MIDDLE EAST NEWS

TUPNews recently visited Doha, the capital city of Qatar, on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. I saw two camels; and more palm trees than I could count.

Doha will be a remarkable city, once it is finished. Everywhere one turns, there are magnificent billboards trumpeting the modern Qatari dwellings and offices of the future. Not unlike the scene in Back To The Future where Marty visits his neighbourhood in 1955, to find it is yet to be built.

Doha is, at present, literally half-built: for every functioning skyscraper, there is a scaffolded clone across the road. And on each scaffold, a handful of Qatari builders.

The Qatari manual labourer is a circumspect chap, with a finely tuned sense of the work/life balance. He is not afraid to bite off more than he can chew: for every sixty-story tower, there only ever seemed to be ten or twenty workers. Faced with such an immense workload, and the oppressive heat, he is careful to conserve his energy. Most of the workers TUPNews came across were, quite sensibly, taking “power” naps underneath roadside palm trees.

Such prudence may, however, be under threat from the money-grubbing Nazis at the International Olympic Committee, who have threatened to withdraw December’s Asian Games from Doha if the Qataris fail to provide some evidence of having actually built some sports facilities. The Qatari philosophy of project management – roughly translatable as “it’ll be alright on the night” – is rattling nerves in Lausanne, where IOC chiefs still shudder at the memory of Athens 2000, and are starting to crack the whip.

TUPNews, for one, would find the imposition of such harshly capitalist working practices on the noble Qatari worker an awful shame.

Joe Qatari, incidentally, is getting a little peeved at the fact that his city is now effectively a building site – no matter how great the future rewards. I can see his point. At first, the visitor is invigorated by the sheer promise and ambition of this plucky city-state. But after a while, the sense of unfinishedness becomes unnerving. As a fellow hack remarked, visiting Doha today is like “getting to a party before anyone else has arrived.”

(pics to follow)

SERVICE UPDATE

Basque Train


TUPNews is pleased to announce photojournalism functionality via the Flickr system. This is a test image.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

Todday TUPNews reports live from Doha, the capital of Qatar.

So far it’s just been airport, taxi, Ritz-Carlton, so I can’t give you too much juice just yet. I saw a pedestrian crossing sign; the silhouetted figure on the sign was a woman in a burka, which was excellent. And when you pull open the stationary drawer of the desk in my hotel room, there is a little sticker indicating the exact direction of Mecca. Also the money is absolutely amazing. There are no people on the banknotes, just images from nature. A one-riyal note has some small birds on it. A fifty-riyal has a massive oyster. Go look for it on the net.

Speaking of which, the internet access costs here are astounding, so this will unfortunately be my only live post. Plenty more when I get back, though.

I will say, in passing, that next time you have a stinking hangover and a howling case of beer shame, TUPNews recommends you sleep it off in the Club World compartment of a British Airways aeroplane. The seats are like little cubicles; they recline to horizontal. I slept like a child. And in my precarious state, the kindness of the service nearly brought me to tears.

Despite my love of the jet set, I have a fear of flying. This is based on my fear of dying cheaply in a plane crash. I was cured totally in this instance, however. This is how I want to die, I thought – on my back, with a belly full of crayfish and champagne, smashing into the snow-capped Swiss Alps.

UPDATE!

Just got in on Qatar Airways, business class - now that is the way to die!!

SCIENCE NEWS

Smell gas? That's because gas suppliers add a chemical to natural gas to make it smell "gassy". When you take it out of the ground, it's actually odourless.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

TUPNews recently visited Nottingham, in England’s The North.

It’s difficult for the Londoner to praise the nightlife of the smaller cities without sounding patronising: nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised. Is Northern nightlife actually the best? London is always trying so hard to be new; the South is always trying to so hard to be London – for effortless, unpretentious class, try Manchester or Nottingham. Or not – I don’t really know, it’s not my area of expertise. But I had a good night. Highlight: chatting up the wife of the lead singer of Six-by-Seven in the Social after flashing my press card and pretending to be an NME freelancer compiling a venue directory.

While our night began and ended in stylish drinking dens, our choice of eaterie was a little left field. Faced with a thirty-minute queue for a table at Wagamama’s, TUPNews and companion took the only respectable course of action for two young lads out on the town on a Saturday night: we went to Hooters.

The Hooters formula is very simple: take a normal American sports bar, insist that all waitresses dress in hot pants and tight, white T-shirts; increase bar and food prices by roughly 50%. Launched in Florida in 1983, there are now over three hundred such restaurants in the United States of America, as well as a Hooters magazine, a Hooters Mastercard and even a Hooters airline. The concept hasn’t really taken off outside of America, however: the Nottingham branch is the only one in the UK.

I’m not surprised: the girls aside, it is a charmless place. Tackier than stablemate TGI Fridays, the clientele is exclusively male, hollow-eyed and slightly moneyed – like a Nuts magazine focus group. All were in packs: seated at a table for two, my companion and I actually looked slightly gay. Dozens of flat screens feed international sports into a room charged with frustration. The whole dynamic is a bit weird – there are so many men and so few women that it does almost feel like a gay bar. This is also true of strip clubs, I suppose, but that’s stage-based entertainment – you’re there for a purpose. The girls here don’t entertain you beyond simply looking attractive and pouring you beer; there are lots of places you can go for that. What is the point of actually being there? Are you supposed to just stare at them? Everyone seemed a little uncertain.

But the girls redeem the experience, just, through their sheer Englishness. Let the Yanks keep their bottle-blonde, heavily-made, Pilates-buff sirens. Ours is a nation of shopgirls, thank God: I’ll take the puppy fat and girl-next-door charm of these Sherwood maids every time. Reader! I swear I fell in love with each and every one.

Just as we were leaving, I saw something that had me in stitches. Two gorgeous, stick-thin platinum blondes of scant dress walked into the basement bar, coolly walked up to the pool table and put their 50p down. They gave the incumbent players a little wink; about fifty men stopped and stared. Talk about knowing what you want and where to get it!

SPORTS NEWS

All of my football teams won this weekend, for the second time this season:

Premiership
Chelsea 2 – 1 Tottenham

La Liga
Deportivo 0 - 1 Real Sociedad

Southern Premier League
Banbury 2 – 3 Bath City

Rymans League Division One
Dulwich Hamlet 2 – 0 Corinthian Casuals

ASIA NEWS

TUPNews has been carrying two sheets of notepaper around since I visited Singapore on business two years ago. I’m going to transcribe them here, so that I can finally throw them away:

1.

Things I’ve seen in Singapore. 24.5.04

Stand on the left in Tube escalators.
Chicken feet soup
Ad on tube train: “the workplace is the best place to make friends, learn to cope with stress, eat healthier, quit smoking”
Equatorial vegetation
“Muslim cutlery station” at Lau Pa Sat
countdown at crossings
cab drivers very knowledgeable about the Premiership. They don’t like Chelsea. The newspaper had a 6-page feature on Houllier resignation.
On the tubes = “Graciousness is… saying thank you to someone who has made your day easier.”
“You don’t have to use long words to speak good English. Speaking English can be like music.” – one of many library adverts.
“Without music, life would be a mistake” – record bag.
Sentosa
When Singaporeans speak to each other, they flit between Malay and English
Crazy in Love with a Chinese rap.

2.

Food Diary

23rd.
9pm – Club Sandwich, Cheesecake. $48.

24th
8.30 – Fruit Salad. $20
11.30 – Hokkien, Number One Malay Food, $3
Lau Pa Sat Festival market – lush!
2.00pm – Teriakyi Chicken Burger, Chilli Fries + Grape soda, Mos Burger - $7
8.00pm – Vietnamese spring rolls + Scallops stuffed with prawns, Sukothai - $75

25th
7.30am – Dim Sum @ Tim Sum, LPS –
$5.50 – lush
but felt rough later
1pm – Mozzeralla + tomato salad,
Room service. $27
10.30pm – Mushroom Pizza, Clarke Quay
reggae bar - $10

26th
11am - eggs on toast, Cosi - $6
7pm – Oysters + veal chops, white asparagus at Hebar Grill - $200

27th

LONDON NEWS

This morning TUPNews visited the London Hilton on Park Lane for a little Q&A with a Brazilian bigwig. It’s rubbish! Looks like a trumped-up Travelodge.

But on the way back, I saw a gold Mini Cooper with Arabic plates. So it wasn’t an entirely wasted journey.

SPORTS NEWS

TUPNews nearly exploded with joy to see today’s The Knowledge on the Guardian’s football pages. It is a list of foreign football terms for which there is no direct English translation – view it immediately on the Guardian’s website. A few highlights:

Anschlusstreffer - the goal that reduces the deficit to one, eg brings the score to 2-1 rather than 2-0. (German)

Cucchiaio ("spoon") - The chipped penalty into the middle of the goal. (Italian)

Optimistblikket ("the optimist look") - describes the focused expression on a player's face as he intently watches the trajectory of a shot, suggesting it is going close when in fact it is travelling miles wide. (Danish)

Angličan ("Englishman") - a goal that goes in off a post. (Czech)

EUROPE NEWS

A few more of my favourite things about Denmark:

People are constantly singing in public, and rather well. It’s something of a sing-song language in the first place, which might have something to do with it.

I love Swiss railway clocks, and there are Swiss railway clocks everywhere – including a massive one in the arrivals lounge of Copenhagen airport, a building in which I would happily live.

It is absolutely freezing – conversation stops when the wind blows - but this is somehow made more bearable by the massive thermometer running down the side of a three-story nightclub on the main square.

BUSINESS NEWS

One of the highlights of TUPNews' recent travels was the acquisition of the Economist’s most recent city-by-city guide to business etiquette. This will always turn up some quaint insider take on the proper handling of business cards, acceptable levels of lateness, tipping customs and so on. Don’t talk family and football in Berlin; talk of nothing else in Johannesburg, that sort of thing.

It’s worth tracking down a copy just for the Moscow entry, which is focused almost exclusively on how not to become violently drunk. It reads like advice you would give to a seventeen-year-old before freshers’ week. Sample:

On business trips to the provinces, a valedictory feast punctuated by frequent
toasts may be unavoidable. If you know you are in for a marathon, trying lining
your stomach with fat first by eating a large chunk of butter, perhaps spread
thickly on some bread. You will stay sober longer, and in extremis can go and
make yourself throw up the booze before it penetrates your system.

Elsewhere, it advises you to pretend that you are on antibiotics. The Economist, ladies and gentlemen.

EUROPE NEWS

TUPNews is aware this is becoming a love letter to Denmark, so I should acknowledge this letter to the editor I read in the Economist on my train journey from the airport to the centre of town:

“I would agree that “free speech should override religious sensitivities” if the
publication of cartoons deemed insulting by Muslims had taken place in the
tolerant Denmark we knew ten years ago. Unfortunately, they weren’t printed in
that idealised country, but in a Denmark that over the past five to ten years
has slid into an abyss of rampant xenophobia, nationalism, racism, and above
all, a bottomless Islamophobia.”

This wasn’t entirely news to me; I visited Denmark ten years ago, and I have read various articles since along the lines of “Scandinavian socialist dream turns to shit”. Ten years ago, Denmark did indeed seem like an idealised tolerant utopia, and I’d be interested to know how much truth there is the “crap Denmark” thesis.

If TUPNews were a more intrepid reporter, I might have buttonholed a Dane and grilled them good. However, it was inevitable that if I talked politics with any Dane, the subject would unavoidably turn to those fucking cartoons, a controversy that has already bored me within an inch of my life. There was simply no way I was prepared to waste another drop of valuable brain juice on such a discussion, so instead I’ll have to give you a somewhat vague impression of how Denmark has changed over the last ten years.

The Danes remain unfailingly friendly and polite. But there is a slight undercurrent to every transaction that suggests a broad, unarticulated sense of - well, just being slightly pissed off.

EUROPE NEWS

By lunchtime on the second day, TUPNews had given away all my business cards and found enough story ideas to launch my own magazine, so I elected to take the afternoon off and explore Copenhagen.

I ended up hitting three art galleries, enjoying each one more than the last.

The Bertel Thorvaldsen sculpture museum is in the old town, near the royal palace and finance ministry. This quarter is worth checking out just for the weird spires of nearby churches, and of the old stock exchange.

Not a particular fan of sculpture, I was a little reluctant, but the charming girl at the concierge desk had recommended it particularly, and I didn’t want to let her down.

Say what you like about Thorvaldsen, but the man had a good line in great big fuck-off statues of popes and kings. Most of them look like they should be sitting on plinths, not nose-to-nose in a modest-sized gallery – the scale is a little unnerving. You’re in and out in twenty minutes, but as one-trick ponies go, Thorvaldsen gets the thumbs-up.

Next up was the Nikolaj contemporary art center, which I found by dumb luck. Went to see the inside of a cool-looking church with a cool-looking spire, turns out someone’s converted it into a cool little modern art gallery.

The exhibition focused on the Fluxus movement, one of my least favourite. Lots of “War is over if you want it”, crazy beat happenings and general hippy carryings-on, but one gem: a poster and recorded commentary of a two-ball football match that took place on Iffley Road football ground in Oxford in 1973, between University College and St. John’s College. The commentary was Danish, so I do not know the result.

Again, twenty minutes in and out. But by further dumb luck, Wednesday is free museum day in Copenhagen, so I wasn’t sweating it.

I had inadvertently saved the best for last, in the form of the magnificent Statens Museum for Kunst, which was recently extended. The new building itself is fantastic – large, vaulted and white-marble, but with a great deal of natural light, most of which comes through a sixty-foot high glass window that overlooks a park. There is amphitheatre-type seating in the atrium where one can sit and look out on the city. It also has a do-it-yourself cloakroom, with little lockers, which I loved.

Artwise, it’s a neat little collection, with the highlight being the preposterous “Highlights” exhibition, a nine-room show that attempted to show the visitor highlights of all art from the last seven hundred years. The curator has attempted this despite not having any real big hitters, aside from a couple of Matisse and a lesser-known Picasso. I love the optimism.

The same curator may be responsible for the new Rembrandt exhibition, which features two paintings that may or may not be newly-discovered Rembrandts previously dismissed as fakes. The museum is confident that these paintings, which had been kicking around upstairs for decades, are the real deal, and is as such happy to charge money for the privilege of viewing them – but one must respect their honesty in titling the exhibition: “Rembrandt?”

The sun was starting to set and my feet were starting to ache, so I set off for my hotel, hoping to hit a hot-dog stand on the way.

BUSINESS NEWS

Highlight of TUPNews’ recent 5-year strategy session with colleagues:

TUPNews: There’s definitely space in the CDM/JI market for a standalone publication, if you shift the editorial focus to sellers as well as buyers.

Employer: How big is the CDM market?

TUPNews: Hard to say – it’s early days and it’s not very transparent. Number of projects is in the thousands, though.

Employer: So if it’s not transparent, is there an opportunity for us to provide data on the market? Maybe an existing setup that we could acquire?

TUPNews: Possibly.

Employer: Who runs the registry of CDM projects?

TUPNews: The UN.

Employer: Can we buy the UN?

EUROPE NEWS

Another dispatch from wonderful Copenhagen.

I was unfair to describe the town as "grim" in my last report. It snowed yesterday, transforming it into one of the most beguiling cityscapes TUPNews has ever seen.

Last night we were bussed from our conference hall to an old brewery on the outskirts of town, for a party. Alone, tired and a little drunk, I spent the half-hour journey staring out of the window at frozen lakes, gothic factories, snow-encrusted churches of unrecognisable architecture - it's like a Tim Burton film here. Or the cover of the Bloc Party album. It's amazing.

The best thing is seeing a tree that has fallen into a river, when the river is frozen and covered in snow.

Once I had drunk my fill, I left the party on foot rather than queue for a taxi. I wanted to soak in more of the snow, even though it was dark. I came across some interesting things, like a fifty-foot bottle of beer. I stopped at a service station to buy a hot dog - it was excellent, so I bought another. When it got too cold I caught the underground back to the centre. The trains are clean, and the seats are shaped oddly and asymetrically, like everything in the Jetsons.

Upon leaving the station I immediately became lost, which was good because it gave me a chance to ask someone for directions, which I kind of like to do. A polite Dane directed me across the street, into which I instantly stepped out, sending another polite Dane skidding into the slushy ground on her bike. The young girl picked herself up and instantly apologised to me - in English.

I would have felt less guilty if I had murdered someone - I was so shaken I had to stop off for one last Tuborg to calm my nerves.