'Khaleej Times is enlightening'

Dubai - Like most readers, reading the newspaper for Humera, who has been in the UAE since 2011, is a habit.

If there's one sensible move that Humera Sultana made in the last couple of years, it is this: she didn't decide right after college what she wanted to do her masters in. She gave it time. Moved from Bangalore to Bahrain, worked there for three years, and only then settled for a Masters in Quality Management, in Dubai. She's been in the UAE since 2011. She surprised herself by her interest in quality management. When all her friends were signing up for courses in marketing and finance, she was marching to a different tune. And now she's that breed of worker that enjoys their work. She finds she has a knack for it, auditing and suchlike. She's the group total quality manager at the Al Yousuf group.
With all that work, where's the time to read? She has to be in office at 8.30am. Oh, but there is time. It's carved out every morning. "I don't like reading online," says the Mount Carmel girl who knows sign language and a bit of Braille courtesy a course in Rehabilitation Science, and some experience working with disadvantaged kids.
The graduate of the University of Wollongong in Dubai - from where she did her MQM (Masters in Quality Management) - she's one of those who likes the feel of paper.
She used to sit in the library on the Knowledge Village campus, in a partitioned cubicle, and read the papers. Like for most readers, reading the newspaper for Humera is a habit. Cue for all proofers and sub-editors in newspapers to quiver and be warned, she says, "I have a tendency to see spelling mistakes."
What does a newspaper owe its readers? "The facts," she says, "without bias." She says she doesn't like it when a report is presented through the eyes (or the bias) of the reporter. Khaleej Times, she pays a high compliment, is enlightening. We discuss subjectivity for a bit. How does a reporter not get in his or her experiences - yea, okay, bias - but why is it such a bad thing for a review to be presented through the eyes of a writer? She says some reviews of plays are biased or very obviously slanted. "Lay the facts on the table and leave it to the reader to decide. Not everyone wants the writer's point of view."
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Humera has an interest in theatre. It's new for her. She wanted to do something in Dubai apart from just going to work and returning home. A theatre person, calling on her experience of working with disabled kids, Humera has played a teacher to a blind child in a play called The Miracle Worker. The play will be performed once again after its January debut, at The Junction, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz, from April 27-29.)
A sports lover, she keeps up with that section of the paper - even reading it back to front - and the entertainment stuff. She will lap up news about what's happening in town - "anything that affects people's lives, I want to read about." Like what? Rents, concerts, tips on things to do, activities centred more around adventure and heritage and discovering offbeat things rather than mere suggestions "for cosmopolitan brunches and dinners". People don't always want to know about where to party. "News shouldn't only be for a more Western audience," she says.
I ask her about quality management again, and whether any aspect of what she's learnt can be applied to daily life. She obviously knows her stuff and launches into a 'PDCA' spiel. A wha-? 'Plan, Do, Check, Act'. That's the mantra for quality managers, to constantly review and strive for improvement. "One should always be going up, from 100 per cent to 110... to 120. performance measurement is very important. It shows the difference between what you did yesterday and how you can do that even better today."
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE