The Mute Herald

Today I renewed the tenancy contract for another year.  Over the past month I’ve been meaning to speak to the real estate agent, but kept putting it off.  When I finally called there was no connection. A quick call to his office confirmed that he no longer worked with them, but no worries somebody would be contacting me shortly but please send an email thank you have a nice day.

Send an email I did, with the perfunctory details.  Dear Sirs, I would like to renew my contract bla more bla.  I finished the email off, rather sheepishly, by asking for a reduction in the rent in order to match current market conditions.  I wasn’t very hopeful, but I had to mention it else my conscience would trouble me to no end. Later that day I was contacted by somebody claiming to hold the power of attorney for the landlord and asking for (rent) money.  Feeling suspicious, I checked his credentials with the agency, and he did send a copy of his documents. He seemed legit enough. Oh and he asked for 16% less renewal rent than I was currently paying.  I could swear that I heard a cha-ching! when I told my wife.  He also asked for an administration fee of Dhs 500, but I wasn’t about to complain in view of the windfall.  The latter part of the conversation involved setting up a meeting, which was to happen at my place. Unsurprisingly he didn’t ask for directions.

Thirty minutes before the stipulated time, it was evident that the house was in no shape to receive guests.  There were current cat toys, past cat toys, makeshift cat toys, unintended cat toys, cat hair and cat all over the place.  Apart from the normal residues of a working couple everyday living.  So we dumped the cat and brought in the professionals.  No, just kidding. We tidied the place up like the Sheikh himself was paying a visit.

It finally turned out that I had misunderstood his instructions.  We weren’t going to meet at my place, but another empty but furnished apartment on the same floor. Oh well. Went over, wrote the checks. He went to great lengths to explain that the landlord, through him, wanted to take care of their existing tenants and be practical in the current rental situation.  He showed me the alleged purchase price of the apartment, which, if true, means that the landlord’s getting a gross return of just over 2%. If true.  We finished the meeting with the usual pleasantries. He wished me a pleasant stay for the indefinite future, to which I replied same to you.  Oh social awkwardness, how you rear your head unexpectedly.

Is it a sign of the times that I have to go out of my way to write about what gave me intense satisfaction? No I’m not talking about the sexual kind. It happened at work.

We experimented with CSR marketing (corporate social responsibility) . Instead of throwing away thousands of $$$ to buy marketing materials and give-aways, we tied up with a charity in Africa and gave the money to them, splashing our actions on media and publications.  Look at us, we’re doing good, now please use our services.

This had two direct consequences.  We were the first company in our industry to do this sort of marketing activity, and it caught on with other providers and suppliers.  Potentially many thousands more were donated to various other charities as a result of our actions.  Secondly, and closer to home, we received an email from the charity in Africa.  Attached to it was a class photo of the children who benefited directly from our own donation, holding a thank you message with our company name.  What powerful feedback! It sure beats throwing pennies in a cup and hoping it does not go to fund somebody’s Bentley.

There you have it, this is what causes me to get all emotional each time I view it.  Who knows, maybe a career change is in the cards for me.

An incomplete look at some interesting characters encountered during the MEBA (Middle East Business Aviation) exhibition. Pronounced like amoeba, just without the “ah” at the start. Rocket science.

The security man who ignored the beeps. Long lines amassed at the entrance, waiting for airport-style searches complete with metal detector gate and x-ray machine, but then the search itself was superficial.  While this should have come as a relief, and on some level it did, I also felt that the wait to get in was not justified.  Twice the metal detector beeped on my passage – once the security man looked at my name badge, read out my first name, I nodded sheepishly, and he let me in.  In retrospect I could have told him that no, it wasn’t me, I just found the card lying around. Then again, maybe not.  The other time he just waved me through impatiently.

The magazine distributors who wait like hungry predators, eying their victims as they shuffled to get searched at the aforementioned security entrance, to then pounce on them having not yet finished dressing up.  Got to give out those copies before the competition, who would be less than 2 feet away.  These would be the same people who arrive first at the show and leave multiple copies of their publications on the as yet unattended booths.  I guess somebody has to keep the paper recycling companies in business.  Have to remember this when I next receive a pitch for magazine advertising space and get numbers like “guaranteed distribution to all 6,350,002 attendees and exhibitors”.

The cleaner with the intense gaze.  Before opening time and every 3 hours or so this cleaner would push his carpet-cleaning gadget around, not bothering to actually cover all the space, just making the rounds dutifully. Passing by our booth he would look up and fix his eyes unabashedly upon me. I could feel them like a subcutaneous itch. His wonder wasn’t subdued after doing the rounds several times. I shouldn’t pump up my self esteem though, I’m sure he was giving the same treatment to everybody else.

The caterer who ate our sweets.  We had brought in some give away sweets and left them on our front desk to entice passers-by (event marketing at its finest).  One of the catering reps who stocked us with drinks and coffee made it a point to stock up his pockets with our sweets.  I guess the sweet is sweeter on the other table.  You get the point.

The busy execs with the shade-marked sun-burnt face.  I guess they were standing outside at the aircraft static display in the unforgiving sun. They will take home a souvenir, and most likely be pointed at with amusement, but I’m sure they prefer the 27 degree sunshine over the biting cold of Geneva for EBACE (sister show to MEBA held in May, somewhat busier).

The man sleeping behind the exhibit walls.  Some background – MEBA is held at the airport expo, like GITEX shopper. They used the entire central hall, but partitioned off half of the east hall.  So on one side of the partition high profile companies are peddling their products or services, which could cost millions of whatever currency (if you would be interested in buying a private jet), while on the other side there was this labourer dozing away on a mattress of stand building material waste, who couldn’t care less about the contracts being signed back over his shoulder.  I wish I had access to some overhead gantry, from which I could include both imageries in one frame. But I hadn’t, so I didn’t.

The freebie hunters. Commercially worthless, yet no trade show would be complete without them. They roam the aisles looking for the juicier prizes. Even if it’s a petty item like a pen or a keychain, they will pick it up anyway on principle alone.  If something is particularly fancy, like a mini-gadget, they will return time and again, hoping not to be recognised while snatching the booty. I’m pretty sure they meet hourly to discuss the action plan and exchange experiences, like which stashes are highly guarded and which should only be given the once-over.

I recently came across an advertisement in the local papers calling for applications to the Abu Dhabi Through Your Eyes 2010 photography competition.  The first thing that sprang to mind was an article that appeared earlier this year in The National:

ABU DHABI // An amateur photographer who said he was aiming for the perfect snap for a photography competition was jailed, relieved of his passport and yesterday fined Dh1,000 (US$270) for taking prohibited pictures on Khalifa Bridge. MA, 30, a Pakistani living in Sharjah, said he was taking pictures of the sunset for the “Abu Dhabi Through Your Eyes” contest, but he was accused of photographing Mina Zayed, which includes military facilities and docked warships.

In the age of Google Earth / Maps, where the lay of the land is visible to all and sundry, it is puzzling to see such outdated security principles still being upheld.  What additional detail could the photographer have captured that is not visible in more detail in this map?:

My guess is that the authorities might be worried that the current occupancy of the base, rather than some architectural detail, would be monitored.  But anybody wanting to do that would be perfectly capable using his bare eyes and report back to his spy masters without attracting any notice.

Would the Office of Brand Abu Dhabi put up notices delineating what is ok to capture on film and what is not?  Or, knowing how they do things in Abu Dhabi, they could take it high-tech: (geek warning) they could take the concept of alternate reality layers (as already found in Android smartphones) and install them in gps enabled cameras so that when your viewfinder rolls over forbidden real estate, the camera will automatically not allow you to snap the picture.

Of course this incident happened in February, so it is not news, and things might have actually changed since then as no other such reports have been heard since (to the best of my limited knowledge).  But any would be competitor had better do his / her homework and find out which areas are camera shy.

October 16th 2010

11 o’clock, I arrive at Wild Peeta, the current venue for our book club gatherings.  The place is quiet on a Saturday morning, so it is the ideal location to host our sometimes loud and often bizarre discussions.  Nominally the meeting kicks off on the hour, but I only see @TDAllonsy, set up behind her mac.  “UAE time,” she says with a sigh.  I empty my pockets at my seat, a habit I display when my better half is not around to supply carrying capacity in the form of a handbag, and get a coffee.

We catch up, and the others start trickling in – @WajihaSaid, who charged herself with snapping some pictures of the meet. Which of course didn’t stop half of everybody else from later on snatching the camera to try their hand at it. @Theregos, who as always provides the extra incentive in the form of cupcakes.  Today it was coffee and walnut. Enough said. @Zooberry, @Shaahima, @Hamna_ (dubbed our resident Niqabi), @Aabo0 and @RupertBu, the man behind the twitter handle of the Sharjah International Book Fair (@ShjIntlBookFair / #shjibf).

Order is brought to the table and we settle down to the business of the day. First on the agenda is discussing the choices made two months back.  Previously titles used to be discussed one month after being selected, but people found it hard to find availability in the local stores, so the gap was widened to two months for this purpose.

Next up we discuss each person’s submission for next month’s selection, after which a vote is taken to choose three.  Other book clubs might choose just one per meeting, but in our case the idea is to have a wider selection to read from to further encourage reading.  Previously four books used to be chosen, but now, to keep true to the “Twit” element of the TwitBookClub, the last book is chosen via online submissions and voting.  Current selections can be seen here.

To see the full tweet-by-tweet update on the goings on, you can either lookup @TwitBookClub (the official twitter handle for the club), or search twitter using the hashtag #TwitBookClub to catch other people’s contributions to the conversation.  I would have liked to include a snippet here on the post, but I have on this occasion found myself to be technologically impaired.  Note to non-Twitter users: the “at” sign @ indicates the twitter handle, or nickname, a person uses on Twitter.  The “number” sign, properly known as a hashtag, is used to index certain terms so that one can search tweets containing said terms and keep track of such mentions.

Before closing Rupert briefed us on the upcoming Sharjah International Book Fair (26th Oct – 6th Nov), now in its 29th edition.  Previously this used to showcase literature in Arabic only,  whereas this year they opened up the scope to include English literature.  A number of authors and industry names will be making an appearance in talks or workshops, among them:

• Zohra Saed & Sahar Muradi (American Afghan lecturers and authors of “One Story, Thirty Stories”)
• Samar Jarrah (author of “Arab voices speak to American Hearts”)
• Yasmina Jraisatti (First European based Arabic Literary Agent)
• Shelina Janmohammed (Number 1 best selling author of “Love in a Headscarf”)
• Octavia Nasr (previously with CNN)

Other info, date and location details on the site.

People sometimes exclaim on twitter that they didn’t have the time to read any of the selections, usually on the eve of the meeting.  It is a misconception that reading the books is compulsory, when in fact it is not.  It is desirable of course, as that’s the point of the whole show, but anyone is welcome to come and join the discussion.  In the end it is just a gathering of like minded people discussing a common interest.

This blew my mind. Somebody posted on Facebook a recording of Italian singer/songwriter Claudio Baglioni (household name in Italy, check out his bio) singing a Maltese song L’Ahhar Bidwi F’Wied il-Ghasel (lit. translated as The Last Farmer in Honey Valley).  Enjoy:

For a well-known (in his country at least) singer to take the effort to learn the phonetics and pronunciation of such a different language just for the song, is remarkable.  It’s quite a leap, we’re not talking Italian singing in Spanish.

Compare it to the original version sung in Maltese, with the added benefit of some local landscape visuals:

Day 432

Peace, not just for the subject

One would think that by now, the cat, Paua, would have settled in.  Yet she surprises us with wildly shifting behaviours in a very short time.

From hovering at the brink of sleep at the foot of our bed one moment, to meowing mournfully, nose touching the front door, the next. Shortly thereafter playfully tossing around a tatter of cloth or bag, followed by a heightened sense of fear of everything that moves. That would be us. She’d dash from one room to the next, climbing on the furniture and fittings, or cower in a corner, back arched, tail huge.  As if nothing was amiss, she would then drop on the floor belly up, inviting attention.  All the above in the space of a few minutes, but of all the activities, the meowing would last the longest.  I fear for her mental health.

And ours.

Not the marital kind.  Yesterday was the blog’s first anniversary.  I would like to thank all the multitudes of regular readers, as well as all those who stumbled onto it using search terms like “sims 3 jacuzzie buy”, “delhi metro in Antonov”, “i”, “magna carda examples”, “mute word of car”, “i m very tayer”, “can you stay at the atlantis palm dubia”, “gzira sex scene”.

You make my day.

I was casually surfing, I mean researching on the internet today, when I stumbled upon this photo in a site header (linking instead of pasting since it’s in Flash).  As is wont to happen to me I was immediately taken back to when I used to perform that task, marshalling in aircraft to their parking position.

I never actually handled an IL76 unfortunately (I did climb into one undergoing repairs in Libya though).  The awesomest aircraft I had to guide to a stop was one like this:

Antonov AN12 / Copyright Angara at Airliners.net

It may not look like much – old, what with the props and all.  But it was noisy, even through the ear defenders. And big. And coming towards me.  I sometimes used to have perverse thoughts on the lines of: what if the pilot didn’t see me? What if one of engines shot off it’s mounting and came towards me?

A turboprop is slow to accelerate, so I used to play these mind games that if something happened, I could duck out of the way, or between the landing gear. Or something.  It was a completely different story with one of these beauties, the private jets:

Bombardier Global Express / Copyright Luc Van Belleghem at Airliners.net

The high pitched whine of the turbine engines gives these aircraft a restless air.  They were built for speed, not for crawling around.  I felt as if the engineering feat was not putting them in the air, but keeping them in check, restrained and obeying the pilot’s commands on the ground.  Which is why, when marshalling one in, I felt like I had the barrel of a (quite large) cannon being slowly pointed towards me, with a shell that was crying and begging to be fired.

I was not scared, I would not have done the job otherwise.  Those thoughts were merely fleeting products of my imagination, which I would shrug off, and get back to there and then.

It was a job I performed with mixed emotions – on one hand I absolutely loved the idea of being close to these high tech machines, climbing on board $50 million VIP aircraft, or being involved in some tricky cargo loading operation.  On the other hand there were the odd timings, the associated running around and the whatever-the-weather requirement.  It could get quite cold in Malta when raining on a February pre-dawn morning.  The office job wouldn’t look so drab then.

When it comes down to it there are basically two things that one can do with an Android phone:

1.  Use it like any normal phone. Make calls, download apps, show it off, brag about it, spar with ifanboys, and/or

2.  Open the metaphorical lid, thus invalidating the warranty, and customise the hell out of the thing.  More correctly known as rooting the device and flashing a custom ROM.

Guess which one I did?

But first, a disclaimer.  I am no phone hacker, nor will I ever claim to be one.  I just scoured the interwebs for how-tos and tutorials, which are not that difficult to find. The task is finding the one that is applicable for your situation.

It is actually funny in retrospect because about a month ago I had commented to a friend that I wasn’t the type to mess with the phone, as it was “outside my comfort zone”.

So what happened?  In my expanding thirst for Android gadgets I decided that I was going to get my hands on one of the tablets coming out in September / October.  I was particularly ogling the Samsung Galaxy S Tab (take a look here).  This would make my Nexus One semi-redundant (since I don’t use it for phone calls anyway), so I decided to step outside the comfort zone, unleash the wannabe geek in me and experiment with the thing.

Ironical side note: after I took the plunge, the pricing info for the Samsung tablet was released, and I decided it was out of budget.  Since I intended to use it mainly to buy and read ebooks I settled for the Amazon Kindle, so I went ahead and ordered the 6″ wifi Kindle 3.  It is currently out of stock, but if all goes well I’ll describe that process in a separate post.  Actually even if it doesn’t go well, as I’d need to vent.

Back to the thread, what I did was very roughly as follows:

1. Backed up all my important stuff and downloaded apps.
2. Accessed the bootloader and unlocked the device.
3. Installed a recovery image, to be able to load the original software in case the device bricks (becomes as useful as a brick, maybe less so as you wouldn’t be able to stack them and end up with a solid structure).
4. Through the recovery make a backup of the entire current OS. You know, just in case.
5. Installed a custom ROM – in my case Cyanogenmod v6-point-something.  Not that I knew exactly what I was going into, but it seemed to be the most talked-about and praised ROM.

Oh there were many in-betweens.  One had to find the right site to install the Android SDK on the PC and hook it up via USB, download the recovery and the ROM, find the latest stable version, get blocked off the main Cyanogen site and thus having to find a costly roundabout way, find the right instructions / guidelines, none of which assumed my very basic level of knowledge so a lot of guessing was involved.

So why go through all this hassle?  One thing is that the custom ROM takes the device and puts every setting at your disposal.  This is not done out of the box to protect the owners of the devices by ensuring that it is stable and works well.  After all tampering isn’t for everyone.

Performance is also greatly increased.  Out of the box the software somehow limits the hardware’s performance, for whichever reasons (battery life, compliance with carrier restrictions, alien interference).  After installing the custom ROM even the basic handling on the phone noticeably improved.  One can also overclock the device, that is make the CPU run at faster speeds, but I haven’t tried that out yet.  Actually at this point there I many things I have to try out, it is wide open: tweaks, themes, apps, whole new ROMs, etc.

I will probably not bore you with the details.