One Attitude Wherever In The World.....

Living in Dubai, we are always criticising the system, the maintenance people, the maids, the visa situation, the traffic, the eternal construction clearances and detours - all issues that we find in most growing young economies, and situations, which we would not bat an eyelid about in our native countries.....why? Is it the same inconsistency that makes us meticulously careful about littering in Dubai (sometimes) while it is almost the first thing we find ourselves doing when we get off the planes back home? Perhaps the same approach that makes us weather the weather and grub, filth and garbage on the roads in our home countries, while we grumble loudly to anyone who is listening, including the maintenance people (bear in mind these guys are even working religiously at 6 a.m. on Fridays, when the rest of the town is sound asleep in warm beds)if there is any mess on the streets here, or if the rains cause a mild disruption in our not-so-busy schedules? Where do we shed this whole attitude? Is it even possible to stop the rant and rave and become more responsible about venting spleen. How wonderful things would be if people could present the same face to everyone, and consider the whole world to be their home (only from the point of view of keeping it in ship shape and caring for it).....I bet it would be a small price to pay for everyone's peace of mind, if we could only get a harmonious attitude.Imagine not being subjected to whinging and whining, either at work or home.....I bet we could all get so much more done in half the time! And that would lead to the said quality time being spent outside of work, and at work as well. Hmm....utopia! :)

Everyone is equal in front of the Law??!!

Even as the news comes in that Shaikh Isa has been cleared of the torture alleagtions against him, for "apparently" beating an Afghan businessman and setting his body alight, there now emerges a counter strike by the defendant's lawyers that this was after all a case of the Shaikh being "victimised" and his mind being meddled with owing to some medication he was on.....does anyone in the cynical, 21st century world actually buy this story? Why is the legal system hell-bent on meting out punishment only to those less privileged? Is the not-so-well-to-do section of humanity worse than the lowest form of low life, and therefore entitled to only the harshest punishments? Having lived in the UAE for several years now, I've had the fortunate / unfortunate experience of seeing absolutely innocent people languishing in jails, for unwittingly bringing in some Khus-Khus (dried poppy seeds, a substance banned in this country, but a common spice in places like India), for flouting a visa rule although they may have had no control over their circumstances, for being caught eating or smoking during Ramadan, for so many other apparently simple misdemeanours.....while those in high places guilty of fraud, embezzlement and yes (sometimes even murder) get away scot free. It is time perhaps to make each person accountable, and therfore the legal system, less of a laughing stock, by shifting responsibility for action squarely on to the individual's shoulders.Until we do so, the world will continue to give the UAE little credit for being free and fair....essential prerequisites to step up its image as a dynamic economy.
To be quite honest, this is of course, not just UAE's problem. In India, the BJP party has some MLA's who make a habit of bumping off people who disagree with them on the slightest issue, in Italy Sylvio Berlusconi can because of his political clout get out of any legal wrangle, in France, Nicolas Sarkozy has the last word in what constitutes ethics, he hss the habit, by the way, of also changing his take on any point.....more frequently than women or the weather are rumoured to do! Reminds you of the Orwellian phrase from Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, some are more equal than the others." Will we ever see justice on God's green earth, or is the divine justice going to be the only kind that might be served.....

All jobbed out!

Having just been told by the HR department of the Government TV network where I work that I have another 25 days to pack my bags and leave the unit, my services are no longer required, thank you very much, I have been gobsmacked for the second time in four months...why does someone get the sack for doing their job? What are some of the parameters to holding a job in Dubai? Looks definitely like hard work and integrity don't belong on the list at all. Possibly playing politics does, measuring up to people's liking you does, and celebrating the system definitely does earn you kudos which doing your work and being a nice person does not help accomplish for you.....curioser and curioser - like Alice would have said in Wonderland - it is a bit numbing and definitely the pressue that being unemployed after having had a job all your life, is a bit of a downer...do things happen for a reason - let's take the positive spin on that and say, definitely - there are reasons and reasons.....what is a good reason on God's Green Earth....nice to think, que sera sera, whatever will be will be, but definitely Dubai is a place where working to earn a living is expected of you - the same way as breathig is, for instance! I often wonder what would have happened if Issac Newton had felt similarly pressured, or Leonardo Davinci had been berated for spending time painting chapels, when he could be earning an honest wage?? Is great creativity often the casualty in our humdrum worlds, built to nurture a capitalist economy? Is creativity something that needs to be told to go to hell, if one must remain sane in a work place?? Let's work, work, work and go, go, go....as that inimitable cartoon character - the smurfs - would have put it.....here's to thrifty days and nights!

The Write Line: Today's News, Tomorrow's History??

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Pages+dissolving+into+pixels+and+back&artid=btnPJuRFHhI=&SectionID=108&MainSectionID=108&SectionName=cxWvYpmNp4fBHAeKn3LcnQ==&SEO

Today's News, Tomorrow's History??

The amazingly rapid strides that the media industry has taken since the first developments in printing and publishing never cease to baffle me. I only have to look around at the style in which we used to work in the press just ten years ago, and see what it is about today to draw back dewildered. How did so much change happen in so short a time?? Broadsheets, tabloids, online news letters, facebook, twitter, every given day, we hit a new method of disseminating the news and developments in our world truly making it a Global Village. When a friend asked me to do a piece for a popular Indian newspaper for the anniversary issue on the beginning of the decade, asking me to mull over the future of the newspaper itself, I actually did pause and plunge in thought........was there a real future of sorts for this wonderful medium, or was it doomed to die a not-so-slow death? For my generation the newspaper is still one of our great loves - a habit so difficult to break, we wont go there - I frequently need to answer arguments at home regarding why I need to subscribe to the newspaper and hold a printed, "hard copy" as they put it, in hand, when I could save that money and read all the news online.....how do you explain your penchant for the written word (not some screen posting that seems as ephemeral as a fleeting rainbow or the smoke trail left by a jet plane? To actually hold the newspaper in your hands, smell the printing ink that is just dry, to leaf through to your favourite sections of the paper, gives it a sense of immediacy, credibility, comfort if you like, which the online media can never take away from it...

The Life & Times of Dubai

Today's a day that Dubai-ites cherish - the fourth accession to the throne of their beloved Vice President and the Ruler of Dubai - His Highness Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Matoum, who has just spent what can only be positively described as the most difficult year in his four-year dream run, as solid as one of the Godolphin Horses he is so fond of racing to victory at Endurance events around the world! It's not been an easy year, thanks mostly to Dubai's financial dbacle - being a city that is so much more at the mercy of international influences, Dubai has always been a confluence of so many different societies and cultures. The tributes for Shaikh Mohammed have come thick and fast - not many obviously from the international press that has had a field day of dragging Dubai over the coals for its being nothing more than a "hubris in the sand" or a "bubble that has finally burst" - for most Dubai-ites like me though, it has always been a story of marvels that went alongside all the tears - yes, we have unemployment, we certainly have labour camps, we have embezzlement, we have crimes and arson - but seriously, Dubai has managed to keep a lid on its problems and try to achieve great things regardless. A testimony is the fabulous Burj Dubai - History Rising - as it has been often described - many would question the necessity for a US $ 1.5 billion edifice that has been five years in the making at a time of financial crisis and deepening debt. But Dubai's leaders and people have always aimed big - it is the need to strive and achieve that has brought so many people to this city of dreams - and it is the leader's vaulting ambition to be the best now, that has triggered so many of those man-made marvels. Why not - has always been his attitude, and this alone, if nothing, promises that everything will be all right - despite, or indeed because of Dubai's detractors! So yes, we do need a Burj Dubai, if only to prove to the world that we may be down, but are certainly not out....let's toast the world's tallest, biggest, strongest and largest - and hope that the new decade is kinder to a city that has, when all is said and one, given so many people the opportunity to hold their heads high and declare proudly that they matter.