I got rain!

I know other parts of the country have had rain but I haven't seen any since last winter some time.

Today I saw some. A short shower, nothing more. A few damp spots on the ground.



By the time I got the photo uploaded and on here, not more than ten minutes, the ground was dry again. Not enough to wash the sand and dust away I'm afraid but it's cloudy and dark so maybe we'll get more...

A stay indoors day

There's a seven star icon somewhere in this pic:



Gloomy, dusty, sandy, horrible:



And not for the first time in weather like this I was puzzled to see several joggers out, sucking in large amounts of dust and sand. Their health would be better served if they cancelled the jogging on days like this.

And talking about the weather, it's not good back home either. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting:

NSW is bracing itself for extreme weather conditions today, with a total fire ban in place for much of the state, and a catastrophic fire warning declared in the Central West.

A top of 40 degrees has been forecast for Sydney's west, with similar temperatures predicted in northern NSW and the Central West.

The Rural Fire Service said that, apart from the hot weather, westerly winds of up to 50km/h were expected to trouble firefighters.

"We've got some quite dangerous fire weather moving through the state," RFS spokesman Ben Shephard said."

Extreme fire warnings are in place for several areas including Greater Sydney with other large areas having Catastrophic fire warnings in place.

Currently, over 100 fires are burning in NSW with 35 'uncontained'.

A different view

Back in February I posted about the changing view from apartments in Dubai Marina. Far from the views buyers expected when they bought off-plan.

The original plans for the Marina, and the city in general, are changed so often that this isn't unusual.

There've been many changes to the original master plan for Dubai Marina and as a result people paying a premium for views often ended up with something very different or even no view.

A big change for some buyers was the introduction of the Metro. For example, the station at JLT was built with its pedestrian bridge across Sheikh Zayed Road to Dubai Marina. Very convenient it will be too, when the station is opened.

I'm not sure the buyers of these apartments will be happy with the convenience though. On the plan they would have seen there was nothing between them and Jumeirah Lake Towers. A nice open space with not a bad view.

Not now:

Preserve, renovate, rebuild?

The other day I took the Metro into Bur Dubai and then had to go across into Deira, so naturally I walked down to the Creek and took the abra across.

The walk took me through Bastakiya, the original part of Dubai that's being 'preserved' by the Municipality.

I'd been in Old Town at Burj Dubai the day before and as I walked through Bastakiya I was comparing the two areas in my mind, and remembering what the old parts of town had been like when I was first here in 1977.

I always carry a little pocket digital camera with me, so I'd taken some photographs in Old Town and I took more in Bastakiya.

I've been rummaging through the few 'old Dubai' shots I have with me - the majority are in store back in Oz - and I'll start with a couple of those, taken in 1978.

Looking across from Deira, it used to be like this:



In both Bur Dubai and Deira there were still plenty of the old buildings, complete with their windtowers, barjeel in Arabic. They were a kind of air-conditioning system, long before electricity was available. They caught the breeze and directed it down into the house.



Narrow alleyways and sand rather than paved footpaths, easy to walk on though because it had been trodden down so hard over the years.



The buildings were basically mud walled, reinforced with lumps of coral. Some of that has been preserved in the renovated Bastakiya, but only in small patches:



Some of the restoration work looks almost authentic:

But a lot of it doesn't. It's all too neat and tidy, there's far too much very obvious concrete, the footpaths are very modern, even in the narrow alleyway sections:

And a lot of it looks, well, modern:



In a strange way the brand new Old Town at Burj Dubai almost feels more authentically old than Bastakiya:

I wonder what the Bastakiya 'preservation' thinking is.

The old buildings presumably couldn't be renovated and preserved, they weren't bult of material that would lend itself to that. But I think it's a shame that the final finish on the buildings, the veneer, doesn't look older, doesn't look more like the original buildings. The modern paved walkways could have been much more like the original alleyways too.

Having said that, it's still an area well worth a visit. There are plenty of interesting little art galleries, museums, restaurants for example, all housed in the recreated buildings. In that sense the Municipality has done a great job, it's a fascinating area to spend time exploring.

The real problem

"It's not the problem that's the problem, it's how you handle the problem that's the problem."

An old truism, which I've been preaching to colleagues and clients for as long as I can remember. I believe it's one of the most important rules in business.

An example. I worked for a hotel group and was in a restaurant of one of our hotels when a waiter slipped and tipped a drink over a customer.

The manageress immediately hurried over with a clean, dry cloth and gave it to the customer. She apologised, said his meal would be on the house, asked him to drop the suit off at Reception, it would be dry-cleaned at no cost and returned the next day.

In a few seconds a possible problem was replaced by a positive outcome. The customer would only remember the drink spilling in the context of how well the hotel had handled the incident. A plus for the brand.

The most important thing you have in business is the brand.

It's hard work to build the brand image and its positioning, to instil a good feeling about it in the mind of users and potential users.

But to damage or destroy it is the easiest thing in the world.

There's a fairly recent absolute classic of how quickly a brand can be destroyed, which gave rise to the phrase 'Doing a Ratner'.

Gerald Ratner was CEO of a successful family chain of discount jewellers in the UK. Discounted but believed to be good value for money. A good brand image.

Then he made a speech to the Institute of Directors, which was picked up by the media.

He said the brand's products could be sold at low prices because 'it's total crap' and he went on to say that some items were 'cheaper than a Marks & Spencer prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long'.

Damage to the brand? The share value fell by about half a billion pounds Sterling, the company almost collapsed. Share price had been at a high of 400 pence went as low as 9.5 pence, sales plummeted, investor dividends disappeared.

Gerald Ratner went but the damage was done. He'd been in charge for 25 years but destroyed it all in a few minutes.

I relate these stories because we currently have two examples of damage to a previously strong brand running in the media.

Very different stories but the difference demonstrates the truth of the saying and that it applies to any brand, whatever the business.

The subjects of course are Tiger Woods Brand and Brand Dubai.

Tiger Woods Brand is worth a huge amount of money, a large amount of its value based on a perception of perfection, unrealistic but that's what people tend to do.

After the row with Mrs Woods and subsequent minor car prang the damage to the brand began.

He hired a criminal attorney, refused to talk to the police and made no public statement.

The rumour mill went into overdrive, in the mainstream media and the blogosphere, and those actions added to the rumours. I haven't heard any jokes but I'm sure there must be hundreds.

He stayed silent for several days, and by the time he eventually made a statement the damage was already done.

The problem was the way the problem was handled.

Dubai World, although a very different story, is a similar example of the real problem being the way the problem was handled, which has resulted in damage to the brand.

I've already posted about the mishandling.

Brand Dubai has been built for decades on the basis of being a great business centre, perfectly located and commercially astute. A city with a long and succesful commercial history, a place where it was safe to do business, where the business people really knew how to run successful companies. Brand Dubai meant successful, safe investing.

As a result of the mishandling of Dubai World's debt restructuring and how it was announced we're now seeing things like this said in the world's media about Dubai:

"Dubai default...Dubai debt meltdown...Dubai financial crisis...bloodbath...risked triggering the biggest sovereign default since Argentina...city is now so swamped in debt that it's asking for a six-month reprieve...shock announcement that a debt-laden Dubai state corporation was unable to meet its interest bill...Dubai cast adrift as credibility crumbles...Dubai's financial health is under scrutiny"

OK, it was inaccurate, it was unnecessary blind panic, it was a misunderstanding of the status of Dubai World, it was lack of knowledge of how much debt was the subject of the announcement, of how much it was relative to the amount of debt in the world. But those reactions were caused by the mishandling of the situation in Dubai. Had the old saying been remembered the fallout would have been very different and without damage to Brand Dubai


If you are a potential investor, publicity like that will make you pause and rethink. If you are a financial institution you'll look much more carefully at Dubai companies requesting loans or offering bonds. There are plenty of other places around the world competing for your investment and loans.

However successful you are, however well you've built your brand, however long it's taken to build it to where it is today, make a mistake in handling a problem and you can damage it instantly. It can take years to regain the reputation and it can even end up as permanent damage.

National Day 38

Back in the late seventies I never heard the word Emirati, I'm not even sure it existed. People identified themselves as from Dubai or Sharjah or Abu Dhabi. The UAE was a fact but people still identified with their emirate first.

The flags flying in Dubai were the emirate's red and white, as in this shot I took of dhows on the Creek in 1978, rather than the national flag:



How things have changed.

Last evening at The Walk at Jumeirah Beach Residence there was plenty of evidence that people now identify with the country.

Car after car was decorated:



Even the cartoon characters' carers had patriotic safety jackets on:




There were plenty of abayas and shaylas with red, green and white decoration and more than a few of the kids were wearing the kind of clothing I'd seen in Satwa the week before:



I think it's an interesting and dramatic change in a relatively short period.

Removing abandoned cars

On my regular route through Dubai Marina I pass four obviously abandoned cars.

Dust on cars is normal of course and when people are on holiday for a month it starts to really build up. But the abandoned ones are obvious because the dust is really thick and graffiti starts to appear in it.

They just stay where they are, the authorities seem not to be active in this area removing them, like the BMW I posted about here.

Things may be improving though:

Here's the sticker on the windscreen:

Apart from the fact that's it's the first infringement notice I've seen in this area, the department involved caught my attention.

Not the police, as I'd assumed it would be, but the Waste Management Department.

They're on the ball on this one too, it can't have been left too long ago. The only fine, for Salik, is on July 16.