Bird flu bandits?

May be another rumor.
Bizarre mail going around, it appears that folks are answering the door to people claiming to be from the health ministry,after being told they have to have a vaccination for bird flu they are pumped full of sedative and their apartment robbed.

Kinda cunning in a weasel sort of way I thought, though you would have to be pretty stupid to fall for the con.

"Excuse me sir I'm from the health ministry and so are my friends, and I want to jab you full of a bird flu vaccine (that doesn't exist)"

"doh ok"

Prepared for a stampede

No-one could accuse Dubai municpality of over ambition in forecasting visitor numbers to the new history of Dubai museum.

From 7 Days - hilarious

Municipality museum

Thursday, 23 February 2006

The Municipality re-opened its old headquarters as a museum yesterday. The exhibition will showcase the history of Dubai and the civic body. Hussein Nasser Lootah, acting director general of the Municipality, said he hopes to get 50 visitors a day to the site in the Old Souk area of Deira.

Lakeside living

There's just no pleasing some people, everyone knows that waterside homes are worth much more than your standard, high quality, Emarr built property, conveniently situated next to the Emirates road.

So when a number of Arabian ranches acquired a new lake view you would have thought people would have been grateful to Emarr for the added value (albeit temporary) that their Desert community homes have acquired.

Some people even get indoor lakes so they don't have to leave their front room to enjoy lakeside living.

But no, it's just moan, gripe, complain.

Poor Emarr they just never seem to get the credit they deserve.

That'll teach them then

I know a lot of people want to bury this case but the sentences handed down today for what apparently was a premeditated and planned gang rape of a British girl are appalling.

2 Years - no wonder she stormed from the court. Oh and 10,000 dhs in compensation, presumably that's what the court thinks a gang rape is worth...

The defendants were all locals.

There very much is an attitude amongst some, that she was a westerner who got in a car after being harassed by another group and therefore had it coming, an attitude that this sentence will do nothing to dispel.

The fact that both groups were working together meant this girl had to endure a terrifying ordeal in the desert while her attackers will now do another year and a bit in jail.

This is another small nail in the coffin of Dubai I'm afraid, safety has always been one of the countries biggest selling points, heavily pushed by Dubai inc, and while no society can necessarily prevent this type of attack, they can sentence to deter.

The idea that local youths can pretty much do what they want, with only a slap on the wrist if caught is not unknown to those who live here, but it will come as a shock to the western countries on whom this place depends for tourism dollars.

We await the appeal procedure which can raise or lower the sentence, and hopefully will review this for the sake of all women here.

Global warming?

Is there per chance a little global warming going on in the Ski Dome?
Certainly snow levels are way down and the last report is that snow is soft even melting, leaving patches of underfloor visible.
To compensate the air tempreture is freezing, making the whole experience less than pleasant.

I wonder if t hey got their calculations wrong? can the snow making not keep up with the melt rate? Has the recent warmer weather has got at the base of the snow?

A personal inspection later this week in the run up to the annual Weasel in Winter fest in Europe.
Will report back.

A tale of 3 cities

Three related stories today, one of them in the realms of fantasy but hey it is Dubai.

1. Dubai to get BUS LANES, this is hilarious, bus lanes? Who in their right mind believes this will make even a tiny difference to congestion, nobody pays the slightest notice of any current lanes so why do the Municipality in their flight of fancy think this will make even a remote difference.

Look busses carry poor people, they can wait. There are far too many people in this town who think they are too important or simply can't be arsed to queue. It will never work.
Can you really see Im bin Important sitting in his Escalade stuck in a jam while workers busses pass him on the inside?

More likely perhaps, are Lexus lanes as used in LA where the rich pay to go faster, but since most people in Dubai are rich that has almost as little chance of working. Besides if the poor and middle classes can't get to work to pay their rent then the rich get poorer so it becomes a viscious circle.

Bit like Sim City really...... mmm I wonder.......

Anyway, Another ditty here stating the bloody obvious that people in the UAE:

1. Love cars
2. Hate busses
3. Will not give up their cars for any hare brained scheme especially busses (and probably the metro)
4. Realise quality of life depends on transport as one of the big influences, particularily not riding on busses
   

And then a strange and a little ill informed article from the Guardian wondering if Dubai is set to become the most important city on Earth.

Err no, it might well become the most polluted and slowest moving though...

So farewell then non censored surfing

It seems the Etisalat (and Son of Etisalat) big brother regulator has decided that all in the UAE must only be able to see censored web content. Including bizarrely the news organisations that were lured here with the promise of unfettered access and no govt interference.

They were also promised competition in ISPs and that other offshore cables would be brought ashore to lift our connectivity to the hi tech economy, but not much is said about that any more...

As for the comments on Skype they are laughable,

"“We are not protecting anyone," says Ghanim, keen to show that Etisalat is not going to get an easy ride from his office.

However when talking about Skype he blatantly says that it is banned because it provides phone services at the end of the ip- ip connection.

Doh - what is that if not protection.

Duty of care? Or personal responsibility - harsh but fair

Emarr has now closed all the swimming pools on their properties under orders of the municipality, depriving the Weasel of the only leisure facility he uses, and one of the few compensations for living on the set of Dune 2.

There is the promise that they may reopen in March though we are all aware of their track record on deadlines.

On the surface this looks reasonable, following the tragic death of a five year old girl in a Springs pool the municipality are insisting that the pools have lifeguards, but we need to look at this in a wider context.

Far too often here there is a knee jerk reaction to any press pressure or even rumor, now the parents of the little girl that died are naturally upset and of course cannot see, or don't want to accept, that only they are in the end responsible for the safety of their children.

Sure blaming the municipality, Emarr or whoever makes them feel better about their loss, but it is wrong.

I'm sorry but you didn't watch your child, no one is saying this was intentional, it was an accident, but you cannot blame someone else.

Far too often people in this country (and others) abdicate responsibility for the care of their children to others, maids in particular can be seen gathered at the playgrounds or in the malls with their charges. But you have to acknowledge that the responsibility in the end is still the parent's.

As the Weasel understands the facts, the little girl drowned while her parents we there at the pool, whether this was because she couldn't swim at all, in which case she should not have been there, or whether she got into difficulty and no-one noticed is irrelevant, if you take your offspring to the pool you are responsible for them, end of story.

More to the point I resent being made to pay for the inability of some to care for their own children. All the pools are fenced with kid proof locks that should be enough.

Now for those not living under the heel of Emarr this currently appears to be irrelevan,t but if you live in a compound or building with a pool this will affect you.

All pools everywhere will need guards, in the end you'll be lucky to be able to take a bath without having some dude in yellow and red sitting on the end of it.

The last Dhow to be built in Dubai?

Following his rambling rant about the fate of the Dhow builders at the head of the creek the Weasel decided that it was about time he visited the place before the concrete pourers take over.

It's not often you get to witness the passing of an age no less.

Dhows have been built in Dubai and all over the region for centuries, it is believed they are possibly descendants of ancient trading vessels coupled with medieval designs taken from ships that sailed from Venice and other Mediterranean ports to trade spices with the caravans
It is still possible to get down to what remains of the yards, though I wouldn't hang around if you want to see this fascinating place.
To get there take the turning by the garden stalls on the right heading towards the Garhoud bridge and hang a left where a sign points towards the jet ski rides. Park by the skis and walk through the new fence.














The Weasel fell into conversation with Rajit, a lumber supplier, he is providing the wood for what in all likelihood will be the last large Dhow built in Dubai.
It is the ship on the right along side its stunning smaller sister vessel, shown at the top of the page.

At 140 feet long it's an impressive sight from outside and amazing inside the hull.


The craftmanship is supearb and all done by hand, 2 years of labour and about 1 million dhs as a bare hull or 4 million fully fitted with engines.

The beam is over 40 feet which presents its own problems, in order to have a strong enough deck single spars of wood must be used to span the ship, however modern containers cannot carry logs longer than 38 feet or so, meaning that steel will have to be used to support the deck.


The curvature of the ribs is natural and obtained by using trees brought in from Pakistan that are naturally curved (maybe because of the wind?) .
this means the ribs are stronger.

Take away the iron bolts from this image an it could be anytime in the last 1000 yrs, even with them it could be 500 years old. Apart from yer man's ratchet spanner that is of course...


Beats the crap out of plastic Dinosaurs.

Ships of the desert

Back again after a sabbatical caused by a protracted hangover and depression brought on by moving so far into the desert that I expect to meet Beau Geste staggering over a dune any day now.

Anyway, back to the ships of the desert. Today's tale relates not to our humped backed, even-toed, ungulate friends (camels to you and I) but the ocean going variety that have been constructed at the head of the creek for many years, possibly hundreds though no-one appears to know for sure.

It was reported in Emirates Today that the dhow builders are being thrown off their traditional spots and relocated to a yard in Jebel Ali that is landlocked.

"The shipbuilders say that they will be located in a land-locked area which will cause them problems. Salah bin Toak, a UAE shipbuilder who runs Bin Toak Yacht Manufacturing and Maintenance, said: “Shipbuilders do not want compensation when they are moved to Jebel Ali.

They want a location overlooking the sea to move their final product to the market.” Bin Toak said the plot that was provided in Jebel Ali would be more suitable for ship maintenance and not for building dhows, yachts, fishing boats and cargo ships.

“Dhows are traditional Arab wooden ships, and the weight of the wood is considerable. There are no facilities for us to carry and transport these heavy ships. It will cost us an extra half a million dirhams to move them,” he said."

Now putting aside the unfairness of the eviction because frankly it's a commercial world, it appears that Dubai is yet again set on destroying something that could help this place retain its character. After the folly of the Bastika demolitions years ago I might have thought they would have learned a lesson but it appears not.

Instead of building plastic and concrete dinosaurs (literally) why not relocate the boat builders to a location where they can reach the sea and people can come and watch. They may seem part of the messy old Dubai that doesn't move at a million miles an hour but that in reality is one of the things that tourists hanker after and can hardly find here.

Yes there is some culture and history in Dubai but precious little is on view.

So here, when you have a living and breathing museum that represents what Dubai started out as, building replicas of medieval sailing ships, why is the natural, and apparently only, answer to bulldoze them out of their livelihoods and deprive Dubai of a resource that, sensibly promoted, could be a fantastic tourist attraction?

None of this would matter if Dubai wasn't hanging its hat on 12 Million tourists coming through the place by 2010. Sure people will come and stay in the 5 star hotels but to keep the room rates high the destination has to provide some culture and history. Already Dubai is going off the boil in Europe, becoming too common and frankly a little chav in places.

Now it's not that there aren't enough chavs in the world to pack the place, but is Dubai going to be ready for them and all they represent, and more crucially, how little they will want to pay.

And don't think there isn't an alternative for the upmarket tourists, there is already a big buzz in the UK and France about the quieter, more cultural, beautiful neighbour to the South East.

Oman.

A lot of press has been generated over the last few months for example a couple of Sunday times articles here and an excellent 5 page spread in the Times colour supplement here

So while Dubai is stuffing low value theme park goers into her hotels Oman will be skimming the high value, low impact, upmarket travellers and laughing all the way to the bank.