Fake Plastic Souks: The Glory Years

By Alexander McNabb

Published as part of a 'how to use ebook publishing platforms' workshop, this collection of posts from Alexander McNabb's Dubai blog, Fake Plastic Souks, charts the years 2007-2009 when Dubai transformed from a city of insane new projects, towers and island building to the new reality of global financial crisis.

On the way we meet taxi drivers, bankers, call centre operators and the occasional radio ad copy writer.

It's all good, clean fun...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander McNabb
• Release date: Apr 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301651221

Alexander McNabb

ALEXANDER MCNABBAlexander McNabb has been working as a journalist, editor and magazine publisher in the Middle East for some 30 years. Today he consults on media, publishing and digital communications.Alexander's first serious novel was the critically acclaimed Olives - A Violent Romance, a work exploring the attitudes, perceptions and conflicts of the Middle East, exposing a European sensibility to the multi-layered world of life on the borders of Palestine. Published in 2011, the book triggered widespread controversy, finding a receptive audience in the Middle East and beyond.Olives was followed in 2012 by testosterone-soaked international spy thriller Beirut - An Explosive Thriller. His third Middle East-based novel, Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, about a man dying of cancer unearthing a deadly past, published in 2013. Together, the three form the 'Levant Cycle'.A Decent Bomber, set in Ireland, published in 2015. It tells the story of a retired IRA bomb-maker forced to resume his old trade, pitching 'old terror' against 'new terror' in a battle of wits between an Irish farmer with a violent past and Somali extortionists with a questionable future.Alexander's latest, Birdkill, is a psychological thriller about a teacher who has lost her recent past to 'The Void', a terrible incident she can't recall and nobody seems to be in a hurry to tell her about. Her friend Mariam embarks on a race to uncover the truth before Robyn is driven over the edge into insanity.You can find Alexander and his books at www.alexandermcnabb.com.

Book preview

Introduction

I first sat down to a blank Blogger screen in April 2007 and have been feeding the beast ever since. It’s like a particularly voracious tamagochi, consuming countless thousands of words over the past half-decade. I’m not even quite sure why I keep it going – it’s become something of a habit, I guess. It’s certainly not the traffic – at a tad under 20,000 views a month, we’re not really taking Huffington Post class readership here.

But I’ve come to like it. And on days I don’t post, I feel an odd guilty discomfort. A sort of blogging cold turkey.

I needed a ‘test file’ for a workshop on creating ebooks and thought I might as well extract my favourite bits from the first couple of years of the blog. At some time I’ll get around to selecting from the other years…

Meanwhile, this little collection quite neatly documents (IMHO!) what it was like to live in Dubai in the frenetic boom-time just before the GFC hit – and the awful crunching sound of the impact as we collectively hit the brick wall of global recession singing ‘lalala’ and pushing our fingers firmly into our ears.

Why did I call it Fake Plastic Souks? Sure enough, Radiohead’s song was playing, but it wasn’t really about that. It was the idea that Dubai was actually building, well, fake souks. Air-conditioned, fixed-price outlets that looked like Arabian souks – so much so that tourists actually preferred to wander around the concrete and breezeblock alleyways with their fake adobe fascias and cod-barasti ceilings. So much more Dubai, really, than those nasty, dusty real souks down the road.

Anyway, I’ve had fun picking over the past, so hope you have fun reading the resulting rants, raves and even the occasional slice of sensible stuff. I’ve added commentary where that seems sensible, to give context or perhaps ameliorate my inexcusable behaviour.

Alexander

This is it: ‘First post’. I had been messing about with various online platforms as I started to get interested in online and social technologies and the ways they were changing the way we communicate. I’d been missing writing and was in something of a hiatus in the old book career, so had started to dump half-thoughts, travel pieces and recipes into a platform called PBWiki. After a while, I realised a blog would make more sense.

I had a reasonably well-honed sense of contempt for blogging, particularly Dubai’s shrill ‘anonybloggers’ and was very clear that I was going to write under my own name, standing by my opinions loud and proud. I remember clearly (and yes, I do wince at the recollection) a chat with radio host and media darling Richard Dean one day in the old Dubai Radio studios (remember those green hexagonal desks and padded looney-bin cells, radio folks?) when I characterised blogging as ‘the new CB radio’. Yes, I know. Look at me now. Breaker, breaker one-nine…

For no particularly good reason, I have always liked this first post.

Tuesday, 24 April 2007

Lebanese Takeaway

Houmous

Fattoush

Tabbouleh

Sambousek Jibneh

Sis Kebab

Plate shawarma dajaj

Sujuk

Tonight the two of us eat like little kings for pennies, while the Arab Media Forum delegates continue their portentous declamations on the importance of fostering media freedom to ever smaller audiences until just two are left. Jackets off and staggering along the Madinat's waterways in their shirtsleeves under the early morning starlight, arm in arm, they rage about how it would have been so much better if Gamal Abdel Nasser had got the Yanks behind him instead of the useless bloody Sovs.

It was almost inevitable that Modhesh would get an early mention in the blog. The little yellow darling had been causing outbreaks of violent sentiment (spawning his own ‘Death To Modhesh’ Facebook page and even being the subject of vandal attacks) and Modhesh spotting had become something of a hobby. This is the first time I used the ‘infinite-eyed, grinning evil’ tag, which was to become my standard reference to the little darling.

Tuesday, 29 May 2007

The Tide of Evil

The summer is upon us and the relentless tide of infinite-eyed, grinning evil is around the corner.

Meanwhile, the Modhesh Friends' Club has been announced: up to 300 lucky children between the ages of 3 and 12 will be able to, for a fee of just Dhs 1,000, take part in summer activities and 'edutainment' thanks to the team at the Dubai Shopping Festival. From June 24 to August 24, kids will be looked after from 10am to 4pm. Parents can register children by supplying two photographs and a passport copy. Passport copy? Are they for REAL?

Yes! They are! The passport copy, says the DSF press release, is required for age verification purposes. They're obviously worrying that people like me will sneak in by wearing short trousers. Or perhaps that the under threes will creep in and bully the older kids.

Whatever. Let's not be mean-minded. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing a lot more of our plucky little yellow friend over the summer to come. It's filling my heart with stuff already.

Predicting that we’d all go out and create our own content back in 2007 was perhaps a little ahead of the game, but there’s no doubt the challenge the Internet poses to regional re-broadcasters of international content is a very real one…

Monday, 28 May 2007

Pirates Waive the Rules

I've always loved that headline: it was above the first piece I ever filed in a publication, a column in Arabian Computer News - back in 1986, would you believe it.

Showtime TV has called for content piracy to be eradicated in the Middle East according to Arabianbusiness.com, that most wonderful of Middle East business focused websites. With Showtime and Orbit having a massive vested interest in the cessation of the widespread satellite TV piracy in the region, you'd have thought they'd have made a damn sight more fuss about it years ago: we were working on (successful, natch) campaigns, for the BSA, to change the region's intellectual property (IP) laws so that the ICT industry in the region could survive. I can't say that Showtime et al have been anything like as active or inventive - and calling on regional governments to do something that's in your unilateral interest is something we learned (many, many years ago) simply won't work.

What fascinates me, he who is to be moderating a session on broadband adoption at next week's Media and Telecoms Convergence Forum in Amman, is that the TV companies have absolutely nothing to sell the telcos. The telcos desperately want ready made streams of content to make their DSL offerings relevant and to build 'value for money' bundles for subscribers. The TV companies want to sell content to subscribers. But in the Middle East, the TV companies have got no reason to trust telcos to become their delivery platform and the telco's can't sell subscribers something they're already getting for free. It just ain't happenin'...

Sure, content piracy in the region has got to end. What I think might be interesting is if it ends because nobody wants the pirate content as a consequence of our already finding something much more interesting, relevant and vibrant - the content we create for ourselves.

Will Web 2.0 rule? Or will we all troop obediently back to Desperate Housewives and game shows at $20 a month?

Sunday, 27 May 2007

Youth Has its Fling

I spent half my weekend moderating a one-day seminar on entrepreneurship held by the Dubai branch of AIESEC, which is an international student body (well, ‘The international platform for young people to discover and develop their potential’). Because one does these things occasionally.

The aim of the seminar was to bring together students from across the UAE, give them some pointers, guidance and ideas on entrepreneurialism and then get them to work together in teams to present an entrepreneurial idea that mapped to one of a number of available themes. The teams were then to give a two minute elevator pitch and a panel of judges drawn from both academia and the real world would then award one group. These would qualify for the ‘Company’ training course held by INJAZ, an NGO that’s part of Junior Achievement Worldwide.

The INJAZ course is really cool: in 15 weeks, students work with mentors from the private sector to set up their own company, from honing the initial idea through building the business plan to incorporating and running it. At the end of the process they can liquidate it (if, of course, it gets that far!!) or keep it running. 20% of students that take this course go on to become entrepreneurs (compared to 3 or 4% of students on average) and 60% go on to take upper management positions in their careers. So it would appear to be working and even worthwhile.

I was amazed at the standard of work done by the AIESEC team running the event. It was evident that a lot of really strong team-work had gone into it and the way in which they worked together was truly exceptional. At their age I was still playing with girls and synthesisers, inserting anything rumoured to screw you up into my body and generally sticking two fingers up at anyone that I thought would be shocked.

These guys were 10 relative years older than me. I found myself wondering how they’d have reacted to meeting young snotty, the 19 year old Alexander. I rather think they’d have tutted pityingly and offered me some money for a coffee before walking on to their meeting with a group of interested VC funds.

And then the student groups attending the event not only listened politely to the presentations and the panel session, but asked the panellists questions that reflected evident interest in the whole thing before they went off and worked together, never having met each other before, coming out of the two-hour workshop having worked effectively as teams to produce presentations that had ideas behind them and that were presented creatively. I’ve worked with teams of PR people that have had 3-5 years of practical work experience that couldn’t do that.

A heartening, great and (nobody that knows me will believe this) humbling day. If I missed the air of rebellion and the whiff of the tear gas being used to break up the groups behind the barricades, at least I tried my best not to show it.

Something of a Canutian (it is SO a word!) rant against dumb stuff on the Internet. What sort of insane standard was I setting the global network of humanity’s hopes, fears and highest intellectual aspirations?

Saturday, 26 May 2007

New Lows - No. 462 in a Series

Today's New Low comes from the Yahoo.com front page, which slops up 'Grilling Without Fear' as its newest question-led invitation to interact with the click monitors. Yes! Yahoo! can show you how to light, maintain and manage a barbecue as well as cook food on it without causing any kind of major nuclear accident, destroying any major cities or, God forbid, undercooking some chicken and wiping out your family.

It's gone too far. Whatever will they think of next? Safe flossing? Coping with that Martini (a guide to drinking a Martini without killing yourself on the cocktail stick)? Walking to the bathroom?

We've got to get over this spate of dumb and redundant questions intended to make us click from curiosity. Does it work? Who knows? Do you?

The UAE’s newspapers can occasionally / frequently (delete as applicable) descend into rambling idiocy. Pointing out these lapses has become part of the fun of the blog, although there are a couple of journalist/editor types who have taken violent exception to me as a consequence. That does rather amuse me. Journalists are always so fast to expose the inadequacies of others but do tend to hate the lens being turned on them with a violent passion. This is just one such example plucked from very many…

Monday, 21 May 2007

School bus leaves girl home alone

A school bus yesterday dropped off a child at her home, but her mother wasn't in so the girl knocked on neighbours' doors until the watchman took her in and called her mother. The mother hadn't known the child would be back early because it is exam week here in the Emirates.

This was Emirates Today's front page splash today. Honest.

Wednesday, 23 May 2007

Control of the media in the 'Internet age'

I thought this was interesting enough to depart from the normal 'amused' intent of this simple little blog for a few moments and commend Sheldon Rampton's thought provoking update of Chomsky et al's work on media manipulation to you. Sheldon outlines the parlous state of media today and wonders if Web 2.0 will help. You'd hope so, wouldn't you?

In 1928, my old mate Edward Bernays wrote: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

Bernays also wrote: There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.

Given that they've had 80 years to get it right since Eddie Bernays first penned those increasingly famous words, you would be forgiven for wondering if the age of social networks, citizen journalism and all else that is Web 2.0 can survive the ministrations of the evil manipulators intact... the evidence is already starting to build that they're at the gates.

The PR Watch article is here if you would like to read it: http://www.prwatch.org/node/6068

Monday, 21 May 2007

Flipped off

7Days reported yesterday on the Brit who was pulled over by Dubai's Finest and given a dressing down. As the boys in green left him he flipped 'em the digit, an action which has resulted in his getting a month in jail to be followed by summary deportation.

I do not believe he wanted to do that.

We have, all of us, had moments out here when the desire to display a number of fingers has overwhelmed us. To be honest, it's a miracle there haven't been more chainsaw massacres, especially for anyone that deals with HSBC, SEWA, the bloke that goes round the back to collect the parcels at the Post Office, the gang of murderous-looking Bashi Bazouks that work for the satellite company we use and the large number of other functionaries, officials and dignitaries that exist to frustrate us in myriad new and wonderful ways as part of our progress through each new and sunny day.

Of course, everything comes in batches. So you can guarantee that the Saturday round of chores that starts with a truck driver trying to kill you then moves on to a lost parcel at the post office, segues into having to resubmit your tenancy contract six times until the sulky, greasy-haired dwarf from hell behind the counter finally nods wordlessley and condescends to take your money, moves on to a good punch-up with the security guard at the supermarket who wants to staple your bags and then tape up your pockets in case you turn out to be part of a gang of international Snickers bar thieves and finally results in being pulled over by a couple of coppers who seem to have an itch to scratch.

When this happens, as inevitably it will, then I can only give one piece of advice. Keep your hands in