The trouble with Triple

Click here if you'd like one of these

Beloved Wife and Goat were finally cajoled by Itisalot into getting a fibre-optic cable to deliver all landline-based telecomms to the Crumbling Villa. It's slow; it's expensive. But cheaper than paying for wireless internet plus a separate landline. And basic cable TV was thrown in too. hence 'Triple Play': Telephone, Internet and TV all for a single monthly payment.

And all was well for a few months, until the cable TV stopped working. The Goat got around to calling Customer Care about six weeks ago, and a new set-top box was duly delivered by one of Itisalot's technicians. He said that it would configure itself over the next hour or so, and all would be well.

The following day, the Goat was on the phone to Customer Care again. All was far from well. The replacement set-top box was as dysfunctional as the first.

There followed around two weeks and a dozen appointments for technicians to resolve the problem. Five actual visits later, a tech declared that there was no more he could do, and the complete lack of cable TV was a total mystery. A subsequent technician promised to return the following day with yet another new set-top box, configured for use, and with a working remote control.

But he never showed up, instead choosing to close the complaint. So a couple of weeks later when the Goat rang Customer Care yet again, Itisalot had been under the impression that the problem had been fixed. The Goat theorises that technicians are on some kind of bonus/penalty scheme, and closing a complaint even if it's not fixed results in a new complaint being generated, rather than the technician being berated for his failure to perform.

In fact, three times the Goat's complaints were closed without a technician addressing the problem. Or turning up at the Crumbling Villa. Or phoning the Goat to make an appointment. The absence of a solution was getting beyond irritating.

Enough being enough (and then some), today the Goat undertook to reduce his 'Triple Play' to 'Double Play' (internet and landline only) with the consequent AED40/month reduction, backdated six weeks to when he first reported the problem. He had to go to an Itisalot Business Centre with the set-top box and wait first for twenty minutes, and then for a further thirty, to obtain An Audience With Itisalot.

Far from obtaining his AED40/month reduction in subscription, the Goat is now persuaded financially to keep 'Triple Play', even though part of it doesn't work. The reason?

Itisalot's cajoling way back included a special offer of AED229/month instead of the normal AED299. 'Double Play' is AED259/month, which is indeed AED40 less for no cable TV.

AED229 is £39, which is for up to 1Mbps. How much do you pay for your internet?

It would be ludicrous to hand back the set-top box and pay an extra AED30/month, and in an attack of irony, Itisalot even said that the Goat would have to pay AED100 to downgrade his subscription.

The Goat has packed the useless device away. He'll probably ring Customer Care every now and then, just to see if a technician is ever invented who can actually fix the problem, but he's not holding his breath.

Edited on 23rd October to note that the Goat received an unsolicited SMS from Itisalot on 20th October to advise that a technician would be visiting tomorrow to fix the problem. And to date, the Cable TV still seems to be working. Its only taken 51 days.

]}:-{>

Race relations

Last year I received a phone call out of the blue from someone looking for a motorbike for the 2010 Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon. I was pleased to help, and this resulted in my piloting the Goatcycle around the route with a video cameraman perched backwards on the pillion.

I did the entire course with the world-class runners. These wiry east Africans set off at 21kph and sustained that speed for an hour. Amazing to watch them close up: the determination in their faces was tangible. If I’d crossed the finish line I’d have got 59’45”, but the motorbike wasn’t allowed. After the men finished I turned round and followed the women into their finish.

This year I volunteered again, figuring that it would be a similar arrangement. Glad to have me on board again, the organizers said this time things would be a little different.

There was the need for live television, so instead of a cameraman with his machine on his shoulder, the bike additionally had to carry a TV antenna and a pair of truck batteries to power all the electrickery.

So on Monday I went over to Navigation Films in Dubai Media City to have the Goatcycle measured for a frame to hang all this equipment from. Naturally, being a modern motorbike that’s covered in plastic, the bike has few places to bolt stuff on, and the final product was a Heath-Robinson affair of alumininium tube, cable ties and gaffer tape. We even cobbled up some footrests for the cameraman that were less uncomfortable than last year’s. The guy fabricating the frame commented that it had been easier to do the other bike, a BMW R1200GS, because that one was apparently made of scaffolding.

On Wednesday after work it was back to Media City for a final fitting, and then on Thursday I was off to RAK to have this scaffolding cage bolted on and all the electrickery plugged in.

Getting to Dubai Media City at a civilized hour after work entailed commuting by motorbike to and from Abu Dhabi. “Keeping my wits about me” doesn’t even come close to describing how careful I’ve been among the usual plethora of headbangers. The bike comes into its own when the motorway comes to a halt because of yet another crash.

On Monday, there was an amusing incident. A car had ended up all over the road after tangling head on with the safety fence. (This was not the amusing bit; this part was inconvenient, expensive, painful and scary.) I threaded my way to the front of the queue in time to see a policeman and a blue-gloved paramedic wheeling the wreckage to the roadside. I imagined that some clown would be whizzing down the breakdown lane, and might squash flat one of Abu Dhabi’s finest. So, putting the bike across the breakdown lane, I signalled to the inevitable white Mercedes, employing the universal police-esque “STOP” gesture.

Did the driver come to a gentle halt? No.

Did he ignore me and squeeze past? No.

With 50m to go, he stuck his left indicator on and tried desperately to insert his Merc into the traffic queue. All the hallmarks of “Oh, no! I’m gonna get a ticket for Dh600 and six black points for driving on the hard shoulder.”

Gotcha!

But back to the main subject: the RAK Half Marathon. All the kit was bolted and cable-tied to the Goatcycle, and I set off on a slightly wobbly test ride, what with a pair of heavy batteries perched well astern of the back wheel. The first hazard was the starting arch. It knocked off the microwave transmitter. So both bikes were modified by chopping down the antenna poles to a mere 2.5m high.

The entire route was run a couple of times to ensure that live TV signals could be picked up everywhere. Then we made a short test run with a pillion and a TV camera. On the day, the actual cameramen turned up, so there were final checks that the technology was working, and we rode half the race route as a final dress rehearsal so the there’d be no unpleasant surprises when the runners set off at 7am.

A couple of incident-free hours later, we were back at the media cabins. All the gear was stripped off and packed away. There was a general agreement that the TV company should consider storing the ally frames. They’re customized for a BMW R1200GS and a Kawasaki 1400GTR. You never know; they might be needed again.

]}:-{>

I know where you're coming from

This map was generated using the World66 web site. Is it, as the website intends, a graphical demonstration of countries I've visited? Well no, actually. I used the tool to save myself a thousand words and summarise whose passport holders can obtain a 30-day free visa on arrival in the UAE. As at today, here is the up to date information.

Important disclaimer: check before you visit. Rules tend to change. Caveat peregrinans.

Oh look: citizens of rich and/or western(ised) countries are allowed to get in for free. Why are the visa costs going up (example: from Dh100 to Dh500) for citizens of all the other countries? How fair and reasonable is it to charge high rates to prospective labourers, teaboys and maids when western executives can get in for nuppence?

Ah, but of course we want rich, professional executives to visit and to buy allegedly 'freehold' real estate, whereas we hate the idea of nice residential areas becoming polluted by large numbers of hawk - spit - ching! bachelors. By making visas prohibitively expensive it'll knock the UAE off their itinerary.



While we're about it, let's tear down Satwa. A picture of old Dubai does the rounds that shows Sheikh Zayed Road in 1991. As recently as then, Satwa was pretty much a desert. In 17 years it has become urbanised, turned into multiple copies of the Crumbling Villa and been scheduled for demolition. Where are Umm Khammas and her Freej chums going to live then? Modern luxury apartments, presumably.

And having expunged from Dubai everyone except the rich, living la vida local in their modern luxury apartments and villas, who's going to empty the bins, sweep the streets, dust the aforementioned apartments, clean, service and refuel the cars?

]}:-{>

Exactly what it says on the tin

Those who think they know me surmise that I'm a crotchety old misery-guts. Possibly with good reason. The blog isn't by the Grumpy Goat for nothing.

But, surprisingly, it's relatively easy to make me happy and to keep me that way. I'll let you into a little secret. Essentially, all I want is for things to happen as advertised. A digital camera that comes out of the box and takes digital photos is unlikely to disappoint me. Someone who promises to return my loaned DVD on Thursday and then does so is a source of some satisfaction.

To keep me in a state of delight, simply deliver a little more than was promised. Go the extra mile, or even an additional yard. I rang DEWA yesterday to report a minor water leak on the Authority side of the meter, and by the time I got back to the Crumbling Villa it had been attended to (although there's still a small leak...). Another example is when I discovered quite by accident that my pocket digital camera would record moving pictures with sound.

It is cheating, however, to offer an inferior service than what you advertise and then briefly to upgrade it to 'adequate'. This is what happened to Seabee with Itisalot recently, and it produced a blog praising Itisalot's customer service with such effulgent enthusiasm that it ended up on last week's Gulf News blogosphere page. I find the idiom 'damned with faint praise' springing to mind.

Good old Red Triangles Bank rang me a little while back, with a customer satisfaction survey. A series of questions took the form: "On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is worst and 10 is best, how do you rate...?" Bearing in mind the foregoing, if the service is pretty much as advertised, I give it five or six. Yet the interviewer recoils like a kicked puppy if I report that I am "fairly satisfied" and then don't give a score of nine.

The list of things that make me unhappy is far longer than I intend to type. A couple of selected examples includes software that crashes, photocopiers that jam, expecially when I'm in a hurry, vending machines that eat the money and don't dispense goods, and real estate developers who don't provide the facilities they promised. Also people who promise faithfully and then simply fail to turn up. Whether its recalcitrant inanimate objects or unreliable people, I feel very much like Basil Fawlty berating his Austin 1300 estate: "If you don't go, there's little point in having you."

]}:-{>

The illusion of reality

Far back in the mists of ancient time there was a television programme called The Young Ones. Always brash and often hilarious, the programme portrayed the surreal misadventures of an unlikely group of students who shared a house. Frequent targets for the parody of student life included the appalling landlord and a complete inability to keep the kitchen and bathroom clean. Naturally, the show was immensely popular with students. No-one in my hall of residence ever did any work between 9pm and 9.30 on Thursday when The Young Ones was on.

Then in 1993, Channel 4 decided to prove that real students were exactly the same as The Young Ones. The basic idea of The Living Soap was that six real-life students in Manchester would all share a house. Cameras would record their behaviour over a year and broadcast a weekly summary. For the students, and thousands applied, the promise was living rent-free for a year plus the chance of becoming a TV personality.

In the real world, a group of friends on the same course, or with similar interests or political ideologies might get together to rent a house. But The Living Soap was not designed to be real. The programme makers picked six individuals who would never have chosen to live together. If I remember rightly, there was a hairy heavy-metal fan who might have been studying to be an engineer, a single mother who may or may not have been a lesbian, a clay-shooting arch-Conservative, a soccer obsessive, a clubber, and an art student. Naturally, with such a diverse range of opinions, arguments were frequent and vitriolic. Just the sort of thing the programme makers wanted, and bearing almost no resemblance to actual student life. Selective editing had even the programme's participants complaining about being misrepresented. The only thing that these half-dozen people had in common was that none of them ever seemed to do any studying. I recall the televised interview of Matt the engineer with his tutor. He was being reminded that as he'd done no work at all that term it was likely that he'd be thrown out of university.

How realistic is Reality Television? Not very! We as viewers are supposed to believe that, because the participants are not acting to a script, everything they do or say is in some way real. Being trapped in the Big Brother house with the knowledge that cameras and microphones capture your every waking action isn't going to affect your behaviour? Is it reasonable to throw together individuals from wildly differing backgrounds and expect that differences of opinion aren't going to result in arguments? Of course not, and this is precisely what the programme makers are banking on. As for no script, I reckon even that's a fallacy. There must be some kind of plan to turn domestic dystopia into entertainment.

And then someone makes an allegedly racist remark. Oh, horror, horror! Questions in the House of Commons! Full-page articles in the daily press! I may have missed something, but I thought that reality television purported to show reality. And in my real world, people do actually make racist remarks. And yes, these might well be offensive. Unless the offensive language is directed at a white, male, able-bodied heterosexual, in which case it's considered perfectly acceptable, of course. Apparently, the participants in a reality show have to behave realistically, yet at the same time remember that they're on television and constantly modify their behaviour to suit. So-called reality television shows no such thing. QED.

Big Brother is a massive international success. All the recent publicity can surely have done nothing but good in the quest to boost ratings. It's the sort of advertising that no amount of money could buy.

Personally, I can't be bothered with it. When I want to watch reality television, I'll tune into the news. And even then I'll take what I see and hear with a pillar of salt.

Into the closet...

I have just received a short movie review of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe from one of my spies in England:

"It was completely superb...The BBC version of a few years ago is now officially knocked into a cocked hat. "

The movie isn't scheduled to arrive in UAE cinemas until January 2006 (which isn't particularly clever for a plot that is orientated in part around winter and the arrival of Father Christmas). Yet there isn't a peep out of all those keen moviegoers about this late arrival. They're all screaming and shouting about the latest Harry Potter.

I just hope that the Powers That Be don't suddenly notice that Narnia is an allegory and send great chunks of film to the editing suite bin.