liverpool in sunny England, whilst I am stuck here in Madrid in (currently) cloudy Spain. So, here's the deal.

There is a map of Xanadu-du. It will be printed in greyscale in the book, and you may well need to refer to it in order to follow the action. Pre-orderers will get a full-colour version of that map (the same size as the book), personally signed by moi. Is that cool or is that cool? So get your order in: http://www.xanadu-du.com/books.

Have we gone to press yet? No. Awaiting final proofreading by Don Colin (no pressure mate!), and then we get a printer's proof, and then we are in production. We're still aiming at the end of February.

And I love you all! Mwaah! Mwaah!

Travels in Xanadu-du: Get It While It's Hot!

2008-02-08T20:32:00.000+04:00

The deal with the printer is confirmed, so we are now taking orders for my fantastic book, Travels in Xanadu-du. Orders will be shipped before the end of February. So get clicking on the banner below.

Travels in Xanadu-du: News

2008-01-29T22:48:00.000+04:00

I know you're all agog to know what's happening with my book, Travels in Xanadu-du, which I suggested might be hitting the market at the end of January (2 days from now). Guess what. Slight delay. We now have an ISBN for it (978-0-9558318-0-5), which means it exists as far as the cataloguing people are concerned. But you'll have a hard time buying it yet.

The files for the cover and interior are just about to go off to the printer for proofing. Once I've received and approved the proof, we'll be ready to rock. Or roll. Or whatever. We are told to expect a ten-day wait for the proof.

We'll be flogging the book from our website xanadu-du.com/books, with a pound off the cover price. In a few days you'll be able to pre-order it from the site - I'll let you know when. In a month or two it will be available from Amazon and orderable through any bookstore. We don't expect it to be stocked in bookshops because the economics would only work if you were prepared to pay about eighteen pounds for a paperback novel - retail booksellers like to have a 55% discount - if we gave them that we would be selling the book at below production cost! We're not gonna do that on account of needing to eat and stuff.

One interesting thing we've had to deal with is shipping costs. Couriers (FedEx, DHL etc) are outrageously expensive - they want 50 or 60 Euros to deliver a package. That's the fast service. They don't seem to offer a slowish service. I think it would be ok if they would take it end-to-end and get it to wherever in about a week for ten Euros or less. But no, they don't do that, what they do is rush around like blue-arsed flies and get it there in two days. Or three if you live in Alaska or Antarctica. So we are using the British Royal Mail for delivery. This is very fine for our primary market: next day or the day after in the UK. About three days in Europe (including all of Russia!). From five days for the rest of the world. The 'from' is interesting. What it means is they will dump the stuff with the postal authority of the concerned country. What happens to it and how long it takes after that is entirely down to your local postal service (sorry UAE!). But none of it costs you, the adored customer, more than 7 Euros.

Rent a Flat in Madrid, Spain

2008-01-17T00:08:00.000+04:00

If you ever find yourself visiting Madrid (the one in Spain, not any of the impostors), you could do worse than visiting this website: rent a flat in Madrid, Spain. My buddy Mike can sort you out with a flat or apartment, a piso (unimaginably small flat) or a room in a shared flat. They are all in the City Centre, and he has a huge selection of places available as short-term or long-term lets. Mike is a very nice guy, speaks English and Spanish fluently, and will help you out with any dealings with your landlord, utilities companies and the dreaded Telefonica.

So now you know.

My Sympathies

2008-01-15T16:17:00.000+04:00

I followed the Bush visits Dubai fiasco with great interest. And not a little relief that I wasn't tangled up in it - I'd have probably blown a gasket if I had been!

Major roads were closed without warning, a Public holiday was declared at six hours notice, people were stranded all over the place, and for what? For the security of the one man who poses the greatest threat to Middle East peace today. Unbelievable.

And there's Dubya in his limo.

'Pretty quiet around here, Abdullah.'
'Mohammed.'
'Whatever. There's no traffic, the buildings are all empty, what's all the fuss about?'

The Great Publishing Adventure

2008-01-11T00:47:00.000+04:00

Avid readers of this blog may be aware that I wrote a novel last summer and have been trying to get the damn thing published ever since. Translation: I've been sending it off to literary agents, because traditional publishers in the UK don't dirty their hands by dealing directly with newbies any more. Furthermore, it seems the publishers don't take risks on newbies at all, and prefer to throw their money at ghost-written 'books by celebrities'. It's a tough market if you're not a celebrity who can't write. Especially for fiction.

So far I've only sent my sample stuff to literary agents who have heard of this thing called email: I've had a couple of genteel refusals, and a bunch of silence. A few weeks before Christmas I fired up the laser printer and sent printed-on-paper versions to three agents. These dudes are the first ones to get the actual final version of the book, but they all say it takes them one or two months to respond. We can probably add a fortnight to that for the Christmas holiday. Whatever, I'm not holding my breath, I could be dead before I get any response!

The important thing is to get the book out there, and then we'll see if anybody can be persuaded to buy it. So we are going to self-publish it. 'We' in this case means my very good buddy in Liverpool, and me.

Is this vanity publishing, Keefie? Absolutely not. With vanity publishing you pay a shitload of money to a company who will sort out your scribbles, print a few hundred or a few thousand copies and deliver them to you. They will then rot in your garage. Our venture means that we become the publishers: we have our own ISBNs, we have designed the cover and the book interior, and we own all of the rights to the material. We won't have a shedful of unshiftable stock, but if you order a copy you'll have it in 2-4 days. And we'll be doing some serious marketing to get the thing moving.

How is this possible? Through the magic of Print-On-Demand. What happens is that we lodge the digital artwork for the cover and the interior with our printer. In theory, if we have an order for one book, they will print one book on their digital printers - they produce around one million books per year, but their average print run is 1.8 books - and ship it to us. In reality, we will always maintain a small stock for immediate despatch. The book will be available from our website, Amazon.com and trade distributors. POD is somewhat more expensive than offset (about 4x), but we think the advantages outweigh the cost: it means we can get the product out there in the market for a minimal outlay and see if we can generate the demand for it.

I think the book will be available around the end of January, so get saving your dirhams: I expect all of you to buy at least one copy, and I'll know if you don't.

Watch this space!

Probably Madrid

2008-01-02T15:22:00.000+04:00

Hi fans. Happy New Year!

I've just noticed that the link to my new blog in my blogroll had a speeling mastik in the URL. Which possibly explains why hardly any of you have linked to the new blog. Here's the correct address: http://probablymadrid.blogspot.com/.

Sudanese TeddyGate Follow-Up

2007-11-27T19:34:00.000+04:00

Good to see a few moderate Islamic blogs expressing their disgust at the TeddyGate affair. Emirati and The Sudanese Thinker are a couple of welcome Muslim voices who recognise the damage this does to the worldwide image of their religion. Well done guys!

Update: 29-11-07
She has been sentenced to 15 days in jail followed by deportation. This has to be one of the sickest stories I have ever heard. Shame on the Sudanese Government and Islamist extremists everywhere. [Sound of puking offstage].

Sudanese Muslim Offence Level: Rising

2007-11-26T22:56:00.000+04:00

The New York Times reports that a British junior school teacher is in jail in Khartoum. Her crime? Offending the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). It's not reported whether the Prophet has been in touch with anyone to explain about his offendedness, but you know what these Gods and Prophets are like. They never call. They're not even on Facebook.

What actually happened was that the teacher brought a teddy bear into class for a project with the seven-year-old kids. First job: name the bear. 20 out of 23 kids chose Muhammed from a list of eight names.

I don't get this. Really I don't. Why is it considered offensive to give this name to a warm, cuddly toy that kids of all ages love? Is it projecting the wrong image of the Prophet? Would it be ok to name a ferocious warrior toy after Him? And why is it ok for many thousands of men, some of whom have IQs appoaching zero, to be named after him? How is an educated non-Muslim supposed to know what the rules are (answer to last question: you're not - the rules are made up as we go along). And why is everyone assuming that the bear is named after the Prophet - I believe the caretaker at that school is called Muhammed and everyone really likes him.

Once more, Islamic hardliners are making their religion look ridiculous. How sad.

Leaving Dubai

2007-11-23T23:32:00.000+04:00

I don't think I ever did do a post about our last few days in Dubai, so here goes.

The essential things that we had to accomplish were:
1) Sell/get rid of most of the furniture
2) Sell the car
3) Shut down our Etisalat (phone/internet monopolist) accounts
4) Shut down our DEWA (electricity/water monopolist) account
5) Be ready for the packers/shippers
6) Have a little rest
7) Leave

1) The second-hand stuff market in Dubai is controlled by Pakistani dealers. They will plead poverty and say that no-one wants to buy the kind of stuff we are selling (nearly all IKEA stuff in excellent condition), and offer you a couple of Euros for each item. When you have spat on your hand and agreed the deal, they pull out their wallet to pay you, at which point they see you looking at their huge wad and feel obliged to tell you that they never go anywhere with less than 50,000 Dirhams (€9200), in case they have to buy a car. Bastards, snakes, Sindhis probably*.

2) Selling the car was problematic. I got quite a lot of responses from my advertising, but the damn car could tell something was going on and kept breaking down to try to stop me selling it. In the last week we had: a flat tyre (I never had a wrench that was the right size, so it needed to be taken to the fixers), overheating engine (water pump or something), and finally, just as we were about to drive it to the Traffic Department to complete the ownership transfer formalities, a loose cable on the underside (the guy who was buying it and his buddy are both aircraft engineers - they said the cable was responsible for the changing of the gears: I could have driven it to the Traffic Department, but only in first gear).

So we went to the Traffic Department without the car. This was close to closing time on a Thursday evening. They would not be opening again until Sunday morning, and BetterArf and I were flying out on Saturday night. It comes to our turn in the queue and they tell us that the car needs a new roadworthiness test. I explain that it passed this test only five weeks ago and they say, no, it's a new rule, whenever you transfer ownership of a car, it has to have a fresh test.

Bugger, the car is actually undriveable at this point, and also about fifteen kilometres away. We go to see the facility manager. He is very understanding, and says we can all sign the documents, and the other guys can bring the car and its test certificate on Sunday and finish it off. So, they pay me the balance, express certain doubts about this guy keeping his word (he is a UAE national, they are Sri Lankan, make of that what you will), we exchange email addresses, and hope and pray that this will work out (they sent me an email a few days later: it did work out).

3) Packing day was the 5th of July. Once the packers had arrived, I tootled down to Etisalat in Jebel Ali to shut down my landline, ADSL and mobile accounts. This proved to be much harder than I had expected. The Etisalat billing system was down. No problem, I said, I can check my balances on the Public Cash Payment Machines. No, said the guy, it won't be accurate. Meaning, any outstanding balance will be till 3am this morning, but I might have spent all morning on the phone to my auntie in Australia, and that won't be shown on the outstanding balance until tomorrow. The system in their office is real-time. But it's down. Fecking hell. I couldn't wait around at their office all day until the system came up again. I tried to pay a bit more than the balances we get from the machine, but the guy said he couldn't accept it. So I paid the exact amount, and if I ever move back to the UAE and try to open accounts with Etisalat, they will insist on being paid the outstanding balance.

They did this to me once before - after my first job in Dubai went to ratshit, I left for a bit. Before I left, I tried to pay off all my bills, but they were unable to determine the outstanding amount on my Internet dial-up account. So it kept on going with some kind of monthly rental charge, and by the time I had returned and tried to open new accounts they insisted that I pay them Dhs 700 (€129) to cover the cost of a service that they had not provided and I had obviously not used. Bastardos!

4) I went to the DEWA (electricity/water company) office a couple of weeks before our departure to find out what the score was with final bills etc. I discovered that I could book the disconnection for a certain date/time, and collect/pay the final bill the next day. This would have been cool, because I expected that they would owe me money in the form of a partial refund of my Dhs 1,000 (€184) security deposit.

So I booked the disconnection for 5pm on the 4th July. We were staying at a friend's flat by then, so no power at night was not a problem: we'd also checked with the packers: they would do their work the next day whether there was a/c or not.

When we arrived back at the flat on the morning of the fifth, we still had power (the switches and meters for the power supply live in a room down the hall - DEWA do not need to enter the flat to read the meter/disconnect the supply). Bugger.

The DEWA guy turned up just as all the packing was finished: he said he had disconnected it the day before, and wanted to know who had put it on again. All very odd, and it meant that we could not get a final bill before leaving Dubai. I had phoned them a few times during the day, and got responses like 'what's the rush' and 'what do you expect me to do about it?' DEWA have a few gazillion miles to go in terms of customer service.

5) Global Relocations (the packers/shippers) turned up at the appointed time, and did their work efficiently. I was a bit disappointed that they had no kind of trolley with them (there were some heavy things that we needed to get rid of, and wheels would have been useful: in the end we bribed the guys a bit to carry them out). But everything was wrapped and packed securely (not a single broken item at the Madrid end!). They could have maybe used a few fewer rainforests-worth of paper in packing the kitchen stuff, and the three rolls of bubble-wrap (weight: zero, volume 0.25 cubic metre) should not have been sent! The point here is that the shipping cost is based on volume rather than weight, so our estimated 6-8 cubic metres became about 15 when it was all packed. That really fucked our budget.

Throughout the day we were taking out stuff that was not to be shipped and leaving it out for anybody who wanted it. BetterArf called the security guys to tell them it was all there for the taking - it was interesting to see the pecking-order amongst the guys who turned up.

And just as we were about to leave, our new next-door neighbour showed up. He was happy to take some of the plants. It turns out he has a small-holding in Andalucia and occasionally has to come to Dubai to do some work. Small world eh?

Finally, it was done: I had expected that it would have been finished by about 1pm, but it was actually 5pm by the time they finished: too late to do a proper handover with the landlord. The weekend was upon us.

6) Our stuff is packed and on its way. Now to meet the guys who are buying my car at the Traffic Department. This is the point where we realise that there's something dangling and clicking on the road under the car (see item 2). Park the car, call the guys, and wait.

BetterArf takes a cab down to the Landlord's office to hand in the documents - they finish at 3pm on a Thursday so she stuffs notes through their letterbox.

The indefatiguable car-buyers arrive about an hour later. They lift up the car and have a wriggle underneath it, but need some special tools to fix it. No worries, we all jump into their car and head off to item 2. After the Traffic Department, we head, exhausted, to our sanctuary.
Amazingly, the lovely, lovely Sri Lankans who have insisted on buying my broken-down car despite all of the problems, take us there - there's obviously something magical about my ex-car that I failed to appreciate but which they prize highly. Possibly it's the red paint-job. Or the furry dice.

So, sanctuary; one of BetterArf's colleagues is putting us up for a couple of nights in deepest Jumeirah. They say that moving house is one of lifes most stressful experiences, on a par with bereavement and divorce. They are wrong: this was worse than anything! I was so exhausted that I can't remember what we did that night. Ate a bit, drank a bit, slept a lot, I suppose.

7) And so we left. We had, for the first time, forsaken Dubai Airport: we were booked on Abu Dhabi-based Etihad. I'd heard nothing but good reports about this airline, and their fares were the best around. You can check-in your luggage at their office on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai up to (I think) 24 hours before your flight, and take a luxury coach from there to Abu Dhabi Airport. Absolutely bloody fantastic. It can easily take you an hour to drive/taxi to Dubai Airport - depending on traffic; it could be a shitload more and you are always at risk of missing your flight. To Abu Dhabi Airport, it's a virtually guaranteed 45 minutes. The flight was grand, marred only by the fact that the destination was Heathrow, the first-world's worst airport bar none.

Do I miss Dubai? Hardly at all. I do miss my buddies, really I do. And I miss the girl who used to come in and do our mountains of ironing. I miss having an apartment that was big enough to live in and accommodate guests - but next year we will get a bigger one. On the upside, we have proper weather that changes throughout the year, we live in a supremely civilized country, we have a King who tells dickheads like Chavez to 'shut up', we have public transport that works, we have freedom of speech and action, we have democracy, we have a government that doesn't need to launch PR things like 'Dubai Cares' - in general the 'caring' is built into the system, we have so much art and culture that it is difficult to keep up with it all. What we have here is real life. And not a small amount of what BetterArf would describe as 'yabadabadoo'.

I'm still lovin' it.

*This may or may not be racist: but I have met both Indians and Pakistanis who've said 'you trust a Sindhi like you trust a snake'. So nerr.

So Long And Thanks For All The Wossnames

2007-10-10T20:49:00.001+04:00

OK folks, new blog up and running: Probably Madrid. I might update this one if anything interesting happens in the UAE.

Feliz Ramadan

2007-09-12T20:39:00.000+04:00

I´ve been trying to write this little ditty for the last few years, but all I have so far is (to the tune of ´Feliz Navidad´)

Feliz Ramadan,
From the land of pork and ham...

Suggestions?

Month Dos

2007-09-03T19:44:00.000+04:00

So, here we are, just into our second month in Madrid, and everything seems to be working out just fine. BetterArf started her job today, and we went to view an adorable little flat this afternoon. It´s tiny, but newly-renovated and it has the most creative use of space ever! We´re calling it the Penthouse - it´s on the 7th floor, has a big terrace and spectacular views over Central Madrid. We get the keys tomorrow! And shortly thereafter we´ll get ADSL installed and posting will be back to normal.

My other excuse for not posting much is that I was finishing my novel - every word I had to write went into the book. It´s now finished, 80,000 very cleverly arranged words, so now I´m trying to find a visionary literary agent who can flog it to a publisher.

Later.

Hola!

2007-08-14T14:58:00.000+04:00

I know, I know. Nearly a fortnight without a post. I´m sorry. I´m just having too much fun in Madrid, and I don´t have time to blog about it.

Maybe later...

Off to Spain

2007-08-01T13:53:00.000+04:00

This is our last full day in England before we whizz off to the sunnier climes of Madrid. We’ve had a fairly eventful time since I last posted. Our week in Scunthorpe and Doncaster featured some bizarre family stuff that I won’t go into here (no matter how much you plead and beg), and some good stuff too.

There was a remarkable gathering of the clans at the Daddy-in-Law’s hoose. DIL has three brothers, one of whom I’ve never met in the twenty-odd years that I’ve been an associate member of the clan. He lives in Switzerland and he addressed me as Keefieboy. Now, nobody calls me that unless they read this blog. So, bonjour George, and thanks for lurking!

By the way, if you ever find yourself washed up in Scunthorpe, make sure you visit The Highfield House. It’s one of the best pubs I’ve ever been in – nice décor, outstandingly good food, ridiculously cheap beer and no background music or TV. It also sits alone in its grounds and it has a functioning bowling green. I loved it.

I also found a really good pub in Doncaster, the Tut ‘n’ Shive. This place belongs to the genre known as ‘spit and sawdust’, and its stone floors and pew-back panelled ceilings are maturing nicely. Fabulous real ales, cheap food and a non-stop selection of old rock tunes made this a winner for me.

The weather and the smoking ban were key themes of this holiday. We escaped the catastrophic flooding that hit Gloucestershire – Yorkshire had already been inundated about five weeks ago – but we’ve seen plenty of rain, a bit of sunshine, and a magnificent double rainbow. The smoking ban that was introduced on July 1 has forced dedicated smokers to cluster outside pubs, trying to keep their fags out of the rain.

We moved on to Liverpool about a week ago. Yesterday BetterArf and I got the bus into town and mooched around in a touristy kind of fashion. We visited Liverpool Museum, an imposing Victorian edifice that has had a serious makeover, and bumped into a mate of ours from Dubai. It turns out that Lynda is a secret Scouser – what a surprise! After the museum we popped into the nearby Walker Art Gallery to see an exhibition of Josh Kirby’s work. Josh is best-known for his cover illustrations for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, but it was really nice to see the other stuff he did.

So, holiday nearly over. Time to start thinking about getting some work, finishing my novel and making some money. Dang.

Lord of the Rings

2007-07-15T10:01:00.000+04:00

We are now Oop North, in Lincolnshire, and I have got a cold. Our week in London was terrific: usually when we go there it's only for a few days and we never get to see anything, but this time we were in full tourist mode and we still didn't get to see a fraction of what's on offer.

BetterArf was determined that we should see at least one West End show, but the so-called 'half-price' tickets booths around Leicester Square seemed to only have the more expensive tickets at half-price, and half of £100 is way too much for our budget. On our last full day, she went direct to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and bought the cheapest tickets for Lord of the Rings. These were on the front row of the balcony - you had to lean forward over the parapet to actually see the stage.

When we arrived for the show we headed to the downstairs bar and ordered 3 glasses of wine plus another 3 for the interval. 'Thirty six pounds', said the barman in all seriousness. Ouch! We climbed the stairs to the balcony (no lift!) and realised that we would have to repeat the performance during the interval to get our extremely expensive drinks. Fortunately there is a little bar beside the balcony and the ushers very kindly arranged for the drinks to be delivered there.

The entire front half of the theatre was decked out like a forest, with branches extending in front of the boxes and across the ceiling. This production was originally staged in Toronto, but has been revamped, rewritten and partially re-cast for the London season. The design, lighting and special effects were all stupendous, but some of the actors were a bit naff. The plot and characterization were, of course, lousy (blame Tolkein), but on the whole it was a really good show. It's worth seeing just for the revolving stage with segments that can be raised and lowered independently, and for the flying elves and bouncing orcs. If the Theatre Royal can sort out the a/c and install a lift for the balcony, I'd be very happy to see the show again.

Hackneyed

2007-07-10T14:32:00.000+04:00

Hi fans. Here we are in sunny Hackney, east Lahndahn, where we've been staying with our son since we arrived. We're having a grand ole time with sunshine, rain, more sunshine, real live haraminals at the City Farm, and lots of other stuff. Will do a proper post eventually - this is just a quickie from an Internet Caff to let you know we arrived OK.

And thanks for all the luvverly comments on the previous post.

Salud, Euros y amor. Y el tiempo para gozarlos*

2007-07-04T07:29:00.000+04:00

*Health, money and love. And the time in which to enjoy them.

The movers are coming today, and DEWA will be disconnecting the electricity. So I don't know when I'll get back online.

But thanks to all of you for reading my blog - it's been a blast! Of course I'll still be blogging from Europe, and I might start a new blog or rename this one. Or both. Damn, it's tough being a Libran.

Adios Amigos.

The Liquid/Laptop Interface, and Other Stories

2007-06-25T19:44:00.000+04:00

The last couple of days have not been the most wonderful. This morning, for the first time in my life, I managed to spill a few good slurps of hot tea onto my laptop keyboard. Suppress your mortification, it's not dead, only wounded. I can switch it on, but the keyboard just types any old drivel (not unlike me then), and the steering of the mouse is wildly erratic. Tomorrow I shall purchase a miniscule screwdriver and invalidate my warranty. Can't hardly wait.

Yesterday morning was blighted by a phone call from a Pakistani gentleman who said he wanted to buy our telly, as advertised on a posterette at Jebel Ali Choithram's. 'What brand is it?' He asked.
'I don't know - it's just some Chinese junk.'
'How much is it?'
'What it says on the poster.'
'It's too much.'
'OK, bye.'
'No wait. What else you selling?' Like a moron I told him. He insisted that I leave work and meet him at my apartment an hour later. He'd said he wanted stuff because his wife and daughter were arriving in Dubai tomorrow. Yeah, right. He was a dealer and he was interested in every appliance in the place. It was almost impossible to get rid of him. So, he's buying/bought: the fridge and cooker; the TV; the satellite decoder (won't work in Europe); the surround sound system (won't work anywhere); an old mobile phone; a broken bed and an exercise bike (crikey where did that come from!). I'm too ashamed to tell you how little I've let him have all this stuff for.

ImbeSalik - I Dare You To Give a Better Option

2007-06-23T01:10:00.000+04:00

The once challenging and brave Emirats Toady would have derided the new road toll scheme with the venom it deserves. But since its new management team took over about a year ago, it is desperate to put a positive gloss on the entire fiasco. That is a really hard thing to do, and Assistant Editor Hakam Kherallah shoots himself in the foot trying to do it. He says, basically, all you whingers out there, suggest a better alternative. If this guy was genuous, he would know that every single critic of imbeSalik has already done so. The alternative is: wait until the Metro is up and running, and the RTA have figured out how to run a useable bus service. That's all. Once these things are in place I doubt you would hear much protest against the toll scheme. But to introduce imbeSalik at a time when the viable transport alternatives are ABSOLUTELY ZERO just tells me that the RTA either has no clue about what it is doing, or it does have a clue and does not care one iota about the expense, pain, frustration and chaos that this scheme is going to cause. I suspect the latter is true.

If the aim of this insane project is simply to raise money for the RTA then I don't think most people would object to a serious rise in vehicle registration costs. But they insist on presenting this as a way of reducing congestion. I'm sorry. The way this scheme is designed will only shift congestion onto other roads that are completely unable to cope with it. RTA chief Mattar Al Tayer insults his customers by saying we are not traffic experts. I happen to know several critics of the scheme who are traffic experts, and I think the rest of us have a pretty good idea of how things work simply because we use the roads every day.

If it looks like a dog, smells like a dog, it's probably a dog.

It's Really Happening!

2007-06-22T23:34:00.000+04:00

Yes, folks, it's true. All of our talk over the last few years about us leaving this miracle of unsustainable wonderfulness in July 2007 is true. I mean, it's always been true. But a week ago I actually got in touch with a couple of removals companies, and two days ago I awarded one of them the job. Within two hours they dropped off a load of cartons, which BetterArf is dutifully filling with books (I would help but a) I don't think we should take all of these books, and b) I'm busy writing my own book). We have thousands of books and CDs and DVDs, and that is mostly what we are taking with us.

We plan to sell most of our furniture. I think it's a shame that IKEA has not introduced a library service whereby you deposit the furniture that you bought from them at your local store, and they give you a voucher. And when you get to where you're going you present the voucher and can withdraw more or less the same furniture that you had deposited in Dubai. IKEA is being slammed a bit for its apparent lack of greenness - I think this would be a really good thing for them to do. But hey.

We actually put some unwanted, unsellable stuff outside our building this morning: 4 steel-framed rattan chairs whose rattan has gone to ratshit, a sofa-bed and two cushions. When we headed out the door for a luncheon engagement, the chairs were gone, and when we returned from our extremely long lunch, the cushions were gone, but the sofa-bed remained.

A bit like Tony Blair, we are now engaged on a succession of farewell do's. We had one this afternoon. An extended South African Christmas Lunch, hosted by the biscuit-dropper John. Marvellous, it was. We had roast lamb that he got from a farmer/butcher friend in SA. Two days ago this lamb had been trotting around a field where the grass was interspersed with rosemary and other herbs. Dee-licious! The concluding biscuits were served on a high-lipped tray.

I have to say, I am really looking forward to a complete change of lifestyle. It's already starting to happen. I have virtually finished all of the work that I have to do for my lovely clients. I am not taking on any new work until I get settled in Spain. But really, I plan to focus on Web 2.0 projects (or as the Spanish would say 'red dos punto cero') of my own, and writing outrageous novels. The current novel is storming along - 45,000 words so far, all of them good.

Moving house is supposed to be one of the most stressful of life's little events, but I'm not feeling it yet. Quite the opposite, in fact, this feels like a release!

The Omars

2007-06-15T15:38:00.000+04:00

The what? I hear you all ask. 'The Omars' is Dubai Drama Group's version of the Oscars, in which awards are given for Best This, Best That and Best T'other. It's a tradition, or an old charter, or something.

The first Omars were held about 10 or 11 years ago, and every year thereafter until the group got sick 3-4 years ago. Now in its resurgent splendour (which has happened largely due to us being able to use DUCTAC rather than previous wildly unsuitable venues), the DDG is back, big time. We fully expect TV coverage from CNN and BBC World for tonight's ticket-only, sold-out, secret-location event.

The dress code is 'look divine'. BetterArf, therefore, is going as herself, a Goddess. And I may be going dressed in elegant swathes of exotic cloth á la Muammar Gaddafi because the Tux rental shop on Diyafah Street, Satwa, has disappeared without trace. Grr.

Anyway, Keefieboy is looking forward to a terrific evening of fun and silliness. And the resurgence of the DDG is one of the things that we will definitely be missing about Dubai as we pack up our troubles in the old 20-foot-container bag.

Salik Day Approaches

2007-06-12T19:49:00.000+04:00

Much has been written in the press and in the blogs (Grumpy Goat, Half Man Half Beer, Secret Dubai) about the impending launch (and hopefully rapid sinking) of 'Salik', the imbecilic road toll scheme that is due to start operating near Garhoud Bridge and Mall of the Emirates on July 1st. There have been public spats between the Police and the RTA about it. Gulf News in the last few days has reported the unanimously unfavourable opinions of many Dubai residents. In the keep-your-head-down-and-don't-rock-the-boat culture of Dubai, this is not far from open rebellion.

I enjoyed this comment:

Salah Bu Farousha, Traffic Public Prosecutor, said he supports Salik, but has reservations.
"It is a trial and we should not make premature conclusions. If people do not cooperate, it will be a problem. I am sure RTA has approved this project after thorough studies. Recently traffic police were asked if they are ready in case of traffic congestions and they said yes they are ready," he said.

Do I detect a note of irony in the above? And this is the first time I've heard the scheme described as a trial. Nice one Salah - hopefully the RTA will adopt this terminology so they won't be too embarrassed when either Sheikh Mohammed or the sheer unworkability of Salik forces them to postpone the damn thing.

Not wishing to gloat or anything, but I will be out of Dubai about a week after the ~~chaos~~ ~~mayhem~~ ~~bedlam~~ scheme starts. But I do feel that every word of justification uttered by the TRA on this subject is disingenuous tosh. The object of this scheme is nothing more or less than to extract more money from drivers. If it were otherwise then the scheme would only operate at peak times, rather than the proposed 24 hours a day. There are zero viable transport alternatives available. Having recently tried to use the 8A bus 'service' from the Gardens to Media City, I have found the timetabling to be a cynical work of fiction. If you use a taxi, you'll have to pay the toll. The Metro is still two years away.

The saddest thing about this disaster-in-the-making is the blinkered attitude of RTA management. It will cause much more congestion at peak time as thousands upon thousands of cars try to get off SZR before going under a toll gantry. Once you've passed the toll gate, you will be able to hurtle along at 120 kph. But before you get to that you will be stuck in the queue of people trying to get off the road because they do not want to pay the toll - at Mall of the Emirates this will mean SEVEN lanes of traffic trying to organise itself into TWO lanes for the last free exit. There will be chaos like you've never seen before - and we've all seen some chaos on Dubai's roads. Many roads in Bur Dubai which are already overloaded, will grind to a complete halt. Al Wasl Road, Jumeirah Road and Al Sufouh Road will all be jammed solid. Emirates Road and Al Khail Road are already over capacity.

And yet the TRA will claim a great success because the stretches of road immediately before and after the toll gates will show a huge reduction in traffic.

If this is indeed about money, why not slap a few hundred dirhams on the annual vehicle registration fee? I don't think people actually mind paying a bit of money extra if they know it helps to improve the infrastructure. But to have to pay extra money to join a scheme that is ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED TO INCREASE CONGESTION is madness, pure and simple.

You Know You've Been in Dubai Too Long When...

2007-06-04T16:28:00.000+04:00

...the Government announces another amnesty for illegal residents. This is the third amnesty during our time here. They seem to be happening about every five years. There are two reasons for people being here illegally

1) They entered the country without any kind of visa, in which case they deserve everything they get, and

2) They had some kind of visa, but it expired and, for whatever reason, they did not leave.

We know lots of people who were caught in situation 2. The policy has always been that once your visa has expired, you are liable to a fine of Dhs 100 per day of your overstay. This very quickly builds up into a fine that nobody in this situation can pay. For example, say you had a job, but you were dismissed or the company closed down. Your residence visa gets cancelled. You have 30 days in which to leave the country. But you have bankrupted yourself to get here and you really do not want to leave just now. So you bust your guts trying to find a job. You have some good interviews and a couple of verbal offers. But you have to wait for those offers to turn into written offers.

This will always take time because the owner of the company or whoever is responsible is too busy/out of the country/too lazy. Your deadline comes and goes. You are taking a flyer, but you feel it is justified because very soon you will have a job offer, and that will turn into a job, and everything will be fine. Except, when the person responsible for making your written offer finally gets down to it, he decides he doesn't want you at salary xx,xxx per month, he's giving the job to the tea-boy at xxx per month. Now you are trapped. You have virtually no money, and you are already on day 15 of your overstay. You now have no choice but to hang on until you do get a job.

You (well maybe not you, but I) hear all kinds of stories about people who have surrendered themselves to the authorities. Of people (typically Asians) who are fined the full Dhs 100 per day for their entire overstay period, and are accommodated at HH's pleasure until they deign to pay the amount. Which of course they do not have, an so they languish in jail until somebody pays their fine or they get pardoned as part of a Ramadan clean-out. And others (typically westerners, but I'm not saying there's any racial bias here) who just get fined an admin fee and are able to sort themselves out for about Dhs 1,000.

I know of one Brit who had overstayed for about 15 years. He took advantage of the last amnesty, and the Immigration officials all wanted signed copies of his documents because they had never seen such an extreme case!

The daily fine policy has exactly the opposite effect to what it should have. You very quickly reach a point of no return, not out of malice, and not deliberately; but very quickly you find yourslef so deep in the mire that you cannot even dream about how you might get out of it. It forces people not to come forward and try to get their status sorted out. It discourages employers from hiring people with an overstay problem. It actually causes many more problems than it solves. And it makes it necessary to hold an amnesty every five years.

We Got the Power!

2007-05-25T22:35:00.000+04:00

DEWA (Dubai Water & Electricity Authority) has announced plans to build a 9,000 MegaWatt power and desalination plant adjacent to Dubai World Central. This is close to the total generating capacity of New York City, and dwarfs Dubai's installed capacity of about 5,000 MegaWatts. So, Dubai, current population a bit over 1 million (it could be much more but the government seems to be completely incapable of keeping track of how many people it is actually serving), estimated population in 2017, 3-4 million, needs 14,000 MegaWatts of generating power, while New York City, population 8 million, needs less than 9,000 MegaWatts. This seems to indicate that Dubai residents use twice as much power as New Yorkers.

Indeed, this could well be the case. We are spoiled brats. We have the air conditioning 24/7 in our homes and offices - well, I don't, but I suspect an awful lot of people do. We use water like it just comes out of the sea - ok, it does, but it goes through a very expensive desalination process at the front end, and a cleaning process at the back end. We insist on having lots of green areas, and lush emerald vegetation on our numerous golf courses - yes, they are beautiful, but the cost is enormous.

I seem to remember DEWA having a problem a few years ago. They were tendering for a 1.8 MW plant, but had to scale it back to 1.3 MW because no contractors could meet the original order. Sadly, DEWA's website has not been updated since 2004, and so there is no up-to-date information on their capabilities.

I was heartened to see another DEWA story picked up by Seabee, in which the reporter seemed to imply that mega-developer Nakheel was talking to DEWA for the first time about the power and water requirements of the three Palm projects, the World, and that canal thing.

This is where we hit a crunch point. Dubai is already outrageously wasteful of electricity and water - far more so than almost anywhere else on the planet. DEWA is struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing demand, to the point that they are considering laying a cable under the Arabian/Persian Gulf so that they can import electricity from Iran. Gas to run the existing power plants is in short supply - next month's launch of the Dolphin pipeline will ease things for a while - but with the potential doubling of demand, where is the fuel going to come from to run all this new kit?

It's time Dubai had a serious awareness campaign about energy and water conservation. I mean, really serious. Doubling the price of electricity would be a good start. Metering water consumption would be another. Getting everybody to realise that these are finite resources and we are wasting them faster than anyone else on the planet. When the oil and gas run out, there is no more. Without oil and gas, power stations and desalination plants will not run.

- Depressed of Jebel Ali

Houses to Rent

2007-05-23T20:57:00.000+04:00

Property company Nakheel has announced that the Falling Down Villas on the hill above Jebel Ali Gardens, which have been standing empty for about three years while the cracks were plastered over, are now available to rent. A 3-bedroom villa in this not exactly Chelsea or Hampstead location will cost you Dhs 215,000 per year. That's 29,500 GBP, or 43,500 Euros, or 58,500 USD.

Unbelievable.

Interesting Times in Kuwait

2007-05-22T22:48:00.000+04:00

I have a buddy that I see fairly frequently down at Jelly Baby Cloob. For the sake of his privacy and continued residence in this country we'll call him Barty. He's a bit obsessive about a thing called Peak Oil. Peak Oil theory is a kind of a game: its purpose is to figure out when the oil will run out. I'm not talking about Extra Virgin Olive Oil; that grows on trees. I'm talking about the thick black stuff that takes millions of years to make and about a century to use up. The problem with Peak Oil is that not only do the goalposts keep moving, but nobody knows how wide or tall they are, nor how many of them there are.

The thing here is that there is no easily defined point where you can say 'right that's it, there is not a single drop of crude oil left that can be extracted from the earth.' You can always find a little bit more oil somewhere. But is it economically viable to extract that last drop? That would depend on the market price of oil.

There's a kind of bell curve that describes oil production over time. It starts off small, gradually gets bigger, reaches a peak, and then declines back to nothing. The great unknown is the actual true size of discovered oil reserves. Companies and countries have, in the past, deliberately overstated, or maybe just made calculation mistakes when figuring out how much oil they had that could be profitably extracted. But once we have passed the peak of this curve, then the world is set for some major changes.

Sorry, that was a bit long-winded. Here's the story.

Two weeks ago, Barty showed me a press article. It was an interview with a Kuwaiti Minister involved in oil, who was saying in no uncertain terms that the size of Kuwait's oil reserves were a matter of national security, and under no circumstances would he reveal how big those reserves were.

One week ago, I spotted an article in the Gulf News, in which a Kuwaiti Minister involved in oil said that Kuwait had revised its proven reserves of oil from 100 billion barrels to 48 billion barrels. A few minutes after I had read this, Barty showed up. Anything good in the papers?

'Kuwait now says its reserves are only 48% of what they had previously stated'. Barty was convinced I was taking the piss out of him. As if I would! I riffled through the paper and showed him the article. He was astounded, absolutely blown away.

Oddly, that report was nowhere to be found on Gulf News' website, and although the story was reported in other UAE papers, no mention was made of the reserves downgrade. But Barty did find a full report of it on the Kuwait Times website.

A day or so ago, Kuwait announced it was disconnecting its currency from the US dollar peg. All GCC currencies are pegged to the US dollar, and that has had a serious impact in the UAE in particular, as the value of the dollar dives headlong towards zero. So congratulations to Kuwait for removing the noose from around its neck. If the UAE would only have the guts to do the same, everybody here would start to feel (and be) better off.

But Barty, of course, has a theory that the USA will take punitive action against Kuwait. 'We helped you in the first Gulf War, and then we put out the fires in your oilfields, and now you repay us by not supporting the greenback.'

'Yes but we lost half of our oil in those fires.' So the USA invades Kuwait to take revenge for them demonstrating no confidence in the dollar.

'We'll have your oil.' But the wells are almost dry.

Salik

2007-05-21T18:14:00.000+04:00

Dubai's RTA (Roads & Transport Authority) has donated a new word to the English lexicon: Salik. It's Arabic for 'clear', English for 'illogical, unworkable, doomed to failure'.

Salik is the brand name given to the hugely unpopular Road Toll Scheme. It is due to start on 1st July (fortunately I'll be leaving a week later so I won't be affected by it unless my taxi to the Airport decides to use SZR). Motorists will be charged at only two points on Sheikh Zayed Road: Garhoud Bridge and Mall of the Emirates. Now, we all know that this is the busiest stretch of SZR, but you'll be able to enter and leave the road at any point between those mentioned and not pay a bean. The logic of this, well, it defies logic. Even more illogical is that it will cost every vehicle Dhs 4 to pass the charging points at any hour of the day or night.

There have already been public spats between Dubai police and the RTA about this, but the RTA are determined to go ahead with it. I wonder, will it be the RTA collecting fines from people who don't have the means to pay the toll? Or the Police?

Here's my prediction of what will happen.

Mid-June: Salik cards go on sale. Everyone who works for the RTA buys them. Nobody else does.

1 July: Salik is switched on. Massive fines are recorded for vehicles without Salik cards. Traffic increases on Jumeirah Road and Al Wasl Road, but it is not total gridlock because all the schools are on holiday and most drivers are away or not doing school runs.

September: schools re-open. Jumeirah Beach Road and Al Wasl Road and that road that goes from Port Rashid towards Garhoud are completely gridlocked. Some people have been stuck in their cars for three days.

Sheikh Mohammed instructs the RTA to shut down Salik. Suggests they call him back in a couple of years when the Metro is open, and RTA have figured out how to run a proper bus service.

Heads roll at the RTA.

TBTB Again

2007-05-16T08:37:00.000+04:00

Ten days without a post from Keefieboy. Did you miss me?

Once again, the reason is that I have been very busy. I've been finishing off a massive e-commerce project for a company in Los Angeles that for various reasons has taken just over a year to get together. The other reason for my busyness is: Keefieboy has started writing a novel! I may be making a big mistake here by telling you about it. I'll look a right wally when I abandon it halfway through. Or when I do finish it but can't find an agent and publisher. Or it gets published and sells ten copies.

Virtually every website I've read about novel-writing says things like 'go ahead and do it if you want to, but don't expect to earn serious money from it.' But the first 10,000 words are embedded in silicon (only 90,000 to go!) and BetterArf has read it and assures me that it is as good as if not better than many other examples in its genre (comic fantasy). And I know she wouldn't lie to me!

Here's the Prologue:

This is a story about the land-locked island of Xanadu-du. Some say it is located in sub-Saharan Africa, interwoven with the nation of Mali. Others say you’re more likely to find it somewhere between the fifth and twenty-eighth dimensions, at any time between say, a week last Tuesday and five million years hence.

The people of Xanadu-du come from all over the world. Yes, this world, the one we call Earth. A few of the people were actually born in Xanadu-du, and if it was a real country they would have a Xanadu-du-ian passport. But of course, it’s not a real country, so they don’t. What they do have is a great capacity for arguing, and a hell of a lot of elephant manure. Which is odd really, because they don’t have that many actual elephants.

Visit www.xanadu-du.com to find out where this nonsense comes from.

Desist Already!

2007-05-06T15:24:00.000+04:00

I have this idea in my head that a year or two ago Sheikh Mohammed announced a bit of a moratorium on announcements of new development projects. The moratorium was supposed to last five years, and the idea was that it would give the people and various gubment departments time to catch up with the new shape of things. I must have dreamed it.

This week is the monster exhibition, Arabian Travel Market, and since Dubai is basing a large chunk of its future on Travel and Tourism, this is when lots of announcements get made. So far we've had news that both the Jebel Ali and Deira Palms have been put on hold pending re-design (possibly related to the fact that if these projects get built as 'planned' there would not be a grain of sand left on the seabed of UAE territorial waters, and desert sand just will not do the job). That seemed like good news: after the experience of the Jebel Ali Palm it has become very clear that chucking a load of sand and rocks into the sea in the shape of a four-year-old's idea of what a palm tree looks like is somewhat more complex than you might imagine.

But.

Announcements of more new stuff. The final phase of the Dubai Creek Extension that connects the Business Not-Much-Like-A-Bay body of water back to the Arabian Gulf. This effectively turns Bur Dubai and Jumeirah 1-and-a-bit into an island. [irony -->] I have no doubt whatsoever that the effects on water flow and ecology have been studied in great depth[<-- irony]. Gulf News had a diagram that shows the exact course of the Creek Extension. Apparently this stretch will be only 100 metres wide. 100 metres! Are you kidding?! It's not the Suez Canal or anything: the only traffic will be little motor boats, the odd rowing boat, and maybe a few abras (water-taxis). So, you lucky buggers who will still be in Dubai when this comes to pass: if you ever need to go west of Safa Park (or you live/work in West Dubai and need to go the other way) you will face the simultaneous buggeration of the newly-beautified Jumeirah Beach Road, Al Wasl Road and Sheikh Zayed Road while they build 100m bridges to span the Creek Extension. OUCH! Oh, and don't forget the Metro: that will have cross the water also. That was a minor announcement. Today we've had the news that Sheikh Mohammed has instructed Bawadi to have the biggest shopping area in the world.

Bawadi is a monster development of hotels, and hotels, and, er, hotels, out in the desert somewhere. The proposed shopping complex is slated to have more than 40 million square feet of GLA (Gross Leaseable Area). This is unimaginably ~~horrible~~ vast. I was at Mall of the Emirates yesterday, a mere tiddler of a mall with only 2.4 million square feet of GLA. After half-an-hour wasted trying to find a parking space, followed by a fair bit of walking around the mall trying to find various shops, I was overwhelmed, lost, disorientated and fed up.

Somebody, please tell me: what on Earth is the big deal about shopping malls? Yes I know, you go to a shop, it might have something you want, you might buy it. Or, in this region, it has free air-conditioning, the possibility of hanging out with your mates, etc. There never seems to be much actual buying of stuff going on (except at Carrefour).

Anyhoo, mustn't grumble: outta here in 2 months and 1 day. Jajaja.

Husband For Sale

2007-05-04T20:27:00.000+04:00

BetterArf has been clearing out her handbag. She found this receipt. I don't know what's worse:

1) She bought a new husband rather than using her undoubted charms to acquire one for free

2) She bought it from a toy shop

3) It only cost 17 dirhams

4) She cannot remember buying it and has no idea where it is now

The mind boggles.

Burj Dubai

2007-05-04T17:48:00.000+04:00

Emaar's Burj Dubai recently became the tallest structure anywhere in Europe and the Middle East. But from a medium-to-close vantage point it doesn't actually seem that tall. It's only when you can see it from a distance (in this case Nadd Al Sheba) that the effects of perspective and foreshortening disappear, and you can really see how it towers (bad pun, sorry) over the other buildings on Sheikh Zayed Road.

Dubai Metro Project

2007-05-04T11:40:00.000+04:00

Work on the Metro line from Jebel Ali to Dubai is hurtling on. As you drive up and down Sheikh Zayed Road you'll see four or five massive travelling gantries that are used to hoist the pre-fabricated track-holder sections in to place (I'm sure there's a proper name for these, but I don't know what it is).

I haven't seen any explanation as to why almost all of the track is elevated. I suspect there are at least four reasons.

1) It keeps idiots from trying to cross the tracks

2) It doesn't create a barrier to movement

3) It'll be another Guiness Book of Records entry

4) It looks beautiful and futuristic

Now I'm wondering: are they going to paint all this concrete? And what are they planning to do the open ends of the cross pieces? If the answer to the last question is 'stick adverts on them', I'm afraid someone will have to die.

Back On The Road Again

2007-05-02T22:45:00.000+04:00

A few months ago my shiny red Beemer decided it didn't want to play any more: it just wouldn't bluddi start. It would start with a jump from another vehicle, but the battery refused to hold a charge. I doubted that the solution would be as simple and cheap as a new battery, and I was right. Cash has been very tight for the last few months - most of what came in went straight back out again for rubbish like office rent, trade licence and apartment rent (all of which ultimately goes to Sheikh Mo, and he obviously needs it more than I do).

But finances improved a few weeks ago and I entrusted the car to the capable hands of the mechanics. They told me it needed a new air flow meter. Wikipedia tells me this is a gadget that measures how much air is whizzing through the engine so it can figure out how much petrol to squirt into it. Must be a wonderful piece of kit because it costs not much short of dhs 4,000. It took a bit over a week to arrive from Germany, and then the garage told me about a few other things that needed attention. I explained that money is not one of my core components, so they re-worked their quote using generic parts. It still adds up to a small fortune, but I guess that's part of the joy of car ownership.

So I collected it this morning, had a minor heart attack at the size of the bill, and then drove it across the road to Tasjeel because the registration had lapsed while it was off the road. Amazingly I had no fines to pay, but I did have to renew the insurance. Even though this was not due until next month, your insurance has to be valid for at least three months for the car to be registered. Don’t ask me why. So, some serious wallet damage, but at least I won't be placing my life at the mercy of overworked, overtired, overstressed, undertrained taxi drivers any more.

A Tag Thing

2007-04-27T15:41:00.000+04:00

Al Ain Taxi has tagged me. I have to tell you five things you (probably) didn't know about me. Here goes.

1) I used to be a lap-dancer at a Working Men's Club in South Yorkshire.

2) I am a Grand Master of the martial art Okidoki.

3) I don't like beer.

4) I admire Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and George W. Bush.

5) I tell lies.

Now I have to tag 5 other unfortunates.

1) Jayne With A Why

2) MamaDuck

3) Half Man Half Beer

4) Madame Cyn

5) Grumpy Goat

Sheikh Mo My Hero

2007-04-23T18:38:00.000+04:00

I've been neglecting local news recently. INWP. So what's been happening? Continuing carnage on the roads. Ram-raid jewel heist. Lots of buildings going up in smoke. The public beach beside Jumeirah Beach Hotel being closed and then re-opened at the behest of Sheikh Mo.

But the best thing to happen recently was Sheikh Mo presenting the UAE Strategic Plan for the next five years and absolutely pasting the Ministries of Education, Justice and Labour. I've had personal dealings with all these Ministries and every word that Sheikh Mo said about them is true: they are hindering the development of the UAE rather than helping it and they need a wholesale re-evaluation of what their roles should be and how they should go about doing them.

The Ministry of Education puts parents through hell if they are insolent enough to want to transfer their child from one school to another. Their current plan is to unify school term, examination and holiday dates. Well, in the government schools, yes, you can do that. But they also want to do it to private schools. These private schools follow the curricula of many countries: British, Indian, French, Japanese, whatever. They must conduct exams on the same dates as in the host countries. Therefore the preparation for those exams is scheduled so that students are ready to take them at the right time. Exactly how and why the MinEd thinks these exam dates can be changed to suit their whims is utterly beyond me.

Justice. Well, there's a lot I could tell you, but I won't. However I did bump into an acquaintance of mine a few days ago. 'Haven't seen you for a while, you been away?'. 'Yes,' he says, 'been in jail.' Now, in the real world, you'd be shocked to hear these words and you'd back away and probably not want to have anything to do with the convict. But here it is not at all unusual: farting in lifts, being drunk, gesturing rudely, swearing, can all get you a month's holiday. And apparently half the people in jail in Dubai are there for debt / bounced cheques: as the Chief of Police said - the real criminals in these cases are the banks.

In my friend's case, he was incarcerated because two labourers decided to commit suicide by running out in front of his car on Sheikh Zayed Road. He was doing somewhat less than the speed limit, and he never drinks alcohol. By some amazing twisted logic, he was deemed to be at fault. But, small consolation to him, the law was changed after his case. Anyone killed or injured while trying to cross a motorway now has only themself to blame.

The Justice system in the UAE is desperately in need of a fundamental review. Judges are not well-trained, they are often on limited-term contracts and they are not independent. The civil laws are written ambiguously and are open to misinterpretation (I'm not even going talk about Shari'a!). Judicial procedures are opaque and you really need to think twice before suing anyone - it's entirely possible that you could end up being the one in the wrong. Interestingly, Sheikh Mo mentioned that there should be an official English translation of the laws.

As for the Ministry of Labour - Sheikh Mo was criticising their approach to getting Emiratis into work. I would also say that the sooner we get rid of the sponsorship system and allow free movement of labour, the healthier the economy will be. But that's another post.

So, it's great to see Sheikh Mohammed tackle these issues, and on a Federal level as Prime Minister. Having lived here for more than a dozen years, if I've learned one thing, it's this: if Sheikh Mo wants it to happen, it will happen. And quickly.

General Drivelly Update

2007-04-23T18:22:00.000+04:00

You may have noticed that my blogging has been a bit infrequent of late. I put this down to a combination of various phenomena: TBTB (Too Busy To Blog), INWP (Interweb Not Working Properly) and CBA (Can't Be Arsed). CBA is a subset of INWP.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that what Itisalot laughingly call my 'broadband' connection at home has not been working properly for months now. A long visit by an Itisalot 'engineer' only made matters worse. The technician uninstalled my Norton Internet Security and downloaded AVG. After an hour or so of scanning the gazillion files on my laptop, AVG found a worm The technician said that that was the culprit - all I had to do was wait for the scan to finish and let AVG kill the worm and all would be well. Well, it wasn't.

A few days later I re-installed Windoze. The only effect that this had was that every time I boot-up (what an appropriate phrase) the laptop, it tells me it's found a new PCI controller and an Ethernet card. It can't install the software for them, of course, because these devices are already installed. I can no longer connect to the InterWeb at my office: when I'm working there I have to throw files onto a memory stick to transfer them to another PC that is connected to the net. Arse pain in the it is.

And at home I still cannot use FTP, nor can I connect to https:// sites. But worst of all, I cannot log on to Blogger to post my lovely blogs! So I have to do the memory stick thing to my old laptop. Arse pain in the it is.

So the prospects of me having to do a complete re-format of my laptop looms large. Actually if I'm going to do that I might think about getting Windows Vista, although I'm told that one result of that could be that some of my software might not work any more. Hmmm. Probably not then.

Demographic Time-Bomb

2007-04-14T17:55:00.000+04:00

There's an interesting editorial in today's Gulf News. The piece is written by Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, Professor of Political Science at the Emirates University, Al Ain. He says:

8 out of 10 people living in the UAE were born abroad. If the current double digit annual economic growth continues, the percentage of non-citizen will reach 90 per cent by 2015.

Henceforth, by 2025, the citizens of the UAE will constitute zero per cent of the population.

A county with a zero percentage citizens is unprecedented in modern history and will make a new entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

I guess his estimate for 2025 is meant to be a joke, or it might mean 'so close to zero as makes no difference'. Actually it does make a big difference: there could never be a condition where the local population reaches zero (well, there could, but we won't go there). His projections are a bit flawed: the current massive imbalance is a result of the decision to buildeverythingallatonceasfastaswecanquickbeforetheoilmoneyrunsout, rather than the traditional way of spreading it out over, say, a few centuries. In 5 - 10 years the current crop of projects will be finished and the last of the workers will be packing up and going home, having made their fortunes in the Emirates. So unless there's a fresh crop of mega-projects that haven't been announced yet, we can expect a dramatic fall in the population - maybe more than 50%. But, to counterbalance that, we will then have an influx of new residents who have bought into new residential properties and will be planning on staying forever - or at least having a holiday home in the sun forever. And they will be wanting some say in what goes on, some form of extended right to residency (rather than the current debacle whereby if you do not have residency by virtue of working here, the master developer will fix you a visa), and all kinds of things that permanent residents in other countries are entitled to. I'm stopping short of asking for actual citizenship: the Government won't even give that to Bedu who have lived on this land for hundreds of years.

The writer does not mention the tourism and business travel population; the Government is hoping to attract huge numbers of these people and this will endlessly distort the local demographic. But his point is valid. Emirati citizens represent a small minority of the population, and that proportion is going to get even smaller. This is an inevitable result of the Government's dramatic growth strategy, but we are not hearing anything from the Government about how they plan to deal with the problem. I suspect they don't think there is a problem. If that is true then they are mistaken. Property-owning foreigners will not accept a total lack of representation for very long - witness the recent 'rebellion' by property owners at the Green Community when the land-owner tried to raise annual propery maintenance charges by 300%.

When expats came here purely for work, the situation was different. Everyone knew what the deal was: you came. you worked, you left. Admittedly it could be hard on kids born here to expat parents (and there are many thousands of them) because they feel that the UAE is their home. But now we have foreigners who own their own businesses, maybe own their own home (but not the land it is built on) who want to feel a bit more welcomed.

The sad fact is that if every single expat left tomorrow, the UAE would collapse totally. And it would stay collapsed for all eternity. The reliance on cheap foreign labour and highly-skilled foreign labour is so total that it doesn't bear thinking about. The Emiratis need to decide: are we going to be a self-reliant people, or are we going to work in partnership with other people to help us run our country. If it's the latter then the 'other people' are due a bit more recognition than they are currently getting.

That Iran Thing

2007-04-07T17:49:00.000+04:00

I've been a bit too busy to comment on the kidnapping of 15 British sailors and Marines by the Iranian Government, but I think Ahmedinejad just proved that he is not someone who can be trusted, or who has any kind of clue about how Westerners think.

I know quite a few Iranians here in Dubai and they are without exception lovely people, but I guess they are the smart ones who had the means to escape from the craziness of their current government. They certainly do not behave anything like the crackpot Ahmedinejad, the ladies do not cover themselves up, and all in all they are perfectly normal people who enjoy a beer and a good time.

I've not seen the movie '300' either, but I do believe that Persia/Iran has a stupendous history and culture, and what is happening there now is a complete travesty.

Occasionally you see articles in the press about why it is almost impossible to negotiate with Iranians. They are obsessed by face (this is important in most Eastern cultures too - loss of face is about the worst thing that can happen to you, short of actually dying). Whereas Westerners might suffer from a bit of pride, they can also admit that they have been wrong without dying of shame. It's a big, big difference. So an Iranian negotiator considers that you have already lost face by the simple reason that you are willing to negotiate. Bare-faced lies are also crucial to the art of negotiation.

The parading of the captives making forced 'confessions' on TV was disgusting. What has now been released about how they were actually treated is vile. Ahmedinejad's statement that they were being pardoned as a 'gift to the British people' was ludicrous, and today's demand for a bit of goodwill - help to get 5 Iranians held by the US released - from Iran's UK Ambassador is just one prod too much. I'll be surprised if he's not on a plane home by the end of the week.

Incidentally, Betterarf reckons the Brits would have been released a few days earlier, but the tailors that were hired to make the appallingly bad grey suits that the Brits were sent home in were all on holiday for NowRooz.

Happy Easter y'all.

April Foo(g)l(e)

2007-04-03T16:56:00.000+04:00

Two days ago I logged into my GMail account. This innocuous page normally contains nothing of interest, but on this day it carried an announcement of a new product: Google Paper. Basically it's a service whereby you forward your emails to Google, they'll print them off for you and mail them to you.

I thought this was a bit bizarre, but I do know people who really really do not understand how email works: these things are printed off by their secretaries and arrive on their desk just the same way as any other document. I thought nothing more about it until I noticed that the login page had changed again, and it includes a link to their April Fool joke. Here it is

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/index.html

Enjoy!

I Want to be a Taxi Driver

2007-04-01T19:58:00.000+04:00

The old Bimmer/Bummer/Beemer has been off the road for quite a while now, so we've been amassing lots of Frequent Near-Death-Experience Points in assorted taxis. Seriously, we added it up, we've been spending about dhs 1,000 a month for the privilege of booking taxis that never arrive, being driven on Sheikh Zayed Road by guys who think the stopping distance at 120 kph is half a metre and folks who got off the plane yesterday and do not know the way from anywhere to anywhere else.

Let it be said at this point that we've had lots of rides with competent drivers, and a few with outstanding ones. But you remember the scary ones, don't you.

I'm prompted to write this because our driver this morning was clearly an impatient headcase. He had been trying to overtake a particular car all the way down the dirt-track at the east side of The Gardens. I don't know why. But as we slip onto SZR, our driver hits the gas and is accelerating towards that car. They slide onto the highway at the same time, but neither can get into the second lane because of an approaching tanker. Nevertheless our driver is still accelerating. When the distance between him and the car in front is a couple of metres we scream at him to slow down. He does, but the laws of physics mean that we actually get to within less than half a metre of the car in front (and yes, the car in front was a Toyota). Our driver is seriously miffed. His manhood has been hurt. What is he supposed to do? There is tanker in next lane! Slow down, we say in unison. He really doesn't like this

I had thought of keeping a diary of all these taxi trips, just for fun or for legal purposes. Stuff like...did the taxi turn up at a reasonable time?...did the driver wear his seat belt?...did he answer his mobile phone without a hands-free?...could he actually drive safely?...did he have any kind of clue about where things are?...was the car not too smelly?... etcetera.

I know that taxi drivers get an appallingly crap deal. I mean it's worse than crap, it forces lots of them to work stupidly long hours to make their daily quota, and that endangers the lives of passengers. But I don't think that excuses them from having a few skills:

1) Being able to drive. Safely. Sensibly.
2) Being courteous to passengers.
3) Knowing the layout of the city.
4) Not having dead things rotting somewhere in the car.

Not a lot to ask - one month's training max. But I doubt that many of them get any training at all.

I reckon I could do it. But not for the money that's on offer.

Technology Update

2007-03-28T14:47:00.000+04:00

Thanks to all the commenters on the previous post who advised to get a Mac.I'm sure I could break one o' those too.

I had a brainwave the other day: why not resurrect my old laptop and see if FTP works on that? So I did, and it did, mostly. There's a few sites that it cannot connect to but it can connect to sites that I'm working on now. So, for working at home I now have my new laptop that I do the work on, my old laptop with its non-functional screen beside me, connected to a 17" monitor that is sitting on a chair because I don't think our glass-topped dining table would take the weight. So when I need to upload a file (this only happens about 500 times a day) I copy it onto a memory stick, plug the stick into the old laptop, swap the LAN cable from the new machine to the old one (reminder to self: get another long LAN cable), and then do the upload and swap the chip and cable back to the new machine. It's an almighty pain in the ass, but it works for now.

On the mobile phone front, I bought the cheapest phone I could find: a neat little black Motorola for a paltry Dhs 99! Sadly, it would only offer SOS/emergency service. Ping! went a thought in my head. Maybe I should pay the bill, it's that time of the month (although the Interweb and landline were still working so it would be a bit odd for them to just disconnect the mobile). First thing the next morning I go to Itisalot in Gerbil Alley, and before handing over any cash I ask a clerk whether I've been disconnected. No, he says, not yet. Ah, so why do I only get SOS service on this phone? He asks me how long I've had my SIM card, and I have no idea - 7, 8, 9 years? Ah, he says, it'll be worn out. You need a replacement: dhs 50. Surely, I say, it should be free: it's not my fault it's worn out! But, he says, you've been using it for 789 years haven't you? Hmm, can't win against Itisalot.

So I fill in the form for a replacement SIM card, wait in a queue for a bit, and get the new one. The guy says it will be active in half an hour. Actually it was activated 10 minutes later when I got a flurry of voicemail alerts.

Anybody want to buy a Motorola C113a: never used?

Technology Hates Me

2007-03-23T08:23:00.000+04:00

My apologies for the complete lack of blogging for almost a fortnight, I’ve been having serious problems with my laptop and the Interweb.

I blogged earlier about my problem with using FTP from my ‘broadband’ connection at home. After two weeks of whingy emails from me, Itisalot finally sent an engineer to have a look. Of course, when he plugged in his laptop, everything was fine. His conclusion was that I might have a virus on my machine, so he downloaded AVG and set it off on a mighty scan. I have gazillions of files and after two hours it was only halfway through the scan, although it had found a worm by then. The engineer took that as his cue to leave, saying ‘it will work after the scan is finished’. Hmm, well no, it bloody well didn’t work. And he had not explained to me why it works just fine using my Media City connection.

I had forgotten about the clever Windows feature known as System Restore. This lets you roll back the configuration of your system to a point where you know things were working fine. I decided to do a restore to a few days before I had the FTP problem. It made no difference, but it did stop the Interweb from working at the office.

DMC’s IT dude had a play with it and got nowhere.

Then I thought it would be a bright idea to re-install Windows. I had forgotten, of course, that when you do this you lose all the emails and the address book that you have built up over the years, and the Registry forgets about all the software you have installed. The software is still there, but the computer no longer knows where to find it so you have to install everything again.

Re-installing Windows did not have the desired effect. FTP was still not working and wi-fi is totally buggered. I can connect using a LAN cable at home, but not at the office. Strangely the computer tells me, with great delight, that it has found some new hardware every time I boot up. I offer the drivers for the Ethernet Controller, but it declines to take them because that device is already installed.

So, my Interweb is muxed ip big time. I cannot even access the Blogger edit page from home right now, and when I’m at the office I don’t have time to do any posting.

I cannot begin to describe how frustrating this is. It looks like I’ll be doing a format c:/ on the beast(ard) this weekend and then re-installing all my software and files. And, as if that wasn’t enough shit, my bloody phone packed up three days ago. The Palm Treo 650 that was my pride and joy when I bought it almost 2 years ago, is now reduced to being a PDA without the phone facility. I cannot get a signal of any kind, no matter where I am. I did some research yesterday on cheapie mobiles: the cheapest one is a plasticky Motorola at Dhs 117. Next up is a blue plastic Nokia at dhs 130. I’ll have to get one of them, because nobody will touch a Palm in this country and to get one fixed you have to send it to Slovakia or Slovenia. Dammit.

And, and, and...I have the world's worst cold! Ah well, mustn't grumble.

Cultural Overload

2007-03-10T15:46:00.000+04:00

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm feeling swamped by culture, right here in Dubai. After a decade and a bit of believing the place to be a cultural wasteland*, suddenly it's not any more. There is so much stuff going on right now that it is impossible to decide what to go to. Or you could just be sensible, stay home, and save your money for the Departure Fund. And now that the stretch of Sheikh Zayed Road between Jebel Ali and Mall of the Emirates has assumed some kind of normality, at least early on a Friday evening, we can actually get to Media City or DUCTAC without too many problems.

Two weeks ago: Roger Waters.

One week ago: DDG Romeo and Juliet at DUCTAC.

Yesterday: Desert Rock at the Country Club, International Jazz Festival at Media City and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana at DUCTAC.

Ongoing: Art Fair at DIFC.

We opted for Carmina Burana last night, and it was wonderful. It was a joint effort by the Dubai Chamber Orchestra and the long-established Dubai Singers. Both are amateur groups but their standards are very high. The first half comprised Mozart's 'Abduction of the Seraglio', followed by the world premiere of 'At Last They Rest' by Barnaby Priest. It was a wonderful piece, and I really hope there's a CD or DVD of the gig that we can get our hands on. The second half was all Carmina Burana, performed by about 68 Singers, 24 Dubai American Academy students, and the orchestra of about 26. Without any amplification, the wall of sound they produced was breathtaking.

And today DUCTAC is hosting a Palestinian Children's Orchestra. BetterArf has gone to that this afternoon: I have to get some work done!

*For certain ethnic groups: the BBC actually made a documentary on this topic about 8 years ago - it was heavily biased and ignored efforts by groups like The Singers, Dubai Drama Group, The Harmony Chorus and embryonic Orchestras. I cannot speak for Asian cultural groups, but they are plentiful and productive. And now both Abu Dhabi and Dubai have realised that people need more than just work to sustain them, and that there is money in art, they are both hurling funds at projects to build theatres, galleries, entire Cultural Districts.

It's a good thing.

UPDATE: BetterArf just got back from the gig. It was performed by students of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, which has branches in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Guess what? Three of the students were not allowed into the UAE because they had Israeli passports. No real surprise there, but can somebody please explain to me what is the point? Everybody knows you can go to Israel if you want to, and they'll stamp a visa on a separate piece of paper rather than in your actual passport. Some governments will even give you a second passport if you need to move between Israel and Arab countries frequently.

But how does stopping three students from entering our country help further the cause of peace?

The Louvre in Abu Dhabi

2007-03-07T13:48:00.000+04:00

A few months ago it was announced that The Louvre, Paris, France, was going to open a branch at Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi. The Guggenheim chain of Art supermarkets will also be opening a branch on Saadiyat. Yesterday Sheikh Khalifa, President of the UAE, had a meeting with Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, French Minister of Culture to talk about the Louvre project.

Picture the scene, a few years hence: the Museum is finished (and it looks like a very interesting building, by the way). The first consignment of paintings and sculptures has arrived at Mina Zayed. Crates are being opened and examined by Customs Officers (CO) in the presence of a Museum Official (MO).

CO: What's this? Looks like a constipated weasel...

MO: Eet ees La Gioconda, ze most purrfect painting everr made!

CO (on phone to imam): Imam? Look, having a problem here, some geezer from the Louvre wants to bring in a painting of a lady...

IMAM: Has she got her kit on?

CO: Yes, but, she's uglee.

IMAM: Hmm. Figurative art. Not allowed mate. Chuck it in the sea.

Splash. Next.

CO: By crikey, that's a big crate, what's in it?

MO: (gulp) Le Venus de Milo. Ees a two-zousand-year-old statue.

CO: Statue? Of a person?

The crate is opened

CO: Hell's teeth, looks at those Charlies! Ermmm, where's her arms?

MO: Eet was discovered in 1820, dug up from under ze ground. Zey could not find zee arms or zee plinth.

CO: (on the phone again) Imam? Me again. Look, this geezer's got a statue of a neckid woman.

IMAM: I'm coming...

CO: But listen, she ain't got no arms!

IMAM: Yeww. Chuck it in the sea.

Splash. Next.

CO: What a small box! What's in it?

MO: Ze Regent Diamond. Eez 140 carrots.

CO: I'll take care of that, shukran.

MO: !

CO: Next!

MO: Ah! Ze Frieze of Archers, from Persia, 522 AD

CO: Figurative! Sea! Next! (pause) Ah, this is a huge box, what's in it?

MO: A wardrobe

CO: Oh, right, that should be ok! (crate is opened, CO observes human figures portrayed on doors). Bugger.

Splash.

MO: Right, you cannot object to ziss. Eet ees a metal basin from 1320, made by an Arab called Mohammed ibn Al-Zain! Surely ziss iss fine?

CO: Lemme see...looks like a procession of Emirs decorating the sides there.

Splash.

And so on. The Louvre is packed solid with figurative art, it's what they do. How does Abu Dhabi plan to square the circle? Islam prohibits figurative art because it might encourage idolatry (yeah, right, I'm gonna worship a wardrobe). It is also robustly opposed to the idea of depicting people in their natural state. If this move by the Abu Dhabi Gubment is meant to presage some kind of shift in policy then that is seriously good news. Otherwise the Louvre in Abu Dhabi is a non-starter.

Curators at the Louvre are none too pleased about this either.

Middle East Madness

2007-03-04T21:58:00.001+04:00

Two things struck me in today's Gulf News

1) The Grand Mufti of Egypt (and I'm sorry I cannot find the link in the online GN) says that women cannot be Judges. Oh yeah, why's that? Apparently it's because the source of law in Egypt is Shari'a (I thought Egypt was more or less secular). And Shari'a says that a woman cannot be alone in a room with unrelated men. Since Judges frequently work on a panel of three, and need to consult each other in private, it is not possible for women to be Judges. Well, listen Mr Mufti. A Judge can sit alone, yes? So no problem. Or there may be two lady Judges and one bloke. Who's wrong now? I find this whole thing incredibly demeaning, and I know I will get into trouble for this, but...why does Islam presume that a civilized man and a civilized woman cannot be alone together for whatever reason without instantly leaping on one another to have hot sex? It's even more insulting for this Mufti guy to suggest that highly-educated Judges of whatever sex cannot control themselves.

He then goes on to say that the propensity of women to get pregnant and have children is also a problem, although he does not specify why. Can somebody please tell me why Islam always places the blame (or at least the punishment) on women?

Those damned Jezebels, temptresses, I'm only a bloke, my willy does the thinking, how can anything be my fault!???!@!

2) The UAE Ministry of Education has announced that from the beginning of the next academic year, public and private schools will all follow the same holiday and examination schedule. With the greatest respect to the honourable Ministry, this is complete and utter bollocks. How can a private school following Indian board courses hold their exams on the dates/times specified by MinEd? Or British, European or American schools? The exams are set by external bodies, and are run worldwide at the specified times.

Sadly, this is yet another case of MinEd announcing first, consulting later, rescinding thereafter.

You would think they would learn, given the business they are in, but no. Every two or three years, they have a go at enforcing segregated schooling. Schools are given something like two or three weeks' notice, when really they need two years. But in any case, parents of kids in private schools pay a shitload of money in fees so that their kids get the education they need, not what MinEd thinks they should have. And if I wanted my child to grow up as some kind of dysfunctional weirdo in a single-sex school, I'd have sent him to Eton!

If it was up to me, the Ministry of Education would have no role whatsoever in private education: they don't understand the concept, hell they don't even seem to know that international exam boards cannot change their exam dates to suit the whims of a local in the UAE MinEd. Why they are involved in trying to regulate private education at all is a complete mystery to me.

Dubai's New Theatre

2007-02-28T02:25:00.000+04:00

About six or seven years ago, BetterArf and I were at a Dubai Drama Group social evening, at the home of Brian and Sami Wilkie. They are both hugely talented actors, and successful businesspersons. They had just sold a business and were planning to ease off 'work'. Or rather, embark on a new challenge. Brian announced that they were going to start a project to build a proper theatre in Dubai. We were all dead impressed. They were somehow going to raise about Dhs 12 million to build this thing.

After going through many changes of location, design, massive increases in budget, hurdles, hassles, hoops and hullabaloo, the Dubai Community Theatre And Arts Centre (DUCTAC) finally opened its doors just before Christmas last year. It is located on the roof of The Mall Of The Emirates.

I have not had a chance to visit the place previously, but two nights ago BetterArf had a DDG Romeo and Juliet rehearsal there, and I went along to take photos. I have to say I was blown away. The main theatre (CentrePoint) is magnificent. When I heard it was going to be a 500-seater, I thought it would be too big for the kind of shows that were likely to happen there. But having seen it I must say it is one of the best theatre spaces I have ever been in. It is warm and intimate. Sightlines are excellent, acoustics are lovely, you almost feel you could reach out and touch the actors. It is amazing. It's also very red, which I'm sure helps with the intimacy and warmth.

There is a smaller studio space with retractable seating, and the Arts Centre with galleries, studios etc.

SHAMELESS PLUG
Get your bottoms along to DUCTAC this weekend to see DDG perform Romeo and Juliet.

There are two shows tomorrow, March 2 (3pm and 7pm) and two on Saturday (same times). Tickets are a paltry Dhs 50. It's an excellent production that combines elements of the traditional and the modern. Don't miss it! You'll also get to see MamaDuck, who, in case you didn't know, is a remarkably talented actor.

OK, I Was Joking

2007-02-28T01:51:00.000+04:00

But you knew that really, didn't you? I could no more quit blogging than I could climb Mount Everest. I just wish you could blog without having to sit in front of a computer or any other electronic device - maybe scribble your words on the side of a goat or something, and squeeze it's whatnot to send it through the goatosphere. I mean, I spend virtually all of my working day sitting in front of a computer, so really I'm not that thrilled to spend 'leisure' time doing the same thing.

But I expect that's the case for most of my readers.

Being almost quite old, I can remember black and white TV, white dog poo (because dog food in the olden days comprised mostly bonemeal, according to an article I read recently but can't be bothered to look up right now), and the complete absence of computers in the home. I was aware of these wardrobe-sized machines that could do maths, but they existed only in a few universities and really big businesses.

I actually worked in a Computer Centre for six months during a two-year-long 'gap year'. I could have invented that term, but sadly I didn't - I was too busy wandering round aimlessly trying to 'find myself' - we didn't have a phrase for that either. This place had big blue machines (IBM) and big orange machines (ICL). That period of my life is worth a post of its own, but for now I'll just say that I knew a bit about computers and they were bloody big things and there was no way that an individual could ever want or need or afford anything like it in their home.

How wrong was I? About as wrong as some famous dude who said, on the invention of the IBM Personal Computer 'the global market for PCs is about five, or six if the Pentagon buys one'.

Anyhoo, in our house we now have 2 fully-functional laptops, two semi-functional laptops and one desktop PC. Between 2 people. We have previously recycled defunct PCs to a Sri Lankan friend of ours who can actually be bothered to fix them up and send them to his family back home (warm glow of satisfaction).

But I digress. Yes, I do.

To those of you who commented on my last post, looking forward with baited breath to some kind of cataclysmic anti-UAE diatribe when I finally leave this country, I hate to disappoint you. That is not going to happen. If you have a boat, don't burn it. Salutory lesson here. I will still have some business here in this wonderful, surreal country, and I do expect to come back occasionally. Getting a bit mellow in my old age, aren't I?

100,000

2007-02-24T23:12:00.000+04:00

Finally, I had my 100,000th visitor, about 10 minutes ago. Only took 2 and a bit years.

So, that's it. Quitting blogging now. Thanks for all your support. Tata. Au revoir. Arrivaderci. Ma'salamah.

About The Crocodile

2007-02-23T15:52:00.000+04:00

I mentioned yesterday that BetterArf had bought me a crocodile. No, of course it's not a real one, it's a fairly realistic 8cm-long plastic model. The reason I wanted it was because I was putting the finishing touches to a new website, and what some of the pages really needed were pictures of crocodiles.

By the way, the site in question is called The Joking Cousins Of Xanadu-du, and it combines elements of social networking, blogging and a kind of virtual world. We're calling it 'tribal networking'. It's a project I'm doing in partnership with an old buddy in the UK, and the aim is to raise lots of money for desperately poor communities in Mali, Africa.

You're all invited to visit the site to find out more. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Actual paid memberships even more so!

Bloggers In Jail

2007-02-22T23:18:00.000+04:00

For God's sake, what is wrong with this region? We have heard of bloggers being arrested, Mahmoud in Bahrain is facing a defamation case, and now an Egyptian blogger has been sentenced to four years in jail for 'insulting Islam and [Egyptian president/dictator] Hosni Mubarak'. Egyptian Blogger Gets 4Years

What the hell is wrong with Middle East governments? Are they so weak that they cannot stand a little criticism? Is it the end of the world when somebody points out that Egypt's Mubarak is a dictator? This is not exactly news, now is it? As for 'insulting Islam', why is that considered a crime? People everywhere have different views of various religions, not all of which would be welcomed by the followers of those religions. But to throw people in jail for speaking their minds is just totally barbaric.

I'm sorry, people think what they think, and you cannot stop them from doing it. Governments cannot legislate that people must think what they think. Not real governments, anyway. I have always been unable to understand why such a populous country as Egypt, supposedly a democracy, has allowed Mubarak to continue in power for so long. They have the political mechanisms to get rid of him, don't they?

But here's the point. Nobody, in any place or at any time, should be threatened with jail time for simply saying what they believe, unless they have actually slandered, libelled or defamed someone. Journalists, bloggers, the average Abdul on the street should be free to say what they like: how can it be otherwise?

Throwing people in jail, blocking blogs, closing down newspapers, imposing censorship. These are all, ultimately, pointless, inhumane, barbaric activities. They show lack of respect for individual God-given rights. No Government can legitimately take those rights away from people. I am disgusted by the actions of the Egyptian government in this case.

Roger Waters Review

2007-02-22T15:25:00.000+04:00

You'll be pleased to know I've almost recovered from the spectacular hangover that I woke up with this morning. And I can remember a fair amount of last night's events.

My plan yesterday was to get a taxi and arrive at Media City for the Roger Waters gig by about 6pm. The gig was scheduled to start at 8.30, and I had little doubt that it would do so. There was a slight problem with BetterArf - she had to be at a photo-shoot for the Dubai Drama Group's upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet. This was at the Mall of the Emirates and was due to finish at 8pm. So, just about enough time for the several cast members who were also attending the concert to get down to the venue.

However, during the afternoon, BetterArf called me to say she wasn't feeling great and was going to give the gig a miss. But she had arranged an alternative wife to accompany me for the night, as long as I promised to behave myself. Alternative wife was then put onto the phone. Sounded a lot like DubaiBilly to me! Hah.

As the day went on, our plans to meet up changed several times, and eventually he arrived at my house at 7pm. I ordered a taxi, we drank a beer or two and waited. Taxis normally arrive in about ten minutes, but by 7.30 there was no sign. So we decided to walk down to Ibn Battuta Mall - there are always stacks of taxis there, but they never ever respond to calls for bookings. I guess we arrived at Media City a bit before 8pm. Plenty of time to get in and get a few beers and then enter the arena where we found a nice place to stand near the back of the huge crowd. I'm told there were 15,000 people there: this is big for Dubai, but it is actually the smallest venue that Waters is playing on this tour.

I have to say at this point that I'm always a bit wary when attending gigs in Dubai - the organisational skills, or lack thereof, of the promoters can make or break the experience, no matter how good the performers are. Fortunately this one was organised by Richard Coram's 'The Talent Brokers', and they certainly know what they are doing. Service at the bar was rapid, the toilets were clean and plentiful, the queue to get in was rapidly processed. Actually the bar was amazing. As is normal at these kind of events, you have to buy vouchers for your drinks first. Then you queue again to actually get the stuff. But at this bar there was no queueing - there were about twenty Filipina girls, each standing behind a Fosters font. We were spoilt for choice of which one would fulfil our order! Marvellous.

In the arena itself, the stage was set. At the back of the screen there was a huge LED screen showing an image of a table top with an old-fashioned radio, an ashtray, and a whiskey bottle and glass. At 8.30 on the dot, a hand appeared on the screen, twiddled the tuning dial (soundtrack: white noise, a snatch of Abba, a bit of a news broadcast, and then: Pink Floyd). The lights came up, the band were there, and off we went! The stage was flanked by two massive video screens showing close-ups of the action.

The small print on the tickets said that photography was not allowed and cameras would be confiscated, so I left my camera at home. Actually I might have got away with bringing it - security at the entrance was fairly lax, and within the arena it was either very discrete or non-existent. But everyone and his dog was recording the show on their phones. I took a few totally terrible photos with my phone: here's one of them...

The first song concluded with a kind of Mexican wave of fireworks in front of the back screen - left to right at the top, then right to left from the bottom, and repeat.

Here's the set list (stolen from somewhere else - I was too entranced to take notes myself).

In the Flesh?
Mother
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
Shine on You Crazy Diamond
Have a Cigar
Wish You Were Here
Southampton Dock
The Fletcher Memorial Home
Perfect Sense 1 & 2
Leaving Beirut
Sheep

(intermission)

Dark Side of the Moon:
Speak to Me/Breathe
On the Run
Time
The Great Gig in the Sky
Money
Us and Them
Any Colour You Like
Brain Damage
Eclipse

Encore:
Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb

Highlights for me were 'Leaving Beirut' and 'Perfect Sense 1 & 2'. 'Leaving Beirut' was very cleverly done. In the recorded version Roger does a voiceover that explains the story. On this tour, he doesn't do that, but there is a wonderful cartoon-style video on the big screen that explains the story and highlights some of the lyrics. The line 'not in my name Tony, you great war leader you' got the biggest cheer of the evening. 'Perfect Sense', from 'Amused to Death', is one of my absolute favourite pieces of music, especially the verse that is sung by P.P. Arnold:

When you add it all up
The tears and the marrowbone
There's an ounce of gold
And an ounce of pride in each ledger
And the Germans kill the Jews
And the Jews kill the Arabs
And the Arabs kill the hostages
And that is the news
And is it any wonder that the monkey's confused
He said Mama Mama, the President's a fool
Why do I have to keep reading these technical manuals
And the joint chiefs of staff
And the brokers on Wall Street said
Don't make us laugh, you're a smart kid
Time is linear
Memory's a stranger
History is for fools
Man is a tool in the hands
Of the great God Almighty
And they gave him command of a nuclear submarine
Sent him back in search of the Garden of Eden

All I can say is Wow. The performers were faultless, the sound, light, special effects and pyrotechnics were all stunning. I might quibble that the man himself did not connect with audience in any way, but you can't have everything. In fact, come on Keefie, it was the best gig you've ever been to right? Well, yes, says Keefie, it really was. Sensational.

Getting home was slightly problematic. I'd lost DubaiBilly near the end when I went to the loo and couldn't find him again, but we were heading off in different directions anyway and the alternative wife thing was going nowhere. I had expected to see a fleet of several thousand taxis outside the venue, but guess what? Another cock-up by Dubai Transport: not a single taxi to be had. So I started trekking over some fairly rough ground in the direction of the Hard Rock Café - there's usually a few taxis there. In my tired and emotional state I tripped over something, grazed my knee quite badly and acquired a massive bruise on my thigh. But I was feeling no pain: the phrase 'Comfortably Numb' springs to mind. I did eventually get a cab, and I suspect that Ahmad from Pakistan got a gigantic tip.

BetterArf said I was very relaxed when I got home. And I was happy too: not only have I just seen the best gig of my life, but she's bought me a crocodile*.

*I'll explain that tomorrow.

Roger Waters

2007-02-20T13:59:00.000+04:00

Great title, don't you think?

Tomorrow night, Roger Waters, 'the Creative Genius of Pink Floyd', is playing a gig on the grass across the lake from my office. Instead of just working late and enjoying a free, but invisible, show, I have bought tickets.

I've been an admirer, rather than a rabid fan, of Pink Floyd since, ooh, seems like forever. But I lost the plot a bit when Waters left in 1985 (Wright had already been fired), reasoning that none of them on their own could be anything like as good as all of them together. This was proved to me about four years ago when BetterArf and Offspring got me a post-split Floyd CD, 'the Division Bell'. Not shite exactly, but nothing at all to write home about. I lost interest in them really, so when Roger Waters played Dubai about three years ago I just ignored it. Waters had got such totally bad press from the other members of the band after the split that I might have been more interested in buying tickets for a gig by Satan himself.

What changed my mind was seeing Waters and the Floyd reunited at the Live 8 London gig in 2005. I Limewired a track by Waters called 'Leaving Beirut'. This doesn't appear on any album but is as beautiful and moving as any song that Pink Floyd ever recorded. After that I bought Waters' operatic double-album 'Ca Ira', followed by 'Amused to Death'. He truly is a genius.

So when it was announced that he was heading this way again (and at Media City, rather than the, for me, inaccessible Tennis Stadium), that was definitely a date for my diary. He's gonna do Dark Side of the Moon and other Floyd hits, but I hope he'll slip some new stuff in there too.

I saw the Floyd live once. At the Knebworth Festival in the UK in 1975 (over 31 years ago!!!!!!). A bunch of us from school had hired a minibus for the day. This was in the days before building-sized video screens, and we were sitting about a mile away from the stage, but I do believe those dots on the stage were Waters, Wright, Gilmour and Mason. But hey, the tickets were £2.75! Standing tickets for tomorrow's gig are Dhs 265, about £37. 'VIP' seated tickets are Dhs 595, about £83. The only seats at Knebworth were patches of grass.

By the way: this blog has not been produced as part of the Roger Waters marketing campaign. I only mention that because about a month ago Cliff Richard played in Dubai at the Tennis Stadium. A few days before the gig I received an email from the Netherlands(!) Cliff Richard fan club, hoping that I was going and would blog about the gig before and after(!). Nice try but no cigar. I have no opinion on Cliff Richard - not a very positive one anyway.

But I'm looking forward to tomorrow night like a kid looks forward to Christmas.

Science In The Home

2007-02-17T18:28:00.000+04:00

BetterArf disappeared into the kitchen early yesterday evening, ostensibly to get herself a glass of vino tinto. Little did I realise that she had really gone to carry out a scientific experiment into fluid dynamics. It was only as the experiment approached its conclusion that I became aware my services as a research assistant were required, but quick.

Read the full exposition here.

Regrettably I did not have the presence of mind to dig out the camera to grab photos of the kitchen in its wine-flooded/splattered state. But this is what the box looks like in the aftermath:

One Year Ago...

2007-02-14T18:08:00.001+04:00

http://webmasterdubai.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-lurve-you-all.html#comments

Blue Screen of Censorship for TECOM

2007-02-10T15:52:00.000+04:00

The papers today are awash with stories related to telecoms: Emirates Toady headlines with a story about rumours of a third entrant into the retail market in the UAE. TRA denies all knowledge.

Gulf Snooze carries a couple of stories, one that says conventional telecoms companies need to embrace VOIP or die (I paraphrase). The other brings us the good news that du (the new telco, soon to start mobile operations) will be connecting TECOM to the proxy any day now and therefore that Media City's tagline 'Freedom to Create' becomes even more meaningless than it has been up till now. Interesting to note that du, the monopoly-breaker, will still have a monopoly within TECOM, Emaar and Nakheel properties. Du is 20% owned by TECOM Investments, who about a year ago took over SahmNet, Emaar's own telco. As TECOM is wholly-owned by Dubai Holdings (who also own propery developer Nakheel), they are given preference in supplying telecoms infrastructure to all new Nakheel developments.

Of course, it is not fresh news that the Broxy will be imposed on TECOM (collectively Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City and Knowledge Vamlet). But what is interesting is the disingenuous tosh used to justify it. Gulf News says:

Asked why users were not free to choose what sites they visit, Mohammad Al Ghanem, director general of the TRA, said the TRA was not out to "police" the citizenry of the UAE.

"We are not inventing a procedure or a process," he told Gulf News. "This is implemented in every single country but with different limits and different categorisations."

Mr Al Ghanem, that is not an answer...

Al Ghanem said the TRA desired to avoid any negative impacts on businesses residing within the free zones, and promised exemptions for companies with a legitimate interest in keeping unfettered internet access.

Breaking with the commonly perceived notion that the free zones had their own sets of telecommunications laws, [Mohammad Al Gaith, the TRA's manager for technical affairs] said the reason the free zones weren't previously covered under the filter was technical, not jurisdictional.

New telecom operator du provides Internet service in the free zones, and problems had arisen over implementing the proxy filter over du's network.

Mr Al Ghaith, I have been a tenant at Dubai Media City since shortly after its inception 6 years ago. I can tell you that the reason these free zones were not previously proxied was neither technical nor jurisdictional. It was a deliberate decision by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum who, in his wisdom, realised that these entities would not be very attractive to potential international clients if their Internet access was censored. That reason is still valid today

Can somebody please explain to me why the Telecoms Regulation Authority thinks it is fit to tell me, or any other Internet user, what sites we can and cannot visit? I know there is a cultural thing with the locals and some others, but surely if they want a restricted Internet then they can request and be given that. For everyone else, we pay more than twice as much for Internet access than anywhere else in the real world, and I think you, the TRA, should respect that and let us have (more or less) unfettered access.

I am sick to death of being treated like a child by these people. Apart from anything else, their obsessive, frequently unreasonable, often illogical blocking of millions of websites, including some of the world's most popular (Flickr again) makes me cringe with embarrassment. We are supposed to be the most free of all Gulf States, but we block Flickr because some wastafarian tells us to.

I despair. And my FTP and HTTPS are still not working.

*%#$ the Proxy

2007-02-07T15:34:00.000+04:00

OK, Keefieboy, try to be calm. Don't bash those keys too hard, you'll be needing them when you leave this wonderful country. Deep breath
.................. innn....................... outttt
...................innn ....................... outtt.

OK. I'm calm. I'm CALM!!!

For the last week I have been having a problem with my Etisalat Al-Shamil ('broadband') connection from my mansion. The problem is that I can no longer use FTP. You don't want to know this, but FTP is File Transfer Protocol - a thing that allows you to upload and download files to and from web servers. It's pretty essential if you design websites like what I do. The problem is that I can connect to various servers, but once connected I cannot change folders or upload/download files. Why? Well, some of my research on the web suggested this was symptomatic of a firewall problem. Somewhere in the chain of computers between my labtob and the web server, a little pox is saying 'computer says no'.

So, with the greatest reluctance, I called the Itisalot Call Center in Ajmaaaaan. I say reluctance because many years of experience have taught me that they have a very limited range of responses available to them, namely:
1) 'Your computer is misconfigured, please format your hard drive.'
or
2) 'There is something wrong with your server.'

So we go through that and then I request a phone number for someone who actually knows something about the Itisalot Interweb network. No can do, says the boy on the phone: 'send an email to mailto:help@itisalot.ae. Yeah, right. So I did.

To my absolute and utter amazement I got a phone call from someone who sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Admittedly he did go through the usual 'it's not our fault' routine, but I feel like we are making progress of a kind. But not fast enough.

In the intervening days I've provided this guy with Traceroutes of my connection attempts to various servers in the UK and US. I have suggested to him that it may be a firewall problem. I have told him that I can successfully use FTP from my office in Media City, so configuration of my laptop and of the servers concerned is absolutely ruled out. So now we are at a stage where they are on the verge of admitting that they have a problem, and he's trying to get a meeting together with various departments to sort it out.

Bravo!

The other day I realised that we (BetterArf and moi) have a related problem, and we've had this one for quite a while. We cannot easily access 'https://' domains from our house. This means that e-commerce transactions almost always fail, it takes forever for me to use Red Triangles' online banking, and BetterArf cannot access her work email from here.

So, enough of the Sherlock Holmes. I just thought I'd try something. Forget about Etisalat's restrictive and ill-configured infrastructure, I'll try my own. I have servers in the UK. I set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to one of them. This means that anything I send or receive comes straight from that server without any of the intervening Itisalot stuff getting in the way.

Bingo!

FTP worked straight off! And much faster than it's ever worked through the Broxy. But, the Interweb fell over. So it helps if I need to do an emergency out-of-hours upload, but not if I want to visit my bank or playboy.com.

Itisalot (sorry, Etisalat, you might not recognise our little jokey name for you), I hope you read and understand this post. It tells you two things

1) The Proxy screws everything up and everyone with more than half a brain hates it
and

2) Stop your Call Center staff from always assuming that the problem is at the customer's end. Because more often than not, it isn't.

Weather

2007-02-04T19:50:00.000+04:00

Hold The Front Page!

The UAE is having weather. If you don't live here, you might not think this is a big deal. But the point is, we don't normally have weather, what we have is climate. The climate in the UAE goes like this: in the summer, it's chuffing hot (up to but never officially exceeding 50°C). In the depths of winter, it can get as cold as, ooh, 17°C. You can expect 4-5 days when it will rain, and a few mornings when it is foggy. This 'winter' has been unusual, methinks. We have had a lot of rain. Yesterday we had half an inch of the stuff in about 15 minutes - thunder and lightning too. Today has been overcast all day. We had a massive shamal (sandstorm) about 1 pm, following which the air was full of sand, no wind was blowing, and El Sol was starting to come out. Just now (from 7pm really), we've had another thunderstorm, and about 15 minutes of really heavy rain.

This rain creates all sorts of problems, of course. Drivers in Dubai, who, with the exception of GCC nationals and locals, all come from places where it rains a shitload more than it does here, forget how to drive in wet weather. They continue to tailgate, drive too fast, attempt rapid lane changes, etc, and consequently end up upside down in their crushed motorcars. Fortunately they are not wearing their seatbelts so they are able to escape.

Locals and GCC nationals don't stand a chance. They just don't get enough parctice at driving in rain.

Here in The Gardens we have the added bonus of a bunch of speed bumps that have been installed on the perimeter roads. You do see the odd speed bump around town that has a gap between its ends and the kerb to allow water to drain through. Regrettably, the speedbumps in The Gardens do not have this clever little design feature, and so they act as dams, creating quite large lakes on the road on their uphill sides.

And usually, when rain is expected, the Municipality sends workers out to empty the sand filters that are a component of most of the drains: when they have done this, they usually leave the drain cover up, thereby facilitating the flow of water. I have not seen any of this happen in The Gardens this year (or ever, actually), so guess what: floods down the hill. Roads around Ibn Battuta Maul under six inches of water. The Maul itself still lacks waterproof roofs.

Still, it could be worse, we could be living in Sharjah where they have no road drainage whatsoever. And it's still only 1428.

New Blogger

2007-02-02T21:39:00.000+04:00

OK, today I migrated to the new version of Blogger. I hadn't planned to, but I wanted to do a post on the UAE Community Blog: that has just migrated and so I basically had to as well. It took hours for my 646 posts to move! But I've spent a happy afternoon adding labels to lots of my posts. And I learnt something new. Have you ever been to Toot and seen the sidebar (tootstream) totally inundated by old posts from one blogger? Now I know what causes that, because today is my day for Total Tootstream Dominance! Aharr.

UPDATE: actually what I thought I learned was wrong - I thought this Toot Domination only happened when you upgraded your blog. Not so. It actually happens when you add a label to a post. Hehehe.

Genetically Modified Dubaians

2007-01-26T17:41:00.000+04:00

Today's Gulf News carries an astonishingly misleading article. The headline says "40% of food is genetically modified". But if you bother to read it, you will learn that the sample tested was of 35 items bought in the UAE, Oman and Qatar. That's a pretty tiny sample. When you get to the bit where they tell you what the 'contaminated' products are, you'll laugh. To save you the bother, here's the list: Munch King Nacho Cheese, Tostitos Tortilla Crispy Rounds, Funyuns Frito Lay Onion Rings, Quaker Yellow Corn meal, Doritos Nacho Cheesier, Fritos Corn Chips, Doritos Nacho Cheese. I wouldn't describe any of that as 'food'. Anybody who buys and eats stuff like that deserves to grow two heads.

I'm really disappointed by this article. It's based on a report from Greenpeace. I don't know if it was Greenpeace people who suggested their survey proved '40% la la la' or what. But I am suspicious of GM food and I think it is something we should be wary of. Sadly, this report by GN is either trying to be sensationalist by exaggerating any claims made, or the reporter just didn't get it. Or the Greenpeace report itself presented the data in those terms. Hmmm.

Duck!

2007-01-24T14:23:00.000+04:00

No, not the fluffy things that love to be chased around the pond at Jebel Ali Village, and not the Little Yellow one that loves to...ahem!. I'm talking about the kind of duck you can eat. We had a bunch of people round for a buffet lunch last weekend and one of the things I did for it was Half Man Half Beer's brilliant recipe for Beijing Duck. It seems like a lot of effort, but believe me, it's worth it - especially the little pancakes.

My original plan had been to buy a couple of frozen ducks but, come the time, our local Choithram's had none, and neither did Géant. So I got a pretty pricey fresh duck and two very cheap frozen breasts from Géant. In fact the breasts were so cheap that when I went back today to get a freezer-full, there were only three left. And now there are none, hehehe.

Jumeirah

2007-01-16T21:20:00.000+04:00

I had to go to the Jumeirah Jumeirah Beach Hotel this morning, so I took my shiny new camera to get some pics.

I'm quite proud of the pic below - the helipad near the top of Burj Al Arab: hand-held, 12x zoom, image stabilisation on.

There's a prototype air-conditioned bus stop outside Wild Wadi:

Apart from the ludicrous waste of energy this represents, I spotted a bit of a design flaw. Well, all of it really, it isn't the most beautiful thing ever built. No, I mean, the door. It's a sliding door, and it's not self-closing. When your bus finally arrives, you'll rush out to stop it and you will not think about closing the door behind you. Mind you, you could do what I did: grab the handle, pull the door shut, and bruise your fingers as it slams against the door-frame: there is no door stop. Ouch!

Burj Al Arabi

2007-01-12T18:58:00.000+04:00

Notwithstanding the blatant rip-off of the name of this building, I read the announcement of this project with a snigger that spread my drink all over the room. Had I not lived in Dubai for these last thirteen years, my reaction would been just plain disbelief. But now I know that anything can be attached to the end of the phrase 'a building in the shape of...'. So this one is 'a building in the shape of a UAE National man'. Except it clearly is no such thing. It's a very poor attempt at it. The real things are a bit rounder, their headresses much more flowing. I mean really, it's not going to win any architectural awards now is it? And it looks a little bit like a statue, which is haram. This comes hard on the heels of the replica of London's Parliament Clock Tower (the one that has the Big Ben clock at the top) being built near the Emirates Towers on Sheikh Zayed Road, and Falconcity of Wonders (buildings in the shape of The Eiffel Tower, The Taj Mahal, The Pyramids etc) being built in the desert somewhere. OK, I give in: we live in a theme park, what should we expect?

iLust

2007-01-10T23:36:00.000+04:00

Apple Combuter has announced its version of a mobile phone. I want it! Now! As you'd expect of all things Apple, it's a sleek and sexy beast. It's all screen and no hardware buttons. Not only is it a phone and internet/email client, calendar and notebook, it's also an iPod. Truly awesome.

Go to www.apple.com and be amazed.

Fixing Stuff

2007-01-09T15:49:00.000+04:00

It is often said that when things go wrong, they do so in groups of three. I’ve had three things to deal with in the last two days – not things that have gone wrong, necessarily, but stuff that I would have preferred to have dealt with one at a time.

Thing 1) My Trade Licence. You may or may not know that to do business in the UAE, you have to have a Trade Licence. It’s best to think of this as tax in advance for the coming year: the cost of a licence varies depending on how big your company is, what business you are in, etc. My licence is done through Dubai Media City, and it was due for renewal four months ago but we’ve been having a bit of a dispute over how much I should actually pay. It has been quite hard to resolve but for the first time ever I have a client who actually wants to see a valid Trade Licence before releasing payment, and that brought the issue to a head. So I spent the whole of yesterday morning getting the licence sorted out.

Thing 2) In connection with the above, I noticed that my passport had expired the previous day. Thank God I noticed it then and not at an airport check-in counter! First thing to do, organize photos. I checked out the requirements on the British Embassy website – light background, no smiling, no masks etc. And also they are now doing biometric passports and iris-scans, fingerprints or DNA may be required. OK, I lied about the DNA, but it meant that BetterArf’s offer to whizz down to the Embassy and do the job on my behalf could not be accepted.

Anyhoo, BetterArf took a picture of me looking glum (proper Brit-style), I Photoshopped it a bit, and then attempted to print it on our Sony photo-printer: no dice (no ribbon). Huh.

Plan B: take the file on a chip and get it printed at the fag kiosk outside building 2 at DMC. No dice: they no longer offer a passport photo service (translation, the guy on duty didn't know how to work the kit - he let me have a go myself, but the ancient laptop they use refused to recognise my chip and wanted a driver).

Plan C: have a fresh photo taken at the photo shop in building 8. This I did, but they were hugely busy and it took an hour to get the job jobbed. Back to my building: no Brits around to countersign the back of one photo saying 'I know this geezer'. So I finished off the stuff with DMC - the important bit, giving them money, and went home. I called an old friend who lives nearby to get him to countersign the photo and complete a part of the form. Sorted.

Up bright and early this morning to get to the Embassy. I hand over the form, the photos and the fee (dhs 640, if you're interested), and they give me a receipt and send me on my way. 'What about the biometric doodad?' I ask. 'Oh, we do that by scanning the photo'. No way! You can barely tell what colour my eyes are, never mind anything else! Whatever, new passport ready in two weeks, offers invited for old one (joking!).

Thing 3) Now this is a killer. I confess that I have not been to a dentist for treatment for an obscenely long time. Although I do have two clients who are dental clinics and I've seen their charges. Which is why I don't go! But for the last month or so, one of my molars has been a bit iffy, to the extent that I've had to avoid eating with that side of my mouth. Two days ago I happened to chomp down on the offending molar, and the pain was agonising and lasted about an hour. Some time later it happened again. Clearly this was not going to go away, and something had to be done.

A friend recommended a new and reasonably-priced clinic in Satwa, and I called them to make an appointment for this morning. The clinic was pleasant, the doctor very professional and anxious to avoid unnecessary pain. The equipment was state-of-the-art - the chair has an x-ray machine and a video screen attached (I was watching 'Hitch' when my eyes weren't screwed shut in pain). But the job is a root canal. Ow, ow, ow! I'll spare you the details, but one of the nerves was inflamed, and I had about 45 minutes of intermittent pain as the doctor tried to numb the nerve and then work on it. Finally it was done and a temporary filling bunged in. I have to have two more treatments for this, the next one is next Saturday when I'm expecting more agony, but the one after that will be ok - that's when they nail a crown onto the remains of the teeth. And after that I guess I'll have my other two amalgam fillings replaced with nice shiny whitish ones.

BetterArf had heroically gone with me to hold my hand (ie make sure I didn't bottle out) and we went for lunch when it was all over. I had lentil soup. How's your soup? 'Tastes like lidocaine' How's your bread? 'Tastes like lidocaine'. Etc.

Hours later, everything still has that antiseptic dental flavour, but I don't have toothache anymore. Yeehaa!

Another Moonshot

2007-01-06T21:09:00.000+04:00

According to the moonbox on BetterArf's blog, moonrise was supposed to be at 8.28 pm. I was up on the hill with camera and tripod, all ready to go with fifteen minutes to spare. It was late! I saw it peeking out from behind a building ten minutes after the appointed time and I took a bunch of shots, none of them terribly inspiring. This is about the best of them- I love the craters at the top.

Shoot The Moon

2007-01-05T23:46:00.000+04:00

BetterArf gave me a book on digital photography for Christmas (just a hint that I'd better use the Sony H2 digital camera she also got me). There's a lot of great stuff in this book, but I was particularly interested in one example piece: how to get a detailed picture of the moon but still retain a decent foreground image. The sample shot showed the White House at dusk with a finely detailed moon just over its shoulder. The text described how you could get such a shot of the moon. And then the different requirements for how you could get the foreground image. And then the steps you would take in Photoshop to blend them together. Huh!

Anyhoo, as soon as I got the camera and read the book, I was keen to do some moon shots. At Christmas we only had half a moon: I took a pretty good test shot, but tonight the moon is 95% full, waning gibbous, so I wanted to have a go at the whole thing. I could not see the moon from our balcony, so at about 9.30 pm I went out to see if it had risen and was visible from some other location. It had and it was, so I went back to the apartment to pick up the camera and the tripod.

We ventured out a little bit and tried a shot or two, but light pollution from the street light was a problem. So we ventured across the perimeter road and a few hundred metres into the desert. I must admit the guidance given in my book was a little bit vague, and I must have taken a dozen shots before finally getting one that worked.

Good eh? You can almost see the London Bus and the remains of the Lunar Module that are parked there! Now I want to try to get a shot just as it is rising. A couple of years ago I spent New Year's Eve on Jebel Ali Beach. The moon rose exactly at midnight and it was gigantic - an amazing sight, but nobody had a camera! If I could get a shot like that I would be a happy bunny indeed.

Peas on Earth - Goodwill To All Men

2007-01-03T23:29:00.000+04:00

I could hardly believe my eyes when I wandered out onto the balcony this morning. My recent spate of gardening has not so far yielded any fruit (or veg), although there is a bit of parsley kicking around. The healthiest plants in the garden have been the peas: they flowered about a week ago, and this morning I noticed that the flowers have turned into pea pods! Just amazing. Lovely plump pods, possibly enough for an entire serving! Whatever: there is nothing to compare with fresh peas, and we haven't had any such thing during our sojourn in the Sandlands. We'll just wait a few days to see if we get any more, and then we'll harvest them. Yayy!

Happy New Years

2006-12-31T19:12:00.000+04:00

We've had some great New Year's Eve's in Dubai.

In the early days we would spend a huge amount of money to attend outrageous feasts at The Highland Lodge (the Legendary Lodge: I must blog about it sometime).

In 2000 we stayed in with a friend to watch the collapse of global civilization on CNN (remember the Millennium Bug?).

Subsequently: camping on Jebel Ali Beach.

Three years ago: a mega knees-up at Jebel Ali Club.

Two years ago, not feeling very festive: sitting on top of Jebel Ali and watching distant fireworks.

Last year: at the Amman Kempinski in Jordan.

Tonight: up the hill again, not bothered about partying (boring old f*rts!), hoping to get some great firework shots.

Possibly I wish I was in Jordan at this time - they've been having snow (140 people had to be airlifted from stranded cars) and I haven't seen real snow for yonks.

Anyway folks, whatever your plans for the night: enjoy it and stay safe! Best wishes, peace and prosperity an' all that to you all.

My resolutions for 2007: get fit, get less fat, leave the UAE. Jajaja.

Bye Bye Saddam...

2006-12-31T15:02:00.000+04:00

So, almost the end of 2006 and am I glad! What a horrible year it has been - 'Peace On Earth' - yer jokin', aren't ya? And I don't expect 2007 to be any less violent. But at least we are rid of one hideous tyrant, and I am a bit surprised at the reported reaction on the 'Arab street' - 'yes, Saddam may have been a bad guy, but it was a shame to execute him on the first day of Eid Al-Adha', 'yes, he was a criminal, but what about Bush and Blair?', 'it was all an American plot'. Amazing. I doubt that there is one person on the planet that would deny Saddam's atrocities, but somehow it all comes back to the West.

Well, while I do not support the war in Iraq (it would have been far easier and cheaper to have Special Forces go in and take Saddam out), the people who tried Saddam, found him guilty and hanged him were Iraqis. The future of Iraq is in the hands of Iraqis. They can either unite or split, I personally don't care. It seems likely to me that something similar to the anarchy that prevails now would have happened anyway had some other party managed to overthrow Saddam. The point is that modern Iraq was always three blocs (Sunni, Shi'a and Kurd) bolted together as one. Nobody can force them to stay together. If the factions are too blinkered to see their mutual advantage in being one strong country rather than three feeble ones, then why not let them try it out and see how they get on?

The Goose is Cooked

2006-12-26T00:26:00.000+04:00

Over a month ago, Dubaibilly and Cher invited us to their place for Christmas Dinner. ‘We’re doing a goose’ they said. It would have been, what’s the word…’churlish’?, nay …’absolutely impossible’ to refuse. I’ve never tasted goose, and neither has BetterArf.

As it happened, all six of the invitees live in Jebel Ali Gardens, and so we arranged to meet at one apartment for some pre-drinkies and then share a people-carrier cab to the venue.

When we got to Bill & Cher’s, gifts and cards were exchanged, cameras were compared* and a bloody fabulous time was had by all. If you ever have a chance to eat some goose, or even cook it yourself, don’t miss it! It was fantastic. B & C also did honey-roast haraminal, sprouts, sprouts with chestnuts, glazed carrots, roast parsnips, roast tatties and bangers wrapped in bacon. Also gravy and a special orange sauce for the meat. Stuffing was served a bit late because someone had forgotten to cook it at the appointed time (but microwaves are marvlious things, aren't they).

This had been preceded by a delicious broccoli and Stilton soup, and was followed by syllabub, Christmas Pudding with custard, assorted cheeses and Port.

Oh, wow. I mean, it was a delicious meal, I actually managed to get to the end of it without falling asleep and without bursting open (although I felt like I might at one point). One of our party totally cracked me up during the cheese course. There was a plate of crackers for the cheese. Not a normal plate with a bit of a rim, this was a flat glass platter. He was looking at me as he swung the platter towards me, holding it at an angle of about 5 degrees towards the floor. I was watching the platter as, one by one, the biscuits fell off. By the time the platter reached me, it was empty. I was giggling hysterically, and John looked at the thing in his hand. ‘Where’s the ****ing biccies?’, he asked. I pointed at the trail of crackers he’d left behind. Jajaja!

A bit later, Billy was attempting to pour himself a glass of Port. The bottle refused to release any of its contents until the cork was removed. I have to confess that half an hour later, I did exactly the same thing – I reckon that Taylor’s Port bottles have a design flaw: they look like they are open even when they are not.

We sang along to a selection of Christmas tunes, playing from Cher’s I-Pod plugged into her Christmas present: a vertical donut full of speakers and a radio: it looked like a shrine to the I-Pod, which in a way it is.

*Cameras. Both Dubaibilly and myself got new cameras today. BetterArf gave me a Sony H2, a replacement for the H1 that I owned for three weeks before some Spanish asshole stole it in Valencia last August. Bliss bliss bliss! Plus a book on how to get the best out of such a machine. Dubaibilly got a top-end Canon digital SLR jobbie from Cher, plus a different book from BetterArf on how to get the best out of such a machine (how she knew this would be useful and appreciated I’ll never know – female intuition I guess). I read most of my book this morning and learnt one very valuable lesson: the thing that buggers up group shots is that somebody will blink. So before you shoot a group, you tell them all to close their eyes, then open them and smile. Then you shoot them, and they all have their eyes open! I tried it and it worked!

We had a very Merry Christmas. I hope you all did too!

Sharjah

2006-12-23T23:01:00.000+04:00

Regular readers of this blog may have sensed that I have a bit of antipathy towards our northern neighbour, the Emirate of Sharjah. Years ago, it was because whenever I went there I could usually find my destination ok, but I could never, ever, find the way out. Dubai did not feature on the signage system at all. 'snot like Dubai's important or anything. So my early memories of being in Sharjah were closely associated with those of being helplessly lost. And for at least the last five years Sharjah has been associated with being stuck in insane, ridiculous trafic jams.

The last few weeks have been interesting, because our panto rehearsals and peformances have been held at the Dubai Womens' College, which is a stone's throw from the Sharjah border. It's easy to get there on a Friday, fairly easy on a Saturday (weekend for Gubment employees), but a complete pain in the derriere on weekdays. It would take us two to three hours to get to the college from Jebel Ali, and about one hour to get back.

There are two phrases that will induce me to consider a trip to Sharjah...
1) 'Your cheque is ready'
2) 'Come for dinner, I'm doing Beef Wellington'.

Phrase 2 was uttered to me by Grumpy Goat about a week ago. Today was the day, an early Christmas dinner because his beloved has to work on Christmas Day. We were expected to be at Grumpy Goat Towers in Sunny Sharjah at 4pm, so we set off from Jebel Ali at 2.30. Amazingly we were in Sharjah by 3pm, so we jumped out at Al Ta'awon Mall and did a little shopping. Then we walked across the sand (feeling like we were in a foreign country) to arrive at the Towers half an hour early.

A splendid time was had by all. Thanks and Merry Christmas Mr Goat!

Google Games

2006-12-17T15:49:00.000+04:00

A lot of people like to play games with Google. For example Googlebombing - where a group of people post identical links on various websites or blogs in order to influence Google's results (eg, getting Google to display Dubya's website as number one for the search term 'miserable failure') or Googlewhacking - where you aim to discover a two-letter phrase that returns exactly one result.

My reason for posting about this is that I've just invented a new one: Googleloner. You invent a word, and a search for that word returns one main result. Try this: haraminal. Of course, this will only work for a day or two until Google picks up this post, and then we'll have two results. No doubt etymologists in the future will be using Google and other search engines to establish when new words come into circulation.

Bye the way, I'm still number one in Google for 'disingenuous tosh'!

Back to Normality. Aharrr!

2006-12-17T02:20:00.000+04:00

So we've just finished our manic Panto weekend. A dress rehearsal and two shows on Friday, and two shows today. Our audiences loved it, and so did we. It was extremely tiring, but great fun.

There is nothing on Earth like a British Panto. It's a hugely stylised form of theatre: there are traditional elements such as the Dame (a man dressed as a woman), the Principal Boy (a girl dressed as a boy), audience participation - 'he's behind you!' - 'oh yes it is, oh no it isn't' - random kids being dragged up on stage for a spot of humiliation - throwing sweets at the kids - splitting the audience for a singsong - making them boo and hiss at the baddies, making them all go 'aaah'. Pour in a dash of innuendo for the parents, throw in some local jokes, singing and dancing to popular songs related to the show, over-the-top acting, and, DING-DONG! You have a pantomime.

It surprises me that Pantomime really only exists in the UK - for sure there will be amateur groups of Britpats doing pantos in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and even Ras Al Khaimah and other far-flung places. In the Dubai Drama Group we have always had a smattering of non-UK actors wondering what the hell was going on. For several years we had a core of Filipino Chorus-boys who never showed up for any other kind of play but were always mad keen to be in the Panto.

If I ever get asked to compile a list of things that define British Culture, it could not be complete without Pantomime.

So now it's all over - I can throw away my script and not worry about it again: all that remains to be said is "Merry Christmas One And All".

Pantomania, me hearties. Aharrr!

2006-12-10T00:43:00.000+04:00

I told you a few months ago that Betterarf and I had been cast in the forthcoming Dubai Drama Group production of Treasure Island. And I don't think I've mentioned it since. But we have been rehearsing steadily for the last few months and now we are almost there: there will be four performances next weekend - two on Friday 15th and two on Saturday 16th. It's gonna be great fun for children of all ages (we're talking about panto here so clichés are compulsory). The venue is the Auditorium at Dubai Women's College.

Last weekend and this one we have been rehearsing and set building at the venue. We did a full run in costume tonight and it's really coming together: it is a very funny and entertaining show.

You can buy tickets online at the DDG website or Time Out .