Walking On Sunshine

So that’s me back from Dubai – six hours on a flight next to a honeymooning couple who puckered up more times, and for longer, than a lip plumped lamprey sucking silt off the glass of the London Aquarium. The kisses I could stand, but the slurping noises drowned the music in my headphones so often I thought it was plugged in to a Dyson.

Dubai was, as always, a fantastic adventure with lots of hard work but a bit of play too. I caught the new Cars 2 animated movie which has a brilliant Aston Martin spy car voiced by Michael Caine, and my favourite line came when one car asked a stupid question and the other replied “Is the Popemobile a Cadillac?”.

I had to suffer as well and manfully went for a “brunch” meal on Friday which meant non stop champagne and exotic food, and finished with my mouth stuck under a chocolate fountain. To think, I actually get paid for this!

Talking of chocolate... as I left Heathrow airport in London the newsagent WH Smith had a huge display in Terminal Three under a Union Jack banner announcing Great British Gifts for sale. They were selling Toblerone. I’m guessing it must have come from that English county Switzerland between Germanyshire and Italyshire.

Arriving at Dubai airport I always find I get caught by how different things are. It’s not just the way people dress or talk. I find myself standing in the passport control line amazed at the fact they allow a very loud busker to sing at the top of his voice somewhere on the concourse. It’s quite pleasant even though the singer is invisible, but then I found out this is a pre recorded call to prayer that is played over the public address system every few hours. That busker gets everywhere as I heard him again in every shopping mall I visited. He must be worth a fortune by now.

Being based in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai takes its responsibilities seriously and we have all heard about what happens to Brits who don’t respect their customs and traditions. The coverage of Monte Carlo head Prince Albert’s wedding was shown on TV but, when CNN showed the nuptial mass, the sound was cut so as not to encourage Christianity. Which seems silly. How many people spring up after watching a wedding on telly and say “That’s it, I’m going to start going to Church?”.

The Brits in Dubai are a great collection of ex pats and visitors and on Men’s Finals day at Wimbledon I was invited to a party hosted by Nick, a nice guy who used to be the NATO spokesperson in Afghanistan. His guests included another Brit, Paul Bramble, who had the incredibly tough and dangerous armed job of running security companies in Iraq and Colombia. He has recently changed career and now imports exotic flowers.

Currently Dubai is emptying as wives and children of the ex pats head home to Europe for school holidays and to avoid the heat, which is around 45 degrees – that’s about 113 degrees in old, black and white, Fahrenheit. In Dubai deodorant is your best friend.

The radio stations sound, more or less, like they do here – the same old songs played over and over again till you want to scream, and there appear to be many British presenters. One of them, a DJ on Virgin radio rang up someone, live on air, to get his Bluetooth fixed. He didn’t ring a phone shop or a technical help line. He rang a dentist. The receptionist on the other end sounded more and more frustrated while explaining that blue teeth were not their field of expertise. Funny, if a bit on the long side.

Now I’m back, and the sunshine is just a memory to be enjoyed as I pack a bag and get ready for our annual holiday.

Life is tough isn’t it?

Relax

Today I had a day off from work, which for me is a huge event.

I had been looking forward to this day for months, imagining what I would do with all the spare time and how I would treat it as a mini holiday. Perhaps I’d get a haircut and a quiet read in a coffee shop and finally finish The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest – if I had remembered how to read.

Since I left my radio job a couple of weeks ago, within ten hours of coming off air I was on a plane to Dubai working my sweaty socks off for six days. Last time there I spotted a shopping mall with a full size jumbo jet, a five story fish tank in which shoppers can dive to take photos, and a mock up of an operating theatre and law court. This time was even more surprising.

It wasn’t that this mall in the desert had a full size ski slope with a hotel whose balconies opened on to the real snow. No, even more exciting was that this one had a shop for chocolate tasting. Right up my Quality Street!

After the choc fest I then flew back to London and straight in to hosting a conference and then off to Dorset to work till yesterday, so I have not had time to actually change those sweaty socks, never mind relax.

Today was going to be brilliant, full of stuff that I wanted to do for myself, without even a slight whiff of work, or indeed socks. And guess what? I spent the whole day at my desk catching up on paper work.

Working hard is all very well but then invoices have to be written, books balanced, post that’s been lying for months had to be opened, and I discovered from a letter written by my MP that there’s been an election and we have a coalition government. When did that happen? Next they’ll tell me that the Barack Obama guy became president.

If we live in the age of paperless offices and computerised lives, how come my desk is still covered in more paper than a bride with a confetti fetish? Where does it all come from?

Looking at it all I grudgingly might admit I make a rod for my own back by being so anal about keeping accounts and correspondence. I call it professional but you’d call it obsessive. I truly wish I was one of those people who throw stuff in the bin and only worry when the bailiffs knock on the door. A pal of mine is like that and when the debt collectors turned up on his doorstep he greeted them with “Trick Or Treat?” and offered each an orange and a bag of crisps. He never lost his sense of humour though he did lose his car, his house and his wife.

In the pile of paperwork today I found bank statements, grocery bills, receipts, invites to buy plants, discounts on vitamins, a new calendar, the kids’ mobile phone bills, invitations to Christmas parties and a begging letter. I really must remember to send that soon, it took me ages to write.

So that was my day off that never was. I think I’ve forgotten how to relax and just chill, the joy of just slobbing about doing nothing. I need to see a shrink, and I bet next time I’m in Dubai there will be a shopping mall with loads of them open for business.

If they do chocolate tasting as well, I’m making an appointment.

You Little Thief

I wish to report a crime.

Regular readers will know that I was stuck in Dubai recently when the Icelandic volcano erupted, and while stealing ten days of my life is a crime in itself, it just got worse this week in a mini crime wave mystery that Sherlock Holmes himself would have found taxing.

After I returned home from the Middle East, the company I was working for in Dubai very kindly sent me a box of luxury chocolates as a “thank you”, and if you know anything about me then you will realise that presenting me with chocolate is like giving me gold wrapped in hundred pound notes inside Louis Vuitton himself.

To say I like chocolate is like saying Lionel Messi is fond of a kick about, Simon Cowell likes mirrors, or Romeo had a wee bit of a fancy for Juliet. If I ever find a magic lamp then the genie will be busy turning the world’s glaciers in to Walnut Whips and the seas in to melted chocolate, and global warming will lead to nothing more sinister than hot chocolate on tap everywhere.

I get this small weakness, or very great talent as I prefer to call it, from my Mum who has a sweet tooth bigger than a giant vampire dragon’s fang. Unfortunately, the older I get the more attached I get to chocolate which, now that I think of it, is fair as it seems to be getting more attached to me - especially around the waist and chins.

Anyway, back to the crime I want to report. This box of chocolates from Dubai was very expensive and only available in the Middle East. The individual pieces were thick and crunchy and promised luxurious melting experiences on my tongue so, of course, I hid the box in a place at home where it would never be found. Or so I thought.

You’re ahead of me now, aren’t you?

At the weekend I was watching TV and said to my wife we should eat the chocolates just to make the evening complete. I searched every hidey hole I have in the house and couldn’t find them and, when I asked, Debbie and the kids insisted they hadn’t seen them. Debbie even swore blind that she knew nothing about them and I never had them in the first place.

Then today I found the box hidden behind a bag of flour in a cupboard in our utility room. And the box was empty!

Actually, to be truthful, it wasn’t completely empty as it had two and a half chocolates remaining. I challenged my wife who burst out laughing and said she’d started on them when I was on a trip two weeks ago and just couldn’t stop. The half of one chocolate remaining was because she didn’t like it and hoped, if I ever found out, that having a half would mollify me. The remaining two were on the execution list but she hadn’t had time to polish them off before I found them. I was desolate.

When your wife lies to you about something as serious as this you know that trust has gone forever and the divorce court beckons.

I suggested to my lawyer that stealing and lying about chocolate were grounds for divorce, but he seems not to understand and has informed me it would have to be something less important, like adultery.

So, adultery it is. I just have to find a chocolate lover who wants to join me.

Back Home

It felt a bit like a Hollywood movie last week with volcanic ash menacingly making its way across Europe. If the Russians wanted to invade then that was the time to do it as Wing Commander Johnny Hero sipped tea and James Bond remained stuck at his skiing chalet waiting for it to blow over.

I still think it was an insurance scam by the government of Iceland as Jeremy Clarkson visited and was allowed to smoke as much as he wanted. Hot air and a packet of Woodbines is a lethal combination, but the get out for insurers is that Clarkson will boast to everyone that, as he did it, it must be an "act of God".

When things erupted, so to speak, I was stuck in Dubai on business and unable to get home so I managed a few days sight seeing. I realise you have no sympathy and there are worse places to be stuck. I could have been held in Kazakhstan or Croydon.
They love being biggest and best in Dubai. It's home to the world’s tallest building, where I sat in a restaurant with the world’s best food and watched the world’s tallest fountains go off every fifteen minutes, choreographed to the world’s worst music.

Where other schools would employ former Raith Rovers second eleven players as football coaches, one school here has ex England midfielder Carlton Palmer. Dubai - never knowingly understated.

Armani has a hotel here though Giorgio himself couldn’t make the opening because of the travel chaos, there’s Dolce and Gabanna and Chanel, as well as McDonalds and Costa. But that’s just where the fun starts. Look further and you’ll find outlets that reflect the Arab love of the gaudy. Shops like ‘You Bring It We Bling It’, a place where you can get anything from your mobile phone to your wife blinged with diamante or Swarovsky. Stupidly I had my underpants done. Now I know what having piles must be like.

I visited The Palm, a reclaimed area where the footballers have bought their holiday homes. It is a man made island in the shape of a palm tree with the Atlantis, a castle like hotel, at the end and having a foyer which is underwater. I was mesmerised looking through the floor to ceiling glass walls at giant fish and sharks swimming around a recreation of a sunken city. Wait till Dubai realises they can open the world’s biggest dentist waiting room here.

I spent some time in what’s billed as the world’s biggest shopping mall. There’s the front half of a full sized aeroplane here for kids to virtually fly, an operating theatre for them to play doctors and nurses, a university for them to graduate, and a law court in which to play lawyers and bad guys. There’s also an ice rink, a twenty screen cinema complex, and another floor to ceiling aquarium but with a cage for shoppers to be lowered in for photo opportunities as they swim with sharks. Beats the wet fish counter at the Wimbledon Waitrose.

Here I bought some sweatshirts for the kids but extra small size of course. Dubai does everything bigger

Perhaps what sums up Dubai best for me was a letter published last Tuesday in the local newspaper 7 Days. It mentioned the world’s biggest travel chaos caused by the world’s biggest ash cloud with the world's greatest publicity from the world’s largest currently erupting volcano.

The letter ended, “when can we get one?”.

Midnight At The Oasis

www.paulcoia.com

I don’t like to boast, in fact I’m the best in the whole world at not boasting, but I doubt your weekend was as interesting as mine. I spent it in the desert with a pole dancer, a clown and a Vietnam veteran.

Sadly they weren’t all one person as I could have earned fortunes hiring him or her out to reality shows. The three of us were joined by a relative of one of the members of Abba, the great nephew of the man who created Disney’s Dumbo, and a man who once wore tights to a reception at the British Embassy in Kuwait. Oh, and around one thousand other people were there too.

I was in Dubai presenting at a conference and I asked the audience to share something about themselves that no one else in the room could know, hence revealing the pole dancer, clown, et al. My reasoning was that we get so caught up in seeing colleagues as just office furniture that we forget they have lives, and I wanted to show the diversity of hidden talents the company had to draw on.

The feedback was provided semi anonymously but I could work out the identities of the two people who had provided the usual nutcase answers like “I have had gender reassignment” – though, on reflection, one of them could have been telling the truth. The person who told us he likes walking on water obviously has a power complex but I took his business card anyway as he might be handy for changing water in to wine next time I’m hosting a dinner party.

The company holding the conference was wonderfully diverse but, until I asked on stage, did not realise its workforce included a concert standard violinist, an old rock star, a former children’s TV presenter from Pakistan and a qualified medical doctor who had changed careers, as well as a girl who can recite the alphabet backwards, someone who has had fifty blind dates in the past two years, a worried man who is juggling twelve girlfriends, and a guy who has had a credit in the last two Star Wars movies.

It’s a pity so many of us are forced because of work practices, traditions and our view of professionalism, to leave our real selves at home as the diversity of our experiences is what makes us unique, but how much of that do we bring to work? This lot were special but probably didn’t realise.

I next asked for their nicknames at school. I was never popular enough to have a nickname, unless you count Wallflower, so I’ve always been jealous of people who have, although having seen some of the answers given I may rethink this one. Amongst the thousand or so people in the room were a former Sooty, Poops, Big Bum, Camel and Wimpy along with a sprinkling of Not So Smart, Chipmunk, Potty and, for some reason, several Boobys. I so wanted to meet the person who owned up to the nickname Armpit. I imagine he started shaving well before his classmates.

Finally, I asked for the worst job anyone in the room had ever had. My own experience of this was as a student at university when I spent a summer break working for a brewery. You may think three months surrounded by beer is a dream come true for an unwashed, unshaven, unsociable teenage oik but I spent the whole twelve weeks throwing empty bottles at a wall so that they smashed and the collected glass could be recycled. If I was very good, occasionally I was allowed to do an hour here and there watching labels being attached to product and making sure the loader was fully charged with Brown Ale stickers. Even for a person of limited brain such as myself, this was mind numbing.

However, I cheered up when I read the feedback from the room in Dubai. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one to suffer in the past. Amongst the former waitresses, burger flippers and dish washers, we had a pig farmer and a sheep dagger. As I had no idea what dagging sheep entails I made the mistake of asking and, when the guy told me, my days of bottle smashing seemed life affirming. This poor man had spent all his time cutting the dirty wool from around sheep’s bottoms. I reflected later that this was perhaps a metaphor for many in business life.

There were some wise crackers who reckoned the worst job they’d ever had was getting married, but many really went for it and shared that they had been garden gnome makers or toilet cleaners, and there was one who admitted to having been an assistant in an abbatoir. I’m not sure who it was that shared with us that his worst job was being a bully, but perhaps he should seek counselling.

One poor soul had obviously had a tougher life than most and wrote that his worst job was selling mangoes from the family farm in order to survive.

So, a random bundle of individuals who all have one aim, which is to make their company as successful as possible, but all bringing so many different experiences and skills to the job and managing, amongst the serious task of carrying this out, to have a laugh and open up a bit. I can promise you that the party that night was special and, despite sore heads the following day, they would all get stuck right back in to earning success for their business, knowing just that little bit more about each other.

My only regret is that I didn’t manage to track down the pole dancer, but perhaps it was just as well. I fear it may have been the very butch Senior Vice President I interviewed on stage.