Your project can make you famous...

Gentlemen ,
Have a read, who knows, you could be the next in line... :)
______________________________________

Student project turns into a handy guide for expats

Free book packed with helpful information

• By Alice Johnson, Staff Reporter
• Published: 00:00 May 8, 2011
• 

Dubai: What started off as a student project has turned into a helpful, handy guide for expats. The Expat Guidebook Dubai was developed by Shaikha Al Qasimi and Fatima Al Shaibani as part of their PR and Advertising degree senior project at Zayed University.

With a brief to develop a campaign, write a book or produce research, the two students began brainstorming to see what ideas they could come up with. They started work on a campaign to address expatriates from a local perspective and also came up with the idea of the guide book.

Dos and don'ts

The book contains everything from where to eat and relax to how to pronounce useful terms, where to catch a bus, whom to follow on Twitter while you are in Dubai and also includes a dos and don'ts section for expats.

Shaikha told Gulf News that they originally wanted to cover the entire UAE, but there was simply too much going on in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to fit it into one book.

She also said that they planned to focus on just the dos and don'ts, to start with.

"Our professors said if you just write a book about dos and don'ts, expats are not going to pick it up; expats are not going to take it, because it's not nice for us to say to them ‘you're not allowed to do this in Dubai, you're not allowed to do that,'" she said.

"So we came up with this book, which is gift-wrapped."

To research the content of the book, the students took information from Shaikha's father's company Orient Tours. They interviewed expatriates, logged on to online forums, and used their own knowledge.

Some of the tour books they read, Shaikha said, included aspects that didn't make sense to the students as Emiratis. "Holding hands is not a big deal," she said, "But PDA [public display of affection] — as in hugging and kissing — is offensive to us. It's not the holding hands part, because you see locals who are married holding hands — it doesn't offend us in any way," she said.

A good deed

Producing the guide proved a tough task, with up to 10 hours a day dedicated to the project alone, and 12 to 16 hours at the weekend in front of the laptop.

The books are free and were not printed with any kind of mass marketing in mind.

"These books are for free, it's just a good deed from a local to an expat. We just wanted to provide information," Shaikha said.

Ms. Sunita