A social twit

It’s happened. I am now the proud owner of the following internet property: 2x Blogs, 1x Facebook Account, 1 Twitter Account, 1x Pinterest Account, 1x Flikr Account and various other worthless sites. I am a member of forums that I didn’t know existed, and my email is now constantly filled with useless emails which I have no idea where I subscribed to them, and worse still, no idea how to unsubscribe from them. All this has only happened in the past 2 years so I must have obviously been signing up to all these needless things and now realise something has to happen. Either I spend all my life checking and updating all these accounts to get as much use out of them as I can or delete them, so where do I start. Well let’s break it down and weigh up the pros and cons of each one.

Facebook: Do I really want a facebook account should be the question? The answer is no but unfortunately, it’s not as straight forward as that. No I don’t use it to keep in touch with long lost friends on a daily basis, but I do play poker on it which I rather enjoy. I also enjoy checking up on what everyone else is doing although this has now become quite tedious. Status Updates fall along very simple lines. Check your facebook page and I guarantee you will find all of the following:

Johnny Roberts had way too much to drink last night and doesn’t remember a thing.

Jane Doe would like to know where that traffic cone came from.

Richard Balls is sitting down enjoying a nice wine and a good movie tonight.

.uʍop ǝpısdn sı uosɯɐıllıʍ ʇɹǝdnɹ

Anyway you kind of get the jist. It’s all nonsense. I don’t really care how messed up you got the night before or how may sleeps you have till you go on your 46th holiday of the year. It is like you are trying to shove in my face how much better your life is. I also can’t stand the constant barrage of adverts, links and useless information posted by other people because they think it is interesting. Watching a malnourished Filipino boy singing Michael Jackson is not interesting, get over it.

Although saying all that I think I will keep my Facebook page. Facebook is like a fridge, you can’t do without one. When you are bored at home you keep opening the fridge to have a look to see if anything’s changed. You do this every 5 minutes and the majority of the time, nothing has changed unless you have been to the shops. See the similarity with Facebook?

Twitter: I signed up for it, I don’t use it, and I don’t think I will ever use it, although I do have a number of followers although I am not sure who they are. Probably some people generated by the Twitter engine to make you feel loved. What could I possibly say in 140 characters that would be even mildly interesting? I understand if you are a celebrity and want to keep in touch with all of your fans, sorry will rephrase that. I understand if you are a PR agent for a celebrity looking to justify your job and have figured out you can keep in touch with all their fans. I am generalizing though here as a few figures do “Twiit” sporadically. So am I going to deactivate my account? Probably not, because I feel that at some point I might use it, which is absolute bollocks, so I am not going to get rid of that as well.

There are various other sites out there which I use and don’t know whether I should keep them. I am not an even remotely good photographer although have grand visions of me being so, so will keep my flikr account and my pinterest account as well, mainly so that I can perve on women in sexy stockings. Of all the forums that I am on, I am not entirely sure how to get off them so I guess I am stuck with them. And one day I will find the unsubscribe button on all the newsletters that get sent to my inbox.

So after all that moaning, I am not actually going to do anything which leads me to my conclusion. We are all addicted to the internet, even though our addiction isn’t going to kill us, we are addicted nonetheless. How many of you spend all day in front of a computer at work and then go home and spend the rest of your evening pressing refresh on Facebook. What did we do before all this happened? Well some people did jigsaw puzzles; others took copious amounts of drugs. I spent most of my life in a pub, I don’t anymore because I am too busy checking my Facebook, sending emails to people that don’t actually exist, and trying to figure out how to unsubscribe from the Young Russian Goats newsletter that gets sent to my inbox every morning at 0900.

The Past, Present and Future

This whole writing malarkey can get a bit messy sometimes hence the reason for my very sporadic posts but occasionally you do get shined upon by the inspiration cloud and a bolt of lighting thwacks (that is such a great word, must remember to use it more often) you in the brain. I was trawling around for something to write about as I had the urge to use my left hand to place pen to paper and let the ink flow, thats called using my poetic license, and stumbled across some of my much older works lying in a dust covered book. I am talking about stuff which was written a very long time ago, ok not that long ago but a good 10 years back. You can tell by the hand writing and the poor spelling that my future as a writer was never meant for great things. But, as the path normally flows, I had a brain fart about what my younger self would think of me and what my future self would think of me, that would make pretty interesting reading, well for me at least.

Picture the scene, all sat around in some coffee shop, very Friends-esque if you ask me, but nevertheless sitting around and having a conversation with Innocent Me, Not-So-Pre-Puberty Me, Me and to throw things a curve ball a way older me. How would the conversation go? I once wrote, a long time ago when I was feeling pretty hard done by, that life goes round in circles, or at least mine does. Would I have done anything different?, would my older self call me a prat for doing what I did?, would my younger self look at me with disgust or admiration and say ‘Yes! I am going to turn into him in a few years!’ or more likely ‘Oh Jesus! Give me strength to endure what is going to become of me!’. After a bit of consideration the present me, which is me (hang on wait, was I me? or him? or dammit  must go back and re-read the Time Travellers Wife for some tips on this), would probably dish out great and not so great advice to the younger me whilst telling the older me to stick his advice somewhere dark and sinister.

We are all told, and many great men use it as a phrase about the past being the present whilst being the future etc etc, you get my point, but in actual fact most of us are only really living in the now. Yes we do give advice to the younger generation, but how many of them actually take it onboard. Would you nowadays sit there and be lectured on what you have to do to get somewhere 15 years down the line, I know I wouldn’t. I’d nod my head and murmur in agreement in all the right places but most of the older’s drivel would go in one ear and come out the other.

We have to experiance stuff, we have to make our mistakes, we have to try different things otherwise we’d all end up being the same. In this day and age, there is too much going on for kids and adults, too much information telling them how to live their lives, choosing careers for them and generally making the path really easy. Life is not supposed to be easy, if it was it would be so damn tedious that suicide rates would probably rocket through the roof. I am not saying don’t listen, but you have to get out there, do it, make that monumental mistake where no one talks to you for the next 5 years, lose friends, betray and get betrayed because at the end of the day, and this is a humanist idea, it will make you a better person and give you the feeling that you have lived. You need your emotions to live, hope, hopelessness, despair, happiness, tears, joy, envy. Some of them are apparently sins, yes probably but don’t they make you feel alive, thats what makes us human, why subdue it?

So back onto point, would I like to be sitting in that coffee shop having that conversation with a number of me’s. Not really, because I dont think I would like what I hear from the older me and I don’t want to be the condescending bastard telling the younger me what to do and what not to do.

Live life and stop thinking about the future-you because to be honest with you, its quite dark and you might not like what you find when you get there and then you are fucked.

I leave you with a dark and sinister quote by Samuel Becket:

‘They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.’

 

 

One Blind Dog

So apparently I am going blind, alright not blind but I am losing my vision in my right eye. According to the Eye person that tested my eyes the other day, it seems I have something wrong inside. He asked me if I sometimes saw stars, I said only when someones hit me but yes I do sometimes see them and thought this was normal. Apparently not! Slightly concerned about this because A) It sounds like an expensive problem and B) I dont really want to lose my eye sight as there are a few things I would still like to see. Okay I may sound like I am being melodramatic and an A-Class Hypochondriac but seriously, its not a nice thought. No more late nights surfing the net looking for interesting porn, I mean articles on business etc. No more driving (although that could be a blessing in disguise!) and no more doing normal stuff that people with eyesight do. It really did make me wonder how it would be to be blind, and I can tell you right now I didnt like what I thought about. Therefore my hat goes off to all those who are visually impaired or blind and not breaking down all the time, because without eyesight a lot of things dissapear (and that was not a pun by the way!). So I am getting myself off to an eye specialist, if anyone knows a really good one in Dubai, please let me know because I really do want to see the Northern Lights and Carmen Electra’s eyes.

A Long Time Coming

So its been a while since I attempted to add some prose to this nonsense page of mine, but I never promised to be a regular blogger (I hate that word, makes you sound like a bird-watcher). Unfortunately the fingers of inspiration left me and decided to cast their gentle touch on John Grisham to right another diabolical story about love, betrayal, murder, lawyers and general no-plot airplane reading nonsense. If it wasnt for meeting a couple of people from my huge fanbase of 2, and them saying that they really enjoyed reading my blog,  then I dont think I would be sitting here right now writing pure unadultered drivel. Yes Grisham you heard me, your reign as a plotless, uninspired writer has ended (sick evil laughter commences!).

So whats been happening than and what has turned my eye in the past couple of months? Well for a start, apparently there is a global credit crunch on at the moment, unfortunately nobody invited me to that party as I don’t have any money, so therefore can’t lose it. But to be a little serious about it, these times are very telling times indeed and the future will be decided on how governments and especially one government (and no that government is not Nepal!) handles the issues at stake at the moment. The most worrying aspect for me has been how greed has been so much at the forefront of this, and greed is infectious. Everybody wants a piece of the pie, unfortunately the pie is only so big and can feed only so many mouths, so therefore you make pretend pies (like little girls used to do in the garden with pretend tea parties) and feed them to people who have no morals and like eating plastic and dont keep the receipts for the friends that they buy. After a while though, some more realistic people want to eat pie as well, and are offered pretend pie, but this doesnt sit well with them, so obviously they get a little upset and start doing stupid things like selling stocks and handing out huge loans and bonuses, which of course the financial sewage system cant handle. After a little while, the pipe bursts somewhere down the line and the whole system loses pressure and it all collapses from little Jose who is cleaning toilets in a Petrol station somewhere in the middle of Beaver Crack nowhere to the Big Kahunas who sit on their lofty thrones in the higher echelons of Avalon. Low and behold we have a Global Credit Crunch. Well thats my take on it anyway. The biggest worry now is that countries will start to think about economic nationalism, and this has already happened with the bill that has just been passed in America. For those that arent to sure what this is, it is where countries look inward to their own economies and try to protect their interests but generating trade within thier own borders rather than stimulating global trade. If country A is not buying products from country B, than country B is not going to buy supplies from Country C who in turn is not going to buy products from Country A (A very simplified version) and therefore people are going to lose jobs, growth is going to be stifled, and we are going to end up in a whole lot of trouble. This is now depressing me so I will continue this during another post!

I am at the boat show this year, which again is a 5 day extravaganza of boredom, excess, and the theory that sex sells (although I am not sure about the old granny with no teeth on one of the stands, horses for courses I suppose). There are some nice boats, but the majority are floating eyesores. How these companies are still doing business is beyond me, but I guess average Joe is sold on the brochure, which is photo-shopped to hell and back, and doesnt take the time to look at the product he is throwing his money into (if he has any after the credit crunch, that is!). If you want to come down and meet the author of this fabulous post and buy him a beer and get an autograph with a free key chain, I am moping around on the Mina Seyahi stand in the the second tent until the 7th (See I didnt need the recent litreture festival anyway, got my own promo going on!)

Finally, something I found quite amusing on the ole tinternet the other day which made me giggle was this long version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Indian Desi Style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmdAF4ihedM.

And one of my all time favorites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYEYbmgp0bY

So long now and thanks for all the fish.

 

Jumeirah Sewage Problem

Dubai has an image which it needs to maintain in order for it to continue to prosper in the world’s eye and amongst the people that visit and live here. I would just like to know how this image is affected by the fact that there is a sewage pipe in Jumeirah 2, next to Dubai Offshore Sailing Club and the public beach which is pumping out raw sewage. It is so bad that the color of the water in the harbor and next to the entrance of the harbor is a stagnant brown, yet nothing has been done about it. The only other places that I have seen something like this are in third world countries, is that something Dubai wishes to aspire to?, I think not! As a UAE National, I recognize how much the sea has had to play in our lives, and yet we treat it with utter disdain and lack of respect. Children swim in this sea and yet we are pumping biohazards into the same sea in which they swim in. This is an extremely serious matter and should be taken as such by the Dubai Municipality, Giardiasis, Amoebic dysentery, Cholera, Liver and Kidney Damage can all be attributed to sewage water. This is not to mention the marine life that is found, caught and eaten by people in the area, wouldn’t this make you realize that this is a very serious problem. I urge you to go down to the said harbor and beach and take a look for yourself and then pressure the necessary authorities to take serious action. If this means patrolling sewage dumping areas, where illegal dumping is occurring, 24 hours a day, then so be it. Isn’t prevention better than cure? I urge the Dubai Municipality and all concerned authorities to take immediate action and realize that this is a very serious problem which could affect the image of Dubai and its community. Please take action before people start getting ill, or worse a life is lost!

Emirati’s Discover Hooliganism

A couple of weeks ago, during a match with North Korea, in which the sub-standard UAE Soccer team lost 2-1, the UAE fans pelted the pitch, North Korean players and refs with water bottles, watches and whatever they could lay their hands on. The UAE team than lost to Saudi Arabia, effectively forcing Bruno Metsu to walk out of the job. His comments were quite cutting, saying that the team lacked any identity, physical presense or concentration, and were basically just rubbish. The whole point of this rant is that soccer is our national sport, why and how? Shouldn’t you be good at your national sport. For too many years, too much emphasis has been placed upon soccer here in the UAE to the detriment of other sports. Take my sport, Sailing, I had an Olympic campaign funded by a club with no recognition whatsoever from the National Olympic Committe, but if they had actually got their act together earlier, the sport of sailing could have thrived. Shooting is another one. This all boils down to the fact that country’s should adopt a National Sport in which they are good at (although quite where this leaves England in the grand scheme of things is beyond me!). If UAE footballers were really keen to improve and than they would seek employment in stonger leagues, unfortunately they are to busy being molly-coddled by their federation, clubs and mothers and have not got the balls (Notice how I used that word with regards to an article about football ay, pretty clever huh?!?!) to travel abroad. As for the fans, instead of using water bottles and watches, maybe take a leaf out of the Polish, German, Turkish, Millwall, Portsmouth or any thug related teams book and use sharper objects (just in case someone takes my words to literally, I am not held responsible for the actions of those that have read my blog and used my ideas to harm others in sporting events!).

As for my sporting career, I have given up my favorite sports and taken up lawn bowls and am applying to the Government to allow me to open up a club. What a great game, you play, you sit and have a drink, and than play some more. Awesome, an afternoon of excercise whilst getting mashed and not having to get wet on a boat. If you are interested in joining I will be posting an application form so you can let me know what you like drinking and what colour balls you like (Theres that pun again, snigger snigger!!!!).

All for now but a new post is already forming somewhere in my drafts page if I could ever find it again. Bloody WordPress!!!

Shades of Gray

Here is something I have been working on for a while. I have only posted the prologue and the 1st chapter but would like to get some thoughts about the general idea if you lot have any.

Shades of Gray:

Prologue

Lying here in my own pool of blood, not in my wildest imagination could I ever dream that it would come to this. It has been fifteen years since I began my quest and where have I ended up? Watching my life slipping away with every crimson droplet, the only thanks I have for myself is that I have preserved my story in letters and words. I am not one to regret anything that I have done and along my journey to discover, I have unearthed secrets, possibilities and notions which should never have glossed my eyes. Some might say that these stories are best left untold, but how can I hide the truth from the throng of people meandering through life without even trying to show them that there is something even more unique and special out there. If I left it as it was and took this secret with me to my grave, than my life would have been for naught.

Reality as we know it is only reality to us, there are other realms which are completely unknown to us because we learn to shut them out. We do not allow ourselves to broaden our minds to the possibility that there could be other dimensions and beings out there. Beings which are not normal in our world, dimensions of our mind and world which scare us and make us doubt our own selves. This is a story for the brave and fearless, those that have the courage to go on when a weaker individual would halt and go back from whence he came. Knowledge is gained by those determined and resilient enough to go after it without a hint of doubt in their mind that this is what they want to find. I would have liked to have believed that I was one of these people. I have been called foolish by many, and maybe they might have been right. I was told by people with more insight to this than I that I should desist and get back to a normal life. I did not listen, and look where I have ended up. I have lost friends, money, and something which cannot ever be bought, my life.

A word of caution for the chary though that if you do stumble across this chronicle. Heed my counsel. You will have your eyes opened to ideas, philosophical stimulants and concepts so unfathomable that you’re life and you’re personality will be changed forever. This story will make you jumpy and jittery at the slightest hint of unexplained noise. I urge you to only read on if you are certain that you can cope with knowing a more defined piece of the unknown than what you think you are ready for. I will also make one more final warning, if you take this too seriously and try to delve in to what I am about to explain further than what I already have, you may end up like me. Dead and quite possibly a shade of gray!

Chapter 1

As a child, I was always fascinated by the gentle shades which effortlessly changed before my eyes. These shades seemed to linger like early morning mist being swept around by a mild breeze. As I grew older, the shades seemed to melt into the background of nothingness and become part of the landscape, invisible unless looked for intently. I had no understanding of what I was seeing, and as my brain was trained to join in a rat race and focus on other avenues of thought, I saw less and less of my shades. We live in a world which thrusts us into conformity, and makes us believe in only what we understand, what we don’t comprehend is dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders and cries of absurdity. I was always curious as to why I, as a young child could see these shades, but my parents and siblings could not. Every time I asked my mother what the shades were, she would reply ‘Stop talking nonsense and do your homework!’ I slowly began to believe that daydreaming and seeing things was a bad idea and wouldn’t help me in the future. As I grew older, eventually I stopped seeing shades, or was it because I stopped looking.

I meandered through school and then high school without a second thought about what I saw as a child. But life and the workings of the universe have a funny way of triggering your mind into remembering a vague thought or experience that has been stored away deep in the recesses of your memory. Some people call this déjà vu, I am not so certain. I was round visiting a friend at his house, when his daughter came running in to the living room where we were sitting screaming ‘the white woman is in the bathroom again!’ I questioned my friend about this after he had calmed his daughter down and told me that she had been seeing things for quite some time. He had placed it down to a child’s imagination, I believed him, sort of, but something was nagging at the back of my mind. It only occurred to me when I got home that evening that as a child I had similar experiences, what if there was a possibility that she was seeing shades as well?

Humans are scared of what they don’t understand, that is a fact. If we look at the world today, this fact is proven time and time again. What makes better humans is that they have this ability to try to understand, only ignorant or arrogant people choose not to. Being slightly immodest I would have to say that I had neither of these traits, so I started to delve into the matter of shades. In our age today, information is widely available through the power of the internet. A lot of the data that is there though is either inaccurate or incomplete, but if you have a feeling about what you are looking for, you can usually get through the majority of the detritus. So I began the long and arduous journey of sifting through documents, reading material and browsing through websites to see what I can find based on my personnel experiences. What I found not only surprised me but also scared me. This did not deter me though and I took this adventure to other venues around the world. I was determined not be scared as I wanted to try to understand and not fall into the category of the majority of the world’s population.

The end for now. Might post a few chapters later on.

An Olympic Month

Well after a rest from blogging, well earned I might add, I am going to get back on the train. I have had a hectic few weeks, yes unemployment is extremely hectic. Do I eat now or later? What clothes should I wear today? When did I last have a shower? And of course the most important question when unemployed ‘What time should I go to sleep and what time should I wake up?’ Needless to say it does get a bit chaotic, and I have seemed to have turned night into day. But there has been plenty of sport for me watch which is always a good thing.

First of all England – South Africa Test Cricket: Yes England have been awful until they decided to get rid of Vaughan and now seem to have understood that to play test cricket, you have to be patient. The problem with England teams in general is that they are afriad to win. There is actually a proven study about teams and individuals being scared to win, just look at the England football side. The only team I seem to know that isn’t is the GBR Sailing team, which leads me onto the next point.

The Olympics are here and I am fed up of watching all the different sports with Arabic commentary. They dont actually have a clue about what they are talking about. But nevermind, Womens Beach Volleyball, now there’s a sport.

The Olympic Motto is ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ which means swifter, faster and stronger. In this day and age of professional sportspeople, records get broken at an astonishing rate. You cannot really compare this day and age with previous Olympics as the values and ideals have changed quite dramatically. Instead of being a celebration of sporting acheivements, it has become a circus showing off the talents of altered bodies running faster, jumping higher and punching stronger than ever before. The reason for this is that there is so much money involved. Cities vie for the honour of hosting the Olympics as it is a great way to earn money and show the world how rich and big they now are. The majority of athletes compete in them because it will be a step up for their career and their advertising takings. I just have to point out Andy Murray, who couldn’t even be bothered playing some decent tennis and eventually lost to someone ranked 77th (not to take that away from the guy, but you know what I mean). Shouldn’t it be an honour to represent your country in the Olympics, rather than just turn up and wave a little and get a free holiday.

As quoted from the Olympic Congress:

‘One of the fundamental principles of Olympism is that Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of leading by example and a respect for fundamental universal ethical principles. The Olympic Movement should evaluate whether the Olympic Games still help to promote the Olympic ideals and whether the Olympic values continue to contribute to the success of the Olympic Games.’

Would you agree with this?

And than we look at the sports. Well my two nominations for worst Olympic sports would have to be Synchronised Swimming and Racewalking. How Synchronised swimming is a sport is beyond me! Swifter, faster and stronger. Hmmmm how does Synchronised Swimming embrace these? Racewalking on the other hand could have a case, but the fact remains. It just looks gay! There are plenty of sports to watch though from my favorite, Womens Beach Volleyball (Yes I am a misogynist prick!), Track and Field, to the Cycling. Just remember when watching in Dubai, to press mute or turn the volume down. I also hear that Nintendo Wii Users are also campaigning to get a spot in the Olympics in London.

Whilst we are in China, I would like to mention the Giant Panda. This beautiful animal is nearly extinct. It is the mascot for the WWF (Not wrestling!) and is generally just a cuddly thing. But no wonder it is almost extinct, its only habitat is up a mountain where its bamboo grows, it doesnt leave in the winter months due to not being able to eat any other foods. And Bamboo is so unnutritional that it doesnt really do anything for the Panda, to the extent that it cant actually hibernate like other bears during the winter months. I am not being harsh, but no wonder it is nearly extinct, it hasnt really evolved that well has it?

Until next time, Zai Jian!!

P.s: Thanks TimeOut Dubai this week in your Olympic Article for missing out Adel Khalid representing the UAE in sailing, well done for the time you took to actually research your article. Get it right next time!!!

Pure Drivel!

Before I continue with this post I would like to get one thing off my chest, if you are reading this expecting some meaningful insight, stop now! This post has nothing very important to say, probably something to do with the fact that Captain Morgan has taken the ship for a wee sail and I have something to get off my chest.

I like writing, I like ranting, I like ranting through my writing. The fact that I have quite a few hits through my blog mean that some of you like reading my writing about ranting (and occasionally my ranting about writing!). So let’s have a rant!

A LETTER COMPOSED TO THE OBNOXIOUS PERSON I MET IN IRISH VILLAGE THIS FRIDAY.

Dear Muppet.

I have met many people like you who come to the UAE to make their millions only to fall at the first hurdle because their attitude got in the way, God only knows how you managed to stay here for five years. The only reason that I know you have been here for five years is because you had the audacity to tell me, quite rudely I might add, that you had. Well done! I would like to point out that you riled me slightly and therefore saw my darker side, please don’t do that again, you might not be so lucky a second time round. What really shocked me was that your freinds actually put up with your ignorant AND arrogant behaviour. You had been told once by the waitress to behave yourself, yet you thought that because you had been here for five years you could continue to act like a yobbo. I will state a simple fact for you, people (and I dont just mean locals, but good expats as well) will not put up with your behaviour for much longer. If you feel the need to try to prove that your are bigger than what you are, than you are but a mere boy. Go back to school, learn some manners and remember what your mother taught you before acting like a spoilt little runt.

The end.

I feel better for getting that onto paper.

I would have liked to have sent this in to 7days to start a war of words, but I than thought whats the point. He probably can’t read, and if he could his response would have been quite boring.

Somewhere deep down, I have a real intolerance for people that dont have any respect, culture, manners and are ignorance personified. I know that I shouldn’t be annoyed by these people, but unfortunately I am. I also have this terrible knack for not being able to hold my tongue and letting these people know exactly how I feel. At some point in my life, I will learn how to breathe and hold my tongue, but at the moment, no holds barred.

It is always good to have freinds with you at this point, freinds, whom no matter what stick by your side. They come far and few between, and they are to be cherished because life is too short not to have people like that around you. I have been lucky in that respect and I know that I dont have to mention any names (you know who you are!). The rest of the detritus can float on by, but the people that you want by your side will always be by your side.

I leave you with a quote:

“When you are gone, nobody remembers what car you drove, how big your bank balance was or how big a house you lived in. What they do remember is whether you changed their lives or not.”

MTV Culture

I am always highly amused when I go out to some club or a dance venue and check out these local guys or others dressed up as wannabe gangsters. Why the hell do you need to wear a towel round your neck or have a comb stuck in your afro. The last time I checked, you cant really comb an afro. And that is not to mention the way-too dodgy dress sense, i.e Cap sideuppy, real dodgy shirts and baggy trousers which give the rest of us a full view of either their arse crack or their undies. Please, leave that for real gangstars. I also don’t understand the whole thing of synchronised dancing between blokes. I personally like dancing with the opposite sex, so maybe they are homosexual. I guess I’ll never know. What I do know is that MTV has a lot to answer for!

I think part of the problem is, most prominently amongst the young Emiratis, is that they have a cultural identity crisis. They were brought up in an age where the UAE changed so fast and exposed them to ‘western values’ through movies, MTV and books, but there was no real system in place to deal with this. The youngsters growing up through the 90’s didn’t really know how to connect with their own culture and weren’t really accepted by the expats. So seemingly to fit in, they started adopting what they saw on TV or through the hollywood culture. Although this is only really prominent here in Dubai, as the other Emirates seem to have retained their culture. Abu Dhabi, especially, has been keen to establish local culture in their society without losing too much to westernization.

Dubai needs to think carefully about what it wants to portray to its local citizens for once, rather than catering to tourists and expats. I know that the counter argument is that Dubai is doing this for its citizens, but really is it? The minority harvest the most whilst the majority struggle to understand what it is all for. Salik, Arabian Ranches, Palm Islands, mass development catered for foreign investors. Yes, some locals have benefited, but not all, and lets be fair there isn’t very many of them. Where is the culture?, how many of you that live here have seen local culture other than the driving skills along Sheikh Zayed Road? And to be fair there is not that many places to go to experiance this, and please dont say Madinat Jumeirah because that is just an absolute shambolic tourist trap.

There is a lot of culture out there such as local fishing and pearl diving traditions, dhow sailing and racing, spices and gold, Emirati cuisine, the desert, the mountains, the majlis and the diwan. Hatta and the history of the place, the local tribe and bedouin names for places. The local names for fish (and all I hear you say is hammour!), the fort and history. How many of you know why and how the Dubai flag (yes there is a Dubai flag and it is not the UAE flag!) came to be? The locals need to be proactive here and show the visitors to their country about their culture, history and traditions. There is no point adopting another culture because you don’t know how to fit in, be proud of what the UAE and Dubai have done, embrace it by all means, but it is vitally important to make sure that you dont lose your past.

Some quotes for food for thought from the late HH Skeikh Zayed:

“A nation without a past is a nation without a present or future.”

“We should preserve our heritage because it is our origin and base, and we have to embrace our origins.”

“The understanding of heritage enlightens one’s judgment and illuminates one’s life”

“Our people should not forget their past and how their ancestors used to live and on what they relied on in their lives. The more they come to feel and know more about their heritage, the more they are interested in their country and willing to defend it.”