Life As A Saudi Prince
In today's New York Times coverage of King Fahd's death in Saudi Arabia, I couldn't help but notice this rare insight into the hard-as-nails Saudi royal parenting method:
Still, King Saud was strict. In an interview in the early 1970's, then Prince Fahd recalled the time his father locked him in a room for over two hours because he had had a fight with a neighbor's son. The King knew the other boy had provoked the quarrel, but wanted to show impartiality, Fahd said.
OVER TWO HOURS??
journalism-ish , middle east-ish , new york times-ish by tangentialist at 10:32 AM on 01 Aug 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
On The Other Hand...
There's always Skype's New voicemail feature to keep me amused.
I love the Middle East.
Like a lot of patient late-to-market schemes, Skype appears to have nailed their market. I signed up for SkypeIn last week, and it's been a worthy substitute for my cell phone, which costs and radiates too much for me to want to use it during the day. Thanks to Keith for the heads-up, and for enticing me to spend ten euros on a yet another new phone number.
middle east-ish , skype-ish , voicemail-ish by tangentialist at 12:04 AM on 22 Mar 05 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)
Dubai On Flickr: Where's The Vanity?
money
Originally uploaded by MISS ICEBERG.
One of the odd little subcultures that seems to have popped up on Flickr is the United Arab Emirates Photo Squad. I don't know where they all came from, but these flickrites (they appear to be young women, for the most part) seem to share both a keen appreciation of Starbucks coffee and conspicuously expensive tastes -- in those respects, they're not unlike their counterparts on the Upper East Side.
That said, the only thing I think is really strange about these photosets is the total absence of self-portraits. There are nice pictures of Dior, jewelry, the well-loved Baba Zayed, Mecca, and small children, but you'd never know what these people look like; none of the streams I've seen has featured any of the extended-arm self-portraiture of the average young-rich-kid-with-fancy-camera set. You rarely see their friends, either; the only faces in there belong to small children, old people, and manual laborers.
Where's the vanity? Where's the unbridled celebration of self? Dubai, you disappoint me.
The UAE group is a good place to get introduced to the young and powerful in Dubai, or at least to see their Pumas.
flickr-ish , middle east-ish by tangentialist at 01:35 AM on 27 Dec 04 | Perm-a-link | TrackBack (0)