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Gulf News web editor Adam Flinter plunges headlong into the blogosphere to find out what bloggers from the Middle East and beyond have on their minds.
Pick of the week: Earth hour
Next Saturday, anyone can make a difference by following a few simple steps:
- Sign up to Earth Hour by visiting www.earthhour.org and commit to turning off your lights on March 29 from 8pm to 9pm. We will send you all the information you need to make Earth Hour happen at home and at work (and to cut your energy bills in the long term). It's free to take part.
- Take appliances off standby. Unplug any appliances — mobile phone charger, TV, microwave, MP3 player, computer monitor, printer — that are not being used and are on standby. Appliances left on standby account for up to 10 per cent of the average household's electricity use.
- Spread the word about Earth Hour and involve your friends, family and workmates. Get them to make the commitment at www.earthhour.org to turn off their lights at 8pm on Saturday, March 29, 2008.
- Organisations who are willing to take part can also register their company and receive a free corporate communication pack with suggestions on how to get their employees involved.
http://dxbsunshine.blogspot.com/
Join us
Dubai has joined the many cities around the world that will turn off lights at 8pm on March 29.
A step in the right direction as Dubai and the UAE have come under criticism in the last few years and especially in the last few months with it being reported that UAE hotels use more than double the energy per guest than European hotels.
UAE landscape architect is supporting Earth Hour and will be switching the lights (and computers) off on March 29. Why not join us in turning the lights out.
http://www.uaelandscape
architect.com/
Customer care
Ah that's better, we're back to normal. The good service I posted about a couple of days ago was just a blip in the normal standard of customer care and service. Today Gulf News brings us the story of bugs in beans. A tourist was disgusted to find live bugs crawling in a sealed packet of beans... he returned the packet, which was crawling with around 100 live bugs. That's when he found out about true Dubai-style customer care. After reporting the infestation to the manufacturer's customer helpline, he was outraged when told that it was a good thing.
"I rang the number to complain and they told me it was a good thing that bugs were eating the beans, because it meant the food was tasty."
Yep, that's the normal arrangement. We pay the money, the company decides whether to give us anything in return, what it is, when they'll give it to us and what condition it's in. Resistance is futile.
http://dubaithoughts.blogspot.com/
Stone me!
Dubai's most thrilling legal saga rocks on, with the billion-dirham bulletproof onyx now on trial in the Court of Appeal. The stone's owner is willing to take a bullet to prove his magic pebble is effective.
"I am willing to prove to the world that it's a bulletproof onyx stone... I am ready to face a death sentence if that's what will take me to prove that the stone is doubtlessly bulletproof... I didn't con anybody's money, but the police tricked me and filed a malicious case against me," the 52-year-old Yemeni dealer, Q.M., told the Dubai Appeals Court on Monday. Meanwhile his defence lawyer hopes that modern science can prove the rock's miraculous nature. Any test-tube waggling white-bearded boffins out there willing to take up this challenging experiment? Sadly Wikipedia, the usual source of all necessary human knowledge, isn't much help in this instance.
http://secretdubai.blogspot.com/
Wadi Wurayya
The last several weekends we have been further exploring one of the Fujairah areas, Wadi Wurayya. I covered the first section of this wadi in a previous post. This is one the few areas that has running water year round, and has pools and cascades that you can swim in. The water also has small fish, frogs, dragonflies and other denizens. The route into the wadi is rough and rocky but after several kilometres it is worth the trip.
http://adventuresinsandland.blogspot.com/
I spy
Do you use: Flickr? Facebook? MySpace? Amazon? Buzznet? imeem? iLike? Flixter? Picasa? Windows Live Spaces? Hi5? Pandora? Digg? PictureTrail? Multiply? Twitter? Stumbleupon? Friendster? etc.? I have just discovered a way to basically spy on everyone you know online. How, O' Wise and Paranoid Tololy, you ask? Just join Spokeo and it will tell you exactly what everyone you know is doing online by tracking their activities across tens of social networking sites.
The site's name is eerily similar to SPOOKY, and for good reason. I have just joined, because you know how I am, like, paranoid and so I am attracted to paranoia-related things, and Spokeo has made me ultra-paranoid but also more careful. You'll only find me on Flickr because I am anti-Facebook and Co. for security and privacy reasons, obviously. Just remember, you are being watched and you don't even know it. Chew on that when you socialise online and always be careful. Nobody likes to get punked.
http://www.tololy.com/2008/03/19/i-spy/
The worst ever?
A columnist in the Toronto Star considered the question of whether George W. Bush is the worst president in history. He attributed Bush's ineptitude to "a neural disconnect in his brain that at crucial moments causes him to be divorced from the constraints of rational thought."
The result is that Bush "seems to be observing events from another dimension."
Bush may compare in terms of domestic disarray to Grant's post-Civil War reign or Nixon's corrupt bumblings and warmongering, but none have had such a destructive global impact. He wrote that although America's historians will debate this question, the rest of the world knows the answer. Amen to that.
http://www.kabobfest.com/
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