Fainting goat

Unlike the famous myotonic goats that eventually learn to brace all four legs so they don’t fall over when they faint, this one has just the two. Thus he’s now falling over with tiresome but unpredictable regularity.

The other two limbs come with opposable thumbs, meaning that playing a musical instrument is an option – presumably whilst not falling over with a fainting episode. Except for his hearing.

The Goat has basically been deaf in his right ear for most of his life, and has learned to live with -60dB on one side. He has a rather basic hearing aid, but stopped using it when he arrived in the Gulf and discovered that it amplifies everything without discrimination: car horns, air conditioning, screaming brats, all background conversations.

So suddenly to be rendered very deaf in the good side is an alarming inconvenience. Going more deaf in the side that is already damaged is of course too much to ask for. Brain scans have revealed nothing wrong, the Goat’s hearing was unaffected by a course of steroids and anti-virus pills, and if anything it has stabilised at a nicely level -120dB across the entire audible spectrum. The technical term is “as a post.”

So with random fainting episodes the Goat isn’t driving. He’s certainly off motorbikes for now. The Road Trip is currently on the back burner. In order to get outside at all without falling over at random and making a urine-stained spectacle of himself in Dubai Mall, he’s now using a wheelchair that Beloved Wife is obliged to push. If he’s not standing up, he can’t fall over, right?

And the Goat cannot really communicate, sing, play any of his instruments (at all, as opposed to merely at mediocre skill). He cannot use a telephone, can understand no dialogue in the cinema, and relies entirely on subtitled Netflix for entertainment.

]}:-{>

I must need my head examining

The long list of side-effects makes we wonder why anyone would choose to take opioids for fun. I've been prescribed the minimum level for pain management and, long story short, have been having all sorts of amazing things go wrong with me. And they're all on the 'possible side-effects' list for oxycodone.

Everything, aside from the backache that drove me to a doctor in the first place, followed on from chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and pain management drugs.

The dizzy spells I've been putting down to positional hypotension. My low blood pressure drops as I stand up, blood drains out of my brain, and until my heart bumps up the pressure I feel a bit woozy. Sometimes I have to sit down again. This only happens when I rise, so is not an issue during periods of sitting: driving is not affected, but getting out of the car can be.

But the said dizzy spells have been getting more frequent over the past month or so, and have occasionally been more spectacular. I collapsed, or at least slid down the wall outside my oncologist's office, and she put me in hospital overnight for observation. To nobody's surprise, I came up normal in all tests. I spent to following 24 hours wearing a Holter apparatus. This recorded my heart's behaviour and proved beyond reasonable doubt that my cardiac function is completely normal.

Other than my heart being two sizes too small, that is.

So off I was sent. I suspect that the cardiac move was little more than an arse-covering exercise to ensure that if I dropped dead it wasn't in Oncology.

But the dizzy spells occasionally get worse, coming with cold sweats and the occasional loss of,erm, control of natural functions. And I had what looked like a full-blown seizure last Friday. Again, one of the possible side-effects of oxycodone. I made an appointment with my pain-management doctor as early as possible. She says it's extremely unlikely to be such a tiny opioid dose, and has referred my to a neurologist.

I spent yesterday awaiting insurance approval for a brain CT scan, and everything appears normal. But tomorrow I'm due back for a MRI scan and some wires to be put on my head to make wavy lines on long rolls of paper. They won't be happy, it seems, until I'm confirmed as having a brain tumour. Grump, grump, grump.

Further grump is being caused by a sudden deafness on my left ear in addition to my normal right-ear hearing loss. Again, "...profound bilateral hearing loss..." is listed as a side-effect of oxycodone.

Long story short: If I have developed epilepsy from whatever cause, I'm banned from driving. If I go deaf I can no longer enjoy music. And those two things seem calculated to fuck up what remains of my life.

]}:-{>

Good news, everyone

According to my oncologist, there is now no evidence of bone cancer.

I had a PET-CT scan at the very end of December, which revealed that my large bones, notably my spine and pelvis, were riddled with cancer that had evidently metastasised from the gastric cancer that is the source of these oncological blues.

One course of ten radiation therapy sessions and six sessions of FOLFOX chemo later, and last week's follow-up PET-CT scan shows no evidence of bone cancer. I have 'responded very well' to the treatment. The oncologist has kindly pointed out the the holes in my bones are probably there for life and I'm forever banned from heavy lifting, but these holes in my bones are now not filled with anything malignant.

She fell short of using the words 'cured' or even 'remission', and was cautious in being unable to advise how long the current situation would prevail. I have another six chemo sessions to go, and there will inevitably be further tests at the end of that. FOLFOX doesn 't really care what cancer it attacks, so I hope it's giving the stomach tumour a good kicking.

I'm now experimenting with reduced pain medication in an attempt to wean myself off opiates. A desirable side-effect of being off the drugs means that celebratory drinks become possible.

I am sure that my oncologist simply hates motorcycles, but I now have clearance to ride my Kawasaki 1400, subject to No Heavy Lifting. Fair enough. She says that the riding isn't a problem, and I can use the sidestand more and the centrestand less. Some riders never use the centrestand, and there are many bikes out there that only have a sidestand. I have to be big-bike fit by July in order to undertake my road trip.

Here's a shoutout to all those who have sent me their messages of goodwill and now congratulations and 'likes' on social media. This has been a source enormous psychological support to know that there are people rooting for me. Positive Mental Attitude must surely have helped, even though FOLFOX has probably been of greatest benefit. Thank you all.

]}:-{>

Plato's Cave

Like most of the people I know, I seem to get a high proportion of my outside experience from social media. Notably Facebook. Yes, like some prisoner in the Allegory of Plato's Cave, I'm getting all my information about the world from a little glowing screen and very little from real life. It's The Matrix.  From time to time something from this manufactured reality really hits home.

One such item was posted by George Takei, linking to an article possibly from the Knowable emporium of clickbaitery. In summary, one anecdote under "Unexpected Things The Doctor Said":

 "I went to the doctor with backache and came out with cancer."

 Oh yes; very familiar indeed.

Another meme, and this time quite independent of the above, was a panel that said something like:

"I weather major crises, 

and then break down 

when I can't find a teaspoon."

This too is happening to me.

DOCTOR:  "You've got incurable Stage IV cancer. We can control it, but you'll need medical intervention for the rest of your life."

ME: "I see. With treatment, can I lead a reasonably normal life?"

DOCTOR:  "Reasonably, yes."

Later...

ME: *Destructive temper tantrum because the new DVD is cracked out of the box and won't play.*

Still later...

ME:  *Massive yelling and throwing things because I'm getting no responses to my email enquiries.*

I am basically a dangerous and paranoid menace to society. Not a nice person at all. Most of the time I am just about able to keep a lid on it, but my life has been one crisis after another since 2010. See old blog posts for the litany.

2010 - Made redundant.

2011 - Made redundant (Constructively dismissed for refusing to commit fraud, actually.)

2011 - 2012  Job from Hell in Qatar Resigned after a year.

2012 - 2014  Banned from Qatar because no NOC from Job from Hell 

2014 - 2016  Job from Hell II in Qatar. Was supposed to be for six months. Contract ended after two years.

2017 - Incurable Stage IV cancer. Unable to take up new job.

2018 - With the clock ticking and, let's be frank, not much time to go, being jerked around by Officialdom over my bucket list.

ME: *Considers reasons to keep trying at all.*

]}:-{>

I still aten't dead

The blog and its author remain alive and kicking.

Four chemotherapy sessions down and eight to go, together with 10mg oxycontin a day, and the Goat is now, startlingly, feeling healthy and happy. The latter may possibly be because he's permanently slightly stoned on the pain medication. Or not.

Anyway, he felt so great yesterday that he took the Kawasaki out rather than the Vespa. A few errands later, including a trip to the oncology department to be unplugged from his portable drug pump, and he discovered himself in Bad Odour with Beloved Wife. Apparently he should have cleared everything with his oncologist, with particular emphasis on getting permission to ride a big bike.

Now, the Goat fully appreciates that the consequences of falling off a 1400cc Kawasaki may include broken bones. And in his current state, broken bones would be extra painful and take a long time to heal. But surely at similar speeds this applies equally to a scooter. And, come to that, tripping over a cat and plummeting down a flight of stairs might have a similar effect too.

Not that there is any intent to do any falling off. The big issue with a 305kg Kawasaki is in manoeuvring it at low speed, and this always takes care and attention. This is where pain management comes in, for any aches, twinges, or searing agonies will inevitably imperil the bike's verticality and plastic. So Zero Pain is mandatory before riding big bikes can even be considered.

Anyway, the Goat has promised Beloved Wife that he will discuss the matter at his next oncology consultation. He suspects that the doctor hates motorcycles, but must be led to understand quite how important riding is to the Goat.

On his errands yesterday, and in keeping with a remark above regarding verticality and plastic, the Goat may have scored some inexpensive rear crash bars to protect the panniers in case of a drop. They come from a police bike that was apparently thrown up the road at 80km/h, and one of them is slightly bent. The Kawasaki workshop has procured new bars for the police, and as the Goat is the only one to have expressed an interest, he might be getting the old ones. It should be possible to straighten the bar, and after polishing and powder coating it'll be all good. And a lot less than $250 from the USA plus the frightening cost of shipping several kilogrammes of scrap iron halfway around the planet.

]}:-{>

Coming to America

My bucket list includes the Great American Road Trip by motorcycle, this being a follow-up to the 2012 epic with Beloved Wife.

Unfortunately, bone cancer (or more specifically my oncologist) has forbidden the use of large motorcycles for the near future. Fundamentally, lack of bone mass and basic body strength makes it too difficult for me to wheel a big bike around. That actually riding it would be no problem is of little relevance when you consider what happens at red traffic lights, gas stations, and overnight stops.

Actually, it came to pass a couple of days ago that I had to move my Kawasaki from the front yard to the side of the Crumbling Villa so it would be parked in a less inconvenient spot. Just wheeling it about five metres was pushing the limit of what I could manage.

None of this has stopped me planning a summer of touring the USA. The overriding assumption has to be that I'll be fit enough to ride every day for a month or so. I floated the idea on a Kawasaki Concours/1400GTR Facebook group with a basic request for opinions on options:-

• Rent a bike commercially.  Probably at $100 a day, I'd be looking at $3000 or so. It'd not be a Concours, but someone suggested I should go large and rent a Gold Wing.

• Buy a used one, ride it, sell it.  I'd doubtless have to get my brother-in-law to own the thing because I'm not a US resident, but assuming say $6000 purchase price, it should be easy to sell at less than $3000 loss.

• Ship my own bike to the US and then back again.  I have no idea what this would cost, nor what administrative hoops I'd have to jump through. But if UAE-registered Ferraris can spend summer in Knightsbridge, the principle is at least feasible. I've asked a shipper for cost and details.

Responses from the Facebook group where overwhelmingly positive, with offers of help, temporary accommodation, and one guy even offering to lend me his bike. "Get yourself to Texas with a license and insurance."

There were also many messages of support regarding the cancer. It seems surprising how many people have been or are are going through similar to me. This trip, if I can pull it off, might conceivably turn into a "Route 66 Defiant Cancer-Surviving Old Gits tour"

Back to Dubai and reality for a moment, and a note that I disgraced myself with Beloved Wife's Vespa yesterday. For the first time ever in my life, I dropped a motorcycle away from myself while attempting to put it on the centre stand, and fell over on top of it. Angry and embarrassed, I now have an exceptionally painful shoulder. The scooter's fine, but the incident serves to illustrate that I am currently in no fit state to be aboard anything heavy.

]}:-{>

Powerslave

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
It's Captain Caprine!!

Radiotherapy has been prescribed, and I'm halfway through ten sessions. I'm having a break because it's the weekend. The basic idea is that x-rays are beamed into my lumbar spine and pelvis to zap the cancer cells therein and reduce the pain. There are no nerves actually inside the bones, but the surfaces are covered in nerves and, as this is where muscles are attached, I get bone pain that feels like pulled muscles. The radiation is helping.

There is a thread on Facebook about this with many friends making comments about how being blasted with electromagnetic radiation will turn me into a superhero, or possibly a super-villain.

As I lay supine with heavy machinery whirling around me like some demonically-possessed fairground ride, it occurred that I might resemble some pharaoh.I was wearing the little paper apron preserving a little modesty, and my arms were crossed in the perfect place for the crook and flail. I guess I should also have had one of those stripy head-cloths and maybe a couple of Bangles...

However, unlike the pharaoh in the Iron Maiden song, I have no intention of being a Slave to the Power of Death any time soon.

]}:-{>

The final curtain?

I don’t think so. But I never expected to be writing this either.



TL;DR - I went to the doctor with backache and came out with cancer.

Being a bit middle-aged, and a bit overweight, I took it upon myself to go to a clinic and, in September, received a very clean bill of health.

And I was, with slightly elevated hubris, pleased not to be dying of something out of the Tropical Diseases House of Horrors.

That was September. By October I was getting persistent aches in my right shoulder and my lower back that weren’t getting any better. They got inconveniently worse in November, and a few days of not sitting down over the Formula 1 weekend didn’t help.By the time of my trip to Munich in early December the backache especially was becoming no fun at all. Indeed, when my transfer at Istanbul included an unscheduled trip over a flight of stairs, I was in extreme pain.

So back to the clinic in December.

“A few years ago I had an issue with my left shoulder that was treated and basically cured with microsurgery by a specialist orthopaedic surgeon. Can you check the other shoulder please? And by the way, my lower back is a bit ouchie as well.”

Two x-rays later confirmed no obvious cause, so I was scheduled for a MRI scan of my shoulder. After ten days, my medical insurance decided to approve the MRI and on 12th December I was back in the orthopaedic clinic with almost no shoulder pain but crippling back pain.

“I can see bone marrow infiltration on your MRI, and you need a lower spine MRI. I also need loads of blood tests to eliminate multiple myeloma.”

My back pain got so bad after that. Following a tortured night of no sleep I went back to the clinic, another doctor told me to go to the Emergency Room and to get admitted to the oncology department.

So I did, and suddenly had a week in hospital. This was to put me in the same building as the CT and MRI machines and a load of pain-relief chemicals not normally available even with a prescription.

Every test was the same story: “We are awaiting approval from your medical insurance.” From getting admitted to all drugs, tests, procedures, consultations. A tearful Beloved Wife must have spent hours on the phone to the insurance company.

And after a week and the last (I thought) test, I was discharged with a big bag of pills and a bill for the last night in hospital “Because you should have left yesterday and our tardy approval of your last MRI had nothing to do with staying an additional night.”

Mr Mystery Illness now called for the endoscopy and colonoscopy. Can I have the endoscopy first, please? Especially if you’re going to use the same tube.” A stomach ulcer was discovered and biopsy taken.

Dear reader, you can see where this is going. And on Christmas Eve that is where it went.

I did not have the extremely nasty multiple myeloma, a horrible cancer with a typical prognosis of a five-year survival probability around 50%.

My stomach ulcer is no such thing. It’s Stage IV stomach cancer. This has quietly jumped to my skeleton and has been attacking and weakening my bones for an unknown time.

Making ‘Caucasian Male, 54’ the star of some future dusty medical paper, metastasis from stomach to bone without touching the liver, kidneys, pancreas, etc., is apparently unusual and therefore very interesting to the medical profession.

Bone and bone-marrow cancer as extensively as I have it is incurable. My oncologist will not be drawn to a prognosis. The ever-helpful Dr Google says that the likelihood of five-year survival is less than ten per cent. This is a number that I intend to beat.

And so the therapy started in early 2018. As at today, I’ve had a port fitted in my shoulder to facilitate administration of chemotherapy. One session down and it made me very tired for several days. I’ve had two radiation therapy sessions so far of a course of ten. I have managed to get access to some really very powerful pain relief so that I can nearly function normally.

Life is nearly normal, and with the anti-pain drugs I appear healthy and fully functional. Apart from the life-threatening cancer, of course.

More anon. I am very far from giving up.

]}:-{>

Emporium of Expensive Epidemiology

There comes a time in a Goat's life when he has to accept that he's no longer young, and really ought to have his body checked in case anything is starting to go wrong with the plumbing.

The Goat's local clinic offers a "Male Executive Health Check", comprising 16 tests plus a consultation, all for the special package deal of a mere one thousand of your American dollars Grand: screening for possible issues with blood, heart, kidneys, liver, thyroid, prostate, bowel...

Except that the Goat's insurance provider will only cover the cheapest five of these. And by paying for the rest 'à la carte' the total cost would be over $1200. Is this price gouging by the clinic? Possible answer below.

One thing that seems certain is that this is an insurance business plan that is nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with making money. By not covering the test for, say, prostate cancer, which is usually undetectable by its owner, such a cancer would go undetected until later when symptoms appear and "I'm sorry, but it has metastasised and you will be dead in six months."

The insurance company avoids the relatively small cost of dealing with early onset cancer, and is faced with the huge cost of cancer treatment. But the latter is time-limited. A few months following diagnosis they stick the Goat in a box. Win-win for the insurance company.

If the Goat were really worried, he'd pay for the tests. And one of the Goat's diving buddies has indicated where a full commercial diving medical can be had for a fraction of the $1000 quoted above at the Emporium of Expensive Epidemiology. "Believe me," he says, "If there was anything wrong with your body, a commercial diving medical would find it."

Hmmm, $1000 to $1200 versus $400 for a more comprehensive set of tests? We have an answer regarding price gouging. But what of all those who can't afford even that?

Those who are so keen to slag off or even dismantle the NHS or similar government-funded medicine really ought to try living in a country where there isn't one.

They might find themselves dying in a country where there isn't one.

Of treatable conditions.

]}:-{>

In a world...

Put on that deep voice that you only use to introduce dystopian near-future science fiction, and say, “In a world…”

Good. In a world where someone invents a cancer-screening machine that is nearly 100% accurate, how useful would it really be?

Let’s look at a population of, say, one million. Medical records stretching back over decades seem to suggest that there are 100 cases of cancer diagnosed each year. And this new machine is 99% accurate. That is, if you submit to screening and you have cancer, the Machine That Goes Ping will go ping 99% of the time. Of course, technology isn’t infallible, and the same machine typically goes ping and gives a false positive in 0.1% – 1 in 1000 – cases.

In summary, there is a 99% chance of being diagnosed, and a 0.1% chance of being misdiagnosed. So what is the overall success rate of the machine? Something approaching 99%? Perhaps surprisingly, not even close.

Let’s put everybody, all 1,000,000 citizens, through the Machine That Goes Ping.

• In 100 cancer cases, the machine pings 99 times. 
• In the remainder of the population, 999,900 people produce 999.9 (call it 1000) false-positive pings. 
• Total suspected cancer cases = 1099, of which 99 are actually genuine. 
• So the probability of diagnosing a cancer using this screening machine is 99/1099 = 9%. 

Nine percent? Only nine percent? That’s outrageous, ludicrous, ridiculous!

It’s pointless doing it then.

Well, no. If I get screened and I have cancer, the chance of getting it detected remains at 99%, and those are pretty good odds. The problem is the huge number of false positives that scare the crap out of too many cancer-free citizens. I suppose you can allay their fears by saying that only 9% of the pings actually indicate cancer. But that leaves the patient wondering why he did the test at all.

Statistics, eh? Of course, you can live healthily, avoid junk food, exercise, not smoke, and still get hit by a bus.

]}:-{>

#CranesForCJ

One of my dear friends CJ has had some very bad news. It turns out that she has a ghastly brain tumour. Following surgery to remove it and a post-operative infection, the MRI scan has revealed more tumours deep in her brain that even the might of 21st century medicine can't currently get at.

As a token of support, she and her husband Jim have asked that as many people as possible fold origami cranes, take pictures, post them on the internet, and tag them #cranesforcj Post them in my comments if you like, and I'll forward the links.

CJ has long been a fan of origami in general and cranes in particular. So if you, dear reader, are willing and able, please fold a crane.

There's an old Japanese tradition that folding 1000 cranes will make a wish come true.

Goodbye, Chris.

]}:-{>

Daily dairy diary

Screenshot nicked from O₂

The Goat decided last July that fattening himself up on the run-up to Eid may have career-limiting consequences, and he at last resolved to lose some weight. His chosen strategy first involved diet and gym, followed by a much cheaper version of the same: diet and bicycle around the streets of Mirdif. Now that summer is fast approaching, it’s diet. The bicycle will re-emerge when it’s possible to ride one without melting.

The diet is an apparent success. All the Goat does is keeps a diary of calories consumed, and he endeavours to keep the total below 2,000kcal per day. This is obviously not always possible when posh dinners out get added to the mix, but the Goat has managed to keep his weekly total below 12,000kcal except when he was in Scandinavia last summer. Most weeks, it’s below 10,000kcal. And, surprise surprise, the weight falls off. The Goat has lost over 14kg in ten months by merely being aware of the number of calories he puts into his mouth.

The food-and-drink diary is most effective. It develops a clearer understanding of how many calories are in a particular food, but doesn’t actually put on any restrictions on what the Goat can eat. He will choose tomatoes rather than Pringles, toast rather than fried bread, and Guinness rather than lager. These are all the lower-calorie options. Strawberries, incidentally, have the same calorific value as tomatoes. It’s the sugar and cream that does the damage. Accurately estimation of foods’ calorific values has become easier with practice, but the Goat still has occasion to refers to the nutrition information on the packet.

Which, at last, brings the Goat to the point of this essay. How the nutrition information can be horribly misleading.

It’s fair enough to tell the consumer that one serving of Sky Flakes is three biscuits and has 120kcal, because no-one who hasn’t got a severe attack of the munchies is going to eat an entire kilo of Sky Flakes in one sitting. And an Almarai Fresh Cream 100g tub is listed at 320kcal per 100g. One tub; presumably one serving. The Goat has to hand a 35g packet of Ready-to-Eat Barbecue Flavor Chicharrito in Delicious Bite Sizes. Servings per container: 1. Calories per serving: 210kcal. So far so good.

Now look at small tins of California Garden Baked Beans. According to the blurb, one serving size is 150g and contains 150kcal. But the tin contains 220g. What is the Goat supposed to do with the remaining 70g? Share them? Waste them? And Lacnor Essential Orange Juice comes in a 180ml package with one straw, yet the nutrition information says that it contains 40kcal per 100ml. That’s right; the apparently individual package contains nearly two servings!

Final example is Glacéau Vitamin Water. This comes in a 600ml package, and contains 50kcal per serving. But one serving is only 240ml. This so-called energy water has to be shared between three drinkers if the stated calories aren’t to be grossly exceeded.

Here, then, is the problem in summary. If you pick up what looks like an individual single-serving pack, the nutrition information should state what is in that individual single-serving pack. The problem isn’t actually in the labelling, but in the package size. It should be one serving, not an illogical 1.5 servings.

]}:-{>

Pies in the skies

Here we go again. Airlines, seeking to increase their profit margins, are looking at fat passengers as a means to fill their coffers.

This BBC news article refers.

Euphemistically described as having ‘unique seating needs’, a fatter passenger is sometimes obliged to buy a second seat if he or she can’t get the armrest all the way down, or need the seatbelt extension, or if someone at Check-In decides he or she is a suitable target for additional charges. What an outrage! Imagine the scene in a crowded airport terminal. 

Now imagine that scene if it’s the choleric Goat who gets singled out. 

According to the World Health Organisation, the planet is suffering from an obesity epidemic. Translated into air travel, this means heavier planes, more fuel, and more drowned polar bears. Perhaps airlines shouldn’t persist with minuscule seats, and instead take a realistic view that the population as a whole is getting bigger. Charge more if you have to.

Cattle Class seating is tiny. Instead of providing luxury in the sky as promised by the adverts for the newer, larger airliners (The ads invariably show happy, smiling First Class passengers who almost certainly had someone else buy their tickets), we find more seats crammed into the back with minimal seat pitch and width. OK, so the Goat could do with losing a stone or three, and he’s currently working on this. But no amount of diet and exercise is going to decrease the distance between his shoulders or the length of his thigh-bones.

The Goat contends that picking out only certain passengers for weigh-in as if they’re jockeys at the Grand National is deeply offensive. If an airline is insistent on charging by body weight, then it should certainly not single out only the fuller-figured. Every passenger should be weighed, along with their carry-on as well as the checked baggage, and the fare decided based on the total weight carried by that passenger. Thus, some racing snake with a couple of massive bags in the hold, plus a gigantic carry-on holdall, plus a bag of Duty Free might well end up paying more than Muggins with his overnight bag and no checked luggage.

But that doesn’t suit the airlines’ Grand Plan, does it? Make fat passengers pay more, but don’t offer any form of discount for anyone travelling light. It doesn’t feel so good to be slim now, does it? Paying over the odds because you’re underweight. Rather like the current system with checked bags, where you have pay ‘excess baggage’ if it’s overweight but receive less than a brass farthing if it’s under.

Assuming that it’s unrealistic to boycott any airline that is going to charge extra to any passenger who looks a bit porky, there is a more practical solution, which is this: fly Business Class. One Business seat costs no more than two in Cattle Class, it’s certainly more comfortable; wider and longer, plus you get more baggage allowance, better food, and better service.

]}:-{>

I didn't expect...

Source: Flickr

Nobody expected this: the Goat has joined a fitness club!

Beloved Wife has been a member of Fitness First for aeons, and has for a similar period been trying to goad her spouse into the gym. It has all been to no avail because the Goat is allergic to being ridiculed by the Fitness Gestapo (and the Cholesterol Stasi, and the BMI Inquisition) because he's let himself go over the past half century.

Previous attempts at keeping fit, or more specifically keeping weight off, have of course been doomed to failure. The two most obvious reasons for this are ale and pies, but there are others. The Goat does not lack willpower, but having tried Atkins for a month and not lost one ounce; having been furiously cycling around Mirdif every day for a couple of weeks and achieved nothing but a sore arse; having fasted throughout a previous Ramadan (because a work colleague said he couldn't, and that's a thrown gauntlet) and not partied at night, again not to lose an ounce, is demoralising.

Last week, Beloved Wife went to renew her gym membership, and noticed that the ridiculous joining and admin fees had been temporarily waived. Following a further "I want a gym buddy" discussion, the Goat finally agreed to join for six months. That's the commitment, and it remains to be seen how successful it will be. The Goat is not expecting to lose 30% of his body mass in six months (it took 17 years to pile it on) but he'll be extremely disappointed if the effort has similar effects to his previous efforts.

The Goat was obliged to go and buy some gym shoes and exercise shorts. It will come as no surprise to learn that he didn't already own any of these and, apart from when using the pool, it's not allowed to exercise barefoot. This is a bit of a problem; the Goat hates wearing shoes and only ever does so under duress.

New membership includes an orientation and a couple of sessions with a personal trainer. The Goat's personal trainer didn't actually say that he was horrified that such a fat slacker had joined a gym. He did set some "ambitious but realistic" targets for weight loss. The method is the usual unsurprising combination of diet and exercise. The super-tech bathroom scales produced estimates of body fat along with body mass, plus where the Goat carries it, and then came up with a recommendation of a starvation diet of 1970 calories a day. That'll surely make the weight fall off: the Goat burns an estimated 2500 calories per day while resting.

As for the Instruments of Torture Fitness Machines, the Goat was introduced to the treadmill, the cross-trainer, and a recumbent bicycle. No Soft Cushions, although the cycling machine does have what might pass for a Comfy Chair. These devices all have digital displays of distance travelled and estimated calorie burn.

The Goat dragged Beloved Wife over to the gym yesterday, and while she swam, he spent 25 minutes each on the treadmill and the bicycle. All he has to show for his efforts are two massive blisters on his heels.

Bloody shoes.

]}:-{>

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

My medication is Not Coming in Dubai™. The supply dried up a couple of months ago, and I’m approaching the bottom of my last bottle. None of the many pharmacies I’ve tried have got it. They’re probably all telling the truth, because they all give the same story, which is this: “The supplier hasn’t brought any from Germany. We remind him every day.”

So what is the problem? A local chemist can’t simply have a boxful of pharmaceuticals FedEx’d; anything like that has to be imported under the aegis of the Ministry of Health. Any opiate, for example, may only be imported and then prescribed under strict controls. Panacodol, available over the counter in Boots the Chemist in UK, contains codeine, which would earn you a four-year stay at the Al Wathba Minus Seven Star Desert Resort if you turned up at the airport with some.

But my prescription isn’t on the banned substances list. In fact, it’s available over the counter - when it’s actually in stock. The 50μg pills are on the shelf and for sale, but it’s the 100μg that aren’t available.

My cynical streak infers a conspiracy to increase profits. If I buy the 50μg, I’ll have to take two at a time. The packages are both the same price, so essentially the cost of my medication doubles. Once the 50μg pills have all gone, I’m stuffed.

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Wheelie becoming a problem

The pile that is "Too Difficult"

Something that has – literally – been getting up the Goat’s nose of late is the lamentable state of local refuse collection. The wheelie bin on the corner of Crumbling Villa Crescent has until recently been regularly emptied by the Municipality. But the bin on the corner has become broken; someone has even gone to the effort of wiring it shut. Sadly, the local residents do not go to the effort of taking their domestic trash to one of the other bins. It is much easier simply to pile the trash up against the empty - but sealed shut - wheelie bin on the corner. Apparently the bin is all distorted and won’t fit on the machinery that empties it into the back of the truck, and that is why it’s been sealed shut.

The Goat telephoned the Municipality. It seemed odd that a Public Cleanliness Foreman of the Waste Management Department found it necessary to make an appointment to meet the Goat to have the problem pointed out to him in Small Words and Big Letters.

The foreman advised that the bin in question was privately owned and nothing to do with the Municipality. This is a bin on a public street, not within a private compound. It does have ‘V-49 A-E’ spray-painted on the side, and Villas 49a to 49e are indeed just over the road. However, unless the Crumbling Villa’s landlord also owns Villas 49a to 49e, it’s not the Goat’s landlord’s responsibility or problem. Nevertheless, the Environmental Health foreman insisted on obtaining contact details for the Goat’s landlord.

The Goat argued that vermin attracted by miasmic piles of festering refuse was surely an Environmental Health issue, and it mattered not one jot who owned the broken bin. This got the response that the Municipality would lean on the landlord and a new wheelie bin would be procured. The Goat should call the Municipality in a few days if this didn’t happen.

It will come as no surprise to the reader to learn that the Goat is disappointed to see that the broken wheelie bin and its attendant odious festering pile of mephitic trash remains on the corner of Crumbling Villa Crescent a month after making the complaint.

Meanwhile, attempts to call Environmental Health now go unanswered. Welcome to the “Too Difficult” pile. The Goat rather hopes that this particular health hazard gets dealt with before the summer...

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Sound the alarm

“My husband tried to use the fire hose but there was no water. Not even one drop came from it…It is just there for decoration.”

So said one of the residents of Tamweel Tower in Jumeira Lake Towers, as reported in 7DAYS.

It’s a miracle then that no-one died or was injured in the fire early on 18^th November. Over six hundred residents, but according to news reports everyone got out safely.

Questions will inevitably be asked about how a building made of steel, concrete and glass managed to burn so comprehensively. One resident cited the cladding, which “…is cheap fibreglass and it just erupts into flames…”

Well done to the ‘amazing’ Dubai Civil Defence for dealing with the fire and then helping to search the building for people and recoverable belongings.  

It’s incidents such as this that make me realise how fortunate I’ve been when living in various apartments. My first place was in a 12-storey block on Al Wahda Street in Sharjah. I noticed that the fire extinguishers on my floor and elsewhere had pressure gauges pointing at ‘Empty’, and I expressed my concerns regularly to the building management on the Mezzanine floor of the same building. Nothing was done. I went and complained to Sharjah Civil Defence (which is the Fire Brigade) but was told it was the building owner’s responsibility. I also complained that the fire escape stairways were completely blocked at ground level by old mattresses and moribund bicycles. Again, nothing was done. I moved out.

The next place, Grumpy Goat Tower in Sharjah was much newer and much better appointed in the Department of Fire and Life Safety, with smoke detectors on each landing, sprinkler systems and a fire alarm. Not that the alarm was ever tested in the three years I was there, but at least the hose reels and fire extinguishers had stickers showing that they’d been signed off as operational. Here, the problem was limited to blocked fire escapes. There seems to be a habit of parking supermarket trolleys, stepladders, bicycles at the bottom of the stairs. This might be OK from day to day, but what if everyone in the building comes piling down the stairs in the dark following a fire alarm at 2am? People will die in the crush.

My place in Doha was extremely well appointed with smoke alarms in every kitchen, a sprinkler system that extended into every apartment as well as the common areas and under-building parking, and even a fire main. I guess that the Qatar authorities mandated comprehensive fire protection in all new builds.

What about fire alarms? I used to work in a building where the alarm was tested for a few seconds every Thursday at precisely 10am. If the bells rang at any other time, or if the 10am bell didn’t shut up after a few seconds, it was to be treated as a full evacuation. The firm even had appointed fire marshals whose job was to drag people from their computers (“Leave me alone; it’s only a drill”) and force them down the fire escape.

What should we do, in the aftermath of the Tamweel Tower fire? Get a smoke alarm. Check that fire hoses and fire extinguishers are signed off as in date. Insist on regular fire alarm tests. Consider a fire safe for the really valuable documents such as passports and certificates.

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Make it stop

It has finally come to this. I had a previous rant about work-related issues, and that supposedly should have got things out of my system. But alas, that was not to be.

My job stinks. Without going into details, because I operate a deliberate moratorium  on discussing work-related material, I’m so utterly fed up with it that I’m chucking it all in. I’m exhausted, completely burned out, and I lack the thick, waterproof skin necessary to shrug off all the grief. There are limits to the amount of work-related stress someone can handle, and I long ago passed that limit. Assuming I’m not already there, I’m heading for what used to be called a nervous breakdown.

Something must change. A new job is possible, whereas the jury’s still out on the possibility of a new life. So the job has to change. I can’t stay in Qatar, and even if I could I wouldn’t. The employer might change but the client wouldn’t, and that is another part of the problem. So here is where I raise my white flag and run away and hide.

It will be difficult, of course, not least in either shipping all my stuff back to Dubai or selling it in the early summer when half the population of Doha is leaving to escape the heat. And I have to deal with everything in the correct order so that I don’t lack the relevant piece of officialdom to do any particular task.

]}:-{>

Shooed away

To my surprise and irritation, I was refused admission to one of Abu Dhabi’s watering holes one evening last week. A quick check of the posted rules revealed that I was not a member of this private club, and I’d not submitted copies of my passport, visa, liquor licence and two mugshots. But that wasn’t the reason for not being allowed in.

I wasn’t wearing a kandoura either, so that also wasn’t the reason.

I was, in fact, wearing casual business attire, with long trousers and a long-sleeved open-collared shirt. But, disastrously, I was wearing Birkenstocks. And this alone was apparently sufficient to prove that I was undesirable.

Actually, the dress code posted at the entrance permits sandals up until 7pm, at which time the landlord presumably rings a bell and the Sandal Gestapo throw out anyone who’s not wearing closed shoes. Except women, of course. Despite there being absolutely no gender bias in the written rules, it’s only those of a male persuasion who are persecuted in this way. The management had no problem with my Beloved Wife and her flip-flops, nor any of the other women in the place.

Yet that a month or so earlier, I was allowed to exchange my money for liquor in the same place without being challenged about my choice of footwear.

In a different bar on another occasion, I was only allowed to join my drinking buddies after pointing out that I’d recently had surgery, and that wearing closed shoes was impossible. The manager reluctantly allowed us in provided we sat in the naughty corner where none of the other patrons could see my feet. Later that evening, a group of Emiratis turned up in their national dress and were quite happily served beers. So much for the theory that suggests the anti-sandals rule is to ensure that everyone seen drinking does not appear to be a Muslim. This is utterly ridiculous: changing your attire doesn’t change your religion, and open-toed shoes prove absolutely nothing about someone’s beliefs.

The truth is simply that I hate wearing shoes.

There’s nothing like several hours a day in closed footwear to bring on an attack of Tinea pedis, or possibly even Aphtae epizooticae, and that’s even with clean socks daily, not wearing the same shoes on consecutive days and Dr Scholl’s Anti-Fungal Spray (Catering Pack), and sandals offer a sensible compromise where going barefoot would be considered too weird.

The Sandal Gestapo even appeared at work. Apparently it’s a Health and Safety issue. But the traditionally-attired Omani PRO is apparently immune to all forms of foot injury. As are all women. What is on the Y chromosome that makes guys’ feet so fragile? It’s only blokes who are apparently vulnerable to having their tootsies damaged in the office. Note that: in the office, not on a construction site or while riding a motorbike.

I continue to find it ludicrous that I have to dress as if it’s a wet winter Wednesday in Wigan in order to impress the client and his cronies in their loose flowing robes and sandals.

And no, wearing sandals does not make me want to dispose of my SUV in an environmentally responsible manner and instead ride a homespun organic bicycle.

]}:-{>

Down in the mouth (edited)

My toothache started up again on about 10 February, and was so maddeningly painful that I made an emergency appointment with my local dentist on 14 February. This proved to be my first mistake because, although Welcare Clinic Mirdif is ‘in the network’, it turns out that dental cover is through reimbursement only. So much for the all-singing and all-dancing new and improved medical insurance.

The dentist looked, x-rayed, and agreed that the tooth was cracked and the gum underneath was infected and inflamed, hence the excruciating agony. She prescribed mild painkillers and comedy antibiotics, and told me to come back in a few days. She could do nothing until the inflammation had gone down.

I helped out the painkillers with overdoses of what I could find in the medicine cabinet to dull the pain, and at last got some sleep.

Having got rid of me for a few days, the dentist took more x-rays on 19 Feb and ground the top off the tooth so I didn’t press on it when chewing. It would have to come out.

Glory Hallelujah! I have been saying this every few years since about 1979. Long-term readers of this blog who have elephantine memories may remember this polemic.

She made me an appointment with an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon. He couldn’t be arsed to look on the Welcare Clinic Mirdif computer system for the x-rays and insisted on taking more, including a gloriously-named orthopantomogram for some unfathomable reason. All at my expense, of course. And then made an appointment for me to come in and have the offending Lower Right Seven and its impacted neighbour dug out.

So when I turned up at the clinic on 8 March expecting surgery, I was less than impressed to learn that no such appointment was recorded on Welcare’s system and Dr Vinod was in fact on holiday for three weeks. The receptionist assured me that the absence of an appointment was my fault, and came within a gnat’s todger of suggesting that the dentist had not made the appointment as I alleged he’d told me, and that I was lying. No, Welcare couldn’t suggest an alternative dental surgeon. Perhaps I would like to make an appointment for after Dr Vinod’s return in about three weeks.

I don’t think so. Goodbye Welcare, for ever. I am currently making enquiries pertaining to an alternative means of having those troublesome things removed from my head. If I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have accompanied Keefieboy on his recent inexpensive and successful dental experience.

Would I recommend Welcare? Based on my experience of booking appointments when doctors aren't going to be there; not letting me see a doctor until over an hour after my appointment was due (because the previous customer was an hour late); telling me my condition wasn’t covered by insurance and refusing to check (it was covered, actually); booking an appointment and then sodding off on holiday; probably not. In fact, I'd recommend a policy of total avoidance.

Edited 16 March to add...

After emailing my letter of complaint to Dr Vinod and the management of Welcare Clinic, I received apologetic phone call, voice mail, SMS and email. Essentially, the Doctor had been called away on emergency leave for a couple of days. He was unable to explain why my appointment had been lost, neither could he figure where the estimate of three weeks vacation had come from.

So I went back and had the offending teeth pulled out as various pieces of shrapnel.

I also had the chance to voice my concerns about Welcare’s management face to face with the said management. Most of the problem appears to be with the front desk; I have little or no issues with the actual medical part of the medical process.

But as I was at pains to point out, the front desk is the first point of contact for a customer. It is also the last point of contact, and will provide the lasting impression when someone leaves. So it is imperative that this front desk is not populated by folk who don’t know what they’re doing.

Does Welcare have a resident proctologist who could perhaps take a rocket and do the needful?

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