Slower, cabbie! I’m in no hurry, so why are you?

These are three incidents I’ve witnessed when I have been in, or close to, a taxi this year so far. I’m going to tell them in the order of dramatic ascendancy.
Story Number 1:
It’s Tuesday night, it’s almost midnight and I’m driving down the highway at the maximum legal speed – just below 120km/hour – in the fast lane. A taxi appears behind me but I pay little attention to it. A minute later I realise that it’s closing in on me and has left not much more than a metre between us.
I don’t know about you, but that makes me nervous. I slow down a little to make him back up but the taxi driver gets even more frustrated and starts flashing me continuously with his high beam light. I’m shocked and I think to myself:
“This is the first time I’ve been flashed by a cab.” There is something just not right about being flashed by a cab when you are driving at the maximum legal speed on the highway. Meanwhile, the cabbie is getting really annoyed with my lack of response and switches two lanes down, passes me quickly and gets back onto his coveted fast lane and speeds away. I take note of his number and later report him.

Story Number 2:
I hail a cab with a couple of friends and sit in the front seat. I put on my seat belt and notice that the driver has not actually buckled his seat belt but just placed it across his lap. I ask him why he won’t put it on properly and he says that it’s only for the police and there are no police in this area at this time. I told him it’s for his safety and he chuckles at me like I’m a novice passenger at a drag race. Three minutes later, we are speeding through a red light that he tried to catch on yellow and failed. Needless to say, we were flashed.

Story Number 3:
Again, I hail a cab with a couple of friends and I sit in the front seat. So far so good, and he’s driving really well until another taxi overtakes him aggressively on a neighbourhood road. But now this is no longer a neighbourhood road, this is Talladega Nights. The driver speeds up but is unable to overtake on the one-lane road we are on. Does he give up the chase? Oh no, he overtakes the other taxi in the middle of a roundabout and almost crashes into a tree. We tell him to stop the cab and get out. I take a good look at the number and report him.

This kind of behaviour is really dangerous but it is also sad. I am sure that the companies that bring these men over here test their ability to drive – in the end they do hold UAE driving licences – but do they test their ability to drive well? Do they make sure that they understand – and follow – road etiquette? Do they ensure that they obey the driving rules and regulations set by the police and transport authorities? I doubt that they do.

These stories are not unique to me; many of you reading this now will be remembering your own bad experiences. Indeed, many of us don’t take cabs any more because they are just not safe. We should be able to take cabs and feel safe in them; it is a prerequisite for any type of transport.
One can only imagine how many tourists must have had similarly bad experiences while visiting the UAE. And yes, this issue does extend beyond a bad cab journey or two; this is about a basic expectation in a civil society. These drivers are breaking the law day in and day out.
The business model of the taxi service in the UAE is flawed; cab drivers work very long hours and must take as many fares as possible to earn a living. This is one of the main reasons why they are so hostile on the road, which in turn makes the roads dangerous – a vicious cycle with emphasis on the “vicious”. It may be wise to take another look at the policies and regulations governing cab drivers.
But we are all to blame: the passengers for the times we did not report bad driving; the companies that hired the drivers for not spending time and money on training them properly, and also for not following up on complaints made by passengers; the police for not applying tougher fines on drivers committing offences such as driving through red lights, excessive speeding, erratic driving, switching lanes, etc. The police are also to blame for not requiring cab drivers to take more specific tests and checking that they do drive well, not just drive.
In London, cab drivers must take a very exacting series of tests to get a taxi driving licence. One of the most difficult aspects – and often the decisive factor – is what is referred to as “The Knowledge”.
That simply means knowing all the roads and principal buildings in central London. I wonder how many of our cab drivers have anything close to The Knowledge? We should institute a similar kind of test here. The amount of times you get into a cab, tell the driver the name of a multibillion dirham monument and still get a blank look are endless. This is unacceptable.

The mecca of Arab culture is shifting south

Not too long ago, the greatest Arab thinkers and artists came from and resided in the Levant and north Africa. To Arabs today some names are instantly recognisable, such as Gibran Khalil Gibran, May Ziadé, Taha Hussein, Amin al Rihani, Mohammed Mahdi al Jawahri, Nizar Qabbani, Rose al Youssef, et al. These were the shining lights of Arab intellectualism. They inspired music and movies, books and broadsheets, poems and paintings, and countless sleepless nights of passion. Today, the Arab world is witnessing a migration of Arab creative minds from these very countries to the relative calm and tranquillity of the Arabian peninsula. The warm Gulf waters and the peaceful desert nations are now attracting more than just tourists and American troops.
The Mediterranean Arabs are assisting their brethren in the Gulf in forging their very own renaissance. Most Egyptian and Syrian television series are financed by Gulf money, and many of them are now filmed here. Following in the footsteps of the all-national Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra that started in 1985, Doha introduced its 80-member strong Qatar Symphony Orchestra to the world, and although it is being led by the Iraqi Dr Salem Abdul Kareem, it will only be a matter of time before the younger generation of Qataris is inspired by these musicians, as is the case with its sister Gulf state.
This year alone witnesses the opening of two Islamic museums, one in Doha and the other in Sharjah. Incidentally, it was the relatively poor emirate of Sharjah that Unesco chose to honour as the very first Arab Cultural Capital in 1998, before Cairo, Beirut or Damascus, the traditional citadels of Arab intellectualism. Dubai, the city of merchants, has launched several cultural initiatives including the redevelopment of its historic old Creek, with the promise of an opera house, the Prophet Mohammed Museum and several other initiatives on the way.
Abu Dhabi, by far the most ambitious of all the Gulf states, has already hosted such world class exhibitions as the priceless David Khalili collection of Islamic art as well as a Pablo Picasso exhibition that would feel as at home in the Tate Modern as it does in Gallery One of the Emirates Palace. These are small steps that will lead to realising the grand vision of hosting a Louvre, a Guggenheim and several other museums and cultural centres on Saadiyat Island.
The Gulf cultural festivals are slowly becoming fixtures in international events calendars; both Dubai and Abu Dhabi host world class film and jazz festivals, for example. Doha and Bahrain host world class cultural celebrations. Even Kuwait, which has as yet neglected to restore the National Museum that was looted during the 1990 invasion, boasts a Museum of Modern Art as well as several private collections that are open to the public.
It seems that the deficiencies of the Arab republics extend beyond issues of governance to maintaining the cultural treasures they have. More important than the pyramids, mosques, synagogues and churches that adorn their lands, the cultural treasures that are irreplaceable are human minds. Today, Arab minds from across the region have migrated to the Gulf. Many Lebanese work in the peace of Dubai Media City and play their music in the concert halls of Abu Dhabi; Syrians sing in the cultural festivals of Bahrain and Qatar; Egyptians act in Kuwait, and Palestinians not only survive but flourish in all sectors in Saudi Arabia.
It’s true that many of these smart Arabs send money back to their countries, but the vital assets that remain here are their skills and talents. Such skills could have been transferred down to a younger generation living in their own countries. Instead, their expertise is being taught to natives and residents of the Gulf. Today, Naseer Chamma, Asala Nasri, Azmi Bshara and Marwan Rahbani have decided to make the Gulf countries their homes and bases. Others such as Adonis and Mahmoud Darwish have an easier time visiting Abu Dhabi and Doha than Beirut and Algiers.
The mecca of Arab culture is indeed slowly shifting south-east away from the Mediterranean basin. What have the Gulf monarchies offered these individuals? Democracy is scarce and political representation is in short supply. What could be bringing them in a constant stream of emigration? It’s not just the money. Libya and Algeria are vastly wealthier than Bahrain and Oman, and yet who has ever heard of a Bahraini going to work in Benghazi, or an Omani working in Oran? The undemocratic, for better or for worse, royal families of the Gulf offer a simple magic ingredient: some desperately needed peace and tranquillity.
It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do for some people. Sultan Al Qassemi is a Sharjah-based businessman and graduate of the American University of Paris. He is founder of Barjeel Securities in Dubai and has recently been elected as Chairman of the Young Arab Leaders in the UAE

The Malays: Their Problems and Future

(Report below from MALAYSIAKINI)

I have not read this book authored by Dr Syed Husin Ali but I agree with Anwar that Malays need to break out of their "neo-feudal" syndrome which is being used as a means of patronage and control by an elite few.

The mindset, which was drilled since colonial times, gave rise to an inferiority complex that had prevented the Malays from advancing with the rest of society.

"What Malays require is not a unique form of affirmative action to help them. What they need are opportunities and space to move forward together as a great Malaysian family. What we require is support, so that genuine Malay talent and creativity can flourish."

Malays at 'defining moment' of history

Terence Netto | Jun 15, 08 5:26pm

PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim said Malays were at a "defining moment" of history that demanded they "disenthrall" themselves from the colonial discourse that portrayed them as dependent on patronage to survive. MCPX Anwar said neo-colonial elements such as Malay-based ruling party Umno promoted this dependence syndrome as an instrument of "political control". "It's time this myth of dependence is exploded," said Anwar in remarks made at the launch yesterday of the book The Malays: Their Problems and Future by Dr Syed Husin Ali, the deputy president of PKR. The book was first written and published in the late 1970s when Syed Husin was detained under the Internal Security Act following his involvement in mass protests over the impact of depressed rubber prices on the livelihood of smallholders in Baling, Kedah Those protests led to the detention without trial in December 1974 of university academics like Syed Husin, as well as student activists and youth leaders including Anwar Ibrahim. The Malays: Their Problems and Future has been updated in a revised edition that was launched by Anwar in Petaling Jaya before an audience of some 400 people, composed of PKR supporters, members of parliament and state assemblies from the opposition Pakatan Rakyat, ex-Universiti Malaya students of Syed Husin, retired academics, and other close friends of the author. Anwar, whom Syed Husin tutored at the University Malaya in the late 1960s, said he saw Syed Husin's book in the same vein as The Myth of the Lazy Native by the late Dr Syed Hussein Alatas, which attempted to refute the colonial discourse that "brown humanity" was indolent and largely dependent on patrons for economic upliftment. The talent and creativity of the Malays will flourish when the myths of their dependence are exploded," said Anwar referring to the eclectic survey of colonial writers on the conditions of the Malays such as Frank Swettenham, Hugh Clifford and Richard Winstedt. Instead he welcomed the counter discourse by academics such as Edward Said, Alatas and Syed Husin. Dr M fails to break away from colonial discourse Anwar equated Dr Mahathir Mohamad's The Malay Dilemma and Revolusi Mental, an Umno inspired tract circulated after the May 1969 riots to rationalise affirmative action for the Malays, with the colonial discourse that held Malays to be dependent on patrons for their economic advancement. He said both Revolusi Mental and Mahathir's book were the works of "surrogates and subalterns" of the colonial mindset. Anwar lauded Syed Husin's "strong passion" and "consistency" all these years in espousing the cause of Malay upliftment from poverty. He said he saw Syed Husin's book when it was first published as a significant departure, much like Alatas' opus, from the conventional wisdom on Malay dependency. The PKR leader also described his party's Malaysian Economic Agenda as the antidote for this mentality that will not only liberate the Malays, and the non-Muslim bumiputeras of Sabah and Sarawak, but also the Chinese and Indians, from the outdated thinking that has warped the nation.

Beza antara Malaysia, Singapura dan UAE

Minggu lepas ada perbincangan mengenai beda kekayaan antara Malaysia, Singapura dan UAE dalam Malaysian-UAE yahoogroup.

Seorang ahli yang juga ekspatriat muda di UAE, Afza, membuat analisa berikut:-

1. Malaysia ada tin, petroleum, timber, copper, iron ore, natural gas, bauxite (from CIA site)

UAE cuma ada petroleum and natural gas (dari CIA site)

Singapura ada fish & deepwater ports sahaja? (Dari CIA site)

2. Tanah di Malaysia sangat subur, tabur saja benih, tumbuh laa pokok.

Di UAE hanyalah padang pasir, nak tanam dan maintain rumput seluruh UAE kena belanja berjuta2 setiap bulan. Kawasan kecil yang subur di Hatta dan Al Ain, penuh di tanam sayuran.

Di Singapura ada tanah lagi ke? Oh ye, Pulau Batu Putih. Di masa depan, mungkin Iskandar Region pun mungkin akan masuk ke tribunal.

Teringat cerita bapa mertua yang membawa delegasi dari Korea berjalan2 di Malaysia. Mereka kagum dengan tanah di Malaysia yang sangat subur. Tetapi lebih terkejut melihat banyak kawasan semak samun, dipenuhi lalang. Di Korea, susah mencari tanah yang subur, kawasan kecil di celah2 batu pun ditanam sayur.

3. Di Malaysia jumlah rakyat yang di tahap sederhana, cukup ideal untuk menjana ekonomi. Peluang pekerjaan sepatutnya cukup untuk dipenuhi rakyat tempatan, tak perlu ramai expatriates, so kurang lah duit yang "keluar" dari Malaysia. Tetapi sekarang, untuk mencari rezeki yang lebih, semakin ramai rakyat Malaysia yang bekerja di luar negara sebagai expatriates, yang menghantar duit balik ke Malaysia.

Di UAE, rakyat UAE cuma 19% dari total population. Peluang kerja terlalu banyak,
tidak mampu dipenuhi rakyat tempatan. Dengan jumlah expatriates yang tinggi, duit dihantar balik ke negara asal, dalam jumlah yang sangat tinggi.
Ditambah dengan subsidi dan privilege untuk rakyat tempatan (e.g. business ownership, equity, free housing scheme), peratus rakyat tempatan yang bekerja juga sangat rendah. Tapi rakyat tak pernah malu dengan subsidi dan bantuan kerajaan, tapi sangat berbangga dengan pemimpin yang menjaga kepentingan rakyat tempatan.

Di Singapura, populasi yang kecil, tapi kepadatan yang tinggi. Kelebihan kerajaan menggunakan "intelligence" dan kepakaran berdasarkan merit terbukti sangat efektif.

4. Di Malaysia, banyak projek mega, berbillion2. Banyak yang terlebih kos. Gaji pekerja rendah, material locally made banyak, nak jimat lagi boleh beli "Made in China". Tetapi kadang2 sedih, duit yang dibelanjakan tidak sepadan dengan hasilnya. Tidak kurang juga duit yang hilang entah ke mana. Pengalaman audit 5 tahun di salah sebuah syarikat construction terbesar di Malaysia, sungguh rumit mencari sebab2 "cost overrun".

Di UAE, banyak juga projek mega. Kos tinggi. Gaji pekerja sangat tinggi, harga material yang sangat tinggi (imported, owner normally will avoid "Made in China" products). Tapi hasilnya, cukup berbaloi.

Di Singapura, kepentingan diletakkan kepada pembangunan infrastruktur yang world class. Tidak perlu bermegah2 dengan bangunan tertinggi, tidak perlu jambatan cantik untuk ditatapi, Tambak Johor sudah memadai.

5. Di Malaysia, sektor perkilangan sangat besar, dari sektor ringan hinggalah berat. di satu masa dulu sebaris dengan "Asian Tigers". Tetapi sekarang, semakin hilang taringnya.

Di UAE, sektor perkilangan hanyalah sektor yang ringan dan di dalam skala yang rendah. Kos yang tinggi, tapi stabiliti dari segi ekonomi, politik dan struktur yang terbaik di Middle East terus menarik investors di UAE.

Di Singapura, walaupun kurang tanah, tetap menjadi salah satu pengeluar terbesar consumer electronics dan information technology products.

6. Malaysia dikelilingi lautan, pinggir laut yang dalam dan tenang merupakan faktor yang sangat baik untuk pelabuhan. Ditambah dengan kedudukan Malaysia, perairan Malaysia di tengah2 jalan penting gergasi ekonomi dunia.

Tetapi pelabuhan Singapura tetap jauh di depan. Terlalu banyak sebab, terutama tentang kecekapan dan kelebihan pengurusan pelabuhan Singapura.

Di UAE, kapal2 perlu "divert" dari Indian Ocean, melalui liku2 Persian Gulf untuk sampai ke pelabuhan Jebel Ali. Tetapi, sekali lagi disebabkan banyak faktor2 positif yang dah diceritakan di atas, UAE tetap menjadi "hub" untuk seluruh Middle East.

Don’t take the life and lights out of Abu Dhabi

It is hard to believe a neon sign could have me so transfixed, but it does, the one hanging above the Light Corner store at Muroor and Al Falah streets.

On one side, two players kick a ball between them on an endless arc. On the corner, a monkey plays a set of drums. Beside him, a bird flaps his wings. I cannot make out the last vignette, but it appears to have something to do with a horse’s head.

I could stare at this scene for many minutes. It is a bizarre and hilarious landmark, lit to the hilt. When I pass by it at night, it always makes me smile.

But under a new Government initiative to beautify the city, I imagine this sign’s days – not to mention countless others – are numbered.

Abu Dhabi is attempting to improve on much that has happened here in the last 30 years through its City Management Office (CIM), pegging London and Singapore as worthy benchmarks. While the office is expected to come out with a complete list next year, it has already released a streamlined version featuring 109 offences.

Some of the CIM’s initiatives make absolute sense: livestock should not be raised and killed within city limits. Medical waste should be disposed of safely. Littering, spitting and urinating in public – not called for. But in a region which has been criticised for its outsize carbon footprint, what sense does it make to levy fines for hanging laundry out to dry just because of how it looks?

And if municipal planners have their way, local shopkeepers will have to tear down their colourful neon signs and replace them with something more pleasing to the eye.

Estimates suggest three years from now, 70 per cent of the city’s signs will be gone.

No more monkey? No more horse’s head? Not to mention the extravaganzas announcing Mister Baker Celebration Cakes, or the Lebanese Flower, or countless others that jazz up the city at night?

It calls to mind the expatriate drivers of the capital’s newer silver taxis: unlike some of their counterparts in the gold and white versions, they sport beards which are neatly trimmed, wear neat uniforms replacing their traditional dress and sit in car interiors void of flamboyant personal touches and decorations.

The result is pleasant. And dull.

One can only imagine how Abu Dhabi will look when the CIM’s work is done. I can’t help but worry that it might not appear entirely real, especially if aesthetics normally left up to individual proprietors are so micromanaged.

My fear is that the great minds mapping out the city’s future will spend so much time planning the way the capital is going to be, they will wallpaper over what it has become. The aim is to beautify; the effect could be to make it soulless.

Sure, London and Singapore are world standards. So are Paris, New York and Montreal. But all these cities – and other great hubs in the world – have one major thing in common with Abu Dhabi as it is right now, and that is peculiarities that make them their own.

Tourists flock to Times Square in New York City because it is a festival of garish neon. In Delhi, cars veer to avoid hitting cows as they placidly make their way across traffic-choked roundabouts in the downtown core. And in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, the Homeless Poet lives on a street corner in a high-tourist area, scruffy and unwashed, quietly offering his thoughtful writing on pieces of cardboard for handouts from passersby.

These are the things, though hardly beautiful, that make one both smile and remember a place. They are the ways a person learns about a culture, they are what one writes home about.

There is no harm in wanting to burnish an image; world commerce would probably grind to a halt if people stopped caring about how they appear to others. And Abu Dhabi most definitely needs a master plan to cope with growth.

But all one has to do is think of an over-airbrushed celebrity photograph, or the unlined face of a woman who has had a little too much plastic surgery, to get that a few blights and irregularities are necessary, even in a world where we have the means to eliminate them almost entirely.

A trip to any modern shopping mall in the world proves that, while the shops may be uniform, the aesthetics beyond reproach, they will never tell us very much about the people inside. It was Desmond Morris, the British artist and author, who said: “The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.”

Just like a neon sign, a city should be lit from within. It should have character. These are things Abu Dhabi has achieved, even in its very short history. And that is something no government department can plan for.

Belonging somewhere

A young student living in the UAE recently presented me with a quandary. Her parents were born in the US, she was born and raised for some time in Brazil. Then her father uprooted the family again and they have lived in three different countries, before coming to Dubai.
Where do I belong, she asked me.
I knew immediately that this would be an extremely difficult question to answer.
When I said, "Home is where the heart is", I also knew instinctively my glib answer would prompt her to question me further. And she did.
"I don’t feel American", she said. "I speak the lingo and follow the trends because of television and my parents, but when I am there I don’t belong.
"My best years were spent in Brazil", she added, "but because I was sent to an international school and English was spoken at home I did not speak Portuguese and I did not belong. And now in Dubai, communicating in English is really easy, but I still don’t belong."
Her lament got me thinking. Now that the world has become multi-layered because of immigration and globalisation, are we all going to be faced with a similar quandary just like this beautiful well-spoken young woman who knows a lot about a lot of things, but does not know where she belongs?
I certainly don’t have a definitive answer, but I do know that a sense of belonging enriches us humans as much as water enriches the earth.
So how does one really know one belongs? What’s most important – your birthplace, your ethnicity, your language, your religion, your education, your career?
Looking for answers I came upon the website of Britain’s Social Issues Research Centre (www.sirc.org/publik/belonging). There’s a whole 46-page study there and it’s a must-read if you too wonder about your sense of belonging.
Immigration has impacted almost every country in the world. While many celebrate the ethnically diverse family, there are many who don’t. Some have woven diversity into a rich tapestry and some have not. Some have used inclusion to create a sense of belonging and others have remained exclusive.
That’s the way the world turns – sometimes we have to accept that we don’t belong.

The number of the East

By the end of this year, the UAE will be home to two institutions which will both be hoping to become globally significant. Noor Islamic Bank launched in January with ambitions to become the world's largest Shariah compliant bank, while Abu Dhabi's Al Hilal Bank will launch with a slightly larger capital base. Both of these financial institutions will be looking to achieve most of their growth outside the domestic market - with around 50 banks in operation, the UAE is not quite over-banked, but there is little room for the kind of growth these giants want.

Instead, they will be looking to expand in other regions with a large Muslim population, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and parts of Europe and Africa. The trend is not limited to pure-play Islamic banks: Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and National Bank of Abu Dhabi, two of the UAE's largest lenders, have both expressed intentions to look East for future growth. ADCB has acquired a 25% stake in RHB Capital, Malaysia's fourth largest bank, which will provide it a foothold as it seeks to build its presence in the country. Asia seems particularly receptive to Middle East banks, since it is experiencing a similar rate of growth to the Gulf and Islamic finance has a proven success rate there. Of course, the ultimate prize is China, which is poised to overtake the US as the world's largest economy. The market is still far from open, but Western institutions have made attempts to enter - HSBC has a joint venture with Bank of Communications, and Bank of America recently raised its stake in China Construction Bank. If banks in the Middle East have serious intentions of becoming more than just regional players, they need to have a strategy to harness growth in the Far East. The opportunities are too great to be ignored.On a personal note, this hack will also be heading East, but will continue to monitor developments in the Middle East banking market with interest.

Banks in the UAE suffer image problem

Banking institutions are facing a perception dilemma with about 75 per cent of UAE consumers thinking all banks in the country offer the same services. David Bennett, head of brand strategy at Emirates NBD, citing a study by AC Nielsen, a New York City-headquartered global marketing research firm, said that this is alarming as people can no longer distinguish which perform better. He said one of the reasons is the "not yet matured" strategy of branding and advertising firms in the region but added that the situation is not unique in the GCC as it is also the same scenario in other emerging markets. "Branding a bank is a bit difficult as people would not necessarily come to a bank if they have other means to secure their finances. But if we can make people feel good when they go to the bank, then that's excellent branding," he told the recent Branding in Banking and Finance Forum. And in an exclusive interview with Emirates Business, Bennett said another challenge in the region is the fact that the banking sector is largely fragmented, with more than 50 players in the market. "The market is not yet in its matured stage and it has a long way to go. The standard of advertising leaves a lot to be desired. "The market here is very product driven and there is a great need to become more customer-focused," Bennett said. "There is also a big difference between bank selling and customer buying. There has been very few organisations in this region that have managed to put their brands close enough to the consumers to the extent of having an emotional link to their customers. There are very few consumers that do business with a bank because it feels good to do business with it," he added. In addition to poor branding strategies, the customer's lack of trust in the bank is also placing a big hurdle in the way of banks' productivity growth. According to research carried out by technology firm Unisys, three-quarters of people do not trust their bank. The report has revealed that many people are unhappy with the levels of service that they are offered. While one of the major issues creating a lack of trust has been the high penalty charges that have been levied by banks on credit cards and overdrafts, the research also shows a more general feeling of a lack of confidence in banks. In a local survey conducted in the last quarter of last year, Dubai residents have complained banks in the emirate are inefficient and out of date, with customer services failing to hit the mark at both local and international establishments. A cross-section of customers interviewed revealed dissatisfaction with lack of staff knowledge, misinformation, time taken to complete transactions and lack of accessible branches. Black marks were also given for the lack of real-time transactions and hidden service costs. The lack of trust has led to lower loyalty levels. "Loyalty" nowadays has become product-driven as seen in the proliferation of loyalty cards instead of cultivating deep emotional and relation-based loyalty.According to Nielsen's global report on Banking Services and Loyalty, 68 per cent claim to be very or slightly loyal to their main bank, with 59 per cent of Canadians the most loyal of all, followed by over half of Czechs, Danes and the French. Least loyal to their banks by a long way are the Japanese, with 29 per cent claiming not to have any loyalty to their bank, compared to a global average of six per cent. Nearly 10 per cent of Australian banking customers are unhappy enough with their bank's products and services to consider switching within the next 12 months, while a further 30 per cent said they had experienced service difficulties, of which only half were resolved satisfactorily. The report also found that of those respondents who had experienced service difficulties with their bank, close to 20 per cent indicated that they would switch in the next six months. Moreover, overall satisfaction scores amongst these respondents dropped from the average of 64 per cent to just 39 per cent as of last year. The survey, which covered 46 markets from Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, North America, also found out that despite the increasing use of internet banking, there is still a high rate of customers visiting the branches. A global average of 14 per cent claim never to visit a branch, and one third claim to visit less than once a month. However, whether online or physical transaction, customers are still demanding high quality services. One way for financial institutions to begin rebuilding confidence and regaining the trust of their customers is to demonstrate that they are capable of providing a safe place for people to put their money, where it will not fall victim to identity fraud scams, Unisys said. "To do this, banks need to ensure that they have a high level of identity authentication standards so as to make it more difficult for fraudsters to obtain access to consumers' bank accounts," it added. According to Pier Massa, founder and managing partner of Canada-based M-2 Business Frameworks, banks first of all need to establish a very strong trust relationship with their clients if they want to be successful. "Banks are unique because the services they deliver generally do not have a tangible physical product so it is more related to trust. "Just like in health care, the clients' or patients' trust in the doctor or in the hospital is deeply needed," he said. Massa added that the banking sector in the region is relatively new to the idea of branding. "So most of the strategies here are very reactive," he said. "Almost all of the banks in this area are competing with one another on offers. Honestly, I haven't seen anything that has struck me as yet." But branding should not be mistaken as only a mere marketing gimmick. He said branding is the summation of all businesses operations, which if run altogether as planned, will increase customers' trust. And improving employees' behavior should be on the top list, he said, adding that to improve their performance, the employees needs should be the first to be catered to. "Employees' satisfaction has a direct correlation to customers' satisfaction and ultimately in the profitability of a company or an organisation. This is critical," he said. "Whatever promise we have for our consumers, we have to over-deliver to our employees. If we promise respect to our customers then we cannot treat our employees with anything but respect because what we do to them is what they will ultimately do to our clients." A number of studies have documented that a bank's performance and the customers loyalty towards it have been dependent on how its staff behaves. According to a US banking sector study by Parkington and Buxton, 68 per cent of customers leave because of poor employee attitude while another study by MCA Brand Ambassador Benchmark noted that 41 per cent of customers are loyal because of a good employee attitude. A study by Ken Irons, similarly stated that 70 per cent of customer brand perception is determined by experiences with people. To establish loyalty, the CEOs should be the leaders of the brand and not anyone else, Aubrey Ghose, AIS Brandlab founder and chief executive, said. "If somebody is selling his business, he is not selling the individual asset, he is selling the brand," he said. "So investing in branding is really important, and the key thing here is that branding isn't one thing that you can spend it on, branding is how your HR behave, how well your communications and marketing performed, how is your IT strategy, you know, branding is all of that. "It's not just one thing that you can spend money and say lets' spend on branding. Branding is about changing the culture of the business, and driving it forward in a way that it makes a difference to people's lives," he said. Massa added: "Companies need to be educated that the value of branding is in the hands of the executive team. This is something that the marketers are not good at. 71% consider mobile unsafe The mobile phone is practically universal, with more than 3.3 billion subscribers worldwide, yet 71 per cent of all consumers surveyed in a number of countries do not consider using a mobile device to bank or shop online, a new study has found. The study by Unisys Corporation conducted with the latest installment of the Unisys Security Index, also reveals that more than half of all respondents (59 per cent) do not trust their mobile devices to provide a secure transaction. Moreover, only nine per cent currently use these devices to conduct transactions involving credit-card payments, money transfers and deposits. Unisys surveyed 13,296 consumers worldwide in March 2008 about their mobile-device habits and how secure they feel when conducting online transactions. The results indicate a widespread apprehension about the security of mobile devices and their ability to protect pertinent information relayed in a financial transaction. Other key findings of the survey include:- The consumers most reluctant to use a mobile device to bank or shop online were in France (86 per cent), UK (79 per cent), Australia (78 per cent), Belgium and Italy (both at 77 per cent) and the United States (71 per cent).- Twenty one per cent of German respondents currently use a mobile phone or personal organiser to conduct financial transactions, representing the highest percentage of any country or region included in the survey. United Kingdom respondents have the lowest percentage of consumers using mobile devices to bank or shop (one per cent). - At least half of all respondents in each country or region – with the exception of New Zealand (45 per cent) and Malaysia (49 per cent) – do not trust their mobile devices to provide a secure transaction. - Most consumers generally perceive banks as having the best security for mobile transactions when compared to telecom providers and online retailers. However, trust of banks vary greatly from country to country. For example, Italian respondents are twice as likely (72 per cent) to trust a bank to secure an online transaction via a mobile device as respondents in Malaysia (38 per cent). Tim Kelleher, vice president of enterprise security at Unisys said: "Despite unprecedented growth in the number of cell phone users and the advancement of mobile technologies, telecom providers, online retailers, and financial institutions seem unable to convince consumers worldwide that a secure platform exists for conducting online mobile transactions. "There is a great deal of money to be made in mobile payments, but only when consumers believe that the security of the transaction meets or exceeds the freedom of using mobile devices."

Bridge under construction collapses on Shaikh Zayed Road

By Ashfaq Ahmed, Chief Reporter
Published: June 17, 2008, 23:53

Dubai: Five workers were injured after part of an under construction bridge on the First Interchange on Shaikh Zayed Road collapsed on Monday night.
A police official said they rescued five injured people from the construction site after it dispatched teams to the site at 1.30am.
The accident has raised concerns about the quality of work and safety issues at the construction sites as it was the second bridge collapse incident in the last eight months.Seven workers were killed when an under construction bridge collapsed in Dubai Marina in November last year.
Since the accident happened near the under construction Dubai Metro line, many believed it was a metro viaduct bridge that collapsed.
"There is no damage to the metro line," an official at the Dubai Metro confirmed.
A spokesperson of the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) said in a statement that three workers, who were working on the bridge sustained minor injuries, while two others sustained moderate injuries.
The collapsed bridge was being constructed to connect Shaikh Zayed Road with Doha Street and was part of the new First Interchange (Defence roundabout).
More than 50 metres of the bridge ccrashed after the pillar and the scaffolding collapsed.
The RTA official said that the Dh618 million contract was awarded to an Italian company to build a three-tier interchange. The construction on the project started early last year.
Miscalculation
A police official said teams from Dubai Police as well as from Dubai Civil Defence participated in the rescue operation.
The official said the rescue teams scanned the area to make sure nobody was buried under the rubble. He said the supervisor also said that none of the workers were missing.
"The accident happened due to miscalculations on the part of the contractor as a result the pillar and the scaffolding could not take the load of the bridge and it collapsed," said the RTA statement. It also said that the damage was just five metres and it did not block the traffic because it was far away from the main road.
The RTA official said an investigation into the accident has already been started.
With inputs from Alia Al Theeb, Staff Reporter

MALAYSIAKINI : No One Is Indispensible Including Pak LAh

In Malaysiakini and the rest of media, Sapp MPs to move no-confidence vote to Pak Lah is hot news. No-confidence call a serious blow to Pak Lah in whatever spins by his media cohorts or the Motion may not see the light of day.

Well, of course BN partners come to PM's support during this historical moment when such unprecedented no-confidence vote to be motioned to our current PM. Pak Lah has made his own record of such beside other blunders during his premiership tenure.

This article reminds me of the day I was sacked by TV3 for no apparent reasons and would like to share with Pak Lah that no one is indispensable. I learned that lesson in hard way and appreciated that there was always blessing in disguise. Otherwise, I would not be writing from Dubai.

He may not read that much or understand what he reads or can concentrate during any meeting or function without falling asleep, but he is surely aware that his days are numbered by the seconds and he is indispensible alright.

Pak Lah was seen as clean (even by Dr M's standard) and humble, if not warak. Those superficial and cosmetic images have long gone and erased with his poor performances. With or without KPIs, he can be sacked and humiliated in Dewan Rakyat, sooner the better for our nation's sake.

Quote : Some of those dead people thought that they were so important that life could not continue without their contribution! But life continues whether they are around or not. They are in the graveyard now and the cycle of life continues.

No matter how talented or competent a person is, he or she is not indispensable. They can always be replaced by someone who is more adept at what they do. The humble, however, do not feel threatened by this. They know and understand that the advancements of any institution were brought about by people who were not afraid to accept and apply ideas that were better than their own. Unquote

Learning the humble lesson that one is never indispensable

When I was still studying to obtain my doctoral degree in the UK, I once took a walk in the countryside with my professor, Dr Martin O'Kane. While we were walking, I told him that my employer needed me because I was the only person in my country who could be considered an expert in my field of specialisation. Simply put, I said I was the only person who could do my type of work in the UAE.
Dr O'Kane then asked me, "Do you know the graveyard?"
"Yes," I replied.
"It's the place where people are buried after their death."
Dr O'Kane commented, "Some of those dead people thought that they were so important that life could not continue without their contribution! But life continues whether they are around or not. They are in the graveyard now and the cycle of life continues."
He continued, "You should never say that you are so important that work cannot go on without you. Work will always carry on in all circumstances whether you are there or not."
Looking back, I now realise the value of what Dr O'Kane was trying to tell me, and that conversation means a lot to me now. Humility apparently has no place in today's society. The current popular image of a successful individual usually consists of a person with a cocky swagger, a rebel who "breaks the rules" and expects to be on top from doing so. In addition, humility nowadays is often associated with weakness, submissiveness and fear. But in sharp contrast to this connotation, humility is in fact an indication of courage, strength and real confidence.
Even history's greatest thinkers and leaders put a premium on humility. Referring to arrogance, Mikhail Naimy, a Lebanese poet and philosopher said, "A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small mind." Abul Tayyeb al Mutanabi, the renowned Iraqi poet, said, "What kills me is to see someone who is nothing pretending to be something!"Unfortunately, humility seems to be incompatible with today's culture, which places so much emphasis on wealth, power and influence. Arrogance is now mistaken for self-acceptance, self-love and high self-esteem. Humility, on the other hand, has been dismissed as low self-esteem, "putting one's self down", timidity and "becoming a wallflower." In order to make themselves look good, people are expected to project their abilities and actions as achievements that are bigger than they really are.
While there is nothing wrong with feeling good about one's self, humility is necessary for a person to have a realistic view of who he or she really is. A humble person is honest with himself or herself. They honestly acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, a humble person is not afraid to receive criticisms because he or she does not view himself or herself as a perfect person, but as someone who is still capable of changing and improving.
However, there is a big difference between humility and false modesty. Humility is the absence of pride. False modesty, meanwhile, is the downplaying of the recognition one receives for an achievement in the hope of getting more praise from others.

Humble people likewise avoid name- or experience-dropping. Those who engage in these practices try to boost their self-importance by constantly associating themselves with famous individuals and/or boasting of their achievements. But in truth, they just end up being arrogant and annoying. Humble people, on the other hand, are secure of themselves - they believe that they can get the interest of others without continuously promoting themselves through others or their accomplishments. Furthermore, humble people are also aware that others are just as important and as interesting as they are.

Unlike the humble, the arrogant ones want their charitable acts to be known by everyone. They make these a frequent topic of conversation, constantly reminding others of their acts of generosity towards them and even posting pictures of their good deeds on Facebook or MySpace. Their actions make it very obvious that they perform charitable acts only to acquire praise from other people and to stoke their egos in the process. Humble people, in sharp contrast, are not self-seeking. They keep their good deeds to themselves because they do these solely for the benefit of others.
Indeed, Dr O'Kane was right. No matter how talented or competent a person is, he or she is not indispensable. They can always be replaced by someone who is more adept at what they do. The humble, however, do not feel threatened by this. They know and understand that the advancements of any institution were brought about by people who were not afraid to accept and apply ideas that were better than their own.

Dr Salem Humaid is an Emirati writer and researcher in cultural and anthropological studies based in Dubai

Pelaburan Hartanah di Ajman

Seperti yang dimaklumi, pembangunan hartanah yang pesat di UAE sudah menjadi berita di mana-mana. Ramai sudah menjadi jutawan dengan pelaburan yang terus meningkat kerana permintaan tinggi.

Maka, sesiapa yang berminat untuk membuat pelaburan atau membeli hartanah di UAE, pihak pemaju Crescent Towers (berita di bawah) menawarkan penjualan dengan harga sebelum pelancaran kepada warga Malaysia. Ini bermakna dihari pelancaran, mereka yang sudah menempah unit boleh menjual untuk premium (purata 15%). Sebanyak 10 menara akan di dirikan dan 3 menara pertama telah 80% dibeli.

Tuanpunya syarikat tersebut dan pengendali projek akan menemui mereka (warga Malaysia) yang berminat sebaik selepas acara majlis keputeraan DYMM Yang Dipertuan Agung, Jumaat ini di Matrade Dubai. Ini untuk memberi peluang jika ada pertanyaan lanjut secara langsung dengan tuanpunya syarikat dan pengendali projek tersebut.

Untuk tujuan itu, sila hantar emel kepada saya, fudzail@gmail.com untuk mengetahui jumlah mereka yang berminat dan penyediaan brosur serta maklumat lain oleh pemaju. Presentation boleh dibuat di bangunan berhampiran Matrade.

Sekali lagi, tawaran istimewa ini khas buat rakyat Malaysia di mana sahaja mereka berada......dan sekiranya anda berada di luar UAE, tawaran ini juga sah.

REBUTLAH PELUANG EMAS INI UNTUK PELABURAN!

Penting :
A new property law has been issued in Ajman, which is expected to take the property sector in Ajman to further heights.The Member of Supreme
Council and Ruler of Ajman, H.H. Shaikh Humaid Bin Rashid al Nuaimi, issued Amiri Decree No.7 and 8, 2008, to regulate the land and property sector in the emirate last week.
The prices in Ajman's property sector have climbed up from Dh.350 per square foot to Dh.500 per square foot over the past six months. Billions of dollars are being invested in the property sector of the emirate, and the growing housing sector in Ajman has drawn considerable interest from the investors.

Crescent Towers launch set to raise the bar in Ajman's real estate landscape
Crescent Towers, a luxurious residential project by Al Jabal Holdings, has officially been launched.

The project, located in Ajman's Marmooka City, comprises of three residential 18 storey towers designed by Adnan Saffarini Engineering Consultants- one of the oldest and most distinguished architectural firms in the UAE. The Crescent Towers is Al Jabal Real Estate's debut development, which today promises to be one of the best investment opportunities in the booming UAE real estate market. Due for completion in October 2011, each floor will have nine spacious apartments ranging from studios to one bedroom, two bedrooms, and three bedrooms.
Set in the rapidly developing city of Ajman, on the 12 lane Emirates Road highway connecting Ajman to Dubai, the Crescent Towers is a short distance from one of the most unique coastlines in the UAE, with the crystalline waters of the Arabian Sea. The government of Ajman envisions the city as an international tourist destination & business hub. Within Ajman, Marmooka City in particular has captivated the attention of home seekers due to its unique master plan and amenities. 'We have chosen Marmooka City as the location for Crescent Towers due to its ambitious design and fantastic location, a mere 25 minutes from Dubai,' says Saeed Ali Currimjee, Managing Director of Al Jabal Real Estate. He further adds, 'Marmooka City is developing its own city within a city with shopping malls, schools, mosques, lush gardens at very affordable prices, which perhaps is the most lucrative investment potential in the real estate market today.' The architectural design of Crescent Towers is awarded to Adnan Saffarini Eng. Consultants famous for designing Princess Tower at the Dubai Marina among many other projects they have undertaken. For The Crescent Towers, Adnan Saffarini Eng. Consultants have chosen to blend traditional and contemporary designs with tasteful soft earthy colors to produce a highly appealing façade. Being the master designer for Marmooka City as well, Adnan Safarini Eng. Consultants have a great feel for the surrounding area. 'The apartments will make the best use of natural light, reflecting Crescent Towers' environmentally friendly approach to providing a green living environment. Residents will have access to several world class features, including a temperature-controlled rooftop pool, state of the art gym and ample covered parking,' explains Ahmad Saffarini CEO of Adnan Saffarini Eng. Consultants. The Crescent Towers will certainly be one of the most admired developments in the Marmooka City offering spacious, tranquil and refined living.

Credit Crisis Made Simple

Rasidin Amri posted this.

By Alvin Kam -
Director at Lehman Bro, London

It's pretty difficult to explain what's happening in the financial world right now. Here's how I would explain to a child:
Alice, Bob, and Sue have ten marbles between them. Whenever one kid wants another kid to take over a chore, she promises a marble in exchange. Alice doesn't like setting the table, so she promises Bob a marble if he will do it for her. Bob hates mowing the lawn, but Sue will do it for a marble. Sue doesn't like broccoli, but if she says pretty please and promises a marble, Bob will eat it off her plate when Mom isn't looking.
One day, the kids get together to brag about all the marbles they soon will have. It turns out that, between them, they are promised 40 marbles! Now that is pretty exciting. They've each promised to give away some marbles too, but they don't think about that, they can keep their promises later, after they've had time to play with what's coming. For now, each is eager to hold all the marbles they've been promised in their own hands, and to show off their collections to friends.
But then Alice, who is smart and foolish all at the same time, points out a curious fact. There are only 10 marbles! Sue says, "That cannot be. I have earned 20 marbles, and I have only promised to give away three! There must be 17 just for me."
But there are still only 10 marbles.
Suddenly, when Bob doesn't want to mow the lawn, no one will do it for him, even if he promises two marbles for the job. No one will eat Sue's broccoli for her, even though everyone knows she is promised the most marbles of anyone, because no one believes she will ever see those 17 marbles she is always going on about. In fact, dinnertime is mayhem.
Spoons are placed where forks should be, and saucers used for dinner plates, because Alice really is hopeless in the kitchen. Mom is cross.
Dad is cross. Everyone is cross. "But you promised," is heard over and over among the children, amidst lots of stomping and fighting. Until recently, theirs was such a happy home, but now the lawn is overgrown, broccoli rots on mismatched saucers, and no one trusts anyone at all.
It's all a bit mysterious to Dad, who points out that nothing has changed, really, so why on Earth is everything falling apart?
Perhaps Mom and Dad will decide that the best thing to do is just buy some more marbles, so that all the children can make good on their promises. But that would mean giving Alice 19 marbles, because she was laziest and made the most promises she couldn't keep, and that hardly seems like a good lesson. Plus, marbles are expensive, and everyone in the family would have to skip lunch for a week to settle Alice's debt.
Perhaps the children could get together and decide that an unmet promise should be worth only some small fraction of a marble, so that everyone is able to keep their promises after all. But then Sue, the hardest working, would feel really ripped off, as she ends up with a much more modest collection of marbles than she had expected. Perhaps Bob, the strongest, will simply take all the marbles from Alice and Sue, and make it clear that none will be given in return, and that will be that. Or, perhaps Alice and Bob could do Sue's chores for a while in addition to their own, extinguishing one promise per chore. But that's an awful lot of work, what if they just don't want to, who's gonna force them? What if they'd have to be in servitude to Sue for years?
Almost whatever happens, the trading of chores, so crucial to the family's tidy lawns and pleasant dinners, will be curtailed for some time. Perhaps some trading will occur via exchange of actual marbles, but this will not be common, as even kids see the folly of giving rare glass to people known to welch on their promises. It makes more sense to horde. What do you think Mom and Dad should do about the children?
A credit crisis arises when many more promises are made than can possibly be kept, and disputes emerge about how and to whom promises will be broken.

The search for identity

Ask the half-Syrian debut novelist Robin Yassin-Kassab to sum up western misconceptions of the Middle East, and he tells a story. In 1996 Yassin-Kassab moved from England, where he grew up with his English mother, to Damascus. The move was an attempt to get in touch with a part of himself that had long been missing: his Arabic heritage.
"In Damascus I lived at the end of a short alley," says Yassin-Kassab. "Each morning I'd walk down this alley, and as I passed every door someone would say, 'Hey, Robin! Come in for tea!' It took me half an hour just to get to the end. And half-an-hour back again in the evening. "That warmth: it's a side of the region that many western people simply don't see." If 38-year-old Yassin-Kassab's personal odyssey around the Middle East - he's also lived in Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Oman - was a quest for identity, then it's no surprise that his first novel, The Road From Damascus, is also full of British Muslims searching for themselves and wondering how to live. The novel is the latest from prestigious British publishers Hamish Hamilton, the literary star-makers who brought us Zadie Smith and Hari Kunzru. But it's also the newest gust in a gale force wind that has carried Muslim fiction ever higher up the publishing agenda since September 11.
In both the UK and the US, young and fashionable authors (think Monica Ali and Brick Lane, Gautam Malkani and Londonstani, Mohsin Hamid and The Reluctant Fundamentalist) are finding huge readerships with their tales of Muslim lives in the West.So where does Yassin-Kassab's book fit? And how does he feel about joining the ranks of other British-Muslim novelists? The Road From Damascus is not directly autobiographical, says Yassin-Kassab. But he readily accepts the idea that he and his protagonist, Sami, have been on journeys that share parallels. The novel sees Sami travel to Syria to discover a long-buried family secret, then return to his home in pre-September 11 London, where those he loves are struggling to define themselves: his Arabic wife, Muntaha, has embraced the hijab, while his impressionable brother-in-law Ammar has turned to radical Islam.
As for Yassin-Kassab, after his parents' divorce, he was raised in south-west Scotland by his mother, and only came back to his Arab roots when he arrived at Oxford University. "I didn't have an Arabic upbringing," he explains. "But it was obvious there was something different about me; my face wasn't the same as the other children's, for a start." I was always aware that a part of my background was missing. I went to the Middle East in search of that."
Today, Yassin-Kassab identifies himself as a Muslim: "There are times when I pray five times a day, and times when I don't pray at all." So how does he feel now about the fraught question of British-Muslim identity?"Part of the problem is that there is no distinctive identity for British Muslims," he says. "It leaves Muslim teenagers desperately searching for a way to define themselves. That's why you see some young Arabs in London embracing black youth culture. It surrounds them, and it's cool, and it gives voice to their alienation."
Of course, September 11 and its aftermath have only caused more British Muslims to wonder where, exactly, they stand. Hasn't it got harder to be a Muslim in the UK?"Western Muslims are under huge pressure at the moment," he says. "That tends to push the Muslim kids one of two ways. You see some who want simply to party and get drunk, and escape Islam entirely. Others get into hard-core Wahhabi stuff, and try to form little cells at their mosque. That's my character Ammar.
"But I feel great affection for Ammar. He's misguided and ineffectual, but essentially a good person. There are a lot of young British Muslims like him. "It's this central theme - the Muslim search for a British identity - that ensures that Yassin-Kassab invites comparison to a host of other young British novelists. Indeed, stories of identity, belonging, and Islam-meets-West have come to define a new generation of British writers, ever since Zadie Smith's White Teeth exploded into literary London in 2000. By counterpointing the fortunes of the Muslim Iqbal family against that of the English-Jamaican Jones's, that book ushered whole new vistas inside the boundary of the traditional English novel. What has followed amounts, says the leading Muslim-British writer Ziauddin Sardar, to a significant shift.
"The Muslim British novel is really coming of age now," he says. "Go back to the 1970s, and there was a lack of Muslim voices. Muslim stereotypes were common in fiction back then; the men were always misogynistic, the women were always oppressed. "A new Muslim-British fiction had its birth pangs with Salman Rushdie, and Hanif Kureishi. But with those two, I think, you still see writing about Muslims that stems from an essentially British sensibility. It's still Islam as seen from outside. Now Muslims are starting to tell their own stories, as seen through their own eyes. That's a huge shift in power, and very welcome."
Of course, September 11, and London's July 7 tube attacks, served to bring interest in western Muslims to an all-time high. But what's behind this flowering in western-Muslim fiction?"We're seeing a generation of Muslims who have grown up in the West, are interested in the novel, and understand the huge power of fiction," says Sardar. "So you have writers such as Monica Ali writing about a Bangladeshi Muslim in Brick Lane, and Ahdaf Soueif, who explores the western Muslim experience in her brilliant The Map of Love."
Most recently, the Financial Times journalist Gautam Malkani gave voice to the Muslim and Sikh "rudeboy" teenagers of Hounslow in his Londonstani, albeit to mixed critical response. Sardar points also to Pakistan-born Kamila Shamsie, and Mohsin Hamid, whose Booker-shortlisted The Reluctant Fundamentalist sees a high-flying Pakistani-American tell of his disillusionment with the West.The result, says Sardar, can only mean a wider understanding between peoples:
"What, after all, is fiction for but to illuminate unknown areas of life?" he says. "Yes, these young novelists are fashionable. They have a kind of exotic value. But we need to look past that and see the social and cultural layers that they are uncovering. They're showing us how Britain is shaping Muslim life, and how Muslims are helping to shape modern Britain. "Ultimately, though, Yassin-Kassab, like many of his counterparts, is uneasy about the "Muslim-British writer" tag. The question of identity, he says, is more complex than has been allowed by much recent multicultural fiction.
"This idea of 'multicultural fiction' is a way to sell books, and that's fine," he says. "But I don't want to be a Muslim novelist, or a multicultural novelist; I want to be a novelist. Multicultural London is the setting for my book, but it's really more about parents and children, and marriage, and the relationship of the past to the present."Really, this version of identity that we've heard so much about since White Teeth is an illusion. It's a product of our strange, alienated world that everyone is asking themselves identity questions.
"Almost all of us in the West - immigrant or not - have lost touch with the customs and lifestyles of our great grandfathers, so all of us are starting to ask, 'Who am I?' and 'What badge can I wear to tell people who I am?' "Still, western misinterpretation of one such badge forms another major theme in Yassin-Kassab's book. Back in London, Sami is distressed by Muntaha's insistence on wearing the hijab. Onlookers, he fears, will believe that she is wearing it at his insistence; Muntaha insists, "I want to belong to my nation".
"In the West, hijab is just as often about an assertion of identity as it is about religion," says Yassin-Kassab. "You get these girls in the East End who were a niqab when even their mothers don't."Then the Islamophobes seize on this and say, 'These girls must be oppressed by their fathers, and uneducated'. Really, it's often much more complex than that. It's a conscious decision by these girls to belong to a certain tribe."
Elsewhere, broader western misconceptions of the Middle East and Arab culture hang heavy over The Road From Damascus. Yassin-Kassab's journey to the Middle East clearly had a profound influence on his novel. So what did he - a westerner himself by upbringing, after all - discover? "What struck me most was that, despite all the troubles, there is still a great warmth and sense of connection between people," he says. "There's more eye contact, more physical contact, more of a hospitality culture.
"Life in these countries is often not as it is described in western media. Yes, Syria is a dictatorship, but it still contains a spectrum of different ethnic groups living together more or less peacefully. It would be optimistic to call Iran a happy democracy, but people there openly criticised the government when I spoke to them. They sat on street corners reading books. Yet Iran is painted as this monolithic culture with no future.
"People across the region were often keen to question the policies of western governments. But they don't equate ordinary western people with those policies. I never encountered any hostility." So who is stoking this misrepresentation? Yassin-Kassab looks to political convenience."It's good for those in charge that people in the West aren't asking, 'Why are we violently involved in the Middle East?' Instead they're asking, 'What's wrong with these Muslims?'"
But Yassin-Kassab's extended Middle Eastern journey - funded by teaching English - brought forth more than these observations. It was in Oman that he started to write. "I'd always known that I wanted to, but felt I had no story. One day I just sat down and started. Sami evolved from there."I've been lucky, Alhumdlillah. There are good writers who spend years trying to get spotted. "Now, though, Yassin-Kassab is heading to Scotland to work on his second novel. He wants, he says, to avoid the London literary scene, to escape the "multicultural writer" tag it will inevitably try to pin on him. But what, then, of his Arabic roots? Does he feel, at last - after more than a decade in the Middle East - that he has found the part of himself that was missing?
"Yes, I do feel a more complete person," he says. "I lived in the Arab world for a long time; my wife is Arabic." Then he stops, and considers for a moment."The truth is that when I was younger, it was important for me to ask, 'Am I British? Am I an Arab?' Now, I don't think of myself in those terms. I'm just me." The Road From Damascus is published by Hamish Hamilton, Dh123.

My friend isn’t from here – but home is where the heart is

My friend is Iranian. My friend was born in Oklahoma. With her family, my friend moved to the UAE and settled in Jumeirah, Dubai when she was three years old. She left for her undergraduate studies and came back and set up arguably the most successful gallery in the UAE. My friend is Sunny Rahbar. Sunny doesn’t know her way around Tehran and does not have a favourite coffee shop in Oklahoma; most of her memories are rooted here in the UAE.
I am writing about Sunny because she and I have discussed – and occasionally argued – for the last two years about how to define her relationship to the Emirates. Sunny does not exactly live what one would characterise as an Emirati life, though she does celebrate and mourn most of what Emiratis celebrate and mourn. She has not applied for an Emirati passport – though she’s known no home other than Dubai for more than 27 years – because she doesn’t feel she is an Emirati. I agree with her, Sunny is not an Emirati.
However, she is not one of those who packed her bags and took a one-way ticket to glitzy Dubai because she had heard of high-flying packages and a fabulous life. Sunny was here when the Burj Al Arab and Madinat Jumeirah were the Chicago Beach Hotel, and the Burj Dubai development was a military base – and that’s how the Defence Roundabout got its name, remember? Sunny was here when foreigners couldn’t buy land, when Deira had the best restaurants and Sheikh Zayed road was a two-way street. What I’m trying to say is, Sunny has been here for a long time.
Sunny is not a novelty because of this – though she is because of her contribution to the arts scene in the UAE – there are many others like her. Children who grew up here, holding on to aspects of their own ethnic identity, fused with their own ideals yet acquiring many beautiful and warm values from living in the UAE and among the Emirati people. They are unique but often feel themselves to be caught on a triangular fence; I call them "Dubaians".
There are also Abu Dhabians and Sharjahians but probably fewer of such folk as you go up through the remaining northern Emirates. How do all these Dubaians and others relate to their cities? How do they differentiate themselves from the people who arrived after the oil and real estate boom? They must still renew their visas and unless they do significantly well enough to afford to buy freehold real estate or own their business, they must leave at the age of 65.
Where will Sunny go when she’s 65? To Iran, where she will be looked at as exactly that, a Dubaian? Or to Oklahoma? Or New York or London? Of course she knows people there, but so do I. I’m not 65 yet but I think I’d like to die where I grew up. I’d like die at home – and home is where the heart is. But there is always a middle ground. We can always meet in between the crowds at the edges and I feel that a long-term residency of some form might be just enough to bridge that gap.
As Emiratis, we do appreciate the contributions of long term expatriates without a doubt; but perhaps our vision has been clouded by a justifiable fear of calls for the mass nationalisation of the incomers. This has made it difficult for us to tell our Abudhabians, Dubaians and their northern counterparts that we are happy they settled down here, shared their dreams with us and bought into ours. Nevertheless, it is such mezzanine solutions that may prove to be the most effective tools in preserving the delicate fabric of the UAE’s society in an even stronger fashion while still reinforcing the definition of national identity in a clear and cohesive form. It is a "thank you", it is an "I love you, too"; it is an appreciation that we share the same memories, hopes and struggles, not just traffic and 45 degree summers. It is a unity built upon a dream to create an oasis of dialogue and peace among a desert that may not always listen without a blast coming first.
We long for coexistence and exchange of thought, so let’s allow those people, our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, lovers and companions, to belong a little more than they thought they could.

Mishaal Al Gergawi is a graduate of the American University in Dubai and the CERAM European School of Business

The hidden and unsung heroes of development

The pace of development in the UAE and the region in general is frenetic. Iconic buildings seem to spring up almost every month, plush resorts bloom in the desert as more and more people decide to set up home.
But as welcome as this is, it is vital that basic infrastructure keeps up with the speed. Utilities may lack the glamour associated with large commercial or residential towers but no project is viable if the power is not on or no water comes from the taps.
What goes on above the ground level is eye-catching but what makes it work is what takes place underground: cable ducts, sewage pipes and telecommunication lines. It is no easy task configuring, planning, mapping, often for projects many years or decades in advance.
The strategic vision in the UAE has been simply breathtaking in turning imagination into reality, transforming plans into concrete; but it stands to reason that as more developments come on line the greater will be the need for utility services.
Just before the handover, the Hong Kong authorities gave the go-ahead for a massive new airport but were at pains to point out that they also gave the green light for a massive sewerage system. This new system, officials insisted, was just as essential to Hong Kong's future growth as the new airport, though it is not difficult to guess which development grabbed the media spotlight.
Utilities and infrastructure are the unsung heroes of modern projects, they are only noticed when absent. Turning a light switch on is an action we often take for granted. Planning for the future is by definition a never-ending process and not always appreciated but yesterday's planning brings today's benefits and allows for future growth. Unless that humble light switch works no project can succeed.

The sermons of hate from my childhood have been silenced

One of my earliest memories from boyhood is being taken to the mosque by my father to attend Friday prayers and hear the sermon. Friday to the Islamic faith is of great importance for it's symbolic significance - the first mosque was built on Friday - and for the Quranic injunction that instructs Muslims to attend the mosque and heed their prayers:
"O ye who believe! When the call is proclaimed to prayer on Friday (the Day of Assembly), hasten earnestly to the Remembrance of Allah, and leave off business (and traffic): That is best for you if ye but knew," - Holy Quran 62:9The Friday sermons, so I was taught in my Islamic studies classes at school, should be a kind of forum where an informed Muslim can enlighten the people from the pulpit about the concerns of life and the afterlife. The issues that the sermons address could be religious, political, social, economic or personal if need be. And they should follow the Prophet's example and last from 15 to 20 minutes.
That's what we were taught at school, certainly. But what I remember from attending those mosque sermons with my father was very different. The sermons we used to listen to then almost always dealt with political issues, and only very rarely with others matters such as religious rites, or moral issues. I suppose it is true that all the political sermons we heard led children like myself to begin thinking about political affairs early on in life - which in itself is no bad thing. No, the problem was not the subject matter but the tone that the imams invariably used: they were always angry.
The usual style of delivery would be for the imam to begin quietly and then progress, getting louder and louder until he was screaming into the microphone. The blaring voice of the imam would shake not just the foundations of the mosque but the foundations of all the listeners, too. At the very top of his voice, he would invariably threaten fire and brimstone, impending punishment and distant reward for all the worshippers. Finally, his voice hoarse from the shouting, the imam would conclude by cursing the enemies of Islam - as defined by his own personal criteria. It was impossible for anyone, young or old, not to be deeply affected by such a performance.
For the first 20 or so years of my life, sermons of this type were my weekly religious staple, until I left Abu Dhabi to study abroad. My first stop was Kalamazoo, a small town in the state of Michigan in the United States, where I went to study at Western Michigan University. My subjects were comparative politics and comparative religions - which gave me the opportunity to understand my own religion and the religions of the world in a more academic manner.
I began visiting churches and other religious centres, and went to services to learn about the different faiths at first hand. In none of them, regardless of denomination, did I hear the preacher cursing others and praying for their destruction. In none of them did I hear the preacher shouting at the top of his voice into a heavily-amplified microphone. The religious ceremonies that I attended were quiet and peaceful, the priests and preachers serious but calm in their demeanour - and all were most welcoming.
I did find, however, that the mosque in Kalamazoo was just like those I had left behind in Abu Dhabi. The imam would curse and scream and promise punishment and impending doom. My most embarrassing experience was when some American students wanted to come with me to listen to the sermon at Friday prayers. The imam, in his usual manner, cursed them roundly in Arabic and I had to translate what was being said to my fellow students.
After completing the introductory courses on the major religions of the world, such as Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism, I began an intensive study of the Islamic faith in all its subdivisions so that I could begin to understand my own religion more fully. Eight years have passed since then and my studies continue, but I now believe that the manner in which the sermons were made when I was a boy and in America does not conform to what the Islamic faith preaches.
Ever since the September 11 attacks of 2001, the mosques in the United Arab Emirates have been brought under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Islamic Endowments and Religious Affairs and under the direction of enlightened religious leaders. Now the sermons are considerably more humane and deal with issues that are of immediate concern to the worshippers. Where in the past, politics took precedence in the mosque, today religious, social, and humanitarian matters have a significantly greater importance. Political issues are still discussed, but only if there is religious clarification needed on them. The end of the sermons today are also vastly different. Now they always finish with prayers for the well-being of all mankind and to ease the hardships of all.
I am happy that my sons and the sons of my sisters and brothers living in the more enlightened UAE of today will not be exposed to the angry, vengeful face of the imams I remember from my childhood. Instead, they will discover the humane and tender face of the Islamic ideal that was lost but has now found its place again.

Dr Khalid Salem Al-Yabhouni is a political analyst and researcher

Currency Freeze Had Saved Malaysia In The Short Term

The currency trap

There is a lot of talk these days of floating the region's local currencies. I have yet to come across someone knowledgeable in finance or economics who has not thought it is an excellent idea. Is it? I am not so sure. There are two types of people who love the idea of de-pegging our local currencies to the US dollar. The first are those who are in it simply for greed: Once the currency floats, they can make a bundle of money playing currency market fluctuations by spotting gaps in demand and supply, filling it as the market demands. The second type of people who would like to de-peg are the idealistic. Our sense of pride in our country and the sense of denigration at not being in control of our fiscal destiny is a powerful driver for such people.

I must admit that until I truly thought about it and considered the shock that our pride may bring to our economies if we de-peg, I fell into this category. Why we should not de-peg? One of the greatest economical crises that we, people who have been financially active in the last past 20 years worldwide, faced was the 1997 Asian Financial crisis that took down the Asian Tigers. This happened because these countries decided to focus their economies on exports to grow. They followed all the rules that economic growth dictated that they follow to achieve a sustainable high growth rate. They aimed high and built like there was no tomorrow. Until the crash, they were the envy of the world. Their secret to success was to keep on injecting their trade surplus into US dollars either through continuous trade with the US at ever higher rates year on year or through the purchase of US Government bonds. They also educated their people and encouraged national savings. So what happened? Sadly success, if not tempered, breeds its own downfall. These economies had overvalued stock markets, extremely high property markets and a significant amount of foreign monies pushing these markets ever higher. As property and stock prices kept rising, cautious and more seasoned investors started to think that the growth was not only unsustainable but worrying. Then the tipping point came and all hell broke loose. Investors were abandoning these investments in droves. Some legitimately, others for more sinister reasons. Never discount the thought that some governments will sabotage others if they feel threatened. The natural thing to do when you sell an asset in a different currency is to convert the money back into your own. This meant a great demand on the foreign currency while the local currency was dumped. This led Malaysia to immediately freeze its currency float, much to the annoyance of the US, to protect its own economy after seeing what was happening to its neighbors. It saved Malaysia in the short term but they were punished in the long term when the US returned its investments to other states while neglecting the Malaysian market. We have nearly all the symptoms of the Asian Tigers - a great influx of foreign money into our stocks and property markets; a lively stock market; a white hot property market; double digit economic growth. If we de-peg we will be asking for trouble. Imagine if liquidity is withdrawn in such a massive quantity from here; what would happen to our economy? We like to think that we are immune and I am sure that the people in the Asian Tiger countries thought that they were as well. The main difference was that they had a highly educated population and a good national savings scheme to see them through the crisis. We are just starting both. Most people think that I am negative when I say or write things. I would too. However, as a businessman, I have learnt that the way to survive is to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Mishal Kanoo is the deputy chairman of the Kanoo Group. It is one of the largest family owned companies in the Gulf. The Kanoo family is the 11th richest in the Arab world with a fortune of US$6.1bn.

How Much Should We Pay Our GLC CEOs?

It is a big issue on the 100% increment for certain Malaysia GLC CEOs. The 100% increment could be fair if their current packages are deemed low and they may have performed according to the KPIs. They deserve to have better salaries based on their contributions and talents.

The timing could be wrong when majority of population is in major crisis with escalating costs of living. However, we may have to look into this issue with open mind and heart.

In the UAE, generally salaries are much more higher for most top GLC executives. I do not really know the details but I guess from my own remuneration, these top executives who are mostly from western countries, not to mention those local bumiputeras/Emiratis earn good money. Of course, non-GLCs may give better perks as well.

Therefore, how much should we pay our GLC CEOs?




GLC CEOs’ pay generally lower
KUALA LUMPUR: The rumoured 100% rise in the pay packages of Tenaga Nasional Bhd’s president and chief executive officer (CEO) Datuk Seri Che Khalib Mohamad Noh and chief financial officer Datuk Mohd Izzadin Idris, which has been widely discussed on blogs, has again raised the perennial debate on how much CEOs should fairly receive.
The middle-income group, which forms the majority of society, may never comprehend why the chiefs of the many government-linked companies (GLCs) and non-GLCs should be paid that high.
Like it or not, increasing the salaries of several top-ranked executives at a time when the masses are burdened with increasing costs of living will inevitably cause resentment among the public. The reason is simple, these CEOs are already getting annual incomes most people will not be able to accumulate in a lifetime.
Nonetheless, even among the corporate chieftains, the gap between their pay could be as wide as tens of millions of ringgit. A comparison of executive directors’ pay between the top 10 GLCs listed on Bursa Malaysia in terms of market capitalisation and the top 10 non-GLCs seemed to indicate that the former group’s CEOs generally earned slightly lower incomes, with the exception of a few.




However, this cannot be ascertained for sure because the remuneration of the GLC CEOs was clearly stated in the annual report while for the non-GLCs, it is not so transparent. This was evident in a compilation of 20 such companies. For GLCs, the individual breakdown of income is often presented. In contrast, most of the non-GLCs provided a lump sum in directors’ fees and remuneration, without disclosing the breakdown paid to individual directors.
Among the GLCs, only Bumiputra-Commerce Holdings Bhd (BCHB) group chief executive Datuk Nazir Razak’s 2007 income of RM9.35 million outshone his banking peers. However, Nazir is seen as the very reason why BCHB is among the fund managers’ favourites.
Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) former president and CEO Datuk Amirsham A Aziz was paid some RM2.71 million last year, according to its annual report, compared with Public Bank Bhd managing director and CEO Datuk Seri Tay Ah Lek’s RM6.18 million.
Amirsham’s pay was even lower than Public Bank executive director Datuk Lee Kong Lam (RM4.6 million) and AMMB Holdings Bhd group MD Cheah Tek Kuang (RM2.87 million).
Sime Darby Bhd group chief executive Datuk Seri Ahmad Zubir Murshid was paid RM2 million last year (before the mega merger). Without any detailed breakdown, IOI Corporation Bhd and PPB Group Bhd paid a total of RM31.36 million and RM11 million to their respective executive directors.
It is worth noting that family-owned and family–run corporates paid relatively high fees and remuneration to their executive directors. These include Genting Bhd, which paid a total of RM91.73 million, and YTL Corporation Bhd, which paid a total of RM36.4 million. In fact, the Genting group, as in the previous years, paid out the most for its top office-bearers.
Responding to questions on GLC CEO pay, Khazanah Nasional Bhd managing director Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar said in a recent function that directors’ remunerations were transparent and disclosed in annual reports. “Let me assure you that there is a careful framework (under the Blue Book that provides guidance on executive compensations).”
Some quarters strongly argued that CEOs should not automatically qualify for pay rise, but should be commensurate with the performance and percentage growth of the companies.
There have been the occasional cases of shareholders rejecting the proposed increase in directors’ fees, but generally, most company officials have had their fees approved.
Last week, Time Engineering Bhd’s directors became the latest to have their proposed increase in fees rejected by its shareholders due to the bad times and that the previous year’s fees of RM228,000 be maintained. Its major shareholder UEM group had initated the pay rise following a survey by an international accounting firm.
Minority Shareholder Watchdog Group (MSWG) CEO Abdul Wahab Jaafar Sidek said minority shareholders were less concerned about the quantum of increase in the remunerations of directors, as long as they contributed to increasing shareholders’ values.
From his personal encounters with minority shareholders, he said these shareholders were more worried about losing good directors than seeing the company forking out more money to pay them high.
“Talents are very important. They are very fluid and can move around. You should not just look at local competition. Talents are in demand in many parts of the world. Their pays must be benchmarked against the similar industry, globally.
“You have to pay well to attract talents. Then, you have to pay well to retain them. Of course, they must perform. If we (MSWG) feel they should be paid higher, we say ‘pay higher’,” he told The Edge Financial Daily via telephone.
Commenting on blogs raising concerns on the purported 100% pay rise for Tenaga’s Che Khalib and Mohd Izzadin, Abdul Wahab said: “You don’t look at the percentage. You have to look at what they (directors) give to the company. You have to reward appropriately.”
“For example, CIMB paid about RM10 million to Nazir last year but shareholders are okay with it because CIMB made a lot of money. In fact, some of the shareholders told me they were afraid that Nazir might leave CIMB,” he said.
He added that MSWG’s survey showed that Tenaga had ranked highly in terms of corporate governance and the revision in directors’ remunerations was timely.
“Good corporate governance includes good performance and conformance. So far, I think it (Tenaga) is performing well, especially in such a difficult environment,” he said.
Last week, Azman had also said any pay increase for GLCs’ top-ranked executives were performance-based, and that such increase was needed to retain scarce talents nowadays.
Abdul Wahab said: “I totally agree with him. Talents help to drive business and company’s growth. You have to compete worldwide.”

by Gan Yen Kuan
The edgedaily.com