1 million 2 hundred thousand 300, Damn lost my place suppose better start again, or maybe not

So the long awaited census result landed in the papers today, that is long awaited not eagerly... Anyway there appears to be a bit of a major anomaly or maybe it's just the Toady getting its facts wrong again.

The Toady gives the population in 2003 in Dubai as 1204000, however Gulf news gives the 2005 population as 1200309.

Now it is pretty clear the population of Dubai has not gone down, the pressure on housing for everything from labour camps, through bed spaces to 8 bed villas tells us this, so what is going on?

For the previous census in 2003 the Weasel was visited and duly gave the details, this time no census taker appeared, nowhere in the empty quarter, that the Weasel is aware of, was visited, nor were his several acquaintances in Springtime for Hitler.

Could this be nothing more sinister than pure incompetence from the census taking agency?

Who knows,

Anther interesting ditty here
"Of the total local population, males slightly out-number females. There are 418,057 (50.7 per cent) males against 406,864 (49.3 per cent) females in the country."

There do seem to be a few girls missing there....Not uncommon in this part of the world but then neither is the most likely reason for it, despite protestations to the opposite.

Blowing dust up our ass

So, interesting weekend, when an email appeared forecasting high winds (force 10) and raging seas for Dubai last Friday the Weasel pretty much wrote it off, mainly because almost immediately Gulf news and the Toady published denials.

Yet because of his aviation background the Weasel was still being phoned by friends on Thursday asking if he had heard the news that there was a huge storm coming. All a bit of fun surely and very typical of Dubai.

Slight problem for some though in that building site insurers now put pressure on contractors to stop work (though to be fair not many work on Fridays) and to ensure all equipment and scaffold etc was secured, expensive.

So it was with a certain superiority that the Weasel stumbled to bed on Thursday chuckling at the naivete of Dubai folk - only to wake up the next day to find that the world has disappeared in a haze reminiscent of The Fog. No wind but pretty poor visibility and choking dust.

Since moving to the Empty quarter the Weasel has been subjected to some pretty extreme sand storms but none quite as invasive as this one, the bloody dust is everywhere, in the nose in the eyes, even jamming this keyboard.
The sickness rate at the Weasel workplace has rocketed by 100% (from 1 to 2) but the coughing, sneezing and streaming eyes throughout cubicle land was real enough .

So clearly there was perhaps a grain of truth in the original report, they just got the wind direction wrong by 180 degrees and exaggerated the speed by 5 or 6 times.

The intriguing thing is the warning came out so early, (Monday or Tuesday) that it probably originated from a pretty good forecasting source. The version of the mail the Weasel saw puported to come from the UAE met office and he does wonder if that could have been the origin, sent as a mail to a mate that then got blown out of all proportion (poor pun intended).

Rumour? Gossip? Little basis in fact? Sure, but according to seven days that's nothing new here.

Friends in low places

For some reason the whole Dallas Austin thing really pissed the Weasel off, it's not that he can't accept the realities of the situation, to be honest the most surprising thing was that it made the news at all, it's just that the blatant immediate release makes the entire place look like some star struck sycophantic fan.
The Weasel is aware that there were political pressures and from some surprising directions (why a US senator found the need to get involved with some dude carrying Bolivian marching powder is beyond reason) but it still leaves a bad taste especially when you read of some poor sod caught at the airport with exactly the same quantity of the same drug who now has gone down for 4 years.

No Wasta, no Iraqi businessman friend, no immediate pardon and little credibility for the UAE I'm afraid.

Super-market

mmm from today's seven days

"7DAYS would like to point out that the four-page "Daily Planet" supplement carried in yesterday'’s paper was an advert for the release of the new movie "‘Superman Returns". Superman has not really been spotted flying down Sheikh Zayed Road nor has he been seen swooping over Luxor in Egypt. 7DAYS would like to thank those readers who thought otherwise for their concerned telephone calls."

The Weasel would love to think this was true but has to cynically believe that it's probably just an extension to the media run the day before.....if so it does raise some ethical issues especially for a paper that does claim to tell the truth.

(and they left out Beirut....)

But then again, this is a country where a fair number of people believe putting thousands of Dollars into a box and shaking some bones over it will cause their money to double, even funnier there are those who really believed that borrowing vast sums of cash to speculate on a hugely inflated stock market was a good investment, so maybe, just maybe, it's true.

back to a turbulent world

Back after a gap caused by boredom, work and attendance at the world cup.

Also trying a new mobile posting solution to allow composition on the move, or indeed in the pub while barely moving at all.

Lots to think about including a disastrous war in Lebanon that threatens to knock one of the Weasel's favourite places back to the civil war levels of destruction, well at least as far as major engineering is concerned.

Hopefully they're able to avoid all out, or worse civil, war, despite that appearing to be at least one of Israel's apparent aims.

While innocence and guilt are never as black and white as either side would like us to believe all we can do is try to get all the facts straight make our opinions known and be sensitive to those under attack.

So while skimming the spoof Daily Planet insert in 7days (and others) designed to promote the upcoming Superman movie, the Weasel was appalled to see that one of the 'sightings' of superman was on July 15 in downtown Beirut, complete with picture of 4 happy girls staring at a delta winged dot in the sky ....is it a bird? Is it a plane........(cue loud descending whistle).

Surely not beyond the realms of possibility to pull the ad or at the least change the location of that image, come on, the shooting started 4 days ago.