Up in Pompeii, Minecraft and iPhones are down with the kids



We went to Italy for the Eid holidays this year because our children are fascinated by Roman mythology and because – well, actually, does one need a reason to visit Italy? Pizza, pasta, gelato, art, architecture, history, shoe shopping – what more does a person need for a family trip?

Unlike the days of travelling with my children when they were little, I don’t have to drag along a satchel bulging with “just in case” items (nappies, clean clothes, aspirin, snacks, toys). Now nine and 12, my two sons manage their own gear, most of which has a power cord. Their carry-on luggage contains iDevices of all sorts, maybe an old-fashioned book (for those times when their e-readers must be turned off), and that’s about it. No longer wide-eyed with wonder at the thought of an airplane ride, my kids lope through the terminals like jaded road-warriors, scanning for the best place to wait for their flight (usually near an electrical outlet, to make sure they can continue mainlining their iFeeds).

Although we had gone “off the grid” with some mixed success on safari this summer (full disclosure: it was hardest for me), when we went to Italy, we took the grid with us. My husband and I had work to do, which necessitated laptops; both children had books and homework on iPads, and the older one seems to have become surgically attached to his iPhone, so that came with us too.

I came home from our trip a few inches rounder at the waist (gelato!), the proud owner of several pairs of new shoes, and with a renewed appreciation for Shelley’s poem Ozymandias. In that poem, a traveller describes a huge and ancient sculpture toppled in the sand, with the inscription “look on my works ye mighty and despair” still visible on the statue’s pedestal. But where once the mighty kingdom must have been so huge as to cause despair in the viewer, now “nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

It’s one thing to read that poem in school with a teacher droning on about the fleeting nature of power and civilisation, and quite another to think of it as you walk along the stone streets of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

To stand in what would have been the marketplace and understand that people bought their bread over here, bargained for vegetables over there, watched the horse races at the bottom of that hill, is to feel history cease being an abstraction and become a living narrative.

The people are gone, killed in the intense heat of Vesuvius’s eruptions, but the buildings remain, offering a moment of double vision: I saw myself in the present, hissing at my children to stop bickering, and also as I might have been 2,000 years ago. Who knows? Perhaps even in ancient Italy, I would have been annoyed by my children’s endless litany of “did not, did too, did not”. One should never underestimate the universal and abiding nature of quarrelsome children, I think, in imagining life in ancient cultures.

Herculaneum did not suffer the same kind of structural damage (or looting) that Pompeii did, which means that many of its mosaics and frescoes are still intact, gleaming through the dust. Dolphins and Poseidon frolic on the floor of the public bath, a peacock graces the wall of what would have been a family’s main living space, vines and flowers decorate the remains of a ceiling. In both Pompeii and Herculaneum you can see entire warehouses filled with the artefacts of daily life – pots, urns, combs, spoons – all of which look like they could still be used today. Stacked in with the artefacts are plaster casts of bodies discovered in the ruins, mute and mortal attestations to the idea of Shelley’s poem.

My children were as awestruck as I was by these vanished civilisations, or so they claimed, when towards the end of our visit I found them sitting on an ancient stone step playing Minecraft on the older one’s iPhone.

In a thousand years, if global warming hasn’t incinerated the Earth, is that what future tourists will find when they wander the remains of our cities? Flat metallic iObjects – rectangles of all sizes – stacked against walls, tucked in what used to be pockets? It’s hard to imagine someone being moved to poetry by the sight of our electronic detritus, but then again, perhaps that’s what Stephanus Jobius thought about the mosaics he created in Pompeii.

Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi

www.mannahattamamma.com

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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.”

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Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
 
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia