Ahmed's Adventures

Friday, July 25, 2008

New Short Film

I just finished shooting my latest short film "The Plan" and now working on the post-production. Should be done the whole thing before September so I can submit it to the Midde East International Film Festival in October here in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

From Left to Right: Me (Director), Khalid Mahmoud (Actor), Abdullah Bastaki (Producer)

Posted by Ahmed Arshi :: 2:30 PM :: 1 comments

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Summer!

There was a warning in the newspaper yesterday morning that it would be so hot that no one should be outdoors. I walked out to my car, and indeed it was hotter than usual. I get into my car and I could not breath! I switched the car on and turned the AC as high as possible! I looked at the temperature in the car and it was 54 degrees!!!!!!!!!!

You can't even go swimming!!! The water is boiling!!!!!!

Posted by Ahmed Arshi :: 2:07 PM :: 0 comments

Monday, July 07, 2008

Customer Service

the first thing anyone looks at any business is their customer service, and how they treat their customer. Even if it is a govermental work, like registering a car and paying your fine and looking for housing. I have come to agree that UAE is one of the worse places on earth when it comes to customer service. Alot might not agree with me and will fire back at me for saying something like this about my own country, but truth has to be told.

It depends on the mood of the person serving you, if he/she are in a good mood, you will have a wonderful time with them and everything will go as smooth as anticipated perhaps even better. But, for some reason, if they are having a bad day, they will do their best to pass that grumpy feeling to you and make life a living hell. That's only one of so many reasons why customer service in the UAE is a nightmare.

I'll follow my argument with an incident that happened to me just last night, I just bought a new car and I took to get it registered. I handed my papers to the desk man to register my car and since its a new car it didn't have to go through testing. The guy asked me of my occupation and I mentioned to him that I work for a non-profit organization. the man immedeitly closed my file and told me that he has to speak to his superior whether to register my car or not, apparently me working for a non goverment organization has it doubts in the UAE, a country that only speaks about profit and not for non-profit. I watched the man sitting on his desk resuming his work as if I was not there, when I asked him of why won't he go now and talk to his superior he answered casually: "Oh, he is on vacation!"

WTF?! Vacation?! Are you fucken kidding me? When I asked him if there is someone else he might speak to, he said that all have gone on vacations! That meant that I had to wait for that guy to approve my car for registration, it could be one day, one week, one month, one year, depending on when he is coming back. I called one of my friends who work for the police and asked him about this new rule they had for getting officials to approve a car registration if the person is working for non-profit to find out that there is no such rule and the man was just making this up to delay me for the sake of delaying.

My friend came to my aid, and since he over ranks that dumbass, he got him to register my car in less than 5 minutes! After waiting for over 3 hours! What a great customer service!

That leads me to the most important gap in the customer service issue in the UAE. Its always a single person that decides everything, and who controls everything. If he doesn't want something to go on, and he knows that what he is doing is wrong, still its his desicion and no one can argue with him, and unfortunalty we have that a lot here in the UAE.

So this makes me ask all the officials out there in the UAE, should I be rich or famous for you to give me a good customer service?

Posted by Ahmed Arshi :: 2:57 PM :: 2 comments