Deep dish Pizza
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Deep Dish Vegetarian Pizza, Mango Iced Tea, Strawberry Lemonade, and the company of two crazy girls- Uno’s Grill is certainly a treat!
Deep Dish Vegetarian Pizza, Mango Iced Tea, Strawberry Lemonade, and the company of two crazy girls- Uno’s Grill is certainly a treat!
Divine dessert fit for the Lords!
Oh and Romano’s Macaroni Grill gives them in a size that will make you say “oh Holy Lord”
Picture the scene. Your big corporate meeting, people flying down from Europe for a day. Let’s all meet they said. We insist we have everyone. Schedule for late Thursday afternoon? Super.
I coordinate with a local contact to attend. Oh, I can’t make it, I have to pick up my kids Thursday afternoon. Right. How about a different time? Yea, that’s fine.
My battery proceeded to die in the evening. So he called me, and I missed it. Around 10 p.m., when I got around to checking e-mail, I see a “I was expecting a call from you.” There was another e-mail regarding a project our companies were partnering on. I had an issue with it, and it was urgent, so I replied questioning his e-mail.
His response five minutes later: “I did not hear back from you regarding the meeting.” I replied I did not get a confirmation so I will get back to him on that in morning. And well, you didn’t answer my question.
I message him after the meeting was confirmed in the morning. He proceeds to call me and say “This is why I was trying to call you yesterday. I can’t make the new time” Eh, what now?!
Fine, you can’t make it. But what am I supposed to figure out when you say I didn’t hear back from you on the meeting. Instead of typing that, why didn’t you type that you couldn’t make the time. Instead of typing “waiting for your call”, couldn’t you have bloody told me what the problem was so when I did check it, I could react?
Let me add that 15 minutes after the scheduled time, he called me. When I returned the call, he told me he wanted to know how the meeting had gone. Er. Did you not propose the time that you then cancelled? You *knew* I’d be in the meeting because it was on your damned calendar as well.
And we wonder why we don’t get a lot of stuff done here. Even though I’m on topic, I will not discuss our favorite telco provider today. But seriously, what is it with simple professionalism around these parts. Why is it so painfully lacking. Inform people what to do, what you want. Communicate! Telling me I’m being transparent with you doesn’t make you that, by the way.
If I wasn’t leaving out the country for two weeks, I’m fairly certain another post on customer service would be on its way. Until then, make do with this happy excerpt I received the other day:
Japanese attitude for work:
If someone can do it, you can do it too :)
If no one can do it, you must do it!
Arabic version:
If someone can do it, let him do it!
If no one can do it, why should I do it?
And yes, this was forwarded quite graciously by an Arab.
What your e-mail address says about you
Living by yourself during your University days are a great way to bring out the hidden cook in you. Searching for simple, effective recipes for one can be a fun challenge, especially when you try to emulate something you see in a restaurant or cafe.
Presenting a sample of the good ol’ days, if we can call them that, the Black bean burrito. I really didn’t want to leave the house this morning, and I managed to find black beans, mushrooms, onions, some greens, oat wraps and this is very important ??? cheese ??? so I set to work.
Witness the end results taken with my phone camera. And yes, that’s Whittard’s Mango & Passionfruit Iced tea gleaming by the side. Yes, iced tea can gleam, thank you very much.
If you’ve been following this blog (you have, haven’t you? Fine, say that you have?), you’ll know I’m a sucker for iced tea. So after having iced tea a few times at Whittard of Chelsea at Festival City in Dubai, I finally succumbed and picked up this little wonder.
Ah, Whittard’s iced tea from the comfort of my own home.??
After looking at the mouth-watering Mango and curried chick pea salad captured in Chirag’s post, I decided to try my hand at it. So with the help of my mom, I marched into the kitchen with laptop displaying the recipe.
What happened next was a blur of cumin seeds, coriander, mangoes, chickpeas, mom telling me (okay okay, screaming) for almost breaking the mini-blender (I WAS EXCITED, OKAY? Hmph) and spinach leaves. And the end result as you can see is the pic! I have to give credit to my mom. She did most of it…I only stirred in the spices, onion and squeezed out the lemon.
P.S. Not the greatest pic but yea…
Such a typical day.
Paneer.
Sorry, but that had to be the first word in this post. Say hello to a nice quiet North Indian meal with some of our absolute specialties. Highlights from the evening include delicious Paneer Tikkas — that looked so good I couldn’t stop taking shots — cooked on charcoal.
For the main course, we had Methi Kofta in Chana Curry, Navratan Korma and Jeera Aloo, pictured in that order.
If you aren’t salivating already….well….Oh sorry, I was busy drooling.
And…Google’s at it again. You have to give these guys marks for creativity. Screencaps from today’s pacman’d logo, which also lets you play the game, in 1- and 2-player modes. Brilliant.
Right, so my post refers to this article, written about this event. (see also this). It’s fairly obvious from the comments section of the article that I felt rather strongly about the way it was written, because it represented very poor journalism on various grounds. Rather than go point by point on the issues I had with the article (I tried starting the post that way, but boy did it get too long), I’ve decided to approach it from another angle.
Before I do that, let me start by saying I did not agree at all with the policy in question. Refusing entry — based on clothing, especially if that clothing has cultural or religious significance — to a networking event, isn’t right. I don’t know if the venue should have been different, or something. To be honest, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword: the law attempts to protect the culture and us, as humans, want to be treated equally and not denied entry to networking events.
If you don’t know them already, allow me to introduce you to the Society of Professional Journalists. I’ll let you read on-line what the organization stands for, but I’m going to bring up, in detail, their code of ethics.
Preamble
Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society’s principles and standards of practice.
via spj.org
It’s straightforward enough. You can argue that it’s a US-based organization, but believe me when I say these code of ethics pass around as a great framework in journalistic circles.
Let’s delve right in. I’ve highlighted just the pertinent points.
Seek Truth and Report It
Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. Journalists should:
The writer left out the fact that the source in the article actually made it in to the event (after removing her scarf). That changes the feel of the article altogether. The writer states that she did not have that information at the time of writing the article. Eh? She interviewed the source either during the event or after it. The source had already gotten in at the point.
More importantly, the writer intentionally left out the fact that she herself had been denied entry. Massive whoa, in my opinion.
She posted the organizer’s twitter post. Yay. She claims she contacted the organizers. I have it from the organizers (and it’s evident from one of the comments) that
I also know for a fact — I heard this myself on the radio the day before — that the organizers announced they were having issues with the hotel about letting people with kanduras in. It was a hotel policy (and common for this region for a place serving alcohol). People may have missed out on that, but it was her job to verify that this has indeed been announced before she wrote about it.
I know, I know, the headline could go either way. But to me, the headline questioned the authenticity of the event itself. Well first, that is not under question in the article at all. I was at the event. Two, she never made it in to find out?
I’m clubbing these two together since they don’t exactly go on the article, but they do go on her responses during the comments. Moving on.
Minimize Harm
Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect. Journalists should:
No real bearing on the post itself, but you know, I thought I should put that out there. But wait, here’s my favorite part.
Act Independently
*guffaw*
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know. Journalists should:
Right, who wants to go first? All through the comments, the writer continued to argue that by a) not mentioning that she had been refused entry and b) sticking to a what happened-quote-response format, there had been no compromise.
Dear writer, read this about three times first. Now I’ll say it again. By being a victim of the incident, you now have a conflict of interest, and are directly associated with the issue at hand, thereby compromising integrity of the article. This is not a point of discussion. This is a fact. She could not, could not, write the article. Period.
What’s more, she intentionally left out the part about being refused entry herself. Intentionally. (She says she did so, so that the article could be unbiased. Duh..what now?)
Be Accountable
Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other. Journalists should:
So she allowed us to comment. But she didn’t take it as a dialog. She kept telling everyone there had been no bias, asking us to point out the offending comment in the article. (My gawd woman, you could not write the article itself, at all. How are you not getting this?)
Hah. Yeah. That.
Yea well. I’ve put that up there, but I realize that point one is useless since she can’t see it herself. And that fact makes point two moot.
via spj.org
Soon after my comments on the article, I was contacted by one the organizers. Why? Because they were upset that their hard work had been put to shame. More importantly, because they had not even been contacted about their response to the accusations in the article. Or during the event to see if the issue could be resolved.
It’s a trivial issue you say? Actually, I don’t think so. Sure, the accusations laid on a media company for a networking event are hardly life-endangering. But the core principle is the same — this was pathetic journalism. Arguing that at Oxford (which doesn’t have a journalism program I understand), she was taught that creative writing spices up journalism makes this even more laughable. They’re separate things. I would know. I’ve worked in journalism. I studied creative writing.
She then turned around to say well, it was an entertainment piece. What? Really? Because it reads like it was meant to be a news article. She said so herself at the start.
I could really go on and on. No, really. I had at least five additional points in my original blog post. The article was terribly executed, but more importantly, horrendously skewed. I’ve found 12 points of issue with an ethics code for journalists. TWELVE. *sigh*
For the record, I’m not in this for the publicity (I’m not posting this on twitter since this isn’t about attracting attention), or to attack anyone personally. I do not know the writer, directly or indirectly. But I’ve looked her up. And I’ve learnt that she actually serves as a business development executive for the Web site in question, and will be speaking about the future of journalism at a panel next week.
I’ll conclude with a line I haven’t used in a while.
I weep for the future.
Note: Just to put it out there, I’m not making these arguments without some background. I’ve written news stories, opinion pieces, copy-edited, done entertainment pieces and served as editor-in-chief, spanning three years. Sure, you can argue that it was a college newspaper, but I’ll argue back that it was a weekly 28- to 36-page hard work per week, with no funding provided by the University at all (we did this to maintain unbiased reporting about the Univeristy). We were a recipient of the ACP Pacemaker finalist award in 2004 during my stay there — an award conferred that year to 25 newspapers among the 1000s around the country — and we followed the AP Styleguide. I could go on, but suffice to say we weren’t just kidding around.
I will also add here that we were a member of various news organizations, including the Society of Professional Journalists.
MAJOR EDIT, May 23: Surprise, Surprise. Upon visiting the article today, I learnt that some later comments have now been deleted. I didn’t save the article (yes seriously, who’d want to preserve that anyway), so all I was able to compare are screenshots of the current article and a cached copy from Google. So much for the “Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant” I mentioned earlier.
Voila my findings:
…which seems to have been pulled down.
Mugg & Bean makes for a nice snazzy little outlet based in Abu Dhabi Mall. It’s quite unfortunate actually that they’ve shut down their branches anywhere except Abu Dhabi. With a menu that boasts a variety of options for every meal of the day, it is a bit of a wonder why they didn’t exactly take off as a concept.
It also helps that there aren’t too many options in Abu Dhabi, unlike Dubai, where you can stop for a bite or a quick drink and also be able to work. Although for the size of the place, having exactly 2 power outlets is quite a negative point (no pun intended). If you aren’t lucky, you’re stuck without one, which is useless if like me, your laptop battery doesn’t have much of a life. Surely they’ve heard of a multiple outlet??surge protector???
Pictured above is their Egg salad with Spring Onion Mayo sandwich pair. Makes for a nice quick bite to eat midway through the day, even if it is a bit difficult to eat as the bread gets soggier with time and it’s an open sandwich.
Why I’m sold? Well, they have bottomless iced tea. Precious little beats that in my book, I’m afraid.
This is funny…and time-consuming..and *goes back to clicking button*
Vending machine to dispense gold.
I found a link for an interesting??recipe??(thanks ParulBh) for a curried chickpea salad with alphonso mangoes. I had to give it a try, it being mango season and all that. (Watch this space for nice mango season!)
I gave it a shot and was fairly impressed with the results. I deviated a little away from the recipe itself.
End result: a delicious (and quite filling) salad. It could have used a bit more lemon for some extra zing, and I probably should have waited for it to chill before downing it.
EDIT: Part deux of this salad, by contributing blogger Neelofer.
Today’s XKCD has a font reference!
Anonymous:
I love the way you eat in relish;
I love the way you work in concentration’
I love the way you smile in happiness;
I the way you sleep next to me in peace.
And oh, I love you, too.
Definitely the big circular one, and the pacman one, and the console one, and and…please mommy, pleeeeease?!
A really good post on the current standard, or lack thereof, of browsers, and interesting insights into why things like iPhone apps seem to offer much better experiences.
Sachin:
The web as an application platform stinks, and I think this is even more apparent now as we see incredible iPad apps being released. Why are iPad apps, in their initial versions, so much better than websites that have existed for years?
When I started writing this post last week, it was going to declare the end of the web. I’m not quite ready to call it dead, but it’s on thin ice.
So here’s how Microsoft defines humor. I particularly enjoyed noticing the list of Recommended Readings. All Google needs to do is setup a similar definition and the world will be a better place.
What? Can’t take a joke?
Has a positive and constructive sense of humor. Can laugh at himself/herself and with others. Is appropriately funny and can use humor to ease tension.
…
To improve your proficiency, ask yourself the following questions on a regular basis:
Watching @localarchade team argue on stage is more entertaining when you have @theregos’ diva-ing his phone :P
What did we learn today? When Etisalat says there’s no problem at their end, you shouldn’t believe them.
Okay, seriously, where do I begin?
Let me take you through my day today. At 10:30 a.m. I received a call from a customer of mine telling me they had lost all network access — the IP phones weren’t connecting, they couldn’t receive e-mail, etc. etc. Since no other engineer was available, I visited the site.
With an interconnectivity between Dubai and Germany and backup operations in Spain, this was a mildly cumbersome task, getting the right people on board to help diagnose the issue. I spent almost two hours trying to diagnose where the issue was coming from and of course, it was from Dubai.
Since the hardware had been checked already, I decided it was time to do the unthinkable — contact Etisalat. For those who follow this (people do?) and don’t know Etisalat (subtotal: 0.5 people), they’re our sole telecom provider in the UAE. Yes, DU, you’re there too, but honestly, the only thing you compete with are mobile phones. For anything else, we’re not given a choice, and for business requirements, we only have Etisalat. So yea, sole provider.
So I call Etisalat help, 101, who after running through some transfers, tell me, “Leased Line is a separate department, please call 04 xxx xxxx”. Right cool. In parallel, I might add, I’m trying to reach two separate account managers, both of whom are unreachable (which is okay, that happens).
So what happens when I call the number?
Attempt 1: <bad number>
Attempt 2: <bad number>
Attempt 3: Rings, rings, user busy.
Attempt 4: Rings, rings, user busy.
I call 101 again.
“What, that’s not the number, here’s the right number.” There’s 20 minutes I’m not getting back.
I reach some genius who tries to talk to me like I’m a 5 year old. “Oh dear, you’re having a problem? What is the problem?” Our leased line is friggin’ down, you moron.
“I’m checking from here and everything is okay. Your problem is definitely in the building. There is no problem from our side.”
“Are you sure, all the lights are not on, and there’s one red light on the modem.”
“No, no, here it is showing up.” (In technical terms, that means the link interface is up, ie, there are no problems). “The problem is in your building, someone must have cut the cable or something. Everything is okay upto and including our modem right now.”
“Sigh, allright.”
For the next 2 hours I waited for a building technician to show. In about 15 minutes, he traced every cable from the office down to the building telephone rooms and confirmed there were no issues at all.
I call the Leased Line help back.
“I’ve verified there is no problem in our cabling. I know there’s no problem in the link in Germany. I’ve confirmed that they’ve paid their bills through the account manager (whom I reached eventually in this hullabaloo). How do I sort this out?”
“Okay let me check, I’ll call you back.”
…
“You see the modem? What lights show on there.” “4 yellow, 1 red.”
“Okay, I’m going to reset the port, turn it off and when I say, turn it on again.”
Pretty much that’s what happens.
“What lights do you see on.” “4 yellow, 1 red.”
“When the WAN light came on, did it blink or just stabilize?” “Well, it just stabilized. Why? What should it be?”
“Oh it shouldn’t stabilize.” (WHAT?!) “Hmm, okay, well it did.”
“Okay let’s try it again and see if we get a different outcome.” Blimey. “Okay.”
Repeat performance.
“What do you see now?” “Oh, WAN link isn’t showing. Red light’s still there though.”
“Red light? Really. Hmm..” (YA THINK?!)
After putting me on hold for a bit…
“I think you have a faulty modem.” You think?!
“I’ll have someone sent over to you with a new modem.”
Yes, the new modem which arrived at 6 p.m. solved the problem. But nothing changed in the 4 hours since I first mentioned there was a red light. Or that we had a problem. Or…sigh, why do I bother.
You’d think I’d be done here don’t you? Yea, I’m not. I bring the sequel to my miff with Etisalat: The Twitter Wars.
So Etisalat recently joined Twitter, with much of the same hullabaloo mentioned earlier. News even filtered in that there were 12 people working the account (12? Gah. At least Dubai doesn’t have to worry about finding creative ways to employ people). Then came a huge furrow of “We’ll get back to you” tweets that didn’t seem to lead very far. And they were tweeting from the web.
However, when they started using CoTweet, I thought, okay, they’re trying.
I got a notification saying my year-long subscription for the iPhone was about to expire. Super, I thought. Let’s tweet.
So I asked Etisalat to help me understand what I needed to do to renew the iPhone subscription, and what plans I had available to me now that I’d completed a year.
On Apr 22, I received a call from a Sharjah number. I was at dinner and did not see the call. The message left behind was, “Hi I’m somebody incomprehensible calling from Etisalat. I’m following you up on your mail.” Er, what mail? (I realize now that this was related to the tweet).
I then received this, by DM:
Apr 23, EtisalatUAE: Would like to inform we will be unable to renew the current iPhone subscription. Please review our Iphone packages at http://twt.tl/qLQt2GI
Uhm. What? Yes, I’m aware that you have some iPhone packages on your Web site. Despite your rather disorienting Web site, I knew what that information was. But does that answer my question? No.
We will be unable to renew the subscription? What does that mean. Etisalat can’t renew subscriptions? That’s what I asked.
Response 2:
Apr 23, EtisalatUAE: Sorry for any confusion caused. To clarify, this is still the same company phone that you wish to renew, just with a different package?
Why did you not ask me that question before? I don’t get it. I told them that it was.
Then I got this:
Apr 25, EtisalatUAE: There may be crossover between my tweets and renewal requests u r sent. Pls bear with me. Am looking into it and will get back to u.
What is going on, exactly?
Apr 26, 5 p.m. I received a call from the same Sharjah number to discuss the iPhone dilemma. I’m told that Etisalat does not renew iPhone subscriptions and I just have to move to buying a regular data package.
One suggestion I received was to just buy a new iPhone and sell it on the market to keep the plan.
Apr 26, 8 p.m., I got another call from the same Sharjah number to tell me the same thing. I got another call at 8.30 p.m. which I ignored. I got another at 9 p.m. The person wanted to discuss my “mail” about my iPhone subscription, and started telling me how they don’t renew… “I already spoke to someone at 8?” “Oh I’m…” “No, seriously, it’s 9 p.m. and this is the third call for the same info.”
I hung up.
All this happened in one day. One bloody day. When I think about the fact that I’ve been a UAE-resident for 20+ years, I don’t think I could even begin to start listing the kind of instances I have been through, let alone people I know.
Why put it up with it?
Only, and only because we don’t really have a choice.
Brioche Dor??e??is a little cafe by the massive fountain structure at The Dubai Mall??that possesses a nice, quiet ambiance and a nice selection of breakfast food, along with sandwiches and salads.
While I didn’t snap it up, they make an excellent and delicious eggs platter — 3 eggs cooked to your choice, lettuce salad and grilled veggies — for a nice AED34.