Chris Saul's Blog

Monday August 31, 2009

How to get through to Citibank Dubai

Citibank have removed the option to speak to a human being when you call them.

This is a bit irritating - Citibank are otherwise quite good, with all the info I need being online or sent via email, so if I need to call them it's generally for something out of the ordinary that only a 'real' person can help with.

I can confirm, however, that shouting at the telephone and repeatedly jabbing the '*' button angrily twenty times or so seems to get you through to a person who can help.

Come and visit Ras Al Khaimah, Larry Ellison!

Here's an interesting article in the New York Times about the America's Cup being run out of Ras Al Khaimah.

My soon-to-be new boss, yacht owner Larry Ellison, is worried about the security aspects, what with Iran being rather near and RAK's general location in the Middle East.

I would say that Mr Ellison's fears are unfounded. He and his crew will be perfectly safe, if not safer than they might be in Europe, the US or elsewhere - after all, few of his current Sun and Oracle employees located here would live in this part of the world if it was truly dangerous. RAK, in particular, is a calm place, with a rather less hectic approach to life than some of its neighbouring emirates.

Mr Ellison has a standing invitation to pop up the road to Dubai to visit me and Mrs Saul, where I will do my best to suck up shamelessly to my new boss of bosses, flaunting my long involvement with the concept of the Network Computer, a subject that his been close to his heart for years. And to mine.

So, come on over Mr Larry (as you would be known). I guarantee you'll have a great time. After all, If Paris can make it over, anyone can.

Final part of business plan

Our local delivery shop has executed the final part of its excellent business plan - it shuts down tomorrow.

This is a real shame - having a local delivery place is very handy. Not something I was used to back home, the ability to have your local supermarket deliver all sorts of things at all times of day is incredibly useful, especially when it comes to heavy stuff such as water, cans of drink and so on.

There was a classic example of a small Dubai delivery place near where we used to live. Their business model was as follows -

- Have a small shop with most of the things customers need at reasonable prices, certainly not more expensive for commodity items than the branded supermarkets.

- Keep longer opening hours than the branded supermarkets.

- Have free delivery, with no minimum order.

- Treat your delivery 'boys' well and let them keep the tips they earned.

- Leaflet nearby buildings to advertise the services offered.

This place has been around for years and is still going strong.

I built up a very special bond with the man who answered the phone, during five years of ordering 12 big Masafi bottle, carton soda soda water and litre low fat milk, no, no low fat milk. At first, his grunts down the phone all sounded the same, but after a while I was able to distinguish between 'hello', 'thank you' and 'goodbye' grunts. The delivery time was always 'five minutes', which meant anything between ten to twenty, but that was always fine by us, okokokokok.

Let's contrast this supermarket's business strategy with the soon-to-be-closed place near us.

- Have a small shop without most of the things customers need, with what is there being sold at ridiculously inflated prices.

- Keep exactly the same opening hours as the more conveniently located and cheaper local branded supermarket.

- Have a minimum order of 15Dhs (about $5USD) and take about 30 minutes to deliver (as opposed to, say, having a small delivery fee for orders that were less than 15Dhs sp that people still ordered small things they needed urgently).

- Have only one delivery 'boy' and tell all your customers he's busy when they ring to order something.

- Never do any marketing or advertising.

Granted, I don't know what their rent was and I know that our development is far from being fully occupied, so maybe they just didn't have enough customers in the area to be viable. That might be why they are shutting down, but I can't help thinking that the reason is that this particular outlet simply wasn't run very well. Shame.

Sunday August 30, 2009

I'm in charge, really

I have to sign a 'no objection letter', giving Mrs Saul permission to carry on working. She's renewing her labour card and needs my continued permission.

Being the magnanimous type, I will sign.

It's nice to entertain the thought that I am in charge, at least from time to time.

Wednesday August 26, 2009

Want one

Please may I have one of these?

I wonder what the warranty is and whether after six years the fuel pump, alternator and engine coils will all fail within 6 months of each other?

Monday August 24, 2009

CCTV's effectiveness

An interesting article on CCTV from the BBC.

Whilst back home for two weeks over the summer, I was shocked to see CCTV cameras absolutely everywhere, compared to when I left in 2002. I found myself wondering about the cost involved and their effectiveness.

I don't mind the odd camera here and there, but I found their new omnipresence a little unsettling.

There's a small shopping centre near my parents' house. When I was younger I used to try and avoid that particular area, as it was a bit run down with local yobs hanging around - if you locked your bike up to use one of the shops, you couldn't be sure it would be there when you got back.

The area now has a CCTV camera watching over it. Over the last year or two, the precinct seems to have attracted a fair amount of investment, with a German delicatessen, Italian ice cream cafe and some much smarter shops there than before. Even the fish and chip shop's* pretty decent.

Does the camera's presence have anything to do with this, scaring off the local hoodies, or is this just economic regeneration which would have happened anyway?

* The fish and chop is run by some Kurdish people. Prior to that, it was Chinese owned. I bet you the owners before that were Indian or Vietnamese, then Greek or Turkish Cypriots, with the first owners being British. Interesting how you can chart immigration trends in Britain by who runs the local chippy. I didn't check, but I wouldn't be surprised if the supermarket around the corner had a large Polish section :)

Fascinating shoe update

Thanks to a lengthy search back in the UK this summer, I am now the proud owner of a pair of traditionally shaped smart office shoes. It took a while, but I found them.

If you go shoe shopping in Dubai, the only shoes on sale are 'fashionable' options, where the shoe is twice as long as your foot and culminates in a ridiculous point - rather like what Ali Baba would wear if he gave up his team of forty thieves and applied for a job as a secondhand car salesman.

Whilst on the hunt for 'normal' work shoes in Dubai I encountered some great salesmanship -

- Hello, do you have some more traditional shape shoes? I don't like these points.

- Ah yes sir! You are meaning the boring shoes? This is not coming in Dubai, only fashionable models that are not outdated for stylish people we are having.

...onto next shop.

- Hello, do you have some more traditional shape shoes? I don't like these points.

- This one. (Hands me something extremely pointy)

- No thanks, I want something without the points, the thin end. I want the rounded ends.

- This one. (Hands me something that takes pointy shoes to a new level of pointyness).

...and so on.

Never mind! Loakes of London rescued me and I now have a pair of unfashionable, normally shaped office shoes. Personally I think that particular style is classically timeless, but I am not know for my dress sense.

Hopefully, by the time this pair wears out, the rounded look will have come into fashion again and the next round of office shoe purchasing will be less painful.

Ramadan's here again

Saturday saw the first day of Ramadan for this year.

I enjoy Ramadan, although a lot of Westerners here say they find it frustrating. It's just one of those things - you have to go with the flow. Business will slow down, things will take longer to get done and there's nothing you can do about it except try to take part in the elements you can enjoy and benefit from.

All office workers, Muslims or not, are entitled to shorter working hours. This doesn't really affect me as the Middle East is only one of the regions I cover, so I am still expected to take calls or respond to emails as I would normally. That's fine - I enjoy the flexibility Sun offer in terms of being able to work from home and being objectives based all year round, so I don't feel hard done by. That said, this part of the world does generate most of the revenue for my product set, so work will definitely be a little quieter, which can make things a bit dull.

Mrs Saul will have shorter working hours, so she'll be more relaxed and we'll be able to enjoy the odd iftar buffet here and there, as well as time with our friends.

Unless you're a fasting office worker who has to be at his or her desk during the working day, traffic will be a lot lighter. The rush hour simply shifts to match the shorter office hours, with the roads being a lot less congested during the rest of the day.

All in all, it's a pleasant month, with the fun of Eid at the end.

There is one aspect to Ramadan here that I don't like - a massive increase in dangerous driving. This tends to manifest itself in two ways.

Firstly, you see people driving home at insane speeds just before dusk. This causes accidents every year and is completely unnecessary.

Secondly, driving in the evenings, when people tend to go out more than they usually would, generally deteriorates. During the last couple of evenings I've seen a big increase in the kind of tailgating, headlight flashing, speeding and weaving nonsense that used to be the norm all year round but which has died out somewhat over recent years. I appreciate there are lots of blokes out and about, enjoying driving around with their friends of an evening, but come on guys!

There was a huge accident this evening at the junction that leads out of our development, where two people had crashed head on into each other. Sadly, I don't think it'll be the last we'll see over the next four weeks.

Sunday August 23, 2009

More business genius

I've just re-read the letter from our cleaning company (mentioned here earlier).

Their genius for business is even more geniusy than I originally thought.

At the bottom of the page there is a form I have to fill in, agreeing to the new rate. Failure to do so will be seen by the company as a rejection of the price increase and they will simply stop sending the cleaners over.

Two clear steps to business growth -

- put up your prices by 16% for no apparent reason.

- put a mechanism in place by which you automatically lose your customers, either because they simply forget to fill the form in, or because they do disagree with the increase and you make it really easy for them to cancel on you.

Bizarre.

Equally bizarre is a local Chinese restaurant's strategy for growing its take-away business.

- leaflet the entire Old Town area with a very well produced, professionally written menu.

- when customers from the Old Town ring up, inform them that you don't deliver to the Old Town.

Wednesday August 19, 2009

Power cut

I feel for the people affected by the powercut in Sharjah.

I'd love to see a campaign here to help cut power consumption, based simply around AC. I'm sure there are lots of simple things that could be done just to reduce the load generated by air conditioning. Some basic insulation, doors that shut automatically and some basic training in how to use a thermostat would make a big difference.

An end to fixed pricing for cold air is needed too. I've mentioned here before that I pay a fixed price for my AC - cold air pricing is calculated based on average consumption in the development, with each resident taking a share of the cooling needed for common areas. I pay for the electricity used to power the fans, but pay the same as everyone else for the cold air that comes out. There are no meters in the apartments, which means people pay the same whether the apartments are occupied or not, insulated or not, face the sun or are in shade.

Individual metering would be a start, but I'm sure that margins could be increased in conjunction with lower costs to residents, simply by putting some insulation around people's front doors and the doors in the public areas. Small steps that would make a big difference, but until there's some financial incentive, it's going to be hard to get anything done.

I'd love to speak to an expert and see some figures, but I reckon a little would go a long way, with everyone benefitting financially before we even start to think about the green aspect of things.

Dubai driving survey results

An interesting article from the local press -

Dubai's favourite lane

The results of a wide-ranging survey of Dubai's drivers have just come in.

Participants were asked which of the Sheikh Zayed Road's six lanes was their favourite. Responses varied, but the middle lanes came out in the lead, with the all time favourite being the lane just next to the far left hand 'fast' lane.

The driver of a mid-sized Mitsubishi truck commented that the middle lanes were definitely his favourite.

'As soon as I join the six lane motorway, I always head straight to the middle lane,' he said. 'I just feel comfortable there. Even if the road is empty, that's where you'll find me. If the road is full, I also like to sit there, just below the speed limit, oblivious to the traffic around me. I love driving there so much, that when it comes for me to turn off, I wait until the last minute before pulling unexpectedly to the right, just so that I can soak up as much of that middle lane fun as possible'.

Drivers of the Nissan Sunny, Toyota Yaris and similar small Japanese vehicles echoed the truck driver's sentiments.

'Like a lot of my colleagues, I favour the middle lane,' said one driver. 'There's no better way to relax on my way to work than sitting in the middle lane at 96Kms per hour, chatting to friends on the phone, my right arm draped over the passenger seat,' he added. 'People driving around me are so friendly. They often drive past on both sides of me, staring at me in a threatening way, making a big joke of it. Sometimes they flash their lights and drive close behind me, even though they could easily pass by on the remaining four empty lanes to my right. That I find a little annoying, but what can one do? I'm a middle laner through and through,' he chuckled.

Whilst the middle lane was a clear favourite, not all of the respondents could make up their minds. One driver, the owner of a Toyota FJ Cruiser, said that he couldn't make up his mind which lane he liked best, so he used all of them to his full advantage.

'I like all the lanes,' he said. 'During rush hour you can find me in one, then another, then another, then back to where I was originally, then screeching across from the far right to the far left and then back again.' When asked if driving in as many lanes as possible all the time got him to his destination more quickly, he commented, 'I don't know, but I don't think so. I usually see people who were driving near me when I started my journey arriving at the same office car park as me at around the same time. I would usually have weaved in and out and all around them for the previous 20 minutes as part of my attempts to enjoy as much of the road as possible. They should do the same as me though - I arrive calm and happy at work, whereas they usually look quite stressed and angry'.

Asked he thought this lane guzzling was dangerous he was quick to disagree. 'I am a very safe driver. I drive fast, but safe and I deserve as much lane fun as the next'.

Some surveyed said they felt they needed two lanes as one was not enough. One driver, the owner of an impractically large SUV, said that she liked to straddle two lanes. 'When I'm on the phone or texting my friends, it makes it easier for me to keep the white line in the middle of the car bonnet so that I don't need to concentrate so much. I apply the same principle when parking my car as well.'

The survey didn't just cover drivers' favourite lanes. When asked which was their favourite indicator, the responses were split three ways - some car drivers preferred the right indicator, some the left and some hated using their indicators at any time. The driver of a large 1999 Lexus saloon commented as follows. 'I love driving for miles with my right indicator on. Although my journey consists almost exclusively of left turns, it just feels nice to have an orange light blinking pointlessly on the right side of my car for hours on end, regardless of the direction I am turning in.'

Surprisingly, many drivers said that driving in a straight line with their indicators on didn't bother them at all. 'The noise doesn't bother me at all', said the rider of a small white Nissan van. 'I'm never happier than when driving for an hour and a half to Abu Dhabi, all the way in the middle lane. The sound of my indicator clicking away in the cab acts as a metronome, allowing me to practise my singing without losing the beat'.

A firm favourite amongst the drivers of large buses was to drive along with their hazard lights on. 'I suppose I'm greedy,' said one driver. 'Rather like lurching from left to right unpredictably, I don't like to do anything by halves - give me all or nothing when it comes to those flashing orange lights on the side of my bus'.

Other bus drivers pointed out the safety aspect of having their hazard lights on, day and night, regardless. 'It's safer that way,' said one. 'Look - I'm driving a huge bus, that's belching black smoke out of the back, carrying 100 workers home, mostly in broad daylight. If I didn't have my hazard light on, how would other drivers see me? I'm practically invisible in my 50 tonne vehicle, so hazards on, unpredictable lane changes and feet on the dashboard it is for me'.

When asked to comment on the results of the survey, a slightly pompous British blogger and Range Rover enthusiast noted that everyone should try to keep to the right, use their indicators appropriately and drive at the speed limit.

'But where would the fun be in that?' chuckled one pickup driver. 'Lane variety and indicator inconsistency are the spice of my driving life.'

Next week, the results of a recent UAE survey of elevator users are expected. The firm favourite way of entering a lift is expected to be to try and charge in before everyone else has got out, with the lift being a great place to burp in just after lunch.

Losing customers? Put up your prices!

I was surprised to see a letter from our cleaning company informing me that prices will go up around 16% an hour from September.

The letter explained, in very well written English, that companies have to raise prices from time to time. It also justified the increase by explaining that it was required to help them 'remain competitive'.

I get frustrated when Dubai companies do this. I've seen it elsewhere in restaurants or bars - fewer customers, so less revenue? Simply put up the price to make up the difference. It's so obvious. Following this, the business geniuses can sit back and marvel as customers pile in, relieved that they can pay more, waving their wallets around with glee.

My suspicion is that our cleaning company is doing the same - they have fewer customers thanks to the downturn, so they are simply making up the shortfall by charging the rest of us more.

I have no issues with a company making money, but I do get fed up with being ripped off left, right and centre.

How about this as a simple strategy -

- Do some kind of promotion for new customers who sign up

- Do some simple advertising

- Offer existing customers a good deal if they get a cleaner in more often every week

- Offer existing customers an incentive to sign up their friends with the same cleaning company

- Do something vaguely creative to increase your business.

If none of this works, fine, up your prices as a last resort if you have to and if you are sure it will not destroy what business you have left.

In a time when everyone is less well off than before, simply whacking on an extra 16% for the kind of service that is first to go when times are hard is simply idiotic.

Sunday August 16, 2009

Sweatsville

Humidity has well and truly struck.

The last few days have been incredibly sweaty. I spent the weekend crashing at a friend's house, whose 15 year old AC has been struggling. Popping home today was a welcome break from the heat.

As with every year, I wonder how people functioned before the advent of AC - granted, you didn't have to deal with the heat that's absorbed by the roads and buildings, but sitting in a small barasti hut or stone dwelling can't have been much fun.

There's a nice picture of a British soldier standing guard at the small fort near the beginnings of Abu Dhabi island, taken during the 50s. I don't know how hot it was when the photo was taken, but the chances are he would have had to endure the summer during his stint. With his tin hat melting on his head and 'summer' uniform drenched in sweat, I bet he wished he could have had the option of switching to local dress for a while.

Decency

Other UAE bloggers have written about this in more detail, but I want to add my thoughts!

There is currently a mildly confusing 'crack down' taking place in Dubai's malls regarding people dressing appropriately for the reason. Basically people are being reminded not to wear clothes that are too revealing. Fair enough, but the whole issue seem to be being presented rather badly.

Lots of commentators on various news sites are saying that revealing clothes should, therefore, not be sold in Dubai's malls. This is plainly ridiculous.

Reading this, I was reminded of a scene in 'Airport', a British documentary show that followed the lives of people working at Luton airport for a EasyJet, a British budget airline.

In one scene, passengers are seen lighting cigarettes during a flight. When the steward asks them to stop, he gets a bit of a rant from the raspy voiced ladies who want to smoke their Lambert and Butlers.

'If you sell 'em on the plane, why can't we smoke 'em? That's unfair, innit?'.

The hilariously camp steward handles the situation perfectly. Leaning over to the ladies, he gives them a conspiratorial wink.

'Ladies. Have you ever bought condoms and used them straightaway, right there in the shop you bought them from? No? Well, there you go then, darlings. You'll have to wait till you get to Mallorca, won't you?'.

The ladies cackle, put their cigarettes out and the whole situation is laid nicely to rest.

Seven years Dubai

August 8 slipped past without my noticing - seven years since I arrived on a British Airways flight from Heathrow in 2002.

Despite some frustrations - which I'd have wherever I lived - Dubai has been extremely good to me. A fantastic opportunity that I hope I've made the best of so far.

I will always be grateful to those at Tech Access, Sun's distributor for the Middle East, for offering me the job that had me come over. At the risk of sounding sycophantic, I also feel gratitude to those people running the UAE. Various British journalists might only see the negative side of the place, but there are positives everywhere you look, particularly when you look at things in the context of the region in general.

We have no masterplan to spend X number of years here before trying to go somewhere else - we are taking things as they come. I am hoping that we'll be able to continue to stay here, enjoying life and work, for the foreseeable future.