Yousef Tuqan Tuqan

2008-09-04T19:39:00.001+04:00

test

2008-09-04T14:51:00.001+04:00

For once, a clever advertising analogy that doesn't suck

What well-known identity is most desperately in need of a redesign?
America. The whole message is wrong. The creative brief—The Constitution—is great, but the execution is horrible. Today, its reputation is almost beyond repair (we may even need a new name and flag). Hopefully we’ll be getting a new managing team in soon.

2008-09-03T10:26:00.002+04:00

John Travolta's House
John Travolta, apart from being an occasionally awesome actor and a Scientology nut, also has the dubious distinction of having one of the world's only noncommercial airports...in his backyard. John Travolta moved to Jumbolair, the world's only "fly-in living community."

Apparently, he used to have an airstrip near his old house, but was sued by his neighbors and then moved to Jumbolair.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration pilot database, Travolta is qualified in several types of single and multi-engine aircraft, and has the highest pilot medical certification possible. “We know that Travolta's an accomplished pilot. A lot of people fly for the pleasure of it, and he's one of them,” said John Clabes, an FAA spokesman. “If you have this many ratings on these types of high-performance aircraft, you're obviously a good pilot.”

Here's a link to an Architectural Digest article with lots of imagery, and an air trip video over his house.

How long before they build one in Dubai?

2008-08-17T11:14:00.001+04:00

Volleyball: why does one player wear a different color?
I've been agonizing over this question for a while. I used to play a lot of competitive volleyball when I was younger, but I never understood this recent development in the game. It turns out that the person with the different color is a "libero."

The libero is a player specialized in defensive skills: the libero must wear a contrasting jersey color from his or her teammates and cannot block or attack the ball when it is entirely above net height. When the ball is not in play, the libero can replace any back-row player, without prior notice to the officials.

This replacement does not count against the substitution limit each team is allowed per set, although the libero may be replaced only by the player whom they replaced.

The libero may function as a setter only under certain restrictions. If she/he makes an overhand set, she/he must be standing behind (and not stepping on) the 3-meter line; otherwise, the ball cannot be attacked above the net in front of the 3-meter line. An underhand pass is allowed from any part of the court.

You can read the full answer here.

2008-08-16T14:53:00.002+04:00

When cakes go bad.
I stumbled onto this cake website today full of the worst cakes in the world. Truly awesome stuff. I especially liked "Olympic Rings", Kermit's Gash, and the tartan special.

2008-08-12T17:06:00.003+04:00

Spanish racism, continued
From Luis Aragones calling Thierry Henry a "black shit" to "Hamilton's family" at last year's Spanish GP, no one does institutional racism in sport quite like the Spanish.

And now, they've gone and done it again.

2008-08-11T20:00:00.002+04:00

Derek Redmond - emotional sports moment

I saw this video again today while farting around for Olympics videos. This is really such a beautiful and emotional Olympic video. I challenge you to watch it and not get a tear in your eye...

2008-08-11T19:55:00.002+04:00

YTT on the TV
I was interviewed by Al Aan TV last week about my trip to Kilimanjaro. It was a very good interview but what I love is how I am made out to be a great sports personality that conquered such a terrifying mountain. I was even asked what message I might have for all the Arabic children out there who look up to me.

You can watch the video here.

2008-08-11T19:48:00.000+04:00

Rest in Peace, Isaac Hayes

2008-01-22T09:07:00.000+04:00

Flags of the world - graded
Yay! I found it! I had linked to this on my blog years ago, but the original link disappeared. I found it again. This website is one person's attempt to grade all the flags of the world, with points deducted for such things as "graven images", "colonial nonsense" or "weapons". (via kottke)

2007-11-23T23:00:00.000+04:00

"The match was played on a surface similar to those used by Sunday footballers on council pitches.."

Here's a great rant by Roger Godsiff, UK Member of Parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath, about how rubbish England were on Wednesday. This is a proper motion that was tabled in the House of Commons.

Fucking love it.

2007-06-25T20:30:00.000+04:00

Rabbit: The Movie
This looks absolutely hilarious. If someone's on their way back from London, can you pick one up for me? The DVD, that is..

2007-06-25T20:11:00.001+04:00

My article in Khaleej Times
I've got an article in Saturday's Khaleej Times. They've even got a picture of me on the cover. Nice one.

2007-05-25T18:41:00.000+04:00

Emma's dilemma
There's a Big Brother Australia contestant who's father recently died of cancer. A media shit-storm has now erupted over her family (and Big Brother's) decision to not inform her of his death until she's out of the Big Brother house.

It's an interesting debate, and I was originally quite offended by the media storm and the fact that Big Brother's producers were going to keep the information from her. However, a letter from her family has been published that states her dying father's wish was that no one informed Anna of the death so as to not influence her Big Brother experience.

2007-05-21T10:25:00.000+04:00

Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.

2007-05-19T12:08:00.000+04:00

John Bracken is your man!
He's a member of the Mentally Handicapped Association, and he's got a cracking theme tune. If I lived in the Laois / Offaly constituency (whatever that is), I would totally vote for you John!

via b3ta

2007-05-19T11:50:00.000+04:00

The Economist's cover this week is brilliant.

2007-05-18T12:24:00.000+04:00

We're in!
Martin and I have both been accepted to run in the 2007 New York Marathon in November. The chances of us both getting accepted were really slim, but we're both in. Had we not been accepted at this point, we'd both have had to join through a charity team and raise over 5,000 AED to run.

Overall, the UAE applicants did fairly well. I recognize some of the names on the list, including Faye Marchant, who's coming to Borneo with us in July for the Mount Kinabalu Challenge.

2005-08-03T13:24:00.000+04:00

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Britons tell of torture in Dubai
Now here's an article you're not going to read in Gulf News or 7Days.

-YTT

2005-04-13T17:31:00.000+04:00

Sheikh Mo's yacht
This is big. 525 feet long, and estimated to cost $300 million. It's so big, just to put it into context - it's longer than a US Navy destroyer like the USS John Paul Jones, which holds 23 officers, 24 chief petty officers and 291 enslited men, as well as Tomahawak and Harpoon missiles, and torpedoes.

2005-03-24T11:51:00.000+04:00

Wing Music
Fuck me, this woman is something else! I've never heard anything like it - she sounds like a parody of someone trying to sound like an Asian in a Karaoke bar, but she's the real deal, and she's released 9 albums (all cover versions - Mama Mia, Let It Be, Don't Cry For Me Argentina). So worth a listen..

2005-03-21T20:29:00.000+04:00

North55 on the BBC
I've been interviewed for the show "Middle East Business Report", which is reporting on the state of the Internet in the region. It's showing at the following times this week:

Saturday, March 26
0430 GMT (8:30 am Dubai time)
1830 GMT (10:30 pm Dubai time)
2230 GMT (2:30 am Dubai time on Sunday)

Sunday, March 27
1130 GMT (3:30 pm Dubai time)

2005-03-21T20:24:00.000+04:00

Firestarting satanic turtle
Satan has a goatee and everything....

2005-03-16T11:05:00.000+04:00

TV Ads, The X show at Kontraband
Have you been cheese nachos?

2005-02-24T12:09:00.000+04:00

Dubai 10K
Here's two pictures from the 10K race I ran in January. Martin and I ran together, and completed the race in a respectable 52:26. I also managed to raise AED 3260.25 for Medicins Sans Frontieres, which will go their Emergency Relief Fund. The money will support their emergency work in the areas hit by the tsunami in December as well as other areas like Darfur.

A very special thank-you to everyone who contributed to my fundraising.

2005-02-24T09:09:00.000+04:00

Tennis
While watching the Henman-Rusedski game on Tuesday night at the Dubai Tennis Championships, I was shocked by the behavior of some members of the crowd. I'm not talking about the usual annoyances of mobile phones and hecklers, for what I witnessed was a lot more cruel.

There was an overweight ball boy about eight years old who was working on one of the court's baselines. On a number of occasions, when he ran to collect a stray ball from the middle of the court, the crowd heckled him with comments like "come on, fatty!", "run faster!" or just laughed at him. I cannot imagine how humiliated that boy must have felt, or what his parents must have felt if they were in the crowd.

Shame on all of you. This was a nervous young boy, standing next to his tennis heroes in front of 3,000 people, and none of you stopped to think about how you must have made him feel. I guess none of you have children his age or remember what it was like to be his age.

On behalf of the little boy who couldn't defend himself last night against the people heckling him, I wanted to tell you that what you did was incredibly cruel, and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

2005-02-16T14:36:00.000+04:00

Public toilets, Ha Ha Road and the right to drive geese through Dulwich

Forty reasons why London beats Paris as a potential Olympic venue. My favourite reason, #18:
"At Holland & Holland, Bruton Street, W1, Londoners can pop in to buy bespoke guns. These are useful for murdering bespoke animals and continental Europeans. If it were to come to that."

2005-02-03T11:55:00.000+04:00

The worst website in the world
I think I found it. The worst-designed website in history. Between the crap music, the intro that would induce epilepsy in small children, and the horrible photo on the right that keeps moving, I cannot hate this site enough. I hate them for making this website.

For anyone who clicks on the link, I'm sorry.

Bastards.

2005-01-12T13:24:00.000+04:00

I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards!
I love this. the Roanke Times from Virginia have written an article about "that Middle Eastern Man in an American flag shirt" who "shook up this town before leaving in a hurry."

I love how these American yahoos then put two and two slowly together to realize that it is in fact Ali G.

Check out the " messageboard, which is evenly divided between people who took it as a laugh, and the usual offended American prudes. The best line..."You redneck, ratty pickup truck owning, frizzy haired wife banging buffons got owned like you did in the civil war. Anyone up for some vino?"

If anyone has any footage of this, please let me know.

2004-12-15T17:31:00.000+04:00

Fuck me, he's coming!
My favourite musician and probably the greatest living artist, is coming to Dubai!
That's right, kids, Mark Knopfler is playing at the Dubai Media City amphitheater on Saturday, March 5.

This is big news. I am so fucking excited. Watch this space.

2004-11-26T19:05:00.000+04:00

Disney's #1 Fan
This guy needs to get out more. He's completely obsessed with Disney - he's covered 87% of his body with Disney tattos, only reads Disney books, only watches Disney films.

Even more interesting than his site is this interview with b3ta, where he revels how he's gone through 6 wives and 2 daughters because no one can cope with his obsession.

2004-11-17T16:44:00.000+04:00

Notes and Queries
Cracking site, this. Read the history of this forum , and then enjoy the answers to such questions as "what good is a fez?" and "Astrology. It's all a load of rubbish, isn't it?"

2004-11-03T11:24:00.000+04:00

Kids...say no to drugs.
An excellent slideshow of images used by police in London to show the effect of drugs. This selection of mugshots was actually taken from police in the US, who have much more relaxed policies on prisoner confidentiality (ain't that right, OJ?). You can read more about it here .

2004-10-21T15:36:00.000+04:00

Google 'saved' Australian hostage
Everyone should Google themselves at least once, and see what turns.
I Google myself all the time, and get fuckall coming up. No matter what I try, I never find my old-skool website or my new one online.

This dude was Googled by his Iraqi captors to establish whether he was indeed an Australian journalist, or a capitalist pig-dog imperial Zionist spy.

2004-10-17T15:14:00.000+04:00

United Arab Emirates : The Question of Succession
Some of you may have heard the rumours flying around about Sheikh Zayed's illness and possible death. Here's an interesting article about the succession (and possible power struggle) that may ensue after his death.

2004-10-13T09:47:00.000+04:00

ENOC's closing stations
ENOC (and its subisidiary EPPCO), who between them own 51% of the gas stations in the UAE, are set to start closing their gas stations. In the UAE, our fuel prices are set by the federal government and AED 4.00 (US$1.1) for 95-octane, and AED 4.75 (UUS$1.3) for 98-octane.
However, with current oil prices at $54 a barrel, ENOC is buying fuel at AED 6.75 a gallon, and is then forced to sell it on at a loss. They're currently losing AED 1.4 million a day.

While ENOC and EPPCO are asking for higher oil prices, I think we'll see the government start to subsidise their fuel prices. After all, the UAE does produce 20% of the world's oil.

2004-07-19T15:20:00.000+04:00

Labradoodles
Here's a queer little species of dog - cross-breeding a Labrador and a Poodle - to create a Labradoodle!

What funny little creatures..

2004-07-01T11:42:00.000+04:00

House of Ugoff
Here's another wicked site from the nice people at Burger King, with a site that features a fictional swinging German fashion designer who's designed their new lunch pouches. Very original.

2004-06-28T10:57:00.000+04:00

Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog'
Allright, what the fuck... I have heard some crazy stories, but this one is being passed off as truth. Hmmm. Maybe the father is French.

2004-06-24T16:56:00.000+04:00

Iraq's new flag
Speaking of flags (see my excellent June 20 post), here's a funny take on the new American-decreed Iraqi flag.

2004-06-24T15:32:00.000+04:00

Dubai Intl Fincl Center Axes Chief Regulators
This is a real scandal, and shows how a number of greedy businessmen in Dubai (who Lord knows are rich enough) continue to line their pockets by outsourcing every piece of business they oversee (as director of publicly owned or government companies) to themselves.

This is not a new concept, and something anyone in Dubai has known for years. It's a shame because this has undermind Dubai's credibility, which is key if DIFC is to ever succeed.

2004-06-24T15:02:00.000+04:00

GUNNER PALACE
Here's a new documentary about a journalist who was embedded with the 2/3 Field Artillery Battalion in Baghdad, and here's a great review of it on The Guardian.

I've always wanted to produce a great fly-on-the-wall documentary since I met Bill Carter in 1996 when made a presentation at my university about Miss Sarajevo, which was amazing.

2004-06-23T16:06:00.000+04:00

Contractopoly - Center for American Progress
An excellent site by The Center for American Progress that highlights how companies like Halliburton and UNISYS have used their influence on the cowboys in the White House to get billions in contracts to rebuild Iraq.

2004-06-21T13:56:00.000+04:00

Iran to ban sheeshah in public
One of the few good things about living in oppressive Middle Eastern countries like Iran is that although they have outlawed such "sinful" activities like drinking, drugs and cinemas, they've always been cool about letting people smoke.

Unlike the rest of the world, you could always smoke in restaurants and public places, and smoking sheeshah (argeeleh) has allowed ex-smokers like me a little nicotine indulgence.

Now, the Iranians are banning the last fun thing that youth had to do: smoking sheeshah in public.

Right, I'm never going to Iran now..

2004-06-20T11:00:00.000+04:00

Flags of the World
This guy's built a great website, that rates all the flags in the world (from A to F). He deducts points for such things as weapons, maps and "colonial nonsense." Funny and worth a look.

2004-05-25T15:52:00.000+04:00

Gerard Houllier got fired!
Right, I've got this fabulous blog, and I do need to use it more. The occasional link to the Guardian just won't cut it anymore.

Hmmmm... What to write? Well, I'll write about something topical for a start. Yesterday, Gerard Houllier, the Liverpool manager, was sacked from his job. Bit of a bitch, really. Yes, we have had three crap seasons in a row, and this last one was totally crap, but I think the fault for a lot of that lies above him.

Oh, well. I was chatting to Craig at work about him, and he said he met him about six months ago at Royal Mirage. He was apparently really nice, and even sent 20 signed kits to Royal Mirage to say thank you.

Well - let's hope for a better season next year. I hope we get Martin O'Neill as our next manager.

2004-05-10T09:46:00.000+04:00

Look out world - here comes Earl Okin!
I read about this guy on The Guardian site this morning, and he's set to launch his own album on May 17 on Sony Records.

He's got a cracking homepage, and I think it'll be interesting to see how it changes in the coming weeks and gets richer and more famous.

I downloaded "Love Me Or Leave Me" from his homepage, and he sounds very cool. He sounds a lot like Chet Baker.

Good luck, dude.

2004-04-08T17:39:00.000+04:00

Banksy
I'd never heard of this London-based artist before I read about his interesting "exhibit" at the Natural History Museum. Anyway, I thought he would be your usual pretentious modern art shithead fop but actually turned out to be a very interesting artist, who does some very cool work around London. Here's a link to his site, which has a very interesting navigation.

2004-04-08T16:08:00.000+04:00

Retro video games
Do you remember the classics? Not the silly classics like Pong and Space Invaders. I'm talking about the REAL classics - games like King's Quest, Alley Cat, Boxing and Paratrooper.

These are the games I first played when I was little kid on my dad's IBM PC XT in the mid-80's, and you can download most of them from this wicked site called Home of the Underdogs, which is dedicated to preserving and archiving old skool games.

It's really worth a look.

2004-04-08T16:05:00.000+04:00

This is too cool.
Subservient Chicken is this website run by Burger King (to tie in with their "have chicken your way") concept which involves a real-live actor that will do anything you want him to. My favorite thing I got him to do was "do your best impression of Jesus". He got on his knees and wailed.

This is the most original site I have seen in ages.

2004-03-11T16:51:00.000+04:00

Imagine getting a celebrity's mobile phone
This is such a great story. Some random girl in New York was issued with Chris Rock's old mobile phone, and she winds up getting calls from all sorts of celebrities, like Jack Nicholson, Spike Lee and even Adam Sandler. Read aboout it here.

2004-02-25T12:00:00.000+04:00

8 Mile Style
I read an article today about how Eminem's music publisher is suing Apple for using one of his songs to promote iTunes. It was interesting because it referred to 8 Mile Style, whom I had never heard of. I always thought Eminem started life at Interscope Records, working for Dr. Dre.

However, I visited 8 Mile Style's website, which has a bit of history on it. It's the classic story of two brothers, Jeff and Mark Bass, who promoted Eminem, and got him to the attention of Interscope Records.

2004-02-15T14:47:00.000+04:00

Jim Giraffe
I've just finished a great book called Jim Giraffe by Daren King, which is a story about a morally reprehensible ghost giraffe that lives in the narrator's wardrobe. It's a very good book. When I bought it in London with my sister Dana, we actually read the first chapter together on a London Underground train between Oxford Circus and Notting Hill Gate, giggling like schoolchidren the whole way.

Jim has started his own website, and you can read the first chapter of his book here.

2004-02-15T14:41:00.000+04:00

Do I have Asperger's Syndrome?
I've just started reading an excellent book that I bought while on holiday in London called
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

It's a nice enough story, but the thing that has touched me the most is that the boy who narrates the story suffers from a form of Autism - Asperger's Syndrome that sounds eerily like something I think I have. He's incapable of emapthising with other people for the most part (something I share to some extent) but he also does some things (like multiplying large numbers and adding up the value of letters in people's names) which I thought that I alone did. People with Asperger's also have incredibly high IQ's and like to do things in particular orders.

I've been reading about it all morning, and I think I have Asperger's Syndrome to some degree. Anyway, my sister Dana, who is a psychiatrist, is back in Dubai in March, and I'll have her assess me properly then.

2004-01-22T18:13:00.000+04:00

Hello, Cowboy.
It's articles like this, about homosexuality in Westerns and John Wayne in a dress, that restore my faith in the quality of English writing in the 21st century.

2004-01-21T15:08:00.000+04:00

I'm on the BBC.
I was in a short film, shot by my colleague Priya, that won second place in the BBC Talking Movies Young Filmmakers' Competition. If you missed my directorial debut on the BBC, fret not, as you can watch it online here...

2004-01-20T14:48:00.000+04:00

Here's a shot at my first blog. Here's a link to a guy who's lost a ton of weight like me, but was clever enough to document it and take pictures every day.

Very cool...