Derick – a new office mate pulled out the latest T3 from his stash of magazines and pointed this out to me – thought it was quite blogworthy.

In the famous tradition of all T? magazines till date – this one features a scantily clad hottie on the cover showing off her bare essential – the latest Nintendo DS, ofcourse!!!
How appropriate and within context .. dontya thinnnk ?? ;P

Anyway.. the meat of this post (accidental pun ..oops) lies entirely in the discrepancy that one may find on the subscription page inside the same magazine which shows the same hottie in a concealing albeit ugly dress resembling a prairie wagon – showing little or absolutely no skin whatsoever…
why ?? why the disharmony between the two images one may ask !??

aaah – elementary my dears: different markets – different levels of exposure of the human skin. What might be acceptable as normality in Lebanon will be seen upon as ‘haram’ or ‘sinful’ in a more islamic and conservative market such as Saudi. Infact its not even surprising to note that when designing adverts for a market such as Saudi – us designers can only use images of male models or veiled females.

No Women = No Problem of Censorship !! thats the way it is in this enchanting land ;P

The Censorship however does not end there – it goes a little beyond that. When PhotoRetouching proves to be tooo expensive – Ol Sharpie comes to the rescue….Whip it out and start blacking out whatever might seem the least bit ‘haraam’. This may include Deities of other religions, Cleavages, Butt Cracks and a certain animal whose name begins with the letter P.

July 2003 issue of ‘India Today’ picked off the magazine racks from a local vendor

You catch my drift…
Fellow Dubai Blogger Keith Williamson too posted a hilarious account on Censorship last month – be sure to check it out here. Just to entice you to visit his page.. here is a snippet;

…. If you ventured into a record shop (you had to be a male-type person to do this – femmes were actually not allowed), you might see CDs on display. The cover might feature a good-lookin’ person of the female persuasion. And whatever she was wearing would be invisible because the censors would have blacked it out up to the neck. And luscious red lips were a no-no also, they would be given a black moustache treatment. You were supposed to be happy to pay good money for this!

hillllarious….!

Disclaimer:
Although funny and quite blogestuous ( a lovely adjective from ish – thanks! ), posts such as this are not in anyway meant to pose ridicule to any community or religion whatsoever. They are an account of the idiosyncracies that exist in different countries, cultures and regions of the world and therefore should be taken light heartedly ;) if however posts such as these are considered offensive – please let me know.

So yes another weekend has arrived and gone …*sigh*
i should probably change the name of this blog to ‘weekenders blog’ or something considering the increasing reportage of my weekends and consequent decrease of design and intellectual art talk … yikes what a scary thought !

Renewd my gym membership again last week but have been seriously thinking about getting into some kinda game/sports – i feel like such a knuclehead whensoever i work out with them huge biceped and v-shaped super model DOHH types. Tennis ? Squash?? maybe a better option …

Anyway.. let me get to the point about this very eventful weekend of mine
( sounds of drumroll in the background )

Took Spooky down to her first ever dog show !!! and wasn’t that a delightful experience!?
It was… and it was heaps fun watching soo many dogs at the same place.

Entered spooky into the toyclass category and i was a teeny-weeny bit concerned that i might have to drag her across the green in front of a few hundred spectators – how embarrasing would that have been? ( exactly the same thought that must have occured to my sister – which is why she backed off from being ‘the handler’ – the cheeky brat ;P )

But all went well and spooky behaved, other than the occasional nagging to be picked up in my arms – she was quite charming, amiable and well poised in front of the judge. …and … she found a potential love interest tooo !!! Sheikh Mohammeds daughters ‘Bichon Frieze’ named Sushi. They looked quite lovely together.

Curiously, I asked ‘Sushi’s’ handler as to how many other dogs Sheikh Mohammed owned and get this ?? he said ‘around 73 dogs, 1 snake, 2 cheetahs and a lion !!!!!!! wow ! WOW ! WWOOOOWW !!! ( a little dubai gk for those who are not familiar with who Sheikh Mohammed is – He is the Crown Prince of Dubai and the revolutionary man responsible for shaping dubai into what it is today and what it is to become in the near future )

Poor thing was awfully tired after all thar excitement and dint want to walk any further so dad had to carry her.

Met up with Sulagna in the evening at the Indian Sports club for her parents 25th – it was quite lovely seeing her after so long.

Nostalgia is always a happy word, is it not ?

Refrain from dialing 9 before any phonenumber when NOT in the office !

Sorry about the previous post and the tiny bit of censorship that it had to undergo …. for those who caught a glimpse – you have to admit the pictures were rather funny… and for those who din’t and have no idea what i’m talking about – erm.. lets just say i kinda chickened out from keeping some rather controversial pictures online…

Went to watch the Desert Fusion Concert (Jethro Tull and Remo Fernandes) last night and it was just way too cold for any non-drinking person to stay alive in … so me and my mate decided to leave after two songs and settle down at a nearby ‘Al Mallah’ for some of them delicious kebabs and shwarmas ( Al Mallah – popular arab restaurant in Dubai serving delicious arab wraps of meat, salad and yoghurt i.e, shawarma )

Here i am .. sposed to be on a diet and everything (which i might add has paid off quite well in addition to Faisal’s excellent training routines … and my mum’s delicious health concious cooking ) .. but lately ive been eaaaaaaaaaaaating .. and eating … eating eating quite a bit – went to the China Club at the Intercontinental for lunch this afternoon and the food was awright … but i did come across some rather blogworthy stuff at the restaurant.

ONE . my chinese horoscope

TWO . my fortune in a cookie ( which i dedicate to a new found darling friend – ish )

hey !! whats this theory about suffixing every fortune you find in a cookie with the words ‘in bed’ ??? – a total newby to me but quite a lot of fun ! perfect for a drunk night at a friends place … mmm.. box of fortune cookies and bottles of red should do the trick next time at Tia’s …;)

THREE . a tremendous urge to learn how to use the godamn chopsticks!!
I HAVE DECIDED – the next time i go into a chinese restaurant i will not be anything less than the likes of Mr. Kesuke Miyagi… Long road ahead but i shall practice hard ‘a step at a time’ starting from here

Had to make the weekend worth its while so i decided to put on my retail cap on and do a little shopping at the CityCentre and ended up spending quite a fortune on a new pair of shoes and clothes (that i could technically do without for a while)- but.. yea! i was just toooooo tempted.

Q.ye know the best thing about buying new shoes is ???
A.ye can put em on your bed .. on your pillow and its still alright !! ;) *snigger* quite juvenile – but true no ? ;P

anyway, work tommorow .. efff… @#$@#!@#^#$
although, next weekend should be fun – am taking spooky to the dog show
(hopefully will have lots more pics from there to blog ;)

quite a funny pic of spooky as she tries to keep her eyes open whilst staring outside the window of my driving car..;)

aaah… a good weekend is sooo unbelievably therapeutic.. reminds me of Andrea who used to keep telling me in her very german accent ‘Raaaaj…. you should go out and have some ffuuun on the weekends – forget work for atleast one day of the week’ – it reeeeaaaallly helps’ – and there i would sit nodding my head in agreement, turn back to my computer – set my glasses in place – and say to myself ‘fuck die Wochenende…geh zu wirken’

So for all those wasted weekends in good ol Aussieland – and for every great weekend yet to come in life … i dedicate to you Andrea Hiller ! ;P

So what was it really that made my weekend fun ?? well… nothing really special – just a lot of unplanned and spontaneous things.

-Out Shopping with sis on Thursday – bought meself a tshirt that i actually liked ( see… i am extremely picky when it comes to clothes — so i could spend weeks in a mall and not buy anything at all )

-‘Blade Trinity’ on Thursday night( which btw was a load of shite – terrible movie! and it got worse when the two filipino gays sitting next to me started making out yuuuuuuuuuuuucchhhhh !! i consider myself to be quite tolerant to the homosexual race but this quite was beeeyyyyond tolerance)

-Time out at the desert with the family and the dog on Friday Morning (Spooky was (as usual) fascinated and slightly disturbed by the unusual salty taste of sand and the way her paws would sink everytime she tried to run)

me under a narcissistic spell that magically drew me to my reflection on the wheel cover .. *snigger* (Ishani..you think M would think i was being pretentious too ?)

aww…. family pic ;)

thought this was a good pic of dad and sis

me taking the idea of ‘hitting the road’ a little too literally perhaps ;P

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-Dubai Jazz Festival( now this was really cool… the gypsy jazz was my favoooorite, but have no idea why-o-why a bad poprock brit band was asked to close a jazz festival ?? )

-Remember Shakti Concert ( awfully cold but simply amazing .. its sooo great to see such talented ppl performing together on the stage. Dragged mom and dad to the concert and they luuuurved it – im glad. Although, i was a little dissapointed at the fact that zakir hussain and john mclaughlin decided to play a really short version of my favorite track ‘lotus feet’ – but oh well — the experience was worth it! :)

so ladies and gentlemen… that was my weekend
now i need to somehow drag myself through the week to the next ‘hopefully’ happening weekend .. arrrgh ;)

Been spotting helluva lot of billboards ( both – in construction and constructed ) all over Dubai lately. Amusingly enough, I find myself quite intrigued and in a way fascinated by these quasi architectural forms. (No! not in a harmful vandalistic way but in a more analytical sense really )

– Beware of out-of-my-arse observations, analysis and speculations to follow hereafter ;P –

Billboards, bus ads, mobile trucks notifying us repeatedly of ‘best deals’, ‘healthy living’, ‘cost effective airfares’, ‘softer skin’ blah blah blah … telling you to buy-buy-buy and if thats not enough, poster-sized ads placed in between lanes, on bridge edges and cab tops telling you the same.
The idea? — To repeat the message again and again in as many ways and sizes as possible so as to engrave into your brain.

I guess we have accepted the fact that we live in an ‘information age’ – but damn! ‘ITS JUST TOO MUCH OF INFORMATION… and the angle that i find absolutely fascinating is the consequence that such prolific outdoor advertising has on other artforms, primarily ‘Architecture’

Starting a few years back, a lot of landowners riding high on the real-estate wave seemed to be considering ‘architectural designs’ that accomodate a bare facade on their buildings to accomodate advertisements. And why not ? — A billboard space that ends up generating a very significant sum of recurring revenue is not anything less than a ‘golden goose’ to a landowner. He not only recovers his costs of construction sooner but also ensures a regular flow of income henceforth.

This decision ofcourse influences a lot of aspects on the design end – such as ventilation, lighting, plumbing .. etc..
Although they are not the perfect examples, here are a few pictures of what i meant.

I was a little curious to verify my theory, so i called the expert – an old friend (Omran Al Owais of Centimeter Cube) who runs a reputable architectural practice in Dubai and he echoed exactly the same thoughts ( thankgawwd.. i would have been quite dissapointed if all that theorizing was bollocks ). He actually further added that with 3M’s technology of wrapping complex surfaces with images, landowners are now considering the rather scary alternative – you guessed it !!! wrapping an entire building with advertisement graphics – this way you save on paint or marble finish to the building and because the sticker technology allows you to stick over windows, the limitations of covering just one/two facade with adverts no longer applies, and more importantly – a building will look different every other month… scary huh ??

Imagine driving down Sheikh Zayed road and all you see to the right and left are buildings that look like detergent packaging, cereal boxes and cellphones .. not too different from pushing a trolley through one of them aisles at the supermarket .. is it ?

Could that be where we are headed ? Could that be what our city would look like in the near future ?

Hope not – yesterdays paper (Khaleej Times) mentions that three months from now the Dubai Municipality will be coming up with new rules and regulations for outdoor advertising as the rules have not been changed since 1986 and there were far too many new types of outdoor advertising that have appeared in the market since then.

This was one of the first billboards in the UAE that used the above mentioned technique. The shot isn’t very clear ( i stole it off a fellow dubai bloggers journal www.attackofthesixfootwoman.blogspot.com but its basically an image of the statue of liberty announcing Emirates Airlines’s direct flight from Dubai to NYC.

On another level, these billboards also become landmark points and introduce themselves quite naturally into the geographic description of a location, hence enforcing the brand in a subliminal level. For example, a friend on the phone giving me directions said “just keep driving straight after the traffic light past the Nakheel billboard and the road will bring you to a junction. You’ll spot an IKEA billboard to your right – take a right from that junction and ……”

What just happened there was a subliminal reinforcement of brands. Adds a little more to the aspect of ambush advertising doesn’t it ?? funny how its weaves itself into the fabric of conversation.

Some ads like that of ‘Homes R Us’ (above) have played on the ‘idea of directions’ as a concept by itself thereby customizing its placement to that location. I personally love this approach ( but would think of something slightly more clever though ). Surprisingly, even my quaint villagetown like city of Sharjah has not found itself too behind in the construction of these new architectural forms.

The very concept of ‘in your face advertising’ or ‘ambush advertising’ is not a new one and i believe it was the film ‘Minority Report’ that really pushed the limits where not only is the advertisers message in your face – they are personalized to you … dude! very extreme!!!

–out of my arse observations and analysis ends here –