Rumour has it

Rumour has it…

Well not so much a rumour; more like information from sources that I trust.

The age at which someone can obtain a drivers license in the UAE is set to be raised to 21 beginning January the 1st, 2007.

Also previous occurrences of wastafarians receiving licenses when they are 16 (which would now be 19) has practically stopped completely; the quote describing this was…

“Wasta doesn’t work anymore”

…this came from someone who just got a number with 5 of the same digit in it.

I personally see this as a problem; the age of drinking has been 21 and now the age of driving is going to be 21. What we’ll end up seeing is a bunch of young-adults fresh out of high-school who are bored out of their minds. You’re going to get these people whining at their parents because they’re bored out of their minds, and then the parents will begin whining because their kids are being annoying.

What this will lead to is a further barrage of whining expats and a bunch of bored young adults who turn to petty crime to fulfil their need for adrenaline that was otherwise being treated by their ability to drive Nissan’s on 3, 2, 1 or no wheels around Dubai.

Remember this is still unconfirmed officially.

The great unblocking of 2006

So Etisalat unblocked a bunch of websites.
Good on them; but I’m not stupid enough to jump up and down like the rest of Dubai is.

It’s the official “jump up and down and pretend like you had something to do with the unblockings” official ceremony…

I’m going to term the whole event the ‘Great unblocking of 2006’; it categorizes exactly how stupid people in Dubai are and exactly how full of themselves they are.

I decided to conduct some interviews to see what people around the UAE had to do with these unblockings…

First we are going to hear from my next door neighbour’s gardener...
Gardener: “Yes, I personally called my best friends sister and she works for Etisalat, so I got all the sites unblocked”

Then the gentleman from the grocery store that delivers items on his little scooter…
Samuraisam: “so what was your part in the ‘Great unblocking of 2006’?”
Grocery store delivery man: “I pestered my uncles, best-friends, girlfriends, brothers, bicycle-salesman’s lion tamer, he knows this guy high up in Etisalat, and he personally listened to my request and unblocked all the websites I requested.”
Samuraisam: “So why are VoIP and playboy still blocked?”
Grocery store delivery man: “Uhh.. That’s because I don’t use VoIP because only cheap people use VoIP and I like my fancy Nokia. I don’t look at playboy because I have strong moral values”
Samuraisam: “What other stuff do you have influence in?”
Grocery store deliver man: “Well 30 years back I had this other friend who’s uncle’s, best-friend’s, gardener’s, house-maid’s, pet chimpanzee has a friend who worked at Etisalat; I suggested they install support for mobile phones, and long story short, you have mobile phones nowadays.

And then 7days…
“Speaking exclusively to 7DAYS, etisalat customer service revealed the reasons behind the sudden turnaround, and it would seem that the 7DAYS readership played no small part in their decision.  “The unblocking of these web sites has been done as part of an ongoing process of web site review especially for those web sites for which we get frequent unblock requests from our valued customer base.” it said.”

Really, 7days, what on Earth does that quote from a puppet at Etisalat have to do with the 7days readership? Nothing. Stop sucking your own penis.

Here is what Etisalat has done; they know that very soon Du-Du is going to ‘hit the fan’; they have a poor public image, so they go and block some remarkably stupid websites over the past 6 months.
Then for no particular reason at all overnight they change their mind and go and unblock a bunch of websites taking into consideration the IQ of the average idiot in the UAE and the fact that they’ll think its Etisalat being nice. It isn’t Etisalat being nice. It’s Etisalat implementing a strategy to look good…

Fortunately for some, not everyone is as stupid as Etisalat would like…

I’m not at liberty to say much here, but from what I’ve heard, Du will steal a lot of Etisalat’s market share once they hit the streets; this is just Etisalat trying to look good.

If Etisalat wants to impress me they might consider unblocking VoIP, or giving me a big bundle of cash to make up for the fact I’ll probably die 25 years younger than I’m supposed to because of Etisalat’s gross incompetence.


“However, included in its responses to 7DAYS was the phrase, “communication with our customers is a priority and their feedback is very important for us”

I really loved that quote from 7days article; I hope the payout 7days receives from Etisalat’s PR agency goes towards a railroad; so I can say Go suck on a rail road spike and have it mean something.

“Another web wizard also expressed his delight at etisalat’s decision having been both baffled and angered by the blocking of the sites in the first place.”
Web wizard? Have you really been blocked off the internet since 1997? Who on earth still uses the term ‘web wizard’?
Eugh.

(idea of man on bicycle was courtesy of anonymous in the form of… “Did you know that that grocery store delivery guy who used to bring stuff over to my place while I was in SandLand had a hand in the unblockin too”)

Settled

Ok; I’m mostly settled back in. Working on some decent blog posts at the moment and will hopefully post soon.

Got a bit of a shock when I plugged my computer in earlier today…


Hmm….
Considering this particular CPU will fail at about 60 degrees celcius and the computer has been happily working at 127 degrees celcius for the past 12 hours, I'd say its sensor is broken.
Ramadan Mubarak / Ramadan Kareem / Customary Ramadan greeting to all during the month of Ramadan.

Touching down once again

Ahhh, Back in the sandlands.

A decent 12-hour flight; Dubai airport has certainly improved, I popped out the exit over an hour earlier than I expected to. People smiled at me in the immigration desk; and luckily my bag didn’t need any pestering; it was brilliant,

Being over an hour early I had to purchase another of those 30 dirham phone cards… A 30 dirham phone card to make a single local call.

I placed a phone call for my pickup and then while walking away from one of the Etisalat payphones (1 of them was broken) I walked into two Japanese tourists asking where to buy phone cards from; I gave them mine.

Kind of sad the first hospitality act a tourist experiences comes from Dubai’s prime source of negativity. I mean really; you have hundreds of tourists coming through their every day, how much can it cost to have a phone which has international call barring? Obviously billions.

If the police are looking for illegal taxi’s I have a suggestion; get someone to walk out the front of Dubai Airport and arrest every single person that runs up to them and begins shouting “taxi?”

Then I get home; find my GSM card and pop it in my phone, try to ring it, and some random person answers. Etisalat has sold off my number. Another moment of greed. Well to be fair I haven’t renewed it in ages, but that was because Etisalat said I’d have to go to their office to deactivate GPRS.

So I get home and unpack my bags.
We’ve lived in the same house for approximately 10 years; the house is over 30 years old, I’ve heard reliable estimates it cost no more than 200,000 dirhams to build at the time. The rent in the past few years for this house has gone from 100,000 dirhams, to 140,000; the house next door (tis a compound) is going for 190,000 dirhams a year.

Pray tell, seeing as rent should cover approximately 1 quarter to 1 third of a persons income (or so I’m told) exactly which person earning nearly 50,000 dirhams a month (600,000 dirhams / 163,000 USD a year) would live in a 30 year old house with leaks, a crappy paint job and broken air conditioning in the middle of the desert?
Obviously someone living in Dubai.

Apparently the traffic situation has gotten even worse since I was last here; seems other bloggers are getting tired of covering it.

Other than that, I’m happy to be back.

Also check out deerplow.com, in particular page 3 of this PDF for my views on car accidents in Dubai; thanks to deerplow crew for the opportunity.

Be back in a bit

Be back in a bit…
Comment moderation probably wont happen on here for a while;
Until then, enjoy this video (and no, it isn’t me, it’s from an anonymous source)

Tone Change

I won’t be blogging for at least the next week or so;
I’m intent on making this blog the best it can be, so if you have any suggestions, if you have any favourite posts from days/weeks/months back, or if you think there is something in particular I should cover, please say so, either via comments or email.

Also, I’m aiming on making this blog slightly less critical; 3 subjects will remain unaffected from this, Etisalat, Du and the TRA.

I want a meaningless award too!

Seeing as Etisalat’s new We-ak (or Weyak if you happen to like Etisalat) is all about sharing your opinion; I thought I’d share mine about their relentless spamming operations.


(thank you to anonymous for screenshot and idea)

And news that Etisalat has somehow managed to win an award brings further sickness to my stomach.
“Etisalat won the Best Overall Operator and Best Customer Care awards.”
I’m sure the competition must’ve been fierce. I’m not really bothered to sit here and list every single time Etisalat customer service department has pissed me off. But trust me; they’re not the ‘best’; they’re far, far from it.

“The latest figures show that in the UAE alone, Etisalat has exceeded a penetration rate of 125 per cent, with more than 5.1 million mobile subscribers.”
That’s about as useful as a farmer saying “I have the only source of food in this country; look how high my sales are!”

“These achievements can be ascribed to some factors like Etisalat's commitment to launch most state of the art solutions and services as well as bundle innovative offers and packages.”
Yes; such as how they completely ignore the existence of VoIP, or how they charge 1 fil per kilobyte of GPRS traffic; or how an uncensored internet connection in another country costs the same as one that is 8 times slower in Dubai.

“Being selected by its peers and a panel of experts as the operator with the Best Customer Care practices is a direct result of initiatives extended by Etisalat to its customers, aimed at meeting their needs and requirements by introducing services and technologies that add value and positively affect their way of life.”
So how many people that have asked for uncensored internet have you catered for?
How many people have you given VoIP to?
How many people have you given the choice of another phone company to?

I love the stance of the entire article actually; I love how it goes from
“initiatives extended by Etisalat to its customers”
To…
“Etisalat provided free upgrades (including 100 percent bandwidth upgrades) on our ADSL service to all customers.”

“Etisalat has a network of 116 Cash Payment Machines at convenient high-traffic locations”
Convenient and high-traffic don’t fit in the same sentence.

I also enjoyed this paragraph…
“Etisalat strives to offer as many life-enhancing solutions as current technology permits and to match our technology with efficient service delivery.”
It was such a great piece of fiction that I decided to rewrite it to be a bit more realistic…
“Etisalat strives to offer as many life-enhancing solutions as the TRA/ourselves permit and to match our technology with efficient profiteering practices.”

“Etisalat is now more accessible than ever before”
Yes, you have not been able to use Etisalat to access the following either presently or in the past… (images link to evidence where appropriate)































That sure sounds like ‘accessible’ to me.
(The reason I’ve included past blockings is because they’ve still wasted a lot of people’s time.)
I’ll tell you a really strange concept that would leave the letters to the editor column in each and every UAE daily near empty!
Dropping the proxy!

terms and conditions and bbq sauce

if you're a regular reader of this blog, Can I please suggest you read the nicely presented 497 words at the bottom of this blog.

Cultural Integration

In today’s Gulf News there is an article regarding cultural integration in the UAE from the perspectives of a few emirati's and expats, I am one of them.

A special thanks to Manal and Gulf News for giving me the opportunity to be interviewed for the article.

Also, looks like I may be writing an article about car accidents in Dubai for a Canadian e-zine; more information as it becomes available.

Also, my blog, and the whole of blogspot was down for about 3-4 hours today; blame Google.

A Brief History of Child Camel-Jockey Slavery

Given recent events, and the probability of UAE-based coverage of them being practically 0, I’ve decided to make this post.

Camel racing is a traditional sport in the Middle East; in recent years, with the explosion of oil money, the focus of it has shifted towards major spending on camels, the treatment (i.e. baths etc), yet at heart it remains very much the same as it was long ago.

The Middle East is a place traditionally associated with slavery, piracy and pilfering; that was up until a few decades back. While the UAE flew forwards in so many ways, sadly an unfortunate facet of camel races, that being the usage of underage jockeys remained common until late 2004.

Obviously, in keeping with the modernisation of the Emirates, a practice as severe as child slavery would have to stop; but it took many years for this to happen.

Ansar Burney is generally praised as the man responsible for the abolishment of child slavery in the UAE; the award winning HBO documentary he was a part of was pretty much the landmark ‘event’ which lead to the repatriation of child jockeys with their parents. According to his website; the Ansar Burney trust has been working for over 16 years in stopping the exploitation of young children in the Middle East.

Obviously tackling a problem such as child slavery carries its own risks; Ansar has reportedly had threats made upon his family due to his work (“Ansar Burney says he's already received threats against his family.”)

My personal opinion: Child slavery is completely wrong and unacceptable; obviously the benefits of using children as jockeys are that they are lighter, and as such the camels go faster, if a blanket ban was enforced long ago, there wouldn’t be this problem, no one would have the option of using children, so no one would have an unfair advantage.
Even given the presence of child slavery; it’s disheartening that despite multi-millions of dirhams being spent on camels and facilities for camels, there was no apparent effort made to adequately house, feed and school the children.

The following is a sort of timeline representing how the UAE government has/has not combated child slavery since the 1980’s, the media attention given and its effect. Not wanting to remain 100% negative; I’ve also covered the actual end to child slavery in the UAE.

1980’s: “Using children as camel jockeys has been illegal in the UAE since 1980 under domestic and international legislation. To the best of our knowledge, no UAE citizen has faced judicial proceedings for this offence.” From here

1992: “[he] researched [child slavery] during a trip to Dubai and several other states of the United Arab Emirates in 1992. This report was soundly criticized by officials in Dubai and across the UAE, as was a widely-shown BBC documentary that followed this report.” From here

1993: “In 1993, the UAE announced a ban on child jockeys” (from here)

1999: “In mid-1999, authorities rescued many children from the camel racing circuit, including one tyke who became a baby jockey after being smuggled in from Pakistan as a 5-year-old.” From here

2002: “Although the United Arab Emirates banned the use of child jockeys seven years ago, tiny Pakistanis or Bangladeshis are still being smuggled into the oil-rich Gulf with promises -- usually false -- of wealth” from here

2001-2002:”When Ibrahim Mohammad, now around 6 years old, fell off a camel in Dubai and fractured his shoulder last year, he says he broke into a sobbing fit and pleaded with his handlers not to strap him onto the back of a camel ever again.” From here

2002: “In July 2002, the UAE Government announced that using children under-15 and lighter than 45 kilograms to race camels would be banned from 1 September 2002 and offenders punished” from here

2003: “the US Trafficking in Persons Report commended the UAE's efforts against trafficking, including child camel jockeys, raising it from Tier 3, reserved for the greatest offenders, to Tier 1, comprising countries whose governments are prohibiting and punishing acts of trafficking.” From here

2004: photographic evidence “photographs prove that, despite the Government's repeated statements that this practice has stopped, it is still a problem.” From here

2004 & 2005: “the United Arab Emirates officially endorsed a plan to replace children used for camel jockeying with robots designed specifically for the purpose. However, some human rights groups in the region are concerned that the practice of using children as camel jockeys continues regardless.” From here

2004: “At the meeting a decision was taken by the UAE leadership to ban the use of underage camel jockeys and enforce the law with a punishment of fine and imprisonment.” from here

2005 was pretty much the year (to my knowledge) child slavery stopped in the United Arab Emirates, the government began making sincere efforts to repatriate the children with their parents. If you want to watch the mentioned award-winning HBO documentary, it can be viewed here, make sure you watch both halves (the second half is a bit more brutal than the first)

Late 2004: “When American TV channel HBO telecast the 25-minute documentary Real Sports on the pitiful conditions of young camel jockeys early this month, Pakistani Human Rights Activist Ansar Burney never thought that the world would cry with him.
Later, the documentary made my Ansar Burney Welfare Trust (ABWT), caught the attention of UAE leaders who invited Burney over to Abu Dhabi, assuring him of all the government’s support needed in eradicating the menace from the country.” From here

2006: “The interior ministry of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has repatriated more than 1,000 young camel jockeys, mostly from the Indian subcontinent, over the past year, a local newspaper reported Thursday.” From here

So there you have it. Despite child slavery being illegal to begin with, it was made illegal a further 3 times (apparently the first 2 times weren’t good enough); only the third of which produced any noticeable effect.

onebigconstructionsitedotcom

If, like me, having grown up in Dubai you have an unfortunate relationship with the word lethargy, you will appreciate the measures I have gone to…

As of a few hours ago, you can now access this blog through www.onebigconstructionsite.com

If you usually type my blog address in like this…

You’ll notice (excluding http://) you have to type in a total of 35 characters to access this blog. That is 1.346 times longer than the alphabet.

Under the new system…
NO LONGER!

This only requires 26 characters for access! This is the exact length of the alphabet.
This represents a saving of over 9 key presses

So when you’re 85, sitting in your old rocking chair with severe arthritis, you may be saying “if it weren’t for samuraisam, my hands could’ve been screwed when I was 80!”

In all seriousness, should Etisalat block my blog, or blogspot, you will find access through the new domain (http://www.onebigconstructionsite.com) to wherever the new hosting location may be.
Should Etisalat choose to also block onebigconstructionsite.com then I’ll be angry.

I love calling Emirates

I love calling Emirates. I can’t think of anything more fun; here is a situation I encountered today.

“Sorry sir, there are no seats available on [xyz date], however there is a seat available on the [day after xyz date]”

So being that I was flying into a Muslim country, I asked the Emirates operator what date Ramadan starts, and they didn’t know! Then I got disconnected for some reason (to me it sounded as if the guy hung up on me), I rang up immediately afterwards and had the following said to me…

“Sorry sir, there are no seats available on [day after xyz date], however there is a seat available on [xyz date]”

Criticism is Illegal

According to this AME article, Etisalat has launched a new service which is supposedly the “UAE's first virtual community” (that is of course excepting the UAE community blog and about a few dozen others)
Contrary to the lovely sales pitch utilized by some Etisalat employee…
“We want to encourage our customers to voice their opinions, share their life experiences and their knowledge, and truly use our solution to come together.”…
etisalat’s website, which entertainingly has a blogging section; has the following lovely points in its wonderfully written terms and conditions, which prohibit you doing the following…
Like everywhere else in the Middle East you are only allowed to criticize Israel and Antartica…
“To promote any activities that interferes with the State's policy/regime or jeopardizing the State's national interest or bothering countries or any other country with mutual interest or engaged in business with the State or transgressing the basic grounds of society such as customs and traditions be means of criticism or otherwise.”
And even more entertainingly…
“To promote any activities that profane the sanctity of the rules of decorum/conduct or have destructive effect on youngsters/juveniles or include an invitation to embrace/promote destructive principles.”
And of course, everyone’s no.1 favourite…
“Advertise any criminal or unlawful topics/messages/ideas that contradict with the UAE social, cultural, political, economical, or religious values.”
And for those with a liking for binding contracts…
“Etisalat reserves the right to change, amend or reproduce these Terms and Conditions or any document related to Weyak portal services provided through mobile handsets or the Internet from time to time as it may deem fit. Any change, amendment or reproduction shall immediately bind the customer from the date on which it is posted on Weyak Portal.”

Seeing as Etisalat uses the latest and greatest in technology, the agreement comes pre-ticked when you sign up (and no, I didn’t sign up), like seriously, you can’t even tick it, it’s already ticked.

Now isn’t that a comfort?

I think the best thing about the service is how it publishes people’s real names alongside their blogs. That is such a good idea.

samuraisam’s prediction?
Etisalat will block livejournal, blogger/blogspot, xanga and whatever else it can forcing you to utilize its substandard ‘virtual community’ which you must use your mobile number/Etisalat internet account details to sign up to.

On the front page of their ‘weyak’ portal, you can vote as to whether you like the new site or not…
Currently the vote stands at about 50/50, unless of course Etisalat (like it has done with surveys in the past (comparison: before and after (they supposedly removed 300 or so votes according to much.net) jumps in at the last minute and votes several hundred times to reinforce how great they are.How about people vote and tell them the truth (as if 60 people already telling them they hate that site isn't bad enough)

P is for pornography

I read the best article in Emirates Today today (page 8, Link (courtesy of NZM)

I mean, as far as articles go about the Middle East, this one has dripping hypocrisy and irony (how unusual!)

For instance:
“We would not invade privacy"
versus
“They explained to me very clearly that they were simply looking for any material that may not be suitable for the UAE”

Who will win? Who knows.

But tell me, when you’re looking through people’s bags for pornography, how can one act as if it isn’t an invasion of privacy?
If you happen to posses any pornography, why would you put it in a sealed suitcase in the first place? I mean, surely, obviously according to this article, you’d be whacking off to your inner-most fantasies in your window-seat in plain view of everyone, all of these immoral people sharing their pornography with other people! It’s unacceptable. We all know that all people who dream about the opposite/same sex obviously possess no moral values and they are intent on destroying productive society.

The better part is when Emirates Today represents it as a “welcome measure”;
“Passengers arriving at Abu Dhabi International Airport have welcomed new measures for checking the content of magazines, newspapers CDs and DVDs.”
Yes. I can totally agree with that.
“I’ve just been on a 16 hour flight, which was delayed 2 hours because of terrorists and ignorant morons boarding the plane late; then I didn’t get one peep of sleep because I was seated next to the children’s section, the food was terrible. Then I arrived at Abu Dhabi airport after filing into a passport queue and waiting several hours for a few stamps. When I went to the baggage carousel and saw a big chalk mark on my bags, I knew that it was going to be a happy ending! It was like Christmas (or Eid) had come early!  The thought of someone sorting through my ‘literature’ never ceases to cheer me up.”

Instead we’re told the following;
“When I got the luggage off the carousel at Abu Dhabi I noticed there was a large chalk mark on the suitcases and I was asked to open them. I presume the mark was an alert about what I had inside.

Especially since the last time someone checked through my bags in Dubai Airport, they ‘dropped’ my Canon 350d on the table with a sigma 15 mm fisheye lens; Sensitive camera’s invite drops from 5 cm up on a hard metal table, they make them work better. The attitude of the lady that did it afterwards was pathetic; she didn’t even apologise, or better yet, explain why the hell she was touching my camera. IT’S A CAMERA, I’M A TOURIST.
The other item of fascination was apparently my headphones. They’re absolutely fascinating, and expensive, please touch them.

“I have to say that the team of people who were there checking magazines and things were very good.”
Propaganda machine? Unpossible!

If this person interviewed really had no pornography, then how can he say whether they were good pornography-spotters or not?

“We are here just to make sure that things that are being brought into the UAE are appropriate.”
Ok. Picture this. I’m a tourist. With 300 copies of playboy.
I want to make sure my entry to the UAE will be ok; so I type “pornography allowed in uae”, and the best I can come up with is this about page. Gee. That sure is handy.

studer

Nothing beats finishing off a good recording session, as much as I love the feeling after finishing a recording session successfully, I probably won’t end up doing this for the rest of my life.

This evening I recorded my cousin’s band; straight to 2 inch studer tape. The same kind of tape recorder used for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.


The Studer A820

After getting a call notifying me the studio was free I turned up two hours early for the 4 hour session. Loaded up the studer, rewound and set it to erase the previous person’s recording.

Then I found out someone else was doing a recording so there weren’t enough headphones available, so while it was erasing I ran home to get my own 2 sets of headphones.

Then I poked a large number of buttons and faders of a JADE mixer, an analog inline mixing console with over 2,500 faders, buttons and pan pots. Not an enjoyable task.


A soundtracs JADE mixing desk (picture taken from here

Then the band showed up, and we began loading the drum kit and the giant Electric Guitar amp with some fancy-pants valve preamp in. Nothing is better to get you awake from your “I went to sleep at 3 AM and woke up at 10 AM” schedule than lugging a giant box full of drum kit paraphernalia which weighs around 40-50 kg.

Then come the microphones, pretty much spending 10 minutes on each mic arching useless microphone stands with heavy microphones on them precariously over each instrument.

Then the problems…
“I forgot my tuning key”
“can you get me a power extension cord?”
“got any earplugs?”

I don’t have any problem dealing with those sort of things, they add to the pressure, I usually work better under pressure.

The great thing about tape is that there is headroom, if you use a digital system, you increase the volume until it goes as close to 0 (the maximum level) as you can, as soon as it goes over, the recording is screwed and you have to start again; on an analog system, such as the 2 inch tape system, you can pretty much crank the signal as far as you want to.

The bad thing about tape is time, 1 hour recording time at 7.5 inches per second, 30 minutes at 15 IPS, and 15 minutes at 30 IPS. The faster the tape moves/runs out, the better the recording quality; the problem is when tracks are 10-15 minutes long, it tends to be a pain in the butt.

The other thing with tape is cost; it isn’t really manufactured anymore nowadays, so it retails for several hundred bucks a piece, that means it is scarce, you can only record over it so many times until it breaks or the quality deteriorates.

Nothing beats having the levels pumping into the tape machine above the recommended level and having the wonderful sound of analog distortion.

You actually have to bolt the tape into the tape machine, and when you leave it undone, things tend to get ugly (as they did early on today), when you realise the tape isn’t bolted in and it could fly off and decapitate someone’s head or another bodily orifice you have to intervene and jam your finger into it, as I did. So today I got my first studer tape machine injury, a large scratch on my pinky.

I ended up doing the first 10 minute track in 15 IPS, allowing a healthy 10 minutes more of maximum quality, or something along those lines. I fucked up, and midway through the song the tape ran out. The band looked slightly pissed, but it didn’t really matter, as a valve in the guitarists preamp had broken or some such, basically making the amplifier useless; so after a lot of pedantic messing around I ended up feeding it into a TLA compressor for some beautiful valve distortion, unfortunately the performance was inhibited a bit without the amp there, so I’ll probably have to end up re-recording certain parts. But at least I ended up getting the drums done.

After finishing off the first reel of tape I had to procure a second one, which I was pretty lucky to have been able to do.

I ran 35 minutes past the closing time of my college; but considering all the fucking waiting around I’ve had to do in the past there (imagine having to look like a dumb ass and have a band wait around for 20 minutes because staff have fucked off for a lunch break, conveniently at the cross over point between sessions?) it seemed like a fitting attitude on my behalf.

The drummer was such an amazing performer, he really put so much energy into playing the drums, and they sounded absolutely amazing; to put it in writing, I termed some of his performance ‘hi-hat rape’, at the end of the last song he was sweating all over and seriously looked like he was going to collapse.

My back hurts, my hands hurt, my ears hurt and I’m sweaty, I feel like nothing more than having a nice relaxing bath whilst listening to some drums of death in an open style, or perhaps listening to the soundtrack for Amelie once more, which is exactly what I’m going to go and do.

If I get a chance in the next week or so I’ll upload a sample of the recording(s).

Interweb Shenanigans

Going back to the UAE means unfortunately going back to Etisalat…

Over the past year my internet connection speed has changed drastically, funny thing is the cost has stayed precisely the same; the internet connection in my parents house in Dubai experienced a remarkable double speed increase for absolutely free. How generous of Etisalat.

Currently I have an 8 megabit (8192 kbps) internet connection, this is a 16-fold increase over the 512 connection I had earlier this year, and Etisalat upgraded 512 connections to 1024 kbps this year.

Looking at it graphically…


As you can see, the internet connection here in Australia is a whole 15 USD cheaper than Etisalat’s offerings.

Let’s be generous to Etisalat, the UAE is a remote location, surely this creates quite a large cost increase?

I live in Perth; supposedly the worlds most isolated city...  So that kind of screws that argument. Also, from what I understand, the internet in Australia is linked through an undersea cable (which like Etisalat’s has been severed by boat anchors in the past (not sure if it has been just once or more))

My connection here hasn’t been without its issues, it did go out for a while due to a cable cut in California or some such; but compared to when I’ve called Etisalat to report technical problems I was actually treated with an inkling of respect and I wasn’t constantly blamed for any shortfalls, I was apologised to, and most entertaining was when I called up and the discussion went like this (for a billing related call, not tech-support)…

Samuraisam: Hi, (I present XYZ problem)
Customer service person: Uhh, Can I please have your username, thanks…
Samuraisam: s-a-m-u-r-a-i-s-a-m
Customer service person: …samuraisam… That sounds familiar, do you play counterstrike?
PS: If you ever move to Australia and need an internet provider, I recommend Amcom internet for their cost, service and general attitude.

I am not looking forward to going from 8192 kbps down to a measly 1024, and I’m not looking forward to losing skype, pornography, youtube and every other half entertaining website on the internet.