The hole truth

The Goat hasn’t needed an alarm clock for several weeks. New electricity cables have been being installed in the street outside his flat since the summer, and the inexorable progress down the road is now having a direct impact on the Goat’s lifestyle.

Every day at exactly 6am, the contractor’s diesel engines are all started, and gently warmed up by revving them to the red line. The compressor powers pneumatic tools, so at 6:05 the jackhammers start. At least the contractor waits until spot on 6:30 before starting with the pecker attached to the excavator. VroomVroom! DinkDinkDinkDinkDinkDink! DinkDinkDinkDink! There isn’t even any respite by going to the office: there’s a vast hole in the plot next door to the Goat’s office block and, six floors down, three excavators spend all day pecking away at the native limestone, as they create space for a third basement level for a new building. VroomVroom! DinkDinkDinkDinkDinkDink!

To the Goat’s delight, he noticed last week that some lines had been spray-painted across the frontage of his apartment block. Clearly, digging a trench on the other side of the road wasn’t going to be sufficient, and the contractor had plans for works on both sides.

Getting home after dark has for many months involved weaving down the street and avoiding potholes, plastic barriers, road cones, and flashing orange lights. Last Thursday morning the situation became worse, because a bloke in a hard hat and carrying a red flag was standing guard at the end of the street and only letting motorists out.

It seemed obvious what would shortly come to pass, so the Goat didn’t drive home after work on Thursday and then take a taxi to the airport. Instead, he parked at the airport so that he could drive home after his weekend in Dubai with Beloved Wife.

This turned out to be a staggeringly astute decision. At 3am on Sunday, he arrived back at the flat to discover a huge, barriered trench all the way across the frontage of the apartment block. There is no way in or out for a vehicle, and all the tenants are parking over the road on the open ground behind the buildings opposite. A different decision would surely have resulted in Rio being trapped in the car park under the apartments, and leaving the Goat with no reasonable means of getting to work.

There is a piece of boiler plate over the trench, so at least pedestrian access to the building is possible. But it’s awkwardly located and not very wide, so the Goat’s motorbike might be trapped until further notice. Given that this is a good time of year for riding a motorbike, the Goat is not best pleased.


]}:-{>

Electric string

The thing about my luxurious temporary accommodation is its luxury and also how temporary it is. Despite my only being in a one-bed flat in West Bay (there’s posh!) for up to a month, I nevertheless was disappointed to discover that the internet wasn’t working. I complained to HR, who told the computer geeks.
Then IT told the Alderney,
And he told the Dairymaid,
Until I was advised
To make a formal fault report.

I phoned Q-Tel.

As promised, Q-Tel contacted me within 48 hours, and I was obliged to drop everything and rush to the other end of town to let the technician fiddle with my router. The verdict was that there was a problem with the electric string connecting the telephone to the wall, and I would need a different cable. So as the technician left, I had a working internet but was missing the correct phone cable.

I know precisely zero about the inner workings of telecommunications equipment. How naïve of me to imagine that, if I bought a phone cable in Qatar that had the right plug on each end and was labelled as being suitable for telephones in Qatar, that it would be the correct cable. Once plugged in, the phone remained as dead as flared corduroy trousers, and so I logged another fault complaint with Q-Tel.

Sure enough, within 48 hours a technician phoned me. “No, actually I’m not sitting at home on the off-chance that you might happen by. I am in fact at the other end of town working and earning the money that enables me to stay here. Yes, of course I’ll drop everything and head straight home to let you in. For the second time this week.”

It turns out that the cable I’d bought was the wrong type. It looks identical to the correct type, but has four internal wires instead of two. And Q-Tel is allegedly special: unique in the Gulf in using the two-wire system. So much for “fully compatible with the Gulf” as it says on the box.

I wasn’t going to let the technician escape without leaving a working land-line. He snipped off the wrong plug from the original cable and crimped the correct plug on to the end. Everything now works. Why, I ask myself, did the first technician not do that? Changing the plug took approximately 20 seconds.

]}:-{>

We've got the power

I'm ever so glad I no longer live in Sharjah. The daily commute to Abu Dhabi is bad enough from the Crumbling Villa. It would be intolerable if I had to do the Sharjah schlepp to Dubai too. In fact, I only ever lived in Sharjah at all because that's where I worked. And as Beloved Wife absolutely refused to live in Grumpy Goat Towers, I moved out a couple of years ago.

The past few years have seen increasing strains put on Sharjah's electricity system. The increase in numbers of residences and businesses has outstripped the electricity and water authority's (SEWA's) ability and/or inclination to provide more 'lectric or sufficient electric string to deliver it.

Result: rolling power cuts. An hour or two once in a blue moon might, in extremis, be tolerable. This is what happened with tedious regularity when I first moved into a flat in Abu Shaghara district, and I lived in perpetual fear of being trapped all night in the lift.

But now we have reports of huge power cuts lasting hours and hours. Frozen foods are ruined; people are trapped in lifts; traffic lights don't work. And when it's pushing 40C at night and close to 50C in the heat of the day, the lack of air conditioning is not trivial.

Massive numbers of the affected population live in apartment blocks. Unlike traditional houses, and exactly like modern, traditional-looking houses, the residences are not designed to function without air conditioning. With neither aircon nor insulation there's no way to pump out the heat that pours in through the walls.

What solutions are on offer?

• Sleeping in your air-conditioned car is possible.
  
  
• A paraffin stove in your high-rise might be the only way to get cooked food.
  
  
• It might be possible to run a portable air conditioner off a petrol-powered generator.

But these solutions are fraught with their own set of problems:-

• Carbon monoxide poisoning.
  
  
• Food poisoning from putrid defrosted and inadequately cooked food.
  
  
• Apartment blocks burning to the ground.

All these problems and more, available to Sharjah residents as a result of SEWA's inability or unwillingness to provide the services for which they charge.

]}:-{>

Off? Ah, you can't re-fuse

The other evening Beloved Wife and I were heading home after discovering that Geeekfest 2.0 had been postponed to October. While rummaging in the dark trying to plug in the phone charger, a coke can ring-pull fell into the socket and shorted the circuit with a briefly thrilling flash and a fuse blew.

We stopped at a petrol station to avail ourselves of the available light, I dug out the owner’s manual and found the fuse box. The task was not made any easier when Beloved Wife recovered her emergency wind-up torch from the boot and discovered that it was FUBAR. Neither was the job facilitated by the blue 15A fuse, as per the manual, mysteriously not being blown. It turned out that the relevant fuse as fitted by some German mechanic back in 2007 was a yellow 20A fuse. So much for Volkswagen’s dire injunctions against fitting fuses with different ratings from those stated in the manual. And the petrol station shop hadn’t got any blade fuses anyway. Loads of cuddly toys and phone accessories, but no automotive fuses. In a petrol station. Is there no limit to mercantile idiocy? Just as well the burned-out fuse only affected the fag lighter. If it’d been on the headlight circuit that night, there might have been more of a problem.

The following day it took four further attempts to buy a replacement fuse before I finally succeeded. Three car accessories shops, whose stock includes flashing lights, radios, spotlights, replacement lenses and any other related electric paraphernalia, didn’t stock automotive fuses. So they all fit aftermarket electrical accessories without any fuse protection, eh? And we wonder why in this country there seem to be so many cases of cars spontaneously combusting. I eventually found a tiny hardware shop where the man had a cut-down Masafi bottle full of 20A yellow blade fuses. He charged me a dirham, and then guiltily gave me a handful rather than just two. (One to use and one to lose.)

Anyway, back to the previous evening. I was fuming by the time we got home. Why? Well, Beloved Wife’s wind-up torch has never been used in anger. It has lived in a bag in the boot along with some jump leads for two years. And this evening the winding mechanism had mysteriously become broken. Come to that, the yellow case had also magically become battered and bruised.

What I suspect is that some unknown person who owned an old and broken wind-up torch swapped his with the decent one that he found lying around in someone’s car. It appears this could only have been the Volkswagen mechanics at Al Naboodah or the car valets at Yellow Hat. Except at the car wash where we stand over the cleaners, no-one else has had access to the boot, as far as either Beloved Wife or I can ascertain.

It isn’t the cost of the torch that I’m whingeing about. They’re cheap, and yes I can easily afford a new one. Unfortunately, when you need to use a torch, it’s dark, probably in the middle of nowhere and likely throwing down with rain too. And the inconvenience of changing a wheel by Braille easily outweighs the monetary value of the torch.

I guess this sort of petty theft goes with nicking small change: a perk, a tax on rich idiots who are careless enough to leave anything in the car that’s not bolted down.

]}:-{>

Organic hand-knitted tofu

“Actually,” I said to the freelance journalist, “I rather like being able to afford to drive a gas-guzzling, ozone-depleting, polar-bear-drowning four-wheel drive.”

“Would you like me to quote you on that?” he asked.

Yet to my own embarrassment I find myself drifting inexorably towards a ecology-minded existence. Not deliberately, you understand.

Agreed, the Goatmobile is a gas-guzzler. It actually burns rather less than the ol’ Disco by about 50%. Seventeen miles per gallon is a lot less unimpressive than twelve. Since buying the motorbike, my personal monthly petrol consumption has dropped from some 90 gallons to around 60 gallons. I make that a monthly saving of about 200kg CO₂ not pumped into the troposphere. Of course, I could have gone to work by bicycle, but that would have required several tins of ozone-depleting deodorant, there being nowhere to shower and change into the mild-mannered Clark Kent upon arrival at the office.

Just for the interest of any chemist who might accidentally have stumbled upon this blog, and to prove to myself that all that O-level Chemistry hasn’t been entirely forgotten…

Petrol is typically a mixture of C₅H₁₂ to C₁₂H₂₆

Atomic weights: H=1, O=8, C=12

Lightest fraction: C₅H₁₂ + 8O₂ = 5CO₂ + 6H₂O

5x12 + 12x1 + 8x16 = 5x(12+16) + 6x(2+8) = 200
72 + 128 = 140 + 60

72g petrol produces 140g CO₂

Heaviest fraction: 2C₁₂H₂₆ + 37O₂ = 24CO₂+ 26H₂O
2x(12x12+26x1) + 37x16 = 24x(12+16) + 26x(2+8) = 932
340 + 592 = 672 + 260

340g petrol produces 672g CO₂

On average, 1kg petrol yields a maximum of around 1.97kg CO₂. This is a maximum, assuming complete combustion. If any petrol is unburned, the amount of CO₂ is going to be less, and there will be increased quantities of other crap such as carbon monoxide and various nitrogen oxides. All of this other crap reduces the amount of oxygen available to make carbon dioxide.

Incidentally, the figures provide a simple way of converting fuel consumption to grammes of CO₂/km:

15 x l/100km = g/km CO₂
Or, in old money 4150/mpg = g/km CO₂

The Goat is bemused to learn that according to UK government figures, the Goatmobile produces 305g/km CO₂, which equates to 13.6mpg. Yet those same government figures state typical fuel consumption as 16mpg in the (worst case) urban cycle. The ‘extra-urban’ and ‘combined’ cycles produce 27.7mpg and 22.2mpg respectively. Yeah, yeah ‘your mileage may vary’. But why does the CO₂ figure exceed the worst fuel consumption by around 18%? If the 16mpg urban were adopted, CO₂ emissions = 260g/km. Perhaps this inflation of the CO₂ figure is a vain attempt to get a prospective purchaser on to a guilt trip so that he’ll buy an electric moped instead. Incidentally, practical long-term testing by Muggins since 2004 shows an overall average of 237g/km CO₂; a total of nearly 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Take that, Ursus maritimus!

Then there’s the house in Cyprus. Accusations that the Goat is turning into a tofu-knitting, lentil-wearing bunny hugger, whilst not exactly unfounded, are circumstantial at best. The interest in solar energy is borne out of solar water heaters being more-or-less mandatory and the nearest existing power pole being about $30,000 away. Whilst photovoltaic cells are unlikely to pay for themselves if ‘proper’ electricity is available on the premises, being self-sufficient in power makes us immune to dodgy supplies, brownouts and inflated bills. You can buy a lot of PV panels with $30,000. Similarly with water. The nearest well is a good $10,000 away and the plot is lower than the well’s ground level elevation, so a borehole may be the answer. Cyprus’ water supply problems make it realistic for the government to subsidise private boreholes because this reduces demand on the piped network. There may even be a grant to get mains electricity to the plot in order to power the water pump. I wonder if there are EU grants available for installing a grey-water recycling system?

I’m advised that decent thick walls with plenty of insulation will keep the heat indoors during the winter and outside all summer, thereby making air conditioning unnecessary. The house will nevertheless be ducted for aircon in case this advice isn’t entirely accurate. Furthermore, someone is going to have to do the sums to see how many PV cells, batteries and inverters we’ll need.

Having contrived to produce a carbon footprint about the size of a pogo stick’s, the Goat has all the justification necessary for owning a big 4x4 pickup. Huzzah! The Goat also idly wonders how much land and effort would be required to grow his own bio-diesel to power said 4x4 pickup and the backup electricity generator…?

]}:-{>

Dhobi wallah

My old washing machine was excellent in many respects. It came free with the apartment and it became my property when I moved. Legally, I might add. It churned the laundry and made it clean. In fact, the only problem was the 400rpm spin speed. Clothes came out a little damp, and in an apartment they took days to dry.

It seems ridiculous to pay to dry the laundry when there's all that free solar energy outside, but following a couple of incidents at the Crumbling Villa involving a washing line, some pigeons and my formerly clean shirts, I accepted the need for a tumble-dryer.

As luck would have it, one of Beloved Wife's friends was leaving Jumeira for Foreign Parts, and it became incumbent on the Goat to borrow a trailer and remove several tons of Frigidaire automatic washing machine. For those not in the know, a typical front-loader comprises a pressed-steel hollow box and a rotating stainless-steel drum. The space between the two is filled with concrete by bands of itinerant guerilla osteopaths.

Anyway, having goathandled the new machine with its 1200rpm spin speed into the Crumbling Villa, I thought that this would be the end of the matter. Laundry came out almost dry, meaning that an hour of dizziness in the dryer would normally be sufficient.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when the housemaid reported that there was a problem. Sceptical as always, I ran a load of laundry, and was sitting in the kitchen when the spin cycle started. The cacophony is difficult to imagine, much less describe, but it's not unlike half a dozen brickbats in a cement mixer. The internet was a little help: perhaps a coin had slipped between the inner and outer drums. But no, shining a flashlight through the little holes revealed nothing untoward, and the main bearing was certainly OK: I know exactly what a knackered washing machine bearing sounds like from a previous life. So I left it alone and went on holiday.

Today, it needed dealing with. It occurred to me as I laid out the spanners and sockets on the kitchen table that the scene was similar to the end of Braveheart - the bit where Mel McGibson gets drawn and quartered. I was going to get the washing machine to behave, and its full compliance was the only available option.

Off with the back, and the drive belt, then I took the rear off the drum. Surprisingly, there was no small change or shrapnel that might have been making the godawful racket.
It was only after removing the bearing that I discovered the problem: two of the four cast alumininium arms holding the inner drum had snapped. These flail around at high speed. A 100 gramme weight pulls around 50g (473N) at 1200rpm, so welding, bolting, gluing or otherwise bodging probably wouldn't be viable. Should I try to find a replacement inner drum? The phrase "It is not coming in Dubai" crossed my mind, as did my previous experience with something as simple as a drive belt. It also occurred to me that resetting all the gaskets and O-rings that I'd disturbed might be an interesting exercise in Applied Incontinence. At this point I set off into town to buy a new washing machine.

It's coming on Monday.

]}:-{>

O Fortuner (Goddess of Fortune)

Four cars met at Dragon Mart EPPCO early last Saturday morning for an impromptu bimble. The Yellow Box Of Doom, resplendent in its new Cooper STT boots, and with co-pilot was one team. Team Tumnus, comprising the Goat and his co-driver Madame Cyn were in the Goatmobile. The Glabrous Driver and his sister Lindsey and brother-in-law Sean were in a rally-prepared Fortuner with the rear bumper held on with luminous yellow gaffer tape. Dimitri and Ruth turned up in a stock Prado. Four cars in, all based on the same engine and chassis, and - eventually - four cars out.

We deflated at Big Red and headed off in a southerly direction. My plan was to travel roughly parallel to the Maha Desert Resort fence line so that there would be a reasonably easy bailout if everything got too hot. We would gradually get closer to the fence until at 11am or noon we'd hit the track and drive easily out to the Al Ain road.

Bearing in mind the relative inexperience of the party I deliberately avoided the high dunes, and instead wove the caravan of Toyotas among the low dunes. Everyone remembered what I'd managed on a previous ME4x4 outing and I was very keen not to repeat this, or worse.

And then came the first stuck. The Glabrous Driver tackled a small bowl not quite quickly enough. The Fortuner was trapped and going nowhere. Wisely, the driver called it quits there and then, instead of spinning the wheels and digging the car down to its floor pan. This made the recovery much easier.

Attaching a strap between the Fortuner and the YBOD, the latter's vigorous tyre treads got excellent grip on the hard sand outside the bowl and in 4WD (Low Ratio) the Fortuner crawled out.

Sean then took over in the Fortuner's driving seat. He and Lindsey are in Dubai on holiday, and Sean was itching to have a go. I bore in mind his likely inexperience and tempered the route accordingly. There were a couple of inevitable minor crestings, easily handled through careful application of recovery kit.

GOLDEN SHOWER: Of sand, of course

For demonstration purposes only (yeah, right...) the Yellow Box stopped on a flat crest of soft sand and proceeded to use its extra-knobbly tyres to dig itself to an immediate and embarrassing standstill.

MIRED: For demonstration purposes only...

I towed the Yellow Box out, and was then treated to Dimitri impersonating Аэрофлот Российские авиалинии. Regrettably I wasn't quick enough with a camera as the Prado sailed across my bows over a metre clear of the nearest grain of sand.

Then, with the Maha Resort fence mere metres away the Fortuner underwent complete electrical failure.

JUMP START: The Yellow Box of Doom helps out

Out came the jump leads. No effect. The battery was as dead as flared corduroy trousers. The Glabrous One protested loudly that it couldn't possibly be a dead battery because it had been replaced with a new AC Delco only six weeks previously. I disagreed, citing in evidence something about a witch's tit. We'd have to tow the car out. For those not in the know, it is nigh on impossible to tow a dead car through even small dunes without a balloon-tyred Unimog (or similar approved). The boys all crowded around the dead engine bay while the girls retired to air conditioned comfort. Not that the Goatmobile had any effective airconditioning, but more of this anon.

Someone had the brainwave of swapping some batteries around to try to get the Fortuner at least on to the track. The Yellow Box was selected as the donor vehicle from a host of applicant, so was duly parked on the track, and the batteries were swapped. It was possible to drive the Fortuner straight out, and eventually to get the YBOD to go, even with a duff battery. Huzzah for big jump leads. The Hatta road was closer than the Al Ain road, so we headed north along the fence line, even stopping near the northern end to have a look at some oryx. Lindsey had wanted to see camels, but in my opinion (I'm biased 'cos I live 'ere) oryx trumps camels any day of the week.

ORYX: Or in Arabic: al maha

As we reinflated our tyres, YBOD reported that the allegedly new battery, still in his FJ, was definitely suspect. We all headed back to town, interrupted only by having to stop a couple of times to apply more gaffer tape to the Fortuner's increasingly moribund back bumper, before restoring both batteries to their original vehicles. I would have said, "Home for tea and medals", but as it was by then an early afternoon in Ramadan, I can't.

Later that day and purely by chance, I ran into the Glabrous One in Yellow Hat. They had immediately swapped the offending battery, declared it dead, apologised profusely and agreed to provide a replacement under warranty.

As for the Goatmobile's air conditioning, this works fine at highway speeds but is useless when stationary or at dune-bashing speeds. The car's booked into the workshop. It's likely to be expensive, and is regrettably most certainly not under warranty.

]}:-{>

Cameraderie

My pocket digital camera went on the blink last weekend. On the eve of a dive trip I was very cross and annoyed to discover that the display of my ancient Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T1 had suddenly ceased to be sensible, and instead resembled a very bad acid trip. So I'm told, m'lud. Removing and refixing the battery and memory card had no effect. Neither did poking the 'Reset' button with a small object such as a paper clip. Curiously, the 'Adjust time and date' screen was not similarly afflicted.

So it must be the image sensor then, the CCD, I thought. Bummer, that'll be expensive, if spares are available at all. Maybe I'll have to buy a new camera, which will doubtless be better in all respects than a four-year-old DSC-T1. And I'll also need a new underwater housing. Buggrit, more expense. I felt all hard done by. It wasn't as if I'd abused the machine. If I'd clumsily dropped it in the bath I'd have c'ested la vie and eventually gone out and bought a new one.

I spent Thursday on a camera-less dive, and then on Friday morning I whiled away a couple of hours surfing the Interweb, trying to find out what was wrong with my camera. Until at last I found a couple of forums that referred to a Known Fault with the DSC-T1. Apparently the CCD goes wrong on occasion, especially in a hot and/or humid environment (such as a Dubai summer, perchance?), and Sony will effect a warranty repair no matter how old the camera is. Oh Happy Day!

Ah, but would I get such a warranty service in Dubai? Figuring that the only chance I had would be at the Jumbo Electronics main shop in Bur Dubai, I headed into town, only to discover a building site where the car park used to be, and a 'Closed until 4pm' sign on Jumbo's door. So it was off to the Mall of the Emirates. At least there, a car park is known to exist and the shop would be open.

The Sony rep was intrigued when I produced my old T1. Intrigued, in the way that the expert on Antiques Roadshow is intrigued when someone produces a Tudor candlestick. "What's wrong with this?" I asked her without firing up the camera.

"The CCD has gone wrong and the images are all wobbly," she replied without batting an eyelid, "But Sony will fix it under warranty."

So I dropped the camera off, having been told it'd take at least ten days, possibly more if spare parts weren't in stock. (For a four-year-old, obsolete piece of electronica? Yeah, right. I won't be holding my breath...)

Imagine my surprise and delight when, on Monday afternoon, I got a phone call from Jumbo. "Your camera is fixed, Mr Goat, and is ready for you to collect."

That's a turnaround time of 72 hours. I am well impressed. Full marks to Sony and to Jumbo Electronics.

]}:-{>

'Twas on a Sunday morning...

...when the Aircon man appeared,
Confirming that the aircon was defective,
as I'd feared.
He rummaged in the fusebox
and the aircon came back on,
But later I discovered
that water pump had gone.

Oh it all makes work for the working man to do.

So late on Sunday night I summoned Mr Aircon back.
He said he'd bridged the aircon fuse; does he a brain-cell lack?
He rectified his error so the villa won't burn down.
I need to find a proper electrician, not a clown.

Oh it all makes work for the working man to do.

'Twas on a Monday morning when I heard my Wife declare
There wasn't any pressure, so she couldn't wash her hair.
With power to the water pump but no hydraulic head,
"We're gonna need a new one then, my darling", Goatboy said.

Oh it all makes work for the working man to do.

And so on Monday evening, I got up on the roof
I swept aside the pigeon poo and kicked one with my hoof.
I spannered my new water pump and threw the 'lectric switch
The faulty motor tripped the fuse because it was a bitch.

Oh it all makes work for the working man to do.

So on the Tuesday morning I went back to Pumps-4-Less.
"We've checked it and there's nothing wrong. Your wiring is U/S.
Last month some pumps were wired wrongly, but not in this case."
(They'd rewired mine in secret so that no-one would lose face.)

Oh it all makes work for the working man to do.

By evening on Tuesday, water pressure was restored.
The shower was delightful as therefrom clean water poured.
There's still no electricity supplying the A/C.
The landlord reckons it ain't his responsibility.

Oh it all makes work for the working man to do.

Flanders and Swann: "The Gasman Cometh"

]}:-{>

Disc-contented

How difficult can it be to buy a DVD player?

The Goat's three-year-old machine suddenly went wrong last week. Mid-movie, it decided that it didn't want to play discs any more and 'No Disc' appeared. The disc would spin up OK but refuse to play. Cleaning the reader lens had precisely zero effect, and the quote from the shop to open the box, investigate and probably install a new laser was going to exceed by far the cost of a new unit. Always assuming that the spare parts are coming in Dubai, that is.

So here are the requirements:-

Region free. In the multinational household of the Crumbling Villa, half the DVDs are Region 1 and most of the others are Region 2.

5.1 surround sound. This input to the home theatre audio system is a must.

S-video. Needed in order to display the picture on the telly at reasonable quality.

The Goat and his Beloved Wife spent all Wednesday evening trawling through every electronics shop in Festival Centre and Deira City Centre. Every DVD player we looked at didn't have all of the above features. The quest for a Blu-ray player was abandoned when it quickly became apparent that none of these were region-free.

I have been shopping in Dubai before. Prepared and armed with a Region 1 and a Region 2 disc, it was possible to demonstrate on several occasions in different shops that variations on a theme of "Yes sir, it's region-free" actually meant "This unit won't play Region 1 discs."

And then, at nearly midnight we found a horrid al-cheabo Chinese player that purported to do everything I wanted. Perhaps this would suffice until a multi-region Blu-ray player appeared in the local market in a year or so. However, this Cyber-Home DVD-300 (who?) is going back to Carrefour this evening. Four of the six audio outputs produce precisely nothing. Another evening wasted. Grump, grump, grump.

]}:-{>

Power to the people

How much are my utilities bills going to go up as a result of DEWA’s recent decision to penalise heavy consumers? I did some basic calculations on energy and water usage. I compared the consumption of the Crumbling Villa with typical tariffs for domestic energy and water in the UK. The latter were lifted off the internet.

British water costs around 90p a cubic metre, which equates to Dh0.03 per gallon. The same price as DEWA charges for expats’ water. And despite the almost complete absence of rain, we don’t get subjected to the annual Festival of the Hosepipe Ban that runs from about Easter to August Bank Holiday. South East Water charges an astonishing £1.70/cu.m (Dh0.56/gallon) during the summer months and then forbids hosepipes, sprinklers, car washing and drinking without due care and attention. Or was that the government’s policy on binge-drinking?

Electricity is a bit more complicated to compare. Every summer month the Crumbling Villa consumes some 3500kWh, which drops to 500kWh in the winter when the air conditioning is off. So interior climate control uses 3000kWh per month, which costs around Dh600 at DEWA’s expat rate. Running the same aircons on British electricity would cost a rather scary Dh2175 a month.

But help is at hand, even in Rip-Off Britain. Gas is cheaper than electricity. If (and this is a very big if) the same number of energy units were used for central heating as for aircons, and utilising my fantasy gas-powered A/C, the monthly gas bill would be about Dh565. This is broadly in line with what it costs at the hands of DEWA. The cost of cooking gas is so minuscule I’ve ignored it in these calculations.

So even given DEWA’s new price rises, the costs aren’t wildly in excess of famously-expensive Britain. I haven’t been able to find out if the UK tariffs quoted are inclusive or exclusive of VAT. They’re certainly exclusive of the insidious Standing Charges that some UK suppliers slap on the bill even if you use nowt. Perhaps we should stop whingeing and realise that the bills aren't stupidly high.

Why has DEWA jacked up its tariffs anyway? I estimate that the Crumbling Villa will cost around 20% extra over the year. According to DEWA’s own figures and based on two people sharing, in order to avoid the high rates, consumption will have to be below 60% of average consumption. Apparently average consumption is considered excessive. Is the price rise to discourage profligate usage? Or to save the planet? Perhaps to jump on the ‘save the planet’ fashion bandwagon whilst making no appreciable difference to any carbon footprint? Or perhaps – and this is easily the most plausible – to make money.

According to the 22-28 Feb 2008 issue of the Middle East Economic Digest, the decision to hike the tariffs was ‘…triggered by DEWA losing Dh223M in the first seven months of 2007.’ Essentially, a lack of local gas forces DEWA to buy expensive oil from Abu Dhabi. At the thick end of $100 a barrel this ain’t small change. Certainly, a price hike ostensibly to curb consumption needs to be more wide-ranging if it’s to be effective.

MEED again: An Abu Dhabi industry source said “[Emiratis] are the biggest users by a long way. Unless they include Emiratis, it does not really make sense, especially for water. Their per capita consumption is much higher because of the kind of accommodation they live in.”

Another source in Dubai said “Even though they are a minority of the population, locals are the majority of water users. The biggest users are the palaces. The government is now pushing sustainability in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It needs to get a handle on government consumption.”

UAE nationals in Dubai get half-price water and pay about a third of the electricity tariff that expats have to pay. In Abu Dhabi, domestic electricity is cheaper than in Dubai. It’s Dh0.15 rather than Dh0.20 per kWh, and nationals pay a third of this. Water is cheaper too. Expats pay Dh0.01 per gallon, as opposed to Dh0.03 per gallon in Dubai and for nationals it’s free.

Of course, UAE leaders can set up whatever rules they choose, and if this includes charging one part of the population more than another for basic amenities, then so be it. I would suggest, however, that adopting a similar approach to everybody – usage of electricity and water above a predetermined limit incurs higher rates – would go a long way in discouraging waste and introducing the perception of fairness.

]}:-{>

Socket and see

"Pray observe the magnanimity
We display to Madame Cynity
And indulge in the felicity
Of unbounded domesticity..."

after A. S. Sullivan,
'The Pirates of Penzance'

As is written in the ancient scrolls, marital bliss involves doing some of those things that only a Man (or perhaps even a Goat?) can provide. You know the stuff: Removing spiders from the bath, wiring plugs, putting up shelves... So last weekend I finally got around to hanging some pictures on the walls of the Crumbling Villa. Out came the spirit level, the power drill and the stepladder, and to instructions from Beloved Wife of "Left a bit" and "Up a bit", I drilled some holes.

It must be a bloke thing. Everyone who ever uses a power drill points the drill upwards and squeezes the trigger before getting on with the actual business of making holes in the wall. Even Gromit does it in A Grand Day Out. (Worryingly, so does my dentist...) And thank heavens for hammer action. The Crumbling Villa is actually made of extremely hard concrete beneath the 1/16 of an inch of crumbly plaster. I recently discovered screws with hooked ends instead of the usual slots. Bang the plastic plug into the hole and screw in the hook until all that protrudes is a very short L-shaped piece of metal that'd probably suspend an Acme anvil. Those plastic picture hooks with three or four panel pins might work OK on plasterboard or wood, but they're completely hopeless on concrete. The pictures, or at least some of them, are now up. The remainder await delivery of my tuit. A circular one.

I am given to wonder why the power drill came with only about one metre of power lead. The manufacturer apparently anticipates that I'm only ever going to drill holes within a metre of a power outlet. This is clearly nonsense, so a vital part of the power drill's armoury, as well as drill bits and a chuck key, is an extension lead. Hanging stuff high up requires that the extension lead be supported by a Beloved Assistant or left swinging until it falls off the plug and comes crashing to the floor accompanied by profane language.

It's not only the power drill either. I selected a vacuum cleaner on the basis that it was the one with the longest flex, and even this came with a totally inadequate four metres of cable. So it's out with the extension lead again. Given the tiny cost of the stuff, would it really hurt Mr Hoover's profit margins to put a decent amount of cable on a mains appliance?

An even better example of tight-fistedness with flex is in the ornamental fish industry. Obviously, where the power lead goes into a submersible pump it has to be thoroughly sealed. Electricity and water are not a good mix. But where is the plug? About 75cm from the pump, that's where! And where is the plug plugged? Into a power strip right next to the fish tank. So what do I have to do? Cut the factory-moulded plug off and extend the wire to a power strip inside a dry cabinet. If any water gets on to the flex where it enters the fish tank, it'll run down to the joint. I have done what I can to make the joint insulated and waterproof, but wouldn't a decent length of moulded cable have been safer?

And this brings me on to another thing. There are probably as many opinions on what constitutes the best power socket as there are international standards. But the industry standard power socket in the UAE is the British three-pin-flat 13 amp fused-plug type, delivering around 240V. So why do so many mains appliances get sold here with various versions of two-pin plugs? Is it beyond the wit of Man to supply plugs for the target market's sockets? It is certainly considered beyond the wit of Man to wire a plug in the UK; by law all mains appliances nowadays have to come with a factory-fitted plug. Inevitably on a piece of electric string that's not quite long enough.

What about adaptors? Oh yes, there are loads of adaptors on the market that will enable just about any plug to be bodged into any socket. Quality varies from prettu good to frankly frightening. And most of these adaptors do not provide an earth. The three-core, three-pin plug and socket arrangement has to connect the earth before the live terminals are exposed, and any metal-bodied appliance needs this earth. Without it, an electrical fault could make the metalwork live in lieu of blowing the fuse. Continental Europe's two-pin plugs have a third flush terminal that provides an earth in an appropriate socket. Sticking one of these plugs into the standard adaptor does not provide the earth connection. Some appliances don't need an earth, and using a two-pin adaptor is OK, especially if the adaptor has a built-in fuse. It would be good if the pins actually fitted securely into the socket. I have lost count of how many times a comedy plug has been so wobbly in a comedy socket that it either only makes a sporadic connection or keeps falling out.

In the absence of an appropriate adaptor, a great favourite among those who have no respect for their own mortality is to wedge open the earth terminal of the socket with a wad of cardboard or plastic (please, not metal!) and then stuff the two-pin plug into the other terminals. This practice, like not providing a metal device with an earth, is dangerous, and is only practised because the wrong plugs are provided by the manufacturers. Even that is an improvement on the disconcertingly common stuffing of bare wires into a power socket.