Add Life To Life

"Add Life To Life" is the tag line for Du, one of the telecommunications service provider in the UAE, which I subscribe the cable TV and internet. Unlike Astro, the cable TV services are better since they are not bothered by the rain that may cause interruption. The charge is pricey but it is compensated with newness and varieties in the subscribed channels. One thing that is worth mentioning here, Du is very stringent and efficient in its internet censorship. If you google for any words that linked to pornography, instead of finding images that make you go ga-ga, you got a blue & white screen with the advice, "Add Life To Life". It means porn sites are blocked here for they are seen as non-value adding to life. Some of the blogs and web-sites that condemn the government are also blocked. Some social networking sites like the escort services are blocked as well. However, sometimes we can get the access to the newly launched porn sites with the less suggestive names for their addresses; but after a couple of days, they are blocked eventually. It means, there are eyes out there screening the online traffic coming to the emirates and making immediate report for anything that is not consistent with the moral, cultural and social values of the UAE.

This Du tag line can also be found in its commercial posters. The one I like the most is the image of an old Arab man holding up his hands in a gesture of appreciation to the Almighty in the showering rain. It is an inspiring image. The kind of rain I was anticipating a few days back.

Every time I pay my bills at its outlet in Ibn Battuta Mall, I would look at the poster and relate it to the same euphoric feeling when I watched the the ending of Shawshank Redemption, one of my most memorable movie based on Stephen King's novella. The rain and the free man create the iconic image of adding life to life.

I was troubled today when I saw Orked in her sorry state. Her two white flowers had withered and faded away. I was imagining her like the skin-head Amani trying to prove something; but it is not something that I like. I decided that she is not suitable to be kept indoor. So I took her to the balcony. When I placed her at the centre of the coffee table, it occurred to me that one is such a lonely number. She needs another life to add hers. Something had to be done about it.

I went to Dubai Garden Center to get some friends for Orked. It is a happening place with so many healthy and beautiful plants and trendy gardening gadgets. This place is well kept and managed by the people who take pride in their business. As I entered the building I felt it was like a mirage in the desert.

I bought 2 pots of orchid plants, one with the yellow flowers and the other purple. I name them Ning and Violet, respectively. Recently a celebrated blogger had commented that a plant needs to be sung to, so I figure Ning can do the singing for Orked. While Violet the biggest among the three can be Orked's guardian against naughty bugs (that might sneer at Orked's flowerlessness) and the wild wind that comes with the uninvited sand. The three sisters are placed on the coffee table at the balcony. I can see them from my bed when I wake up in the morning. Outside, their purpose is to display their beauty, to promote their deceptive pollination, and not to add pollution since the don't have pollens to spread. Hereunder is an excerpt from an interesting article about orchid's sexual deception which escapes Du censorship. It explains orchid plants being kinky and naughty by nature.

"The great majority of animal pollinated plants secure the services of their animal pollinators by providing food rewards such as nectar or pollen. However, orchids are exceptional in that perhaps as many as one third of the 30,000 or so species achieve pollination by deception. That is, they lure animal pollinators to the flower by false promises of food, but do not provide any. Most of these species are ‘food deceptive’ falsely advertising the presence of food by bright colors and sweet scents"

I have also adopted the green brothers to become the pioneering members of my little nursery at the corner of the balcony. When these brothers are bigger and stronger they will be kept indoor to supply the oxygen that I need in the bright daylight of Dubai winter.

Well, this is the story from my balcony. It serves to accentuate the original version of "Add Life To Life", nothing else.