Chris Saul's Blog

Monday October 13, 2008

UAE Banks protected

This news is welcome. Guaranteeing the deposits of banks in the UAE puts my mind at rest, for the moment. I dread to think how you'd actually get your money back in the event of a bank failing though.

My vast wealth can reside with my bank here for the time being. We were on the verge of raiding every local ATM and using the cash to fill my failing mattress.

In other banking news, a friend of ours told me recently that his mortgage is collected by monthly direct debit by his local mortgage company. I had to write 72 cheques for my monthly payments, with the difference apparently being totted up every two years, followed by either a refund or my paying the extra. Not particularly clear or efficient for either party.

False travelling economies

Today's trip to Algiers has to be the most miserable journey I've had to undertake when working at Sun.

I had the choice of two carriers and chose the one I thought would be more convenient - nicer arrival time back on Thursday, fewer stopovers, cheaper for Sun, etc.

I got to the airport at midnight, only to be told that the plane would be late. I was given varying information on how late it would be, so decided to stay at the airport, rather than go home to sleep for a bit. In the end, after a nightmare checkin and boarding, we left at 0800, five hours late. Thankfully, the gentleman from the airline managing the checkin process took pity on a poor Englishman and bumped me up to Business Class. This made a world of difference, the principal advantage being that I was able to sleep and I had the use of a toilet on the plane that wasn't awash with water and still had some toilet paper. And a working toilet seat.

On the plus side, the passenger mix was one I'm not used to at all, so I got to see some new faces. A lot of the passengers were en route to Niger and other countries in French speaking Africa. One African chap was wearing what I, in my general ignorance, would describe as a wraparound, Touareg style, headdress. The picture here doesn't really do it justice, but it was this kind of thing. It looked quite cool.

Passport control was rather slow, but I did have a good chat with the immigration officer about which languages people learn at school in Algeria and the UK whilst he tidied up my bad handwriting on the immigration form. Apologies to the people behind me in the queue. I promise to fill the form in more clearly next time if you promise not to smoke and spit phlegm on the floor next to my luggage.

When I arrived at my hotel, there was no booking for me, but I managed to get a room.

I'm going to ask my travel agent if I can be booked on a business class seat when flying back. I generally don't mind slumming it and economy is usually fine for most of the routes I do, but this one was really rather tough. Once everyone's seated things tend to be ok, but getting to that stage can somewhat trying.

I'm hoping that I'll be home to Mrs Saul on time on Friday morning.

If I come back with a successful meeting in the bag and a smiling customer and partner, that'll make it all the more worth it. Let's see.

I am now a real executive

I bought my first BlackBerry today, which surely qualifies me as a fully-fledged important executive. About time too.

I had been told 'Company A' had the new BlackBerry Bold in stock. Due to the recent, washing machine related, demise of my old Sony and the need for something to be able to use to do email on the move, I'd decided a while ago that this was the model for me. Lots of my colleagues have got earlier models - the general feeling is that whilst they can be a ball and chain, if you can manage the addiction the advantages of being constantly callable, sms-able and email-able outweigh the disadvantages.

Whilst I could have bought an iPhone and cracked it, I wouldn't have been able to make use of the local UAE telco's fixed price international GPRS roaming. Being ever considerate of Sun's opex and shareholders' interest, coupled with the fact that I want something that's excellent at email and ok at multimedia, rather than the other way around, it had to be a BlackBerry.

I duly called Company A at Mall of the Emirates, only to be told that they and all their other stores were out of stock. Undeterred, I passed by MoE to see if I could pick one up at another shop. Thirty minutes of being told that the Bold was 'not coming', I was walking back to the car and passed by Company A's place. During my call in the morning I had broken my local rule, which is to ask again if you don't like the first answer you get. I decided to pop in to see if they had one. They did - two, in fact. I bought one. Always ask twice.

I still need to do some fiddling to get it set up with email, as Sun don't let you use the default BlackBerry client, but I've been happily playing with the GPS, synched it without any problems and have even sent a few text messages. First impressions are excellent. Easy to type and navigate, beautiful screen. I will see if it might be a better choice for videos than my iPod. I'm looking forward to having email up and running - I expect it to save me a lot of time, save a lot on wifi hotspot costs and stop me having to use my laptop on the move. The latter point is quite important - a hot laptop on your suit trousers simply ruins the crease.

It always surprises me that Sun don't use the BlackBerry, or something similar worldwide. There isn't even a recommended phone or PDA either. The phone you get, at least in the Dubai office, is whatever's mid priced. This usually means that you get a rather ugly Nokia or something similar, which is never quite what you want.

I find all this odd - I've spent my whole career at Sun giving the 'golden pitch' about how Sun's strategy is all about the network and how mobile devices, rather than a laptop or PC, will be ubiquitous, connected and rather useful. Despite this, I am probably the last out of most of my 'career' friends to have a BlackBerry, or mobile email capable device - and I had to pay for the thing myself. Hmmph.

Expect me to be even more responsive via email and to add yet more value on a global scale, moving forward. I, in turn, expect disapproving frowns from Mrs Saul as I attempt to send surreptitious emails under the table when we're out at the weekend.