7th December 2017

We were up at the crack of dawn, which is quite literally around 0500.

The sun was so hot already we were sweating like we'd done a marathon. We both thought that a shower wouldn't go a miss but it wasn't an option. I didn't want to make the family feel awkward either, let alone myself.

We sat in the sun eating our breakfast. Suddenly the chickens woke up. We didn't know that we were sleeping close by to a chicken home but we quickly found out. They were so loud and there must've been loads of then. It was obviously their breakfast time and they were 'patiently' waiting!

A woman walked down towards us and the chickens, she went over to feed them to shut them up, or so that's what I would do. She came over to us and introduced herself as Helen. It was strange as we never saw her last night and she was middle aged woman. We thought the lady laying on the sofa was Helen. We got that wrong. It must've been her mother.

Helen said that we were welcome to stay as long as we liked, we didn't have a check out time or anything. She was actually very lovely and made us feel a load better about being in her property. If only we met her last night, we may not have had to wee on her grass. We even went in the middle of the night too... Sorry Helen.

She told us about a beautiful hike up the mountain near by that we would probably love to do. We said we'd give it a go and that we would be leaving soon to do so. It was only 0800 and I needed to put sun cream on. She advised doing the hike before it got too hot.

We got ourselves up and dressed (in the van). We left pretty pronto but we weren't going to do the hike. It was far too hot already, plus it would eat into one of our days in Brisbane City!  

We had an hours drive and we needed to check into a new holiday park. First thing on the agenda: SHOWER.

I done the driving into Brisbane which wasn't too bad. We're both nervous when it comes to driving in Australian cities because they're strange. They have hook turns and odd lanes that disappear into thin air. Sometimes you can turn right when there's no traffic lights but sometimes there are! It's all very up in the air. We don't understand it.

We pulled up at our new caravan park – Ashgrove, around 1030. The lady behind the counter was wearing a 'Hippie' T-Shirt which was the brand of our camper van. She checked us in and we were on our way. She explained how best to get into the city, which is by bus. She helped with what bus we would need and circled out the things to see on  a map.

We parked in our spot and pretty much ran to the showers. If we were in a cartoon programme, you would see green lines all around us. We stank. I guess that's the life of camper van.

We were ready to face the day by 1130. We locked the van up and left for the city centre! Steve and I have not been in a big city since Melbourne so we were so excited to be in civilisation again.

We walked the 10 minutes to the bus stop. A few busses came by but not the one we needed. We probably could've jumped on, but we were going with what the lady said at the desk. We needed the 425 which turned up shortly after. We both bought a zone 1 ticket for $4.60 each (day light robbery). It was 5 stops.

We were shocked at how much Brisbane loves their bus transport. They basically have an under ground world that runs just for them. It was so strange. The majority of bus stations were underground, too. We were baffled. It was just a bus but we daren't say that out loud, Brisbane people may find that offensive.

We got off the bus at Southbank. This is where the majority of 'stuff' is. We walked across a bridge and it showed fabulous views of the city. I just love the skyscrapers. I took some photos and we continued walking.

We came across The Wheel of Brisbane. We decided to go on it as I have never been on the London Eye before. We would get great views of the city too. I was like a child. The tickets were $20 each which I thought was a bit expensive so I checked out Groupon, as I do. As if by magic, there they were. Tickets for two people - $23. What a bargain! We're getting one adult for free, almost. We had loads of money on our Groupon account (thank you Steve) so we just bought them with one click.

We got onto the wheel straight away, there was no queue.

It had such amazing views. Steve said that the London Eye goes so much slower and that it takes about 45 minutes to get the whole way around. This one went round in about 3 minutes and we kept going for 12 minutes. The staff give you a map with numbers and places marked on it. There's a speaker inside which tells you about each place and you can spot it as you go around. Quite informative really. A good job we went on it first. We were able to see where we were headed next.

After the inner child in me was over the wheel, we walked down the jungle like board walk towards the lagoon. Mel lived in Brisbane for the last month or so of her trip. She arrived home in the UK two days. She said that Brisbane was her favourite city and Mel loved Melbourne. We talk every day still and she text me to say, “How long do I leave it before I see you when you're home? One day?”. She makes me laugh so much. Is it weird to click with someone so well, in the first time of meeting them? I know we'll be great friends for a very long time.

Anyway, back to Brisbane.

The lagoon was really nice, better than Cairns. It wasn't better than Airlie beaches lagoon but I don't think anywhere in Australia will have a better lagoon than Airlie.

The lagoon was made up of two sides – pool water and 'sea' water. I'm not sure whether it was salt water but it had sand all around the edge and as the floor. Steve and I are going to spend the day here tomorrow and we pick the pool side, he hates getting sand everywhere.

We walked around the area of Southbank and loved every minute of it. We found a cash point for the first time in 5 months for our banks so we got money out. Australia charges you if you don't get money out of your own banks hole in the wall. They love to charge you for everything here!

After walking about, we decided to go over to North Quay. This is where all the big buildings are and most importantly, the shopping! We had to get a ferry over which was brilliant. They had a ferry system to take you up and down the river so that you can get to different parts of the city. You can walk and get the bus but it's fairly large and why wouldn't you just jump on the ferry?! 

We could get the ferry because it's included in our bus ticket, but we couldn't be outside of our two hour time frame. The tickets expire which is weird.

We had no idea what ferry we were getting on but we went for the first one to turn up. Luckily, we were right. North Quay was the first stop so we were on and off within moments. 

We walked off the ferry and up two flights of stairs (I picked these over the lift and Steve was horrified). We were in the CBD (Central Business District). We've spent many months in the middle of these so we felt right at home. It was a lot worse mind you, being Christmas time. It was lunch time too and no Australian has home cooked lunches at work. They all literally go out for fast food. There's food courts in every street on every corner so why wouldn't you? I would get HUGE if I lived here in the CBD. When I worked at Momentum in Melbourne, Lena always went out to get food. On a few occasions, but not many, she managed to persuade me to come out. Persuade isn't the right word though, I love food so it was an easy decision.

We stopped in the middle of Queen Street. The local police force had a Christmas Concert going on and I was loving it. They had a band playing, mostly bagpipes and they had people dressed up. There were stalls all around with Crime Prevention stuff to take/sell. It was great. It made me miss work though. We watched them for a while, clapping and laughing along before Steve's stomach got the best of him. He was suddenly starving. Actually starving this time though. I know he's mentioned starvation before, but this time, he really means it.

We walked around trying to find somewhere to eat. We weren't short of anything – we had too many choices! I didn't really want to eat out because I'm so focused on saving money but we were both hungry and we didn't bring lunch.

We eventually found somewhere, had lunch and then we were on the move again.

We were in and out of shops, which was stupid really. We're both DESPERATE and I literally mean desperate to buy stuff for ourselves. We hate our clothes and with every right too. They're all stained and mouldy now. We've not really been able to go out and buy anything for ourselves for a whole year which is horrible to think about. We tortured ourselves and went into our favourite shop... Zara.

We said that we would save up for a year or so and then go on a mega shopping spree, just on ourselves. I need to lose weight before I shop for myself so it'll be another year before I can spoil myself but it'll be worth it. Steve wants to get straight back into football so he'll be losing weight too. I literally cannot tell you how bad we want to shop though. We're finding shops and things that we don't normally get and finding excuses as to why we need it! We're delusional.

We went into the big Myer centre to look for our cards. The Myer centre is like a Lakeside along the city street. Half is designer and half is your normal stores. We had been looking all day but we came across a toy shop and kept our fingers crossed. We went inside and found the card section... No Backpacker. We were so sad. If it wasn’t going to be here, in a city, it wasn’t going to be in Australia. We did, however, find Uno for $9.99 which is the cheapest we’ve seen it so far. We bought it and got over the fact that we would have to wait until we were home to find our beloved card game. 

The guy on the counter said to try a different shop on level two. It was a store for card games, mind games and board games. There’s no harm in trying. We travelled to the store and went inside. It was packed. People must’ve been doing Christmas shopping on their work breaks! I saw Steve jump and I turned to look at him - WE FOUND IT!!!! It was being sold for $25 but we had to get it. We loved it so much when we played it at Fraser Island. We were both in utter shock. I’d never pay $25 for a pack of cards but these are fun. 

(I’m bragging about these cards and when everyone at home plays them, you’re going to think we’re weirdos). 

We went to celebrate and get a pint. Steve took us up to a very, VERY, posh roof top bar with a pool. As soon as we walked in, I told him no. We got the lift back down and searched for a pub. I wasn’t dressed for a posh bar let alone did we have the money for it. There were loads of corporate people there and I just felt awkward in my flip flops. 

We found an Irish pub and enjoyed a jug of beer. Cheers! We had a game of cards and left to go home. We were so tired after being woke up with the sun. We enjoyed sitting there, as the sun was setting, cooking dinner. We are absolutely loving van life! We played numerous games of Backpacker before we watched an episode of I'm A Celebrity on the data which we probably shouldn't have. We then went to bed. 

We couldn’t stop saying “I can’t believe we found it!”. 

Noon CEO - His first 90 days via /r/dubai

Noon CEO - His first 90 days

After reading so many negative comments about noon and its new CEO I thought it would only be right to give a more balanced view of what he has manged to achieve in only 3 months.

On hiring and Culture. It has been well documented that as soon as the new CEO joined he gave Omar the green light to do whatever he wants in the Tech and Product teams. We all know what then happened to the highly talented teams which had taken over 12 months to hire from around the world (all fired). During the mass lay off Omar disagrees with Faraz and then decides that the gig is a little too tough for him so he leaves the company. As soon as he is out the door, Faraz starts spreading rumours and dissing him in front of his old team, and then some of them decided to join him in his new venture esanjo

After the initial layoffs, Faraz stands in front of 400 people at his ‘town hall’ presentation (which I have on good account, was one of the most un-inspiring motivational speeches ever witnessed) and told them that there were to be no more headcount reductions. One week later the complete management team in the warehouse are told to leave the company. (Apparently this was a better ‘town hall’ meeting that the previous one, where he gets lambasted by the commercial team, and begs the team to "trust him" and "believe him” when they doubt the new business plan.

He has done a great job of hiring and maintaining the great diversity in the teams in all areas of the business. Up to now around 90% of the new hires are from India (no disrespect) but he has thrown everything the previous team has done off the window. Moreover, his close friends with little knowledge and experience now head up the various remaining departments he butchered. RC heading logistics who never worked a day in the UAE, KM in the warehouse and CS (why not combine 2 departments? it makes perfect sense) previously heading CS at Namshi with no priors in fulfilment operations and AM heading content and catalogue (graduated in 2010) previously a category manager at Wadi and customer service exec at Etisalat (talk about capability & Ivy leagues he continuously brags about) which btw up until yesterday she steered a major screw up in content where only 5,000 out of the 250,000+ were showing up live. Oh, and while on the subject of India – he opens an office there under a different name (limestone I believe) not associated with noon, - dig a little deeper and I'm sure there is something very fishy going on there.

He has done a great job in transforming the culture in the company, to one where people are either waiting to be fired (you may have seen a little website which went viral last week) or have just had enough and decide to the leave (Head of HR, more to come watch this space). I heard that the warehouse had a good culture, which took a year to build, but his team of experts headed up by some guy was destroyed within a couple of weeks of his expert team running it. (I suppose it does not come as a surprise given that he has only had a couple of years of Customer Service experience at Namshi – with no operational background at all).

Oh, and a little-known fact is that during Ramadan the noon Warehouse apparently was asked to do Namshi volumes because they were breaking and apparently in 3 weeks did a better result than what Namshi did in 5 years. It's a shame that Namshi folks are now running it. Faraz had kept the management team on board until they were done and fired them straight after... speaks volume of his character.

Apparently Faraz can't wait for the day noon is launched so he can remove the gloss from the windows and people are going to look inside and have envy when they see the buzz... they will be jealous and line up to be part of this organization. What a great vison for being an employer of choice in the region, I am sure all the top talent will be forming an orderly queue to join given the culture that he has created over the last 90 odd days.

Technology Back in April, the App was ready and approved in the app store, the warehouse had already inbounded >200k units of stock, and gone through weeks of outbound testing, CS team was in place and finishing the final testing on the system, and the logistics system was also finished with the testing of the last mile operations. But due to all his vast experience Faraz knew that what had been built from the ground up was the wrong approach (and he had sanctioned the firing of all the people who had built it). So he depreciated all the systems that had been built and tested, and decided to go with……well he was not sure but he knew a few companies in India who have some off the shelf products which would offer no competitive advantage, so he popped to India and bought some systems – which are going to be the enablers of noon’s amazing customer experience that everyone is expecting. Anyway – the systems were late and the warehouse needed to inbound products ready for the August 15 launch, so currently the systems and stock are being managed on good old google sheets……..Now that is cutting edge. He is humble, and had no problem with pleading with some of the fired Tech and Product teams to come back and help him out when he realised that he had no talent left in the team, but unfortunately, they replied with their middle finger. Faraz has tenacity, and these small set-backs did not stop him pushing ahead with the app and website development. Although he calls himself a coder and bragged about it endlessly to everyone he met when he joined – he did not have a clue what to do (he actually did not write a single line since he joined... the guy is that inspiring) so it is a good job that he kept in the good books of Hisham Zarka (co founder and MD at Namshi) as he is now working full time at noon as Faraz was not able to work out what to do (obviously Faraz doesn't want a single person to know that Zarka is there practically 24 hours building the tech stack... he goes by the alias Tom).

Selection & Customer Experience. There was a lot of hype of noon launching with 20 million products, a lot of which would be available for delivery within 3 hours. Unfortunately, again Faraz, is not one to be throwing money into stock (noon is a shop after all). So what will be the ground-breaking customer proposition noon will be launching with after all this wait and anticipation in the market………..Well about 200k SKU’s (most of which are going to be picked from other company’s warehouses, shipping into noon, packaged and then sent via Aramex on to the customers. What about the ultra fast delivery I hear you ask, well Faraz thinks it is a waste of money, and customers do not really want to have fast delivery. So it will be 5 days delivery, or until the customer cancels. Noon had also developed a market leading aftersales and returns policy together with its own fleet for the last mile delivery, again this was expensive (not sure if I have mentioned that Faraz is a very cheap CEO who does not like to spend money…..or pay anyone who has provided stock or a service to the company, therefore he scrapped all of that, no more 3 attempts of delivery, Keep attempting delivery till customer cancels the order. However, he has made a big improvement in the cost structure of the logistics and due to the amount of trust he has in the logistics team, the delivery associates are to keep cash and failed deliveries with them till next day. (saves on overtime and bringing the cash back to the operations) If you think he is just going to launch with the regular ‘non-food’ categories then you would be wrong, he is going to launch with food and FMCG which is great news. Yes he will deliver the order to union coop (he smartly happened to choose one of the most expensive on the shelf customer propositions who will go around their shops and pick the order, and then hand it over to the last mile operation – again another game changer for the region, however I am not sure how the availability will be as there is not stock file for each of the shops so I hope he has built in a robust replacement recommendation engine…..not (as per Faraz this is not important, this can be filled on good old excel sheets).

The revised business plan had a lot of the selection coming from back to back orders from other re-sellers in the region that he promised the commercial team he will sign on (actually that was his only deliverable, other than delivering the tech stack which he handed over to Zarka), however he has not been able to sign any of them ( except for Sivvi.com; gee I wonder why) as they see him and noon as a bit of a joke and do not want to be associated with the company.  I am sure you will agree that with these changes, noon will be living up to the hype of changing the way people will shop very soon.

Commercial During his ‘town hall’ meetings in April– Faraz openly put the reason for the previous failure to launch at the doorstep of the Commercial team, as there was not the selection that was promised. He was correct as it was well known that all other functions were tested and ready, it was just that there was no stock in the shop. Strange how Faraz then went of a firing spree with every department who were ready and completely left the commercial team in place. That said, initially Faraz wanted to fire the head of Commercial (Tarik) as soon as he joined but he realized that Tarik could be a puppet and he is now very happy he is on-board. It is not all one way, and Tarik is also very happy as he has a new mentor and does whatever he can to emulate him. Faraz runs about in the office – Tarik runs about in the office. Faraz takes his shoes off in the office – Tarik now walks about in the office barefoot. When Faraz has a cold or the flu – yes you guessed it, Tarik suddenly comes down with a bout of flu. Tarik is very particular of how people pronounce his name and just to get the message across he sent out a universal message to all his team (not to get there stuff together to avoid another failed launch) but to make sure they call him Tarik with a K. Faraz wants the most un-inspiring people around him and the commercial team of 40+ people are complaining every day with no one to listen anymore. (Well unless they ring the bell which is to signify that there is going to be ANOTHER commercial meeting). What about the seller platform I hear you ask – well that is not ready yet, apparently the sellers will be getting training on how to use the platform on the same day the site goes live – assuming it will be on August 15. Working in the commercial team is not all that bad, they have a unique way of motivating the team. Anyone who does not hit their weekly target will get a warning, and If you receive three warnings, you will be fired, but the really motivating part is if you DO hit your target, Tarik will ring the bell. What true leadership, although the bell is not ringing that much at the moment.

Leadership…… Faraz loves to hustle, and keeps asking everyone to show this unique leadership trait, hence running around the office to get to that meeting just a bit quicker than if you walked to it. That said Faraz never turns up to the office before 10,30 (and this is after he sent out a message to all the company begging them to ‘please turn up to work on time’. He is forward thinking though, and now as a company perk, employees who work after 8.00pm can now get their dinner paid for by the company. He does some great stand up meetings with all the office, the subject of which are usually Faraz, and how great he is, oh and the investors in noon. He talks about loving to be challenged, however when anyone does – he storms out of the meeting. Although Face time is not allowed in the UAE, Faraz has managed to install it in the company culture and people have to stay late even if there is nothing for them to do, no one should leave before 9.00pm and if you are thinking of leaving you should ask others in the office ‘is there something I can do for you and stay a bit later’? He also loves to have a game of cricket, and ping pong, which is a little distracting for the rest of the people in the office, who are trying to get stuff done. That said it is a shame that he does not even know the people in the teams, does not say good morning to any of them, and has not trusted anyone in the company to test the new app.

Vison Noon was started with a clear vison of quality and changing the game in the Middle East. The previous CEO was passionate about delivering a great customer experience in all parts of the business and he hired some amazing talent both locally and from around the world. Yes the plug was pulled on the launch but why would you then come in and turn everything off that was built over the last 12 months, to replace it with sub-standard components, and sub-standard talent from a local competitor? Was he scared of the talent and did not understand what had been built for scale? Faraz has managed to turn noon into a joke in the region, forget about competing with Souq and Amazon, noon will struggle to compete with……..well anyone. All he needed to do was to understand what he had, and then work on the selection, but his ego was too big, and he just needed to do what he could understand, which is why it will look like a copy and paste of Namshi. Noon was a great opportunity to put the Middle East on the map of e-commerce, however all it has achieved is to destroy people, burn capital, and become a joke.

To all the people who have been shown the door in the last three months without so much as a thankyou. You built something which would have changed the way people shop, and you should be very proud of that.

Well done Faraz – you have demonstrated great HUSTLE to get all this done in 3 months, looking forward to the 15th

Submitted August 08, 2017 at 09:52PM by pleasepleasefireme via reddit http://ift.tt/2vLZHBc