Who-sane's

I was on a business trip to Japan recently. It doesn’t really warrant a blog post as the whole trip was too short (just four days and hence the title), but here’s a typical Japanese anecdote I brought along.

It was the next day we arrived. We were supposed to leave the hotel at 8:30 in the morning. Maki, our sweet Japanese tour guide lady/PR representative, walks up to me with a big grin on her face, and the following conversation takes place:

Maki: “Who-sane san! Good news!”, she said cheerfully.

Who-sane: “Oh, what is it, Maki san?”

Maki: “The traffic is light today, Who-sane san. We reach our destination earlier. So we don’t have to leave the hotel at 8:30.”

Who-sane: “That’s great! So what time do we leave?!”

Maki: “We leave at 8:33!”

Who-sane: “……..&^#!@**%$… …..!!”

Maki: “Who-sane san?”

Who-sane: “Well, errrr … that’s errrr good news, Maki san! Now we’ll leave at 8:33 instead of 8:30!!”

Maki: “Yessss!!!”

I LOL’d.

Anyway, here are some photos and a video I took in Japan. It was my first attempt at creating/editing a video, so please spare me the giggles

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Look at that cute octopus!

Oh wait, it’s a … dolphin!

Although the headline says: “The Octopus Beats Germany!” – of course referring to Paul the Psychic Octopus, who now by the way has a wikipedia entry – for some reason I can’t fathom, the editor of this Saudi-based newspaper decided to put a picture of a dolphin!

I don’t think you’d disagree with me when I say that the editor needs a new pair of optics for this octopus!

My brother got me this bumper sticker as a gift and a joke of course.

As you can see below, the provoking piece encourages misconduct by highlighting where people can have public sex in Dubai. See if it were a blog, it would have been less of an issue, but this is a magazine, in its first issue, mind you, that is printed and published regionally and one which targets readers in the Middle East in general and the UAE in specific.

I suppose the only element the story lacked is the jail terms for each of these misconducts. Perhaps something along these lines:

1- At a hotel: 6 to 3 months

2- As we wake up: (depends where, but 2 months at least)

3- In the forest or a desert: refer to sex on the beach case

4- In a car: one month (refer to newly-wed couple car sex case)

5- 6 months and deportation

Catch the drift here?

In their next issue, however, the magazine apologized to the UAE authorities and the readers “a 1001 times” and even went as far as to announce that it has subsequently sacked the author of the above-mentioned piece.

Now I don’t think blaming it all on the scapegoat, i.e. the ignorant reporter, is fair. I mean for sure a magazine such as Elle, especially in its first issue, would have assigned stories to each of its staff members.

Even if they didn’t do that and gave their writers absolute freedom to choose which topics they want to cover, does that mean their stories get filed and printed without going through some sort of an approval process?

Surely, someone else agreed on the idea and context of the story, then reviewed it, and then edited it, then proofread it, then approved it, then laid it out, and then finally granted permission for it to go to press. So clearly it’s not just the sole mistake of the reporter here, yet he was the only one to be blamed and fired.

I’m sure in his mind, the writer thought well. Perhaps he thought he was doing Dubai residents a favor by spicing up their lives, but alas, you can’t always get what you want.

Having said all that, and for the sake of boosting my testosterone, that has dramatically decreased in my attempts to write this post, back to its normal levels, I feel a pressing need to highlight that I don’t really read Elle and the entire issue was pointed out to me by one of my colleagues.