OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH – JUNE 2015
OK, how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Of course, old joke; firstly one has to assess if the light bulb wants to be changed. This is just the sort of analogy we need to enhance scientific leaning and career prospects – not!
Just so you know where we are going, let’s assess the nuance of this article. Finding the perfect job is as rare as unicorn sh*t, but life ostensibly begins in our late teens with that sole goal in mind. Amazingly, so called studies show that among the worst university degrees to obtain are within the arts, which according to this research are close on a complete waste of time. Shockingly, criminology is also high up the pile of pointlessness if this list of defeatism is to be believed. Speechless!
Just like media hype for inanity and without being too sesquipedalian about it, most of these long winded surveys are just that, tosh! Wait a minute! Who are you to incinerate that I don’t know big words? But if authentic, then music and graphic design or degrees centred around these subjects are ostensibly as useful as a one armed trapeze artist with an itchy bum and below the status of stuff like marketing or Social Studies which every man and his gold fish seem to have. That and Psychology. Ah, but ask yourself who carries out these studies? Oh! That would be marketing people and psychology students trying to justify and validate their own existence on degree courses. What they fail to remotely intimate is that there are more psychologists working in McDonalds than wannabe actors in Hollywood.
Apparently only some 20 percent of degree holders actually carry their qualification through to a related vocation with most just wanting the acknowledgement and credence of degree level intelligence when applying for jobs. What jobs….where? Yale degrees in hip-hop and black rap or street talk are commanding high paying positions within corporations, simply because the Curriculum Vitae lists a ‘degree’. Yes, some American universities even offer degrees in what can only be labelled pornography and one suspects a super-graphic memory helps with IQ tests. Indeed, the Proprietor of this ‘ere bastion of literary works wishes to bring to our attention that there is currently a large (using the word very sparingly) shortage (using the word lovingly) of male employees in the Japanese adult movie industry. Lots of openings apparently!
With physics, the ‘s’ and the ‘y’ are in the wrong order so avoid that, but because it begins with ‘psycho’, psychological profiling is way up the must have degree desires. After all the CBS series ‘Criminal Minds’ portrays most of us as chain saw murderers and none too clever because the profilers know exactly how we think and have this uncanny ability to guess which brand of chain saw will be used by all. The profilers go down the hardware store, which miraculously has a list of purchasers and bingo, perp. arrested! By this time, 20 souls minced but hey they know who did it. So the question is; how come these psychologists can’t perform in ‘Minority Report’ mode and go to the store earlier? Or is that too deep?
If psychology is credible and factual, then life as we know it is nothing but organized ideology. Analytical comedians like Emo Phillips tend to test psychology to its inner or outer limits by going against teachings and asking God for a new car or something material, but we know it doesn’t work like that. So just go out and steal the car and then ask God for forgiveness. That apparently does work. Then we have those who somehow look out from the inside and we call that philosophy. Dare we mention the psychotherapist! Apart from the word itself being made up of ‘psycho the rapist’, who the hell is psychoanalysing the assessor?
Don’t despair; jobs are out there. A lot of say highly educated ladies from ex-communist blocks holding doctorates in rocket science are walking around gainfully employed. They could quite possibly land a rover on Mars, but earn far more on a much smaller scale guiding pocket rockets around Juffair in Bahrain.
As a footnote; before the Internet, Plymouth University in Southern England has or had infinitely more wannabe psychologists swarming and swamping the place compared to the number of light bulbs in the entire building. For those on complex mathematical and technical degree courses, seeing this entire abstract curriculum in play exasperated them to the Nth – Y degree. The psychologists had umpteen free periods and no lecture days, so continuously filled the top floor library blocking access to those hard working geeks who got no free periods at all yet were desperate to get a shot at the books but couldn’t. Catching this Bombay like train lift crammed with twittering anal retentive Freudies was a nightmare, so drastic tactics were employed by the geeks. One would force his way into the lift squeezing among the mass, while his colleagues would walk up one flight of stairs. Pressing floor one, once the doors had closed and the lift started moving, said geek would covertly let out an enormous fart (through his mouth we think) which resulted in a rapid mass exodus at the first stop. Needless to say, waiting geeks would quickly jump in, shutting out the psychologists. Who knows, maybe they started to study this methodology as ‘contra-deviance’?
OLD MAN’S RANT – APRIL 2015
Page 201
Bahrain this month April 2015
SOAPBOX FOR THE OLD AND GUMPY 3
Spoiler warning: The following article contains flash photography and an authentic sense of humour embodied with language which many who have lost touch with reality will find offensive. Furthermore, the risk of triggering bouts of Jeremy Clarkson syndrome for those affected is quite high
Don’t you just love living in Bahrain where Political Correctness has as much presence as a Casper in a bacon factory here. Bahrain is the classic Hotel California; ‘You can check out any time, but you can never leave’. Utterances like; ‘How dare you’ and ‘apologize now’ are as rare as unicorn dung and you are going nowhere with it even if you try. So for the PColics, here’s an apology before you palpitate; ‘Sorry, you are in Bahrain and you love it. Get over it – now’.
It confuses the life out of expatriates of the appeasement generation who have elsewhere collectively dominated not only what we say, but how we must appease, live and act among each other. A particular flare up issue is and always will be the imported and imposed cultures; those who in principle leave their unhappy, often violent homesteads to pursue a better life in the west, but through bloated Political Correctness are allowed to create what they left behind in the new paid for home. ‘No problem’ reads the flyer; just make sure you vote Socialist. Wait! Sit down, take some water, you are having a Jeremy Clarkson reaction already.
Is it ok to carry on now?
So you have arrived on these shores and are initially horrified by the total disregard for sensitivities other than religion but have somehow fallen in love with the place. A conundrum as Radio Bahrain’s Mr. Fisher would put it and Christopher Hitchens a self-proclaimed Marxist, Neo Conservative (no confusion there then) and polemicist – expounded as to how depressed he was. Even he couldn’t fight his own doctrine. Confused he says; ‘Living in a country where you can be told “That’s offensive” as if those two words constitute and argument’.
While Da’esh physically and terminally wipe priceless artefacts off the earth, limp ‘Peeceeuraucrats’ as far afield as Alaska have engaged in apocalyptic paternalism for the past 40 years or more (Look it up). This culminates in the abstract removal of one of life’s greatest arts, by actively suppressing any form of laughter as they attempt to eliminate all traces of the once upon a time intangible hormone called ‘a sense of humour’, simply because it is deemed offensive to someone somewhere; known or unknown, close by or maybe 50,000 light years away, or even dead. ‘They’ have near succeeded too, judging by the number of trolls out there.
Clarkson’s antics, hype or real has started a colossal world opinion war which could be the obtuse catalyst for a physical revolution. The BBC chocolate box boss says with naïve brainwashed, privileged but amateur confidence; ‘No individual is bigger than the show’. Oh really sir and on which piece of Marxist Fabian parchment does it support that? In this case Mr. Luvvie might consider calling his favourite chiropractor to help him extract his head from behind his belly button. And if Jonofon Roff gets the job it would be a war crime.
It is strikingly obvious; UK and Europe in particular are a mess with a massive volcano about to erupt, as missionary statements commanded by this now echelon of society are being challenged. Forcibly by law ‘they’ have dictated speech content using a viral language called ‘clichéd rhetoric’ in response to anyone who starts a sentence with the words; ‘I think’.
Despite the plethora of peroxide blondes on Fox News never having wanted to master ‘clichéd Rhetoric’, the unearthly profusion of closet members at the BBC are extremely fluent in it. Ask yourself, why did Esperanto fail? Because words like ‘foreign’ (eksterlandaj) and ‘obese’ (graso bastardo) were just too long
The echelon, ‘they’ have successfully been forcing equalization and drabness upon us, even degrading exam standards so as not to offend the dopey. With droves of ‘clichéd Rhetoric’ speakers in tow; mouthpieces like the BBC and newspapers such as The Guardian, Independent, Huffington Post and a good few more, literally ‘speak for us all’. Megalomaniac egos overpower reason, with a desire to neutralize the voter base, in other words make us all totally indistinguishable from each other. You know the rules; do not profile at a crime scene or airport. Vanquish all thoughts that this person might be different because they have a beard or wear tribal like clothes and enforce colour blindness on everyone. Damn Clarkson.
Here’s a simple tip to detect ‘they’ when being subliminally nobbled. Every time you listen to a radio advertising message, promotion, current affairs presenters and now so-called entertainers, be conscious of the voice and demeanour. It is almost like it is one voice or clone of for all now; this incessant sickly, girly sing song replica of that BBC pop channel implant, spewing out insincere happiness. The liberally infected ‘Pronoun Virus’ ever present as she hangs words at the end of every sentence. Je suis all ‘WE’. If not her, then it is an equally effeminate male (we think) with a lisp, doing much the same. The Star Gate is somewhere in the Meteorological Office. Whoops! Severe Clarkson moment. Doctor!!! Plus, clock the clothes, particularly the BBC presenters. The female species so often wear vibrant blue or bright yellow and is as significant as a bird mating ritual. Blokes removing ties would be just too much for now, so wear pink for the same reason and red for allegiance. They even have the gall to wear arm bands if Bono from U2, Paul McCartney or Bob ‘Comfortably Numb’ Geldof strike up a cause. It is all so incestuous and closed shop. Clarkson has never been part of that, having slipped through the corridors years ago and like double jeopardy managed to hang on, but it was never going to be easy.
OLD MAN’S RANT MARCH 2015
Bahrain this Month – March issue 2015 (Page 176)
SOAPBOX FOR OLD CODGERS 2 – For March 2015
Opinions expressed in this column in no way reflect those of Santa Claus, the country, the magazine, the Editor, any particular company or anything you might find in the closet.
Everything gravitates to sea level when you hit the senior years except time. You slow down but the clock speeds up. More everyday things annoy the hell out of you. Even life in general is a struggle, like trying to heave oneself out of bed 50 times during the night. The pseudo carefree younger generation has no idea as they waltz through the days accepting and appeasing everything thrown at them, with us older folk baffled as to why. It is across the board from agenda indoctrination in the media to computers and Google googling your insides even behind closed doors.
The technology doesn’t really bother us, but the likes of say Sir William Gates does. He who with his software in the mid 80s found a legitimate way of inducing heart attacks, nervous breakdowns, chronic eczema and baldness in upwardly nubile young ladies. As the old adage goes; If Bill Gates had a cent for every time Windows crashed…. Oh Wait! He already has.
The almighty ‘Operating system software’ can be classified as a basic need these days as we cannot do without it. When it works, it is there to control our very existence in every way and who knows what is going on in the background?
Regrettably no software was injured during the construction of this epic, but if it was perfectly legal to seriously maim responsible programmers, Silicon Valley would quite likely be a serial killer’s paradise.
Unstable software has become a health hazard for us old ‘uns. Imagine some poor lonely old soul, orphaned at 50 and spouse no more, all alone in the world, his spirits perked up on a dating site and just as ‘Google’ condescends to find the perfect match – Windows crashes. As the late Joan Rivers describes romance in later life; ‘An affair of the heart is a bypass’,
Of course it is all Illuminati deciding everything for us. Stop laughing at the back. It is, they are everywhere! Be on the lookout for anyone in a space ship or something equally telling, they shouldn’t be hard to spot. Now seemingly meandering off the plot; This chap walks into a library and asked the librarian if she had any books on suicide. The librarian dismissed him immediately saying that they stopped lending them, because people were not bringing them back. Tasteless or not this joke is pure Illuminati and stems from a home grown original which was covertly removed from Facebook. ‘A civil servant walked into a library and asked if they had any books on the ‘Illuminati in Europe’. The librarian said; ‘Triangular Merkal’.
Not Illuminati? Did you know that many of the first few batches of the iPhone 5 were shockingly defective, yet nobody moaned and the world’s media stayed silent? Up to 8 million were quietly returned to Taiwan in early 2013 for re-engineering and the other 28 million of us suffered, having paid a small fortune only to experience the ‘no network’ syndrome and ‘Wi-Fi forget hell’. The world believed it to be our telecom provider on both counts. Worse still, the telecoms companies went along with it keeping their mouths well shut or be forced to replace thousands upon thousands of handsets which were handed out so-called free with packages. The iPhone 5S fixed the problem and Apple came out smelling of roses with no signs of blight. In fact, in true Illuminati format, Apple actually deflected any potential adverse publicity by announcing that their CEO was joyfully gay. Just sayin’….
Rumours abound that Google has reversed engineered Windows. Talk about ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ or ‘Wag The Dog’, it really is Hollywood come true and the Illuminati, now a massive conglomerate is obsessed with eyeballing you and clocking which soap you use in the shower. Smart TV? Ho Ho Ho! It is listening to your every word.
Bizarrely we are forced to tick the ‘AGREE’ button before we can even try the product and they have then got you by the short-cut and cursors. If you think this is actually fraud, then join the club. Oops! Not a good turn of phrase
There is a toothless army of dissatisfied, frustrated folk out there who know the operating system software is defective at sale, but can do absolutely nothing about it. Sure it loads, it runs – sort of, exasperating us old codgers to the point of violence. Macs are generally the more stable of the two staple options, but don’t hold your breath; Apple has gotten away with some blinders too as mentioned above.
It’s Murphy’s Law in a box and our precious lives ebbing away. We just don’t have time for this. Every day we endure those constant imposing updates which drive you crazy as we endlessly wait for the computer to switch off or even start now. It is always when you are in a rush but you fear stopping the process in case it screws something up or worse, fire breaking out if you leave it because of the cheap Chinese fans in the cheap Chinese case, not to mention taking up our costly bandwidth in gigabytes. Like a bad romance, Windows is also quite capable of hanging just on the stroke. This ritual continues until the new software version comes out which we are all forced to pay premium for again and again and the whole palaver repeats itself. ‘The Hills have Eyes’ is less of a horror story. Seriously, if a car manufacturer or any other industry for that matter sold a defective product, then a recall would be ordered or a refund, but not anything under the control of the Illuminati.
OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH (February 2015)
Bahrain This Month – Old Man’s Soap Box Rant:
The old adage goes something like; ‘To cut a long story short – just don’t tell it!’ But senior citizens love to reminisce with the clichéd; ‘When I was a lad’, or; ‘As girls we use to….’ Unfortunately, most things old people come out with now is considered grossly politically incorrect. With communication between us now predominantly in text form, it is a tad difficult for old timers to manipulate all this changing technology, but don’t underestimate us. It is our faculties that let us down, not our brains. Sure we get slower to respond to things physically, but not mentally. Think about it; all that knowledge accumulated over the years is like a million gigabyte disk drive full of data. It just takes a little longer to access it and we only do a working week in our heads, with those in Europe under the impression that there’s no email delivery on Sundays.
Sure, the body processor slows down a bit as well, but we all become lovable until you get on our nerves and the new bloated PC generation can certainly do that, so we rant and as we get older and there is good reason to get grumpy.
Now women generally get quieter as they reach their golden years with the rampant, wanton cougar in them diminished or at least diminishing. But there’s not an old man who hasn’t got a good lengthy yarn to spiel, true, false or somewhat embellished. Life’s experiences will do that to you, plus we all tend to get much less shy as we slow down and are quite happy to yap away to anyone who will listen as if the last day might be tomorrow. Alas, with everyone on their mobile phones texting, it is difficult to find an audience. There again, even if we manage, it is most likely another older person, so all this new found desire to communicate is often a fruitless aspiration because your new old friends can no longer hear you anyway . For the wrinkled, ‘let it all hang out’ takes on a whole different meaning verbally, particularly for blokes, but the proverbial mobile phone selfie is definitely not on the menu. Now that’s not sexist in anyway – moi sexist? Gossip is not a story and the reality is that unlike men, few women sit reminiscing and blathering tales of exploits best of times. As the years clock up, the fairer sex tend to more ‘tch tch’ as a disenchanted, ‘mature’ response rather than throw the blarney stone at you. Mind you, most had plenty to say while getting there. The fact is, so many married blokes have had to wait until they are over sixty five to get a word in. So verbal is the order of day because texting pretty much becomes impossible without a couple of glass pebbles over your eyes, LOL.
Older readers might be ROTFL as they scan this missive, thinking how true. Only now, they will respond with ROTFLACGU! (Rolling on the floor laughing and can’t get up). BTW doesn’t mean ‘by the way’, it means; ‘Bring the wheelchair’. LMAO is adapted to become LMDO, or to be more precise; ‘Laughing my dentures out’. It is a whole new language and meaning we have to learn. ‘Talk to you later’ or TTL stays the same, but between old folk it means; ‘Talk to you louder’.
But hey, men get so much more romantic after retirement and more imaginative, which is extremely odd because most marriages go through phases where either party would be quite happy if they could literally get away with murder; so the companionship grows more intense, or is that needy? Old couples see more beauty in each other, even if men still see more beauty in….um.. anything that moves in a skirt or a tight T shirt pair of jeans. As mentioned, they come out of their shell and become bolder, believing they are more loveable, funny and forgivable, sitting there in retirement watching the world go by. Of course, they’ve not only lost the touch and ability but any possibility of getting out the chair fast enough, if in the extremely remote chance that some willing potential conquest happened to walk past the window.
Old age is the déjà vu that you are having a bad attack of déjà vu. You’ve been there, done it, wrote the book and sent the postcard.
So back to the grumpy insinuation and stereotyping an entire generation of anyone with a liver spot; let’s make this perfectly clear and with some glee. Disregard, dismiss or just dis the old codger’s outpourings as just another pathetic rant at your peril, for each is a masterpiece of experience. To do so is actually offensive in its essence, rather than the content of old folk’s outpourings. This hypocrisy is not perceived by the now wide-spread ultra-orthodox Politically Correct, deluded, confused or just oblivious among us, wallowing in their misguided appeasement. Calling us old folk ‘out of touch’ or even worse accusing us of being ‘offensive’ because we tell it like it is, is outrageous. Just back off! Furthermore, I’ll worry about my own health and safety not you!
The best part about it is; being an old git with probably only a few years left on earth, (a debatable, contentious statement in itself) you don’t care what you say anymore, so my next rant will address the pseudo majority Illuminati who these days instantly object to anything and everything.
PASSAGE TO HONG KONG
Hong Kong review: June 2014 (Note: Sorry about the picture layout – This particular theme does not provide any other satisfactory options)
Looks like a postcard – It is! But it is real!
Once upon a time in a far off land in the Orient, long before Jo Bananas, a fairy tale evolved where goodies and badies lived side by side rubbing each other’s shoulders and things, where a multitude of police horses stood on two legs. One reason for that was to make more room, the other was to keep the disenchanted at bay. If you are over 50 and geographically astute, you might have visited a completely different Hong Kong to what it is now, or at least heard enthusiastic memoirs and felt like you had been there so knew the score – literally
As a rough guide how to get to Hong Kong from Europe or the Middle East or in my case Bahrain: Keep heading east with an umbrella until you reach the South China Sea and look for the bright lights; you can’t miss it! Of course it is best to go west if you are coming from say LA, but don’t laugh its – north initially if you are heading out of New York. Better still, just look for a Cathay Pacific plane wherever you are and as sure as Brazil went out of this year’s world cup by *censored* goals, that plane will be heading to Hong Kong.
Ignoring China itself, the other bright lights in that area might be Macau which is close by if you are a crow, certainly from Lantau Island which is only 25 miles away, but unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a direct link. The ferry starts in town and goes all the way around. That water is rough too. Eeeeeee uuuuwww!
Not a very pleasant 25 mile hike by water – but you’d need to be put to sleep for a light-year if you wanted to drive over.
Apart from making thousands of pretty ham kung fu movies, Hong Kong is now perhaps the safest destination on earth next to say Singapore maybe. Most
DINGALING – TIME FOR A REFUND
The following could and should set a serious precedent and affect each and every one of us who pays a mobile phone bill. This post is a bit of a follow on to my last year’s epic; BEWARE OF GEEKS BEARING GIFTS.
How many of you just pay your phone bills without ever checking them thoroughly? Mind you, I have asked that question before without much impact at all. How many of you have paid hundreds of Dinars/Dollars to telecom providers for so called ‘data’ which you had no idea you were using? Some of you have even encountered travel bans because of it (reference Bahrain). I have a very close friend who tells me that his wife is currently paying off a hefty $1,500 (600 Dinars) bill in bits monthly all because she didn’t realize that her mobile was set to ‘DATA’ switched on. I know of another Bahraini lady in absolute despair because she has a BD 3,500 bill ($10,000) for roaming charges which she had no idea about. Silly lady you say? Yes, she is, but she is culturally and naively innocent in many ways. She has no idea how telephones work from country to country, no idea that roaming is what it is and she just carried on sending pix and Whatsapping. Duh!! By default, most Post Paid customers are automatically ‘roaming’ enabled, whereas Pre Paid most have to activate it. Another lady I know has a hefty bill from just visiting Dubai, where like inter Europe, it should be near a local call, but it is in fact beyond premium. She was not knowingly using data, but didn’t have a clue about ‘switching roaming data off’. She didn’t even know she had to, or where or how she could do that with her phone. It’s all as slippery as a Soprano’s plot.
Well, any testy lawyers who might happen to read this, me thinks there is a little gold mine in the making if you wish to pursue the cases of what must be thousands of customers who have been duped, with grossly outrageously inflated prices for data which nobody asked for in the first place.
Which is exactly the crux of the issue; you as a consumer never asked for it, never signed a contract to accept it. In fact, you probably had no idea you were being charged horrendous rates, thus in the eyes of any credible, moral, legitimate law these charges are fraudulent; it is as simple as that. In America now, this issue has just been legally addressed and T-Mobile will be ordered to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars of ill-gotten profit to its subscribers, simply because none of them asked or signed for the service, product or data. It is not a ‘loop-hole’ it is blatant scamming. I for one expect this to snowball and the fallout could be stunning, just as Brazil’s 7-1 defeat (predicted by me exactly) by Germany.
However, big business and no doubt media worried about its advertising revenue have apparently closed ranks and publicity is scarce still.
Déjà vu Last year I wrote (and blogged) of a case where in just one month I had been charged over BD 400 by telecos who had billed me just for apparently ‘receiving’ erroneous premium rate text messages and making weird calls, none of which I asked for or indeed subscribed to. Many were never received in the first place and absolutely no calls made, but listed on the bill. Sadly, not a single person appeared to care or respond to my missives, so like always the corporations get clean away with it in Bahrain and elsewhere, except with me. I fought the issue tooth and nail and Zain kindly refunded over BD350 (just under $1,000) having thoroughly investigated and logging that it was not my IMEI number.
The former Lightspeed very reluctantly refunded about $100 never accepting that it was their fault.
Batelco refused outright to refund BD 9 ($23) which would surely have been BD 900 had I not caught it in time. The so-called investigator even lied to me telling me that they had checked and that it was indeed my IMEI number, yet not a single SMS was actually received on that particular phone, all of it being a scam. In the end, I ordered the Visa gateway to block any transactions from my numbers, so tough on the scammers and even tougher on the mobile phone companies who claim up to 40% of the SMS revenue.
Now out of the blue, last month we received a bill for near $400. Batelco told me it was for ‘data off package’. It was a Samsung S4 that had been switched off for a few weeks (while I was away in the States) and on re-charging, unbeknownst to any of us, automatically switched “data on – wireless off’. Within hours, Batelco sent an SMS warning that our ‘credit limit’ was approaching. Who knows, perhaps the phone did some automatic update for just a few megs. These few megs off package are set at an extortionate rate, which is beyond reality and the Telecoms Regulatory Authority should wake up and smell the roses and get this hideous rip-off sorted.
So what anyway? I really don’t care Data on or off, why should we care, we don’t have a package. For 15 years, or more this number has been a constant $5 a month, (BD 2), nobody making any calls on it ever as it is only a relay phone to receive office callers on the land line. Now suddenly the telco wants BD145 for data which should not have been available on that number in the first place. As I advised the Call Centre agent. He said; ‘But you don’t have a package on this phone”. My response was just that; ‘You are absolutely right and obviously not a lot gets past you does it? We never signed for any data on this number and have ‘never’ asked for any and furthermore, we don’t want any data, so whatever scam you are working at whatever stupendously high rate, it isn’t going to work on me’. In effect the T-Mobile ruling will prevail and set the precedent and hopefully worldwide. If you don’t ask for something, don’t sign for something, don’t want something, how the hell can a telecommunications company charge you for it and get away with it? It cannot be legally justified whichever way one looks at it.
There is no such thing as a ‘free phone’ , free laptop, free TV either. The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority do nothing about it, the government is not interested and there are just no advertising morals, let alone standards, so all this marketing scam goes on unabated. It is all just a ploy to hold you hostage for up to 2 years on jumped up contracts which include the price of the device – trust me. No matter where you are, incompetent and deluded dudes calling themselves ‘Marketing Specialists’ rule the roost and get clean away with it, giggling away at the deceit. Hundreds of thousands go alone with it, because it is an easy way to get hire purchase.
I P a lot!
Another pathetic revenue scam is; telecos claiming some sort of ‘difference’ between voice traffic and data. In the past this could be somewhat justified but not since the advent of IP routed traffic on data trunk highways. It is ALL DATA now. You’ve all heard of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and most of us use Skype. There is no difference. It is all ONES AND ZEROS. Everything is routed by a matrix and your telephone number is really nothing much different from an IP address. Once the infrastructure is in place, and it is, it costs no more to link to Los Angeles from Bahrain as it does Riffa to Isa Town. This applies to anywhere else in the developed world. Even outside of that, the delivery method might be slightly different, but taking a call at the North Pole for example, the technology and method is EXACTLY the same nowadays. In fact, look up another blog of mine on ‘Bandwidth’ and test for yourself. In general, Skype has clearer calls than over your mobile phone. If your network speed it slow, then sure it might break up whereas it does not, or should never break on a mobile network, but mobile voice is so muffled in general. It does not have to be because these networks have bandwidth coming out their arses, but they just can’t get past the monopoly and 3 khz doctrine, so why should phone manufacturers concern themselves with hi-fidelity microphones and speakers?
Zain and Viva are playing the HD voice card with 4G, when all could have easily done much better with 3G, but they are all too anal and it is endemic across the world, except perhaps America as was. However with the imported British Telecom and Cable & Wireless mentality in more recent years, with the likes of T-Mobile, nothing creative or abstract is ever considered, until a competitor does it first, then they copy. In recent years, competitors have been non telecom schooled geeks who actually force progress on these dinosaurs holding the world to ransom. Across current telephone networks set to operate as they are, there is no such thing as CD quality voice. Whatever HD is supposed to represent it is all big time BS. For a start, the very cheap all singing, all dancing Chinese switches which seem to be growing ever popular outside of Europe run at a piddly 8 bit – 8 khz highly compressed format. This is standard Huawei format. By comparison CD quality , which is NOT high definition, is of course 44.1. khz – 16 bit. The higher the bit rate, the higher the sampling frequency, obviously the higher the quality.
Back to this 145 Dinars and any one else out there who has been burned; sure they will take my number away and hopefully take me to court eventually to try and recover this amount. This is when the fun will begin and we all need to get together to make it perfectly clear that; No signature, no request, no need, then no money honey either! ‘Off’ being the second word!
BRITISH BENDER CORPORATION – CHARTER TIME AGAIN.
Time for a rant, it has been ages: Oh, I seem to have picked the BBC again, how unusual. Or as a new friend on Facebook calls them: The Big Buggers Club, which I thought was hilarious.
Most have no real objection to a BBC existing, proving its funding is not by force. If by force continues, then the BBC has to have no foibles whatsoever. It has to be perfect, it must only set an artistic example of this perfection and can in no way be political or sexual. That can happen, but not in God’s lifetime.
As the BBC Charter continuation looms yet again, like every other controversy surrounding the Illuminati the BBC pretend to address it with seemingly serious intent, incredulous debate and near convincing discussion among their so many arrogant egotists. Oh Paxman will be popping up discussing the issue with some sweet looking, butter wouldn’t melt nanny looking Governess telling how fair and balanced and completely unbiased the output is and to such high standards. She herself quite possibly a lesbian now, but wasn’t really daring to practice until she joined the ranks and found she enjoyed this closet scene and could get away with it without being found out because this incestuous society propagate and look after each other, in unwritten secrecy. Conspiracy? WHAT?
Jimmy Saville, Guardian support, Socialist doctrine, demographic change etc etc. Of course, these clubbers are merely fooling the dumbed down nation unaware that it is all smoke and mirrors. Indeed the very same junkies who create this charade enjoy it as a journalistic high. (By the way, I mention the known exploits of a good few Jimmy Saville era personalities in my EGO rant *** hopefully*** coming up).
An extremely privileged bunch of very connected and lucky upstarts for most is how I see the BBC and its octopus network, with underground cavities with nooky bunks all the way to Westminster, the nest! On the contrary they say; a society stalwart and loved by billions. The iniquitous BBC might be British in name, but it has long been out of character with the indigenous folk of the Isles. Infiltrated by Muggaridge-ites, political socialism, immigrants of varying faiths and little art and given the job under the BBC’s gross obsession with ‘minorities, labeling them as under privileged, so favoured so easily above other struggling talented citizens – oh and we don’t forget the abundance of just plain old sexual deviants. For imagery only, the BBC keeps its old agenda making, plummy family farts, lovingly referred to and worshiped as ‘doyens’ - the John Simpsons, the dimblebys and a good few more, filling the rest of the necessary 24 hour coverage with football wives and throw away society to make us all feel connected.
The BBC really does very little to warrant the age old, perceptions it once had. In fact, its reputation is appalling in learned circles who are not part of the clan. Never mind, the masses are still fed and indeed believe the old adage that the BBC is the broadcasting benchmark and the dog’s clangers in integrity. Wait, I can hear someone saying; ‘But I like the BBC, I think they are very professional.’ Ho ho ho ho! Gimme a bucket. Oh! And; ‘What has someone’s sexuality got to do with it?’. A lot if you want the job!
YOU PAYZ YER MONEY – BUT YOU DON’T GET YER CHOICE:
Anyway: Predictably, this week we have a Tory ‘plant’ spouting yuckspeak; ‘Unconstitutional demand for fees rather than voluntary – being so out of place in the 21st century and that if the public are forced to pay, they should have a say’. Oh that rhymes, let’s slogan it!
Our Tory might be talking but the ‘random’ public are not and will never be allowed to broadcast the real story – not while we still have East Enders.
The yap will continue with the same old BS: ‘Accountability’ – ‘objectivity’ – blah blah blah… ‘ until the ink is dry, which for sure it is already. Of course it has already been decided, because some imaginary ‘NO’ decision being suddenly made 2 years from now would mean that the monster that is the BBC being given short notice to cease operation. As if!
We all know that not a single politician from any party (except maybe the National Front ) has the gonads to even remotely contemplate a real cull, without first being licensed to run their own station or at least have sympathetic broadcast platforms. (Not that it would influence too much anyway, but still it is never going to happen in Britain).
Fox News is of course available on most sat providers, but hey….Not a British version. NOT ALLOWED!
The BBC’s assumed influence outside of Blighty is staggering and extremely dangerous if of substance. Yet we are bombarded and conditioned to perceive tabloid platforms like FOX NEWS to be demons, thus will never be given grace to established such media in Britain with Murdoch the Antichrist for most UK media cohorts. Astoundingly, with Spitting Image like destruction, the British Media not owned by Murdoch has managed to convince most of the nation that Murdoch is none other than the devil himself. Just the mention of Murdoch leaving his office, never mind his name on a passenger list somewhere, causes sudden changes of underwear in the corridors of Aunty and Labour HQ, especially the immigrant Lords in their dens.
Think what you like about glitzy rah rah FOX and co, until Britain is allowed the same real freedoms America is allowed, the BBC and its Fabian base, the pseudo Marxists will prevail and the rest will fall in line.
So my guess is, the decision is already final and cemented long long ago in favour of continuation and all this talk is just pure hype and decoration. My God, they’d have to make wimp Chris Patton a Lord, he’s done everything else un-elected and there is nowhere else for him to go. The rest of the Fabian governors meanwhile sit in their closets supping chino and laughing like hell at us.
RADIO KHALEEJI GA GA
I am a loss as to find any more news on this issue, other than what I read on Arabian Biz. So the question is, where did they get their information from? I have a few loyal and trusty ears and eyes within the Ministry and there was no hint of this in the wind leading up to this announcement. Has this ‘really’ been thought through?
There is such a huge misconception and indeed perception to the contrary that there are ‘qualified’ broadcasters of standing within the local media. There are a few nice voices if you like, but there are no characters, no real professionals and how can there be? Despite whatever the existing media says, there is no such thing as ‘free media’ in the entire Islamic world, never mind the Gulf itself. There just cannot be because to have such talent, one needs to be a free spirit and the culture is not ready to hear alternative thought as such. Those that do realize the poor showing cannot come up against the masses, so just give up. By doing so, we have a vicious circle spiraling into the abyss.
Since it all began, it was just lip service. there has really been no understanding of the art, thus no progress, no respect or discerning the principal in the first place. Besides, those above who are put in a position of power or management have no real notion of broadcast media or the arts either for that matter. Nice people maybe, good friends of mine to say the least, but it is all smoke blowing and say the right thing. National pride and the desire to believe that everything local is professional and sound (no pun intended) goes without saying, but we all know really that this is delusion personified.
Some come and they quickly go. For most the eviction was not of their choice. Others are removed because of intimidation, whereby they literally make monkeys of the talent-less offerings sitting beside them and so easily and willingly put in place. For a few others, they take one look and say; ‘Sod this’.
Nobody gets trained in the art, nobody cares, nobody perceives the industry as a profession which requires qualification. Even then, the qualification is intangible.
So here they go, a commercial dream for some, one might think. After all, MBC has had such outrageous privilege for years now, being the ‘ONLY ONES’ given rights to broadcast commercially regionally. That in itself is the epitome of ignorance of the profession. Just as Group Plus were given the status of a Monopoly running a Monopoly. They have NEVER paid a single penny in royalties, to the artists who make the platform possible and attract the listeners for their advertising to be heard. It is ludicrous really.
Orbit Showtime, or OSN are prime examples of the notion that there must be money to be made in media. So get a monopoly and coin it. OSN to my knowledge has NEVER put a cent back into the industry. They have never nurtured the art of which feeds them. So what can we expect?
Until I get more details, I can only post here what I did on Face Book and perhaps some of the comments returned as I go. So far, nobody really cares.
**************
iPhone5 TIMES AND YOUR PHONE IS SWITCHED OFF – REVISITED!
Don’t tell me there is no ‘Illuminati’ (no need to buy the book) and Apple don’t attend those decadent parties of extreme deviance. Wondering about the ‘apple’ symbol, I am now very suspicious of the significance within the society.
Nobody fixed the iPhone5 ‘no network’ issue. The loss of passwords when coming in and out of known wifi haunts. The low battery retention or the heat and the sudden demise altogether after just a month or so. Apple lost their credibility for many over this, but they will get away with it. After all, some iPhone5 models were working ok-ish, depending on the batch. Nobody cared and no main stream media picked up the story of Apple’s woes with it and their silence over the issue. Sending back as many as 8 million faulty devices to Taiwan in May 2013, is a major Toyota size recall, but NO! Not a blink from anywhere. ‘Wait for the IOS7 they say, all will be fixed. Not only 7 but a revamped iPhone5 S. Never mind that most of us forked out over 500 quid for a heap of trash. Let us see what the 64 bit S brings, Or should that be; ‘Let us pray that it is improved’.
I love the iPhone, but maybe Apple or the Chinese tried to be a little too clever. As a comms engineer in my past life, I have a gut feeling that the iPhone5 woes are hardware rather than software. Not that I could open a mobile phone these days and figure out what is going on inside, but the principles have to be the same. GPRS, EDGE, 3G, 4G and so on, all accommodated on the one device. All different waves lengths and many different algorithms to deal with from an antenna reception point of view. Yes it could well have been software, whereby in the switching of wavelength requirements, something was not right. However, and logically, that does not explain why some iPhone5 releases were ok, or seemed to be ok. (People are so fickle. If you call some of those OK phones, you might still get the ‘This phone is switched off’ response and everyone just blames the network).
I got so fed up with my iPhone 5 and my provider Zain, doing nothing about it, simply because they could not, it was out of their hands. Within 6 weeks of owning the phone, it died. It would not charge and the existing charged withered away like a rotting corps. What could Zain do? No replacement other than change your iPhone for another smart phone of a different type. This is exactly what I did. I was advised by my buddies in Zain to go for the Samsung Galaxy S4, which I did. I have had the stunning Dell Streak for a couple of years now, so I know the Android operating system enough to find my way around a bit. I also have an earlier Samsung Galaxy of the small type. Slowly I was getting used to the S4, but more importantly, I NEVER lost a single call with this phone, so please please please all you Zain doubters out there, stop blaming the network for this particular issue – it is the iPhone 5. Not that the network itself is by any means perfect, as we all know it aint for all mobile providers. Viva Bahrain have exactly the same iPhone 5 problems as no doubt do hundreds of other providers around the world. All of which preferred to keep their mouths shut. The marketing departments absolutely shit scared to mention any issues if the other carrier didn’t. Very sad, very sad indeed.
So where was I? Oh yes; I say that I ‘was’ getting used to my S4, when my UK provider EE/T Mobile, decided to give me the new Sony Experia T. There is something about ‘love at first fight’ with it. Fight I did, until I got it working on net, sending data. It required a few reboots to hold the settings, but now all seems tickety-boo and some rather sensible ergonomic advantages over the Samsung S4. Let’s see how I get on with it.
Meantime, I did try to buy an iPhone5 S while in the UK this week (Sept 2013) but that proved difficult and the price was well out of order. All readers of this blog would dearly love to know if the iPhone5 S has been fixed. Post please.
iPhone5 TIMES AND YOUR PHONE IS SWITCHED OFF!
Dateline: 16th June 2013: Updated information on iPhone5 woes in Bahrain and probably across the world.
Basically Apple and the Telecommunications companies selling this heap of junk are doing absolutely ‘NOTHING’ about it.
This page is getting around 2,500 hits a day at the moment, so something is seriously wrong with the iPhone 5 as people surf to see what’s going on. Yes, we speak of Bahrain here, but the problem is not isolated to Bahrain, it is probably world wide, unless Bahrain has been buying batches of dodgy models of the iPhone 5 in the first place. I would not put it past some, but if not, then just when is Apple going to do something about this? So far, not a peep! Again: Not all iPhone 5s are are bad, but ALL iPhone5s are NOT good.
In Bahrain, not a peep regarding the issue from any single mobile provider either. Anywhere else in the world as I type……… NOT A PEEP!
In Bahrain, the excuse is: ‘We cannot be the first to admit this. If the other telecom company admits first, we will follow’ Where are all the B.S. geeks who constantly write bilge on the likes of PC World or Mac World. I see and hear nothing. Have we all been nobbled?
It is primitive, Politically Correct, 3rd world thinking to the Nth degree. I am hearing of tens of thousands complaining, but the world’s watchdogs, stay silent.
This silly iPhone 5 issue has gone beyond a problem to become a complete rip-off, with subscribers still paying the full package price but getting nothing resembling the goods.
KICK ‘EM WHEN DOWN: (See below and the original post for an explanation of who is who in telecoms within Bahrain)
Zain Bahrain and Saudi (which I do not know much about now) gets knocked pretty good and I am not so sure they deserve this. Batelco used to be the bashing board but have weathered that, although I see little improvement if any within their electronic Customer Service. As a provider, they are up among the best. As a progressive, artistic, leader, they are also zero.
Customer Service in Zain is as good as it gets by comparison. It is not perfect as such, but there are very knowledgeable, well trained people within and I have not seen better in other companies. Many came from Batelco in the first place for Christ’s sake.
I know Bahrain Telecommunications very well, as I do Zain, but I know very little about Viva. (see below). I personally had several bad experiences with the third operator Viva, but like pop stars, they have their dedicated followers and to them, Viva cannot put a foot wrong.
Within our little group, we have Zain iPhone 5 packages and there in lies our problems. My good buddy who I see almost every day has a similar iPhone 5 but with Viva and so far no complaints. Quite the opposite really as he waxes lyrical about his operator on a regular basis. Good for him. Odd really, because 90% of the times he calls me we get cut off and he always assumes it is me. On Whatsapp, sometimes there are very long delays before he gets the message. He doesn’t notice any of this because he just assumes it is Zain, yet I am convinced it is his iPhone 5.
There are may good aspects about Zain and no more bad really than any other. However, not admitting there is a problem with the iPhone5 is not one of their best decision to date, but predictable in this culture. Then again, As time goes on, not dealing with the issue, hoping that the iPhone 6 will come and everyone will forget is just deluded, pathetic ideology and yet one more nail in their corporate and marketing department’s coffin; although I am not exactly sure the two are on a level playing field. For one, I will NEVER forget the iPhone 5 issues and it will affect my future judgments as I am sure it will thousands of others. Besides, the ‘Consumer Protection Society’ should have been on the case long ago demanding a recall. (I don’t know, but I get the impression that the CPS is just one man around here and seemingly none too concerned about much either way).
As eluded to below, of the three main operators, Zain appears to have the most iPhone customers, therefore the issues is highlighted even more. Plus, Zain are going through a series of publicity revelations at the moment, with some funny internal struggles and currency issues within Zain’s operating field, but nonetheless Zain are very capable operators. There are many good people working for them in operations, but it is not them who make the big bucks in wages, it is Marketing and it is the deeds of Marketing which the public encounter.
It is so frustrating from a lay person’s point of view. What with inane advertising and a culture of give-away - to cover incompetence, I am surprised they get anywhere at all sometimes. But then, all industry, Corporates to window cleaners target the lowest common denominator. I am old, but give me just ONE YEAR and carte blanche in any telecom company marketing department and watch me go.
What have I been saying for donkey’s years about telecommunications companies? I love them dearly, nay, I adore them and all who sail within, but their marketing and public relations nous is scraping the Kelvin scale of ZERO! They recruit non entities always. There advertising agencies are mere opportunists in most cases, so take the money and run, fully aware that there is absolutely zero creativity or perceived professionalism within these marketing departments. Still, there are plenty of Advertising Agencies crawling in the crevices just to get the dosh and will kowtow to the lowest common denominator. Who can blame them, easy pickings. From what I have experienced over the past 7 years is that, these telecom marketing departments are awash with nice dudes who are being paid upwards of $25,000 a month for addressing the masses at its lowest access point. The end result – dirge! Copied at that. The same old. All of it needs a serious clean out.
To repeat: The biggest problem with a ….um….er…. telephone companies is that they think …um…. telephones. It is so hard for some within to think out of the box. Give any telco a good idea and they WILL NOT RUN with it, until someone else does. ‘Catch 22’, so by then it is too late and nobody progresses with it. Read earlier posts from me. ‘Someone else must do it first’.
How anything ever sees the light of day is a miracle half the time. 4G could have been with us 2 decades ago, but ‘same old’ mentality prevails. They are brilliant in parts and technology when all things are taken into account, but innovation and risk…………………. just forget it. Yet as I have also said many times; telecom companies are the present, the future and beyond. Everything we ever do will be through telecommunications, now and into the future. Although most of them deserve to rot to be honest, but without them, an entire metropolis of industry would die, from advertising agencies to most of China.
I actually await the day of the ‘Internet Global’ as a non mobile operator. AOL could have done it, but too early in the market and like Kodak failed to wake up in time. Google might succeed with their ‘jelly fish’ trans/receivers, who knows? The time will come though when the ‘money for old rope’ establishments will fail. It is already happening because each and every one ‘FAILS TO ADVANCE’ or take
SIZE MATTERS; (Part fix for some)
Zain Bahrain came up with a small possibility which might help iPhone5 owners in strong 3G areas. Go to your settings page and look at ‘networks’. Now in Bahrain, like other places, your chip or Sim only allows your subscribed operator to lock on when on home turf. With the iPhone 5 being 4G capable (apparently, but yet to witness its worth), it constantly searches for a provider. In Bahrain, it will be looking at every other provider until it finds Zain. Switch off the ‘AUTO’ and wait. Eventually you will see a list of providers. Select Zain. This takes some time and you might think nothing is happening for a while. The downside to this is when you are in low coverage or non 3G areas. Just forget it.
Original post:
Dateline: April 24th 2013. I could be from another planet walking around in a daze oblivious, or this could be the biggest Wikileak type revelation since the massive Toyota recall a few years back. Watch the news in the coming days, if you don’t hear anything, then I am well wrong! Maybe I am just last to know. [See breaking news at the bottom of this post]
Until now, it would seem to me that Apple and certainly local telecom companies have been keeping very nervously quiet about the iPhone 5 problems. Yeah, we heard about ‘battery drain’, blah blah with all the usual geeks out there offering their own deluded tech tips, but seriously now, this is much much more disastrous.
A month back, I renewed my affiliation to one of my local telephone companies and took advantage of their ‘get a new phone free’ offer. Nothing is free of course, but it is better than nothing. Um.. ok, you know what I mean. I actually have phones from several telcos. On unpacking my new iPhone 5 and sticking the chip in, I couldn’t pick up the network. The sales assistance said to wait 20 minutes. Not these days surely! So I wandered on home. Once there, still no network then suddenly it came. Unnoticed really for a couple of days, I realized that I had not received any calls on my new iPhone5. I did not think too much about it, until friends starting calling my other half saying my phone was always off, asking if I was dead already and if not why not? Then the horrible reality came to light. The new IPhone5 is fu.. um.. broken. It must be, because my Blackberry, now sitting on the shelf worked quite alright before in the same rooms. (Yeah I got my ‘connected’ boys to twist the cell array around a bit to cover the bunker, but they had to do that or we had nothing at all)
THERE’S NO NETWORK LIKE SHOW NETWORK LIKE……WHATEVER:
Wandering around town these last few weeks (in Bahrain), I have been near to throwing my new iPhone 5 against a wall – the lack of network is so bad. Whoever is nearby gets my loud wrath with me blurting out; ‘No NETWORK AGAIN!!! This last batch of iPhone 5s are defective crap and nobody doing anything about it. Invariably I am asked’ ‘Have you got a Zain iPhone? I have exactly the same problem’. Or; ‘A lot of my friends say they are experiencing the same thing’ and so on. Although I am quite happy with Zain (a mobile network provider across the Middle East), and I am honestly not particularly defending them, I ask these affected souls if any of them have reported it to the call centre. Oddly, I have found nobody of the dozens or so I have met who have realized there is most likely something very wrong with their phone, so instead just take as fait accompli assuming it is Zain at fault.
The problem is rearing its head in large numbers daily as more and more folk chatter and become fed up and aware. But is it only relative to Zain? No of course not, but in little ole’ Bahrain it might appear that way for several reasons:
- It depends from which batch of iPhones your item came, as not all iPhone5s are affected. Only Apple and the people who make iPhones for them in Taiwan know that. Thus I suspect that the new iPhone 5 issue is the telephone hardware itself, including wifi and quite possibly not software in general although some hang periodically. So far, no teleco has admitted this.
- I also suspect that Viva (Saudi Telecoms) have serious issues, but are keeping very quiet about it because like Zain, they will not know what to do as they quake in their sandals, worried sick that it might cost millions. Like Viva (who are relatively new to the market), Zain launched about 7 or 8 years ago with 3G dominant rather than GPRS or Edge, although of course they have to make provisions for the older technology, so it is there but sometimes you would not notice. I am not sure about Viva, but from my limited experience, if you cannot get 3G, then you get nothing at all with them. I think it is safe to say that the original incumbent, once monopoly -Bahrain Telecommunications (Batelco) have a more solid GPRS base as they only added 3G a few years back, so any of their customers lacking network on their new iPhone5s might not be as quick off the mark discovering there are issues. With Zain’s weak GPRS in areas where there is no 3G coverage, the Zain Network craps out, so it looks like Zain is suspect as far as the user is concerned. Plus, Batelco might have purchased their batch of iPhones from completely different stock, but I am sure revelations will be made sooner rather than later. ,
- Not ALL iPhone5s seem to be affected. It just seems to be a particular batch, although still there is definitely a poor attachment to networks with all the iPhone5s I have come across so far.
- The blame Zain is more mathematics than anything to do with Zain’s operations as such; Standard Deviation with a very wide bell. According to my little bit of research and the constant ludicrously long queues at Zain shops and stands over the past few months, so many more people have taken up iPhones with Zain, so therefore the complaint numbers are going to be higher by law of averages. Each mobile operator offers certain benefits and somewhat similar packages, but the Zain ‘post-paid’ package is hard to beat: Unlimited data with the lowest package, free Zain to Zain calls and that includes to their Wimax phones and some free minutes to other networks. Oh..er.. and the free phone as well, if you contract more than a year. Well, with Viber and everything else, it is not rocket science to see that many of us will only ever end up paying the fixed tariff each month for the relative package with no additions. With this increase in the number of users, it is even less rocket science to note that there are more user appearing on individual network cells and with the likes of 3G, it does not like that one bit.
- Bahrain suffers greatly with all forms of radio transmission. Cell towers transmitters are set to the lowest possible output power, as with wimax and so on. Naturally, this affects the network’s ability to function efficiently. Even the commercial radio stations are heavily restricted. If you have a weak phone, it is going to show up. Low power? Why? Ah, good question. The ‘concerned citizen’ know-it-alls, bitch about radiation sickness and and and – and in theory, to save us all getting nodules on our nodules, the power output has been restricted. What a load of old bollocks if you ask me. I personally think it is Saudi Arabia firing warning shots across the bow. There is a great individual greed in the Middle East and this extends to business, hence the monopoly ‘agency’ fascination and addiction. The UAE monopolies (a funny plural), banned Skype (although it is unofficially open from just this month). They simply want to make money. But how can they stop Skype coming in? Ah, they don’t! But you trying calling a number in the UAE from Skype and watch as your credit disappears quicker than panties in the Saudi branch of Anne Summers. Inter Gulf telephone call rates are among the highest in the world. Roaming between them is hideously over priced when you consider the price anywhere in Europe to anywhere in Europe. Now Saudi doesn’t have a wall around it, but my guess is they would really like one and that would include blocking radio signals from neighbours getting in. No, nothing to do with cultural degradation from the decadent surrounds; just money honey. Since the countries are only seeing distance apart (but light years in thinking), one assumes they do not like Bahrainis using Bahrain’s networks while there. So what has all that got to do with the issue? If your receptor is weak and there are weak signals (in the RF domain)…. No surely, you don’t want me to continue with the explanation do you?
THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT- ER. WELL A LITTLE BIT – MAYBE:
4G/LTE is on its way and soon by all accounts. Don’t hold your breath for the boasted dynamics. I will be blogging about this soon I hope and in fact started blogs about it years ago but never bothered to finish them. Yes it will be better than 3G, but there are some heavy, very heavy restrictions for us. Like any system, it is only as good as its weakest part. Sadly, we have more than a few weak parts. However, the iPhone5 handles 4G, or so we are led to believe. Perhaps these complaints about the low performance of certain iPhones are hoping to get swept under the carpet as the telcos pray that the 4G components are not affected. Ho Ho Ho, laughed Santa.
With so many complaints pouring in to the telcos, just what are they going to do about it? From my experience (and I am one now), saving face is a big issue here. Blame is a very dubious subject and the reluctance to accept it is shockingly worrying in the most dire circumstances sometimes. Someone has to pay, someone might have to replace all these new iPhone5s. It could run into millions.
Calling the call centres now will not help. They are not calling back, or rarely. They simply do not know what to do about this and of course many within accepting that there are an unusual amount of complaints about the same, but are extremely reluctant to blame the phone itself yet. Serious ‘denial’ comes to mind.
Just a thought: The local telecom companies claim to be official distributors, but just how official is that? My guess is that a few sphincters will be twitching wildly because phones are sold across this region ‘unlocked’. Maybe there is absolutely no liability on the part of Apple to replace these phones and they are not direct sales – or are they? The supposedly recent earthquake repercussions felt in Bahrain recently might not be from the Iranian earthquakes at all, but extremely nervous executive knees knocking and teeth clacking in the ivory towers of the Bahrain telcos.
Praying is locally a cultural necessity in its propensity or otherwise and oh boy- there are a few genuflecting right now that this problem can be fixed in software. Me thinks not…………………but what do I know, I was only a communications electronics master as the world went silicon and I have forgotten more than I learned.
BREAKING PARTS AND HEARTS:
Low and behold, as I write this page, news has just broken. Last month, Apple returned to the manufacturer up to 8 million iPhone5s, claiming quality concerns. I don’t think this is the first time either. Those defective phones are made by the Taiwanese company Foxconn. I am searching all over my iPhone and the web, to see if there is any way I can tell if my iPhone is a batch from there too. Anybody any ideas? Post!