Year: 2007

Tunisian Mobile Network Problems

Starting yesterday 11:30AM, the network of Tunisiana, Tunisia’s only private mobile phone operator, has been having problems, even going down for hours, and with outgoing and incoming calls being impossible. The problems persist to this very moment for two whole ranges of numbers.

Tunisie Telecom, the first telecom operator, also ran into similar problems yesterday, with their network rejecting calls. But things got back to normal on their side a bit quicker.

Many Tunisian blogs have written about this already, and it has been covered quite enough, but well I want to talk about a whole different angle of this problem.

This critical incident has been an ongoing one for over 24 hours, and up to this very second, not one of these telecom operators has said one thing about it to their clients; nothing, nada, zip, rien, zilch.

Their websites don’t even have the tiniest of messages announcing or explaining the problem, apologizing for the inconvenience caused to millions of clients, let alone giving insight into the reasons behind it and how long it is expected to last.

The news yesterday didn’t say a single thing, the newspapers today didn’t mention it, and generally speaking, there’s an information blackout surrounding this problem.

Online, the only things I find about this problem are on blogs and on WebManagerCenter, a Tunisian business news portal.

I find this totally abnormal, unprofessional and unexceptable!
When are Tunisian companies going to learn to communicate more with their clients, be more transparent about their plans and problems, and own up to their mistakes?

We’re in an age where information goes around very quickly, and unless you want the wrong information and lie packed rumours going around behind your back, you have to be the first out there with the right information and with answers for your clients.

The relationship between a client and a service provider is all about trust, that is what generates customer loyalty. Trust isn’t just by providing a great service, it’s also about being honest with your customers and telling them that you’re doing everything you can to make them happy even when things go wrong.

Tunisian companies in general have to stop taking their clients for granted and start working on building clear and transparent channels of communication with them; providing better services and customer support; going out of their way to make the client happy and be sure they’re satisfied.

As a client, I want to know what’s going on, and I personally feel let down and dissapointed in how this situation was handled, just like many others; that translates into a big chunk of trust and respect lost.

Dutch MP Calls for Ban on Quran

Bits of news like this show me we have yet a long long way to go ahead of us before anything like peace, understanding and mutual respect is reached…

A Dutch member of parliament has called for the Quran to be banned in the Netherlands, describing it as a “fascist book” which calls on people to kill non-believers and rape women.

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom Party, called for the ban in a letter published in De Volkskrant newspaper.

[…]

“I am fed up with Islam in the Netherlands: no more Muslim immigrants allowed. I am fed up with the worship of Allah and Muhammad in the Netherlands: no more mosques,” his letter concluded.

[Source: Al Jazeera]

With fools like this guy in governments and high places from both sides of the divide, the madness will just go on and on, making things worse and worse for us all.

How To Drop Off The Face Of The Earth

The other day I was thinking about what it would take for someone to just disappear, just seem to have dropped off the face of the earth, if they were to wish to do so.

I’m not talking illegal stuff, no, just using strictly legal means; how can a person just disappear into thin air without a trace?

It’s not like I’m planning to do this anytime soon or ever really, but well sometimes my mind does wonder off to such weird ideas, and I think that it’d be cool to have a plan if someone ever felt the urge to do something like that, even for a little while, if one day they just got fed up of it all maybe.

So I’m thinking these following steps could somehow work and make it seem like you dropped off the face of this earth:

– Throw away your mobile phone, blackberry, whatever connected mobile devices you have.
– Sell whatever you don’t need to different people so no one gets suspicious.
– Choose a destination country to move to that is vast, where you can move around freely and easily extend your visa.
– Get a visa to that country.
– Make one-way plane reservations through a number of different travel agencies transiting through some other countries to get there, with the outgoing flight not on the same day as your incoming one.
– Travel without saying goodbye to anyone.
– Once at your destination country, move to a small rural town or island.
– Find a simple job at a small place that doesn’t get you too much attention.

And well, for as long as your passport is valid, to everyone you know, it’ll basically seem like you just dropped off the face of the planet.

Now that I’ve finished this post, it feels even weirder that I’m thinking of this, but well the time has been wasted so I’ll publish it anyway.

What do you think? Would you ever think of doing something like this? And do you think there is an easier way maybe?

Tunisia & Jordan Conclude Aviation Talks

So, some interesting news between Tunisia and Jordan in the travel area…

Jordan and Tunisia have concluded discussions on the issue of aviation on Sunday at the headquarters of the Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission.

The discussions led to signing a MoU aims at liberalizing air transport between the two countries and direct allowing aviation companies, designated by the contracting parties, to operate any number and any kind of flights without restrictions.

The two sides agreed to add Aqaba as an air route to the schedule of the bilateral air transport agreement to the Tunisian side and to add Tabarka and Tozeur to the Jordanian side.

[Source: Petra]

Well, maybe it’s not as interesting for everyone, but considering that I’m a Tunisian and my wife is Palestinian-Jordanian, and we travel to Jordan as often as we can, I think it’s pretty obvious why it’s interesting to me.

So, from my side, above all, I hope this results in cheaper tickets and more flexible flight schedules.

On the other hand, I wonder how successful the extra air routes to the selected cities will be, but well I guess if some tourism agreements between the two countries are thrown in there as well, they could potentially become pretty popular; especially that these 3 cities are great destinations for tourism all year round.

Winning (Jack Welch)

Last night I finished reading “Winning” by Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001, transforming the industrial giant from a sleepy “Old Economy” company with a market capitalization of $4 billion to a dynamic new one worth nearly half a trillion dollars.

“Winning” describes the management wisdom that Welch built up through his four and a half decades of work at GE, focusing on actual management techniques.

The book is divided into five major sections that cover management from all sides:

Underneath It All: Here he talks about missions and cultural values, as well as candor, differentiation among employees, and inclusion of all voices in decision-making.
Your Company: Here he covers issues around one’s own company or organization: things like leadership, hiring, letting go of people, the people management in between, as well as crisis management.
Your Competition: This discusses competition, and the external factors that can influence a company’s success: strategy, budgeting, growth, mergers and acquisitions, and the implementation of Six Sigma.
Your Career: This takes it a bit more personal with a focus on individual career issues; how to find the right job, get promoted, deal with a bad boss and go about work-life balance.
Tying Up Loose Ends: Here he answers some general interesting questions that don’t fit into any of the previous categories and that he’s received in the last several years while traveling the globe addressing audiences of executives and business-school students.

“Winning” is a great management book based on the true and successful experience of one of the best managers of our time. It’s a very worthwhile addition to any management bookshelf, and I personally recommend it to everyone who is interested in the subject.

[To buy: Winning – Jack Welch]

What Would You Do On A Sabbatical Year?

For a couple of years now, I’ve been wishing I could just stop, take a break from everything and take a sabbatical year, and just do whatever I want to do in it.

When you come to think of it, it’s not really such a hard thing to do after all, I think that if you’ve got yourself financially covered for a year, meaning that you’ve managed to save what equals 12 of your paychecks, then you’re good to go and have yourself a year off from work and the everyday responsabilities you’ve had for the past years.

Ok, it’s not that easy to save all that money, but well with a good savings plan, it’s not that hard either; let’s just say you get there, then what? that’s the really big question!

You’ve got enough money to keep you going for a whole year, you don’t need to work at all, and you can, at least in theory, use your time to do whatever it is you want to do. But what is it that you want to do?

Over lunch these past days I’ve been asking some friends and colleagues from work what they’d do with their time if they had a whole year covered financially. I was expecting some really inspiring answers, but what I got back was more like blank unknowing replies.

I’m not any better, although this isn’t a question someone just threw on me while I’m chewing my lunch and thinking how great it’d be if the bug waiting for me at work would just decide to dissapear; This is something that I’ve thought about many times, but every single time I come up with a different answer.

Is it that we don’t know what we want to do with our lives?
Is it a lack of passion in us?
Is it that we’ve got so used to work that we don’t know what we’d do without it?
I don’t know, but I somehow think it’s a problem, because until we know what it is we want, we won’t know where we want to get to, how we’re going to get there, and whether we really want it or not.

So, try it, what would you do if you had a sabbatical year?
If you have an answer in your head right away, maybe that’s what you should be doing instead of whatever you’re doing in life now, and if you don’t know, then it’s about time you start thinking about what it is you want in life, and then base your goals and decisions around it.

Pixels Are The New Pies

I just love this…

A great new way to represent percentage-based statistics instead of the traditional pie chart.

Pixel Graphs

– The chart on the left is from a NY Times story on atheism and the afterlife, and was created by Charles M. Blow.
– On the right, a detail from a Wired story on how much Americans spend on gadgets, and was created by Arno Ghelfi.

Very creative and more representative and accurate I think.

[Via: Anil Dash]