Blogosphere: August 14, 2007

Gulf News web editor Adam Flinter plunges headlong into the blogosphere to find out what bloggers from the Middle East and beyond have on their minds.

Pick of the week

How good is Salik?
My observations since Salik's implementation are as follows:

a) More traffic on the "free exits" before the two Salik points
b) Still a gridlock on the Barsha toll gate (more compared to pre-Salik @ peak hours)
c) More traffic onto Sofouh Road leaving Media City (peak hours)
d) More traffic on the junction leading to Madinat Jumeirah (peak hours)
d) Bottle-neck (non-existent pre-Salik) onto the entrance to Business Bay Bridge (from Dubai direction)
e) Shaikh Zayed Road seems to be a little less busy at off-peak hours
f) Day-by-day, Dubai's floating bridge (peak hours) is packed, Sharjah direction
g) Last but not least, I've overheard impatient Salik-customers at petrol stations request if Salik tags were available. Station attendants responded that there is a quota on the number of tags they receive, and they are out of stock.
Just over a month into Salik, would you say it's been good for you, or not?
uaecommunity.blogspot.com

Driving in Dubai
Don't know if it's my imagination, but road manners in Dubai seem to have improved enormously over the last few months.
The key change seems to be the way taxi drivers are driving, at least in the parts of the city I tend to frequent. Five years ago horn blowing and an indicator-free lifestyle were the norm, as were speeding (and even overtaking on the central reservation on a couple of occasions). I regularly found myself asking the driver to slow down and drive properly.
I probably shouldn't tempt fate, but all that seems to have changed, thank goodness. My main complaint now is drivers pootling along in the middle of the motorway at 90, when they could quite safely be driving at the speed limit in an empty right hand lane. A nice problem to have though.
blogs.sun.com/christophersaul

Roundabouts or lights
There's an interesting report in Gulf News from Oman, headed: "Muscat roundabouts being replaced with traffic light junctions." Apparently all roundabouts in Muscat will be replaced.
One of the problems with traffic management in Dubai is the fundamental mistake way back of using a hybrid of various road systems, particularly US and UK systems. So we have dual-carriageways with U-Turn allowed but also roundabouts — and to add to the confusion, traffic lights on the roundabouts.
I remember a US traffic management expert, too many years ago for me to remember exactly who, saying that roundabouts were very pretty but they were an obstruction to traffic flow.
Is it too late for the basic system here to be cleaned up?
dubaithoughts.blogspot.com

Simpsonisation
I know I know, I'm going barmy but what the heck… go Simpsonise yourself and show me if you can do better!
mahmood.tv/2007/08/07/simpsonize-yourself/

Girly men?
During my daily news round up, I come across this article on the BBC Network explaining that British women do not see "macho men" as a sound bet for a long-term partnership, preferring those with more feminine features and it wasn't so long ago that I saw something quite the opposite…..
emoodz.com/?p=390

Saudis and US visas
For Saudis, many things have changed after 9/11. One of these things is that getting a visa to enter the United States has become very, very difficult. The reevaluation of the process to grant visas to Saudis have made it complex and time-consuming. I don't blame America
for trying to protect their country, and to be fair, getting a visa to
enter Saudi Arabia is not that easy either.
However, what many Saudis complain about is not the long process and the time it takes, although time can be a very important factor especially in medical cases, but rather the way they are treated when they apply for a visa to enter the US.
saudijeans.org/2007/08/08/saudis-distressed-over-us-visas/

The I Word
Wow, it seems that even T-shirts are now subject to censorship, as Debbie Almontaser has now learned. Worse still, is that mainstream media, such as the IHT [Internatioanl Herald Tribune] article, seem to have bought into the thinking that there is something wrong with the word.
The dreaded "I" word: intifada. "Intifada" literally means "shaking up" —there is nothing "highly charged" about it. But there is another "I" word that is highly charged…
www.kabobfest.com/2007/08/using-i-word.html