A sad day has arrived. Even my nine-year-old now finds me embarrassing. This depressing realisation hit me when he begged me not to come in to his school office to sort out a problem about a club. "I'll do it. Just give me the money," he pleaded. I doubt if embezzlement was on his mind, just a desperate urge to prevent either his friends or the staff meeting someone who has long been officially dubbed The Most Embarrassing Woman in the World.
If I went around in thigh boots with pink hair and sang at the top of my voice at the school gates, I would understand. When I was a child I used to feel sorry for a friend whose mother was huge, flamboyant and provided her with a packed lunch containing olives and avocado in an era when everyone else had jam on white bread. But, honestly, I am pretty much indistinguishable from all the other mums who drop their children off, arrange play dates, put pizzas in the oven and make polite conversation with their children's friends.
One by one even those innocent maternal activities have been banned by my older children. "Please don't speak to my friends," my 14-year-old recently asked, almost nicely. "It's so embarrassing." When I pick them up from someone else's home, I am invariably given the instructions: "Text me when you are outside. Don't ring the bell." A look of horror crosses their faces if I ever actually knock on the door: I might smile at their friend's parent, I might even swap notes.
If my teenagers had their way, all the outside world would ever see of me would be a ghostly hand opening a purse to give them something to fritter away with their friends, or a disembodied pair of chauffeur's gloves behind the wheel of a car. Fortunately, I don't take this personally. Whenever I happen to be in earshot, I often hear them competing with their friends as to whose parents are the most cringe-inducing. The current champion is the mother who calls her teenage sons "baby" in public. Now that is embarrassing, but many lesser talents also manage to make their children's faces turn puce and their insides liquefy simply because the teenage brain is built that way.
Sarah Jayne Blakemore, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, has just published research that will make many parents feel reassured that their children are not uniquely thin-skinned. She asked 19 young women (ages 10 to 20) and 10 adult women to imagine a series of embarrassing situations - and gave their brains an MRI scan as they did so. While they were thinking about how they would feel if their father was dancing in the supermarket or if they were dribbling food down their tops while eating with a friend, she found that the part of the brain involved in social emotions - the medial prefrontal cortex - was more active in the teenagers than in the adults. "It might explain why teenagers are more susceptible to embarrassment," she concluded.
She could not tell, of course, whether the feverish activity in this developing part of the teenage brain was a cause or an effect of sensitivity to embarrassment, but at least - like a lot of psychological research - it confirmed what any parent of a teenager already knows. To illustrate the lowering of the embarrassment threshold in teenagers, she tells an anecdote about a man she knows who has daughters of that age. "Before they reached puberty, if they were messing around in a shop, he'd get them to stop by promising to sing their favourite song. After puberty, he'd get them to stop by threatening to sing their favourite song."
I'm with the teenagers on that one. I remember well the agony of the time when, at about my son's age, I suddenly realised that my parents were hideously embarrassing. With my father it was on the beach. The rest of the time he was a conservatively dressed, rather formal figure, but when it came to swimming he would strip off down to a tiny, revealing swimming costume - closer to a thong than boxer shorts - simply because he hated shopping and had once bought it in an airport. On family holidays I used to stand behind a rock whenever there was a danger he might stand up.
As for my mother, she had a horrible habit of discussing the finer points of my school reports and quizzing other parents on how their children had done. At such moments, I wanted to drop her off a cliff.
Perhaps parents are subliminally exacting revenge for all the times their small children have been devastatingly embarrassing to them. At the time there's nothing to be done but squirm when your toddler asks loudly in a shop, "Why is that lady so fat?" or says "yuck" and requests a chocolate mousse when faced with a delicious risotto that some kind hostess has slaved over.
Teenagers are often justified in trying to rein us in. While children are small and - generally - adoring, we parents can lose our inhibitions over all kinds of behaviour that are essentially mortifying. I have often checked my son's head for nits in public, without even noticing I am doing so. I have also administered the appalling "spit wash": vigorously wiping the faces of grimy or ketchup-covered children without a thought to their dignity.
I hope that I have never proceeded from embarrassment to actual humiliation, but I have observed other parents wonder aloud in front of their children whether Sophie will ever lose her puppy fat or if Jake is bright enough to get into the best school in the area. Until our children pull us up, I have noticed that we get more abrasive, rather than more sensitive to their feelings, perhaps because we sense that as they get older they are psychologically slipping out of our grasp. "Is he your boyfriend?" I caught myself asking one of my teenage daughters. I shouldn't have been surprised when the girl rushed from the room.
My children can find some crumbs of comfort in my inability to dance. At least I don't take to the dance floor doing my Madonna imitation. Nor do I rate my figure so highly that I dress in short skirts or low-cut tops. As I flipped through websites in which teenagers talk about how their parents embarrass them, I found that the worst offenders are those parents who kid themselves that they are still teenagers, ranting along to their children's rap heroes, and those who tell their children off in front of their friends.
But a certain amount of embarrassment is necessary. It serves an evolutionary purpose, helping teenagers put distance between themselves and those who shaped their early lives. Hurtful though the requests to remain silent and invisible may be, they are part of establishing a distinct identity. The key for parents is to keep their nerve and continue - with a little self-censorship - to be themselves. In moments when your clothes/voice/small talk are being slammed, it may be helpful to remember that it's the eccentricities that children will eventually look back on with pride and affection.
Paatal Lok season two
Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy
Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong
Rating: 4.5/5
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Emergency
Director: Kangana Ranaut
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry
Rating: 2/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
Citizenship-by-investment programmes
United Kingdom
The UK offers three programmes for residency. The UK Overseas Business Representative Visa lets you open an overseas branch office of your existing company in the country at no extra investment. For the UK Tier 1 Innovator Visa, you are required to invest £50,000 (Dh238,000) into a business. You can also get a UK Tier 1 Investor Visa if you invest £2 million, £5m or £10m (the higher the investment, the sooner you obtain your permanent residency).
All UK residency visas get approved in 90 to 120 days and are valid for 3 years. After 3 years, the applicant can apply for extension of another 2 years. Once they have lived in the UK for a minimum of 6 months every year, they are eligible to apply for permanent residency (called Indefinite Leave to Remain). After one year of ILR, the applicant can apply for UK passport.
The Caribbean
Depending on the country, the investment amount starts from $100,000 (Dh367,250) and can go up to $400,000 in real estate. From the date of purchase, it will take between four to five months to receive a passport.
Portugal
The investment amount ranges from €350,000 to €500,000 (Dh1.5m to Dh2.16m) in real estate. From the date of purchase, it will take a maximum of six months to receive a Golden Visa. Applicants can apply for permanent residency after five years and Portuguese citizenship after six years.
“Among European countries with residency programmes, Portugal has been the most popular because it offers the most cost-effective programme to eventually acquire citizenship of the European Union without ever residing in Portugal,” states Veronica Cotdemiey of Citizenship Invest.
Greece
The real estate investment threshold to acquire residency for Greece is €250,000, making it the cheapest real estate residency visa scheme in Europe. You can apply for residency in four months and citizenship after seven years.
Spain
The real estate investment threshold to acquire residency for Spain is €500,000. You can apply for permanent residency after five years and citizenship after 10 years. It is not necessary to live in Spain to retain and renew the residency visa permit.
Cyprus
Cyprus offers the quickest route to citizenship of a European country in only six months. An investment of €2m in real estate is required, making it the highest priced programme in Europe.
Malta
The Malta citizenship by investment programme is lengthy and investors are required to contribute sums as donations to the Maltese government. The applicant must either contribute at least €650,000 to the National Development & Social Fund. Spouses and children are required to contribute €25,000; unmarried children between 18 and 25 and dependent parents must contribute €50,000 each.
The second step is to make an investment in property of at least €350,000 or enter a property rental contract for at least €16,000 per annum for five years. The third step is to invest at least €150,000 in bonds or shares approved by the Maltese government to be kept for at least five years.
Candidates must commit to a minimum physical presence in Malta before citizenship is granted. While you get residency in two months, you can apply for citizenship after a year.
Egypt
A one-year residency permit can be bought if you purchase property in Egypt worth $100,000. A three-year residency is available for those who invest $200,000 in property, and five years for those who purchase property worth $400,000.
Source: Citizenship Invest and Aqua Properties
Scores
Bournemouth 0-4 Liverpool
Arsenal 1-0 Huddersfield Town
Burnley 1-0 Brighton
Manchester United 4-1 Fulham
West Ham 3-2 Crystal Palace
Saturday fixtures:
Chelsea v Manchester City, 9.30pm (UAE)
Leicester City v Tottenham Hotspur, 11.45pm (UAE)
Brief scores:
Manchester United 4
Young 13', Mata 28', Lukaku 42', Rashford 82'
Fulham 1
Kamara 67' (pen),
Red card: Anguissa (68')
Man of the match: Juan Mata (Man Utd)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Credit Score explained
What is a credit score?
In the UAE your credit score is a number generated by the Al Etihad Credit Bureau (AECB), which represents your credit worthiness – in other words, your risk of defaulting on any debt repayments. In this country, the number is between 300 and 900. A low score indicates a higher risk of default, while a high score indicates you are a lower risk.
Why is it important?
Financial institutions will use it to decide whether or not you are a credit risk. Those with better scores may also receive preferential interest rates or terms on products such as loans, credit cards and mortgages.
How is it calculated?
The AECB collects information on your payment behaviour from banks as well as utilitiy and telecoms providers.
How can I improve my score?
By paying your bills on time and not missing any repayments, particularly your loan, credit card and mortgage payments. It is also wise to limit the number of credit card and loan applications you make and to reduce your outstanding balances.
How do I know if my score is low or high?
By checking it. Visit one of AECB’s Customer Happiness Centres with an original and valid Emirates ID, passport copy and valid email address. Liv. customers can also access the score directly from the banking app.
How much does it cost?
A credit report costs Dh100 while a report with the score included costs Dh150. Those only wanting the credit score pay Dh60. VAT is payable on top.
Frida%20
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Janet Yellen's Firsts
- In 2014, she became the first woman to lead the US Federal Reserve
- In 1999, she became the first female chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers
FINAL SCORES
Fujairah 130 for 8 in 20 overs
(Sandy Sandeep 29, Hamdan Tahir 26 no, Umair Ali 2-15)
Sharjah 131 for 8 in 19.3 overs
(Kashif Daud 51, Umair Ali 20, Rohan Mustafa 2-17, Sabir Rao 2-26)
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now