Uniform

I’m currently navigating the appallingly complex set of rules, procedures and opinions required to export my worldly goods to Dubai. There may be light at the end of that particular tunnel, even though it seems that the solution is to hurl massive sums of money at the problem.

Officialdom, eh? I wonder what it is that turns normal, well-adjusted citizens into misanthropic sociopaths the moment they don a uniform? I went shopping on Saturday. After the atrocious tragedy that was the Villagio fire, that particular shopping mall has been closed, and thus there is a massive shopping mall shortage in Doha. Consequently, up at Landmark the parking areas are full to overflowing and there are cars abandoned all around the mall on any piece of flattish ground that’s within a reasonable walking distance of air-conditioned comfort.

I turned up on my motorbike. Unsurprisingly, all the underground parking bays were occupied, and cars had been abandoned on raised hardstandings and double-parked in aisles. So I asked the uniformed security guard if I could park my bike just here, in an unoccupied corner next to the door. He was adamant that I could not, and dismissed me with an instruction to go and find a space.

I’m surely perfectly entitled to park my motorbike in a car space, of course, and if I’d turned up as the sole occupant of a car there’d be no fuss. But with such a busy car park, isn’t it to everybody’s advantage that I park my bike somewhere that can’t be used by a car? Notwithstanding the outrage of someone who can’t park his Hummer because the only available space is full of motorbike. Unfortunately, the legal position  is unclear. I have heard of tickets being issued to motorbikes “parked illegally in a car space”, and also to motorbikes parked in alleys and on footways because “they should have been parked in a marked space”. At a different mall I have been instructed to “park here” and “no not here; you must park over there” by the same security guard.

My guess is that the security guard has no power over folk who simply abandon their cars in the aisles, and therefore chooses to take out his frustration on the one mall customer who has the courtesy to ask him where he should park his bike.

A similar thing happened a couple of weeks ago over at the Pearl. A group of us bikers rolled into our usual parking area and were shooed away by Security, as this area had been designated for valet parking only. Never mind the cars that had been abandoned there. After we moved to an unoccupied area beneath an adjacent building, more Security arrived and told us that we couldn’t leave our bikes there either. The security guard suggested an alternative place to park but, when this turned out to be a bus stop with an enormous “No Parking” sign, we went back to our original parking area and the rather embarrassed security guard drove away.

In other news, my landlord has decided to be awkward. Obviously I have to vacate the premises, have an inspection done, and then get my security deposit returned. Let’s work backwards.

• I have to close my bank account before I leave the country.
• I need a bank account in order to pay in the security deposit cheque.
• It will take my landlord up to two weeks after final inspection before the cheque is issued.
• I have to vacate on or before the date of final inspection.

So where do I live? The Ramada? Bates Motel? Someone’s sofa? I’ve already paid rent up to 14^th July and I have to leave within a week of my residence permit being cancelled. Allowing a couple of days for the bank to handle cheque clearance and account closure, I will become homeless on 21^st June. I’m suspicious that my landlord is not satisfied with three weeks’ rent paid on an empty flat, but seeks to delay issuing the security deposit cheque until after I’ve demobilised and he can grab a further month’s-worth of free money. Maybe I should sell all the furniture from this fully-furnished flat and let him keep the deposit.

Further demobilising expenses involve the multiple-exit permit. This cost me QAR500 and is valid until August 2012. But I can’t have my residence permit cancelled until after the multi-exit is cancelled. And that now costs QAR500. I never signed up to a cancellation fee; this is a new thing dreamed up by da Gubmint a couple of months ago. It’s a ploy to discourage multiple-exit permits, so the reasoning behind punishing people who are trying to cancel is unclear. I can’t simply let it expire, as my residence permit has to be cancelled before that expires in July.

Ever get the feeling that you’re being ripped off at every turn?

]}:-{>

Queue to pay to queue

I guess it’d be rude to go to Florida without visiting at least one of the world-famous tourist sites. I was put off Disney in Orlando partly because I’ve no real desire to meet a seven-foot mouse, and so Beloved Wife and I settled on Universal Studios.

We arrived in Orlando having failed to locate any suitable motorcycle gear for Muggins, and descended upon a ginormous outlet mall. Most of the population of Florida had seemingly decided to do the exact same thing, so around and around we drove until we found the empty parking space. Beloved Wife was desirous of purchasing shoes. And ships and sealing-wax? No, but if there were blue jeans… I must say that the delights of clothes shopping began to pale after two hours or so, which I think is pretty good going for someone with a Y chromosome.

The shops, seething with bargain hunters, still had their Christmas decorations on display. Such decorations included life-size versions of what happens if you cross anthropomorphic reindeer with Christmas trees.

It's...different

The mall was close to Universal Studios, so after exhausting the delights of crowded shopping – it’s like Dubai Mall on a Friday evening – we drove around the block to check where the main entrance to the theme park was, and then sought accommodation nearby.

This is one of the problems of simply turning up at a holiday destination during holiday season. No room at the inn. The problem was compounded by a Hand-Egg match: The Cotton Bowl, or Citrus  Bowl, or some such. We drove in ever increasing circles, accidentally finding ourselves on a toll motorway, before locating an expensive flea-pit Motel 6 in Kissimmee. Beloved Wife had already rejected the Bates Motel lookalikes. Grotty it might have been, but the guy on the front desk was very helpful in that he overheard our plans to go to the cinema and called the room after about ten minutes to say that he’d printed off the movie schedules for the local multiplex.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was huge fun, and not just for the “I can see my house from here.”  We had also learned our lesson, and got online to book the following night’s accommodation.

Arrival at Universal Studios was very well organized. Having paid our $15 to park the car, we joined the influx and were marshalled into a generous parking space in ‘Cat in the Hat 2’. The pedestrian slidewalks propelled the multitude towards the main entrance. Do words like ‘tourist sites’, ‘crowded’, ‘holiday season’, and ‘multitude’ appear to be building up to a perfect storm?

Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure are two adjacent theme parks with a single one-day admission to both of $120. As it’s $90 each if bought separately, and as we both wanted to see stuff in both parks, we bought the $120 tickets. The complicated fare structure included priority passes to jump queues for certain rides, which is something I regard as shockingly unfair. It’s easily possible for a family to lash out $1000 for a day’s entertainment, and then spend two hours queuing for a ninety-second rollercoaster ride. And that family has to wait while a similar family essentially pushes in front having paid a further $500. What they need is a system like getting served in a bank. Take a timed ticket and then come back at the correct time. That way the punter can have fun and spend money elsewhere in the park.

Fairly hairy

The much-publicised “Magical World of Harry Potter” was so popular that punters were queuing for three or four hours just to get into that particular Island of Adventure. Many were outraged that their expensive priority passes didn’t work. The queue wound its way back from the entrance to Hogsmeade back and forth in front of Jurassic Park. I was outraged that nobody was told at the entrance that “You do realize that you’ll have to waste half your day queuing just to get into Harry Potter, don’t you?”

So Beloved Wife and I checked out the rather tame Jurassic Park instead, which was more like a downmarket natural history museum than a theme park. Then we took in a live show. “The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad” was a rollicking pantomime of swinging from the rigging, swordfights, pyrotechnics, water, a hero, a damsel in distress, a comedy sidekick, and a villainous sorceress. Huge fun, however cheesy.

Heroic entrance

All together now: "Bwahahahaha!"

After accidentally finding the exit from Harry Potter, Beloved Wife bewailed to a park employee how we’d travelled from the middle east just to see this…etc, and his colleague turned to me with an, “Excuse me, sir. I think you just dropped this.” It was a re-admission ticket. Result! We were in. I took photos, and even persuaded Madame on to a small and innocuous rollercoaster. Neither of us are rollercoaster junkies, so we found no need to queue to ride on the “awesome” big ride.

Buckbeak

Tame ride

Hogsmeade, seething with happy Muggles

Hogwarts

Food time, and green eggs and ham in the Dr Seuss area didn’t appeal. The restaurant where we ended up served the usual burgers and fries, but also did fajitas. And the big jug of sangria set us both up to leave Islands of Adventure and go next door to Universal Studios.

I do not like green eggs and ham

The latter’s conceit is that, unlike Islands of Adventure that is mostly thrill rides, Universal Studios consists of movie lots. Shrek was a 3D short film, but with cinema seats that vibrated and squirted water mist and air blasts in time with the film, to startling effect. ‘Disaster Movie’ took the audience through how a film is made, and then put us in an underground metro train during earthquake and flood. We the punters were extolled to act for hidden cameras. At the end of all this, we got to see the finished disaster (or possibly disastrous) movie that we’d watched being made.

We waited for the next show and killed time looking at exhibits from Ye Olde Frankenstein films, The Wolfman, and Norman Bates’ mum. ‘Horror Makeup’ was essentially a lighthearted lecture with props and effects that included the animatronic werewolf head from An American Werewolf in London and some trick knives. An audience volunteer put on a motion-capture suit, and her movements were duplicated by a seven-foot tall version of Wile E. Coyote. The poor volunteer jumped out of her skin when Wile E. turned out not to be quite as he appeared.

Marvellous teeth you have there, Mrs Bates

That's gotta smart!

Animatronic Wile E. Coyote

Animatronic werewolf head

We had little desire to go on the thrill rides owing to the typical 60 to 90 minute wait for each. And I was particularly insulted at being unable to get the mock-up safety harness for one of the rides to close. I’m fat, but not THAT fat! Obviously only beanpole-thin yoofs are s’posed to go on the rollercoaster with the combined loop-de-loop, barrel roll, and loss-de-lunch.

Rollercoaster by night

Exhaustion finally set in after dark, and we wended our weary way back to the car park. Plans for tomorrow involved a whole different genre of theme park. Our hotel was forty miles away in Titusville.

Back to the main post.

More pictures here.

]}:-{>

Return to the Yaristocracy

It seems that the Yaristocratic masses have mucked up Hertz’ business plan. Presumably there is an average rental income gleaned off each car before its residual value starts to get badly affected by large numbers on the odometer, and having the Goat and all the other Dubai to Abu Dhabi Yaristocrats each whacking 2000km on it every week does not suit the business plan at all. Consequently, despite a signed rental agreement to the contrary, Hertz changed the ‘unlimited’ part of its terms and conditions while the Goat was swanning around Italy, and capped the monthly distance at 4000km with any excess charged at 30 fils per kilometre. And that’s rather a lot of additional cost at the end of the month.

This is not good for the Goat’s finances, so following some fervent bleating, he got the 4000km changed to 5000km. Meanwhile, alternative options are being sought.

One of the alternatives is only available in Dubai. It’s a combination of bus and metro.

The Goat’s previous experience, reported here, was not altogether good, with the main problem being having to buy (as in hand over cash in advance of any actual fare) a prepayment ‘nol’ card and charge it with credit prior to embarking on the journey. Having done this, there were two dirhams of credit remaining at the end of the return journey and, it being late evening, there was no apparent way of recharging the card for next time. Another issue was the inane muzak on the train, although the Goat is pleased to note that this has apparently now ceased. Good riddance.

The Goat was recently invited over to Chateau Dogs in Arabian Ranches. He doesn’t drink and drive, so public transport was a compulsory option. The first problem was recharging the ‘nol’ card. Per Dubai RTA’s website, nowhere in Mirdif can do it. On-line recharge is, after a year, ‘coming soon’. So His Caprinity had to stop off at a metro station while Yarising his way back from Abu Dhabi.

Brilliant! You need to travel by private, personal transport in order to be permitted to use the public transport system. What genius thought that one up?

Having credit, the journey from Mirdif to Rashidiya to Mall of the Emirates to Arabian Ranches only cost five dirhams... and took two and a quarter hours. Most of this was in air-conditioned comfort; almost none was spent standing around awaiting connections. And here is a fundamental problem with the system in its current incarnation: it’s mind-numbingly slow. The Filipino crossing himself and kissing his crucifix when the Arabian Ranches feeder bus set off was also less than confidence-inspiring.

The taxi home took 20 minutes, cost less than Dh50, including tip, and deposited the Goat right outside the Crumbling Villa. Not that there were any buses or trains running in the wee small hours.

Despite Ibn Battuta mall being open until midnight, for example, the last metro finishes at Rashidiya terminal at 11pm, so you’ve got to finish your shopping, restaurant or cinema by 9:30pm at the latest in order to stand any chance of getting back to Mirdif. In a society where many families apparently don’t even consider dragging their children out to the mall until 9pm, it doesn’t make the metro the most convenient option, does it?

]}:-{>

Donkeys and camels and goats. Oh my!

The Crumbling Villa is bursting at the seams. Instead of being populated by The Goat and his Beloved Wife, this week The Goat's howling herd has descended for some sunshine. Apparently it's cold, damp and snowing in Blighty, whereas here in the Lands of the Sand there is more sun that you can sheikh a stick at.

The two adults and their four kids are of course all having a riotous time, and The Goat has taken a week's leave of absence from his job. There was a plan to escape back to the office mid-week, but the savage itinerary set by the rellies who want to see everything and do it all doesn't allow this.

An outstanding and long-standing promise involving a large motorcycle and some nephews has been discharged. After The Goat borrowed a spare helmet, the ten-year-old rode pillion to Sandy Beach and the 13yo rode on the trip back. Yes, yes, Bad Goat... Everybody else went in the Goatmobile. Sandy Beach advertised its wares with a large sign in Reception warning potential punters that there were jellyfish in the sea. Following physical observation, 'a jellyfish' would perhaps have been nearer the mark. There were also sharks and barracuda, much to the delight of the young and not-so-young snorkellers.

We're all off to an aquarium to have a better look at some sharks today. Not Atlantis, though. Visiting Atlantis was limited to driving around the barrier reef and getting splashed by the enthusiastically rough sea. That'll learn Beloved Wife with her open-top car!

We all piled into two cars on another day and did part of the most recent Gulf News Fun Drive across the dunes. Clearly too easy because nobody got even slightly stuck, this trip was deemed a delight by the visitors. Of course, the Fossil Rock steep track was added to the itinerary, to the further delight of all. As well as picking through the dunes, the visitors busied themselves checking out the wildlife. No oryx; no gazelles. But plenty of the usual suspects.

Tomorrow we're off to ride the water flumes up at Dreamland in Umm Al Quwain. The Goat mentioned the availability of fizzy yellow beverage to his brother-in-law, but somehow forgot to note the delicate Low Tide aroma wafting in off the mud flats.

What else? Well Beloved Wife and Goat are packing the other 'dults off to a five star hotel for their wedding anniversary on Wednesday, and then spending the evening in loco parentis (you've gotta be mad to be a parent). Cinema followed by Burger King, we suspect. And there's also the obligatory trip to the gold souq. We've already been to Karama: "Copy watches, genuine fake handbag, etc."

The relatives have had such a wonderful time so far that they're already mumbling about visiting again.

]}:-{>

No kidding

Gleaned from all over the internet, here is some helpful guidance for anyone considering the middle east as a destination...





























]}:-{>

First impressions last

Beloved Wife declared last evening that we had to run an errand to the Mall of the Emirates. Having just spent all day on a Gulf News Fun Drive marshals’ run-through I was in no mood to drive. I thought of the nightmare of attempting to park in a busy mall car park, and, on a whim, brightly suggested trying the Metro.

We’ve not used the Metro before. My understanding is that all ticketing is electronic, with pre-paid credit being deducted from a so-called ‘NOL’ card.

But neither of us had a ‘nol’ card. We walked from the Crumbling Villa and waited in the ice-box bus shelter for the feeder bus. When it arrived, the driver said he couldn’t take our cash, and suggested that we go and buy our ‘nol’ cards from Spinneys. That can’t be right: surely it must be possible to buy a card from the bus driver, as Beloved Wife’s friend managed to do a couple of weeks ago?

No, apparently. Ah, well. Perhaps the driver’s English isn’t good, although how much of any language do you need to take money from the customer and issue a ticket/smart card/receipt? So I asked a bus passenger. He confirmed what the driver had said, except that it was Carrefour, not Spinneys. Neither one of these emporia is within walking distance of the Crumbling Villa, which is less than convenient.

There might be a bit of a logic leap here, but this was not as if I’d boarded the bus and attempted to buy 20 Marlboro. What kind of half-baked system exists to encourage people out of their cars on to public transport, and then refuses to sell them tickets to use that public transport?

The reason for my quandary is obvious. The bus driver was clearly an imbecile. Not a good way to sell your product, is it? But then again, Dubai is full of examples of retailers who populate their shops with staff who know the square-root of sod all about the product they’re selling, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.

I felt spurned and snubbed, and was all for rejecting Dubai’s public transport system for ever on the basis of this encounter. However, Beloved Wife still had to run her errand, so we walked home, drove to Rashidiya, parked the car, and bought our ‘nol’ cards at the station. From then on, using the Metro was painless.

]}:-{>

Bargain basement

Why does the nonsensical phrase “until stocks last” keep popping up where special offers are advertised? The phrase has amused and bemused me ever since I first encountered it in about 1996. I think I understand what the message seeks to convey: that the ‘two-for-the-price-of-one’, or ‘half-price with this coupon’ offer is only valid provided that the shop has still got supplies of the relevant items. According to Wikipedia, ‘...every reasonable person knows that goods advertised or displayed and [sic] shops are implicitly available “while stocks last”.’ The implication of actually writing it on the advert is that the offer is such a bargain that if you don’t drop everything and head for the mall this minute, it’ll all be gone.

But “until stocks last”? What on earth does this mean?

My understanding of the word ‘Until’, which is shared by Messrs Webster, Collins and others is that it indicates continuance up to a specified time or event. The word might also mean ‘before(a specified time)’.

And “Last”? Ignoring sillies such as the metal thing that cordwainers use, ‘last’ as a verb means ‘to continue in existence or in force’, or ‘to be enough for the needs of’, or ‘to keep adequately supplied.’

So according to the advert, the offer is valid up to the point when the stocks exist? Eh? So the ‘Buy One Get One Free’ (with the wonderful acronym BOGOF, but I digress) offer only applies if the shop has none in stock. Then, when new supplies arrive, the BOGOF is no longer available.

In the words of Inigo Montoya: “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

How about rewording the disclaimer to read “while stocks last”, “limited supplies”, or even “until we run out”?

On the subject of things that do not mean what they say, there was recently Sharaf DG’s paradoxical offer: “If we don’t have it, you get it free!”

I see. You will give me - for nuppence - the item I request, provided that you haven’t got one. In that case, I’ll have my free Princess 46 motor yacht.

Of course, the offer only applied to items normally held in stock, there were time limits on how long Sharaf DG would be allowed to obtain the requested item, and there was a comprehensive list of rules in the small print explaining how there was, in practice, almost no way to get something for nothing. This was no surprise. As Marvin the Paranoid Android quipped: “What does it remind me of? Ah, I remember: life.”

Beloved Wife and I are pleased to note that some of these special offers have been good for a long time and show little sign of abating. For this reason, we regularly BOGOF to Billy Blues on Sunday evenings for steak dinners.

]}:-{>

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.

]}:-{>

The doors in the mall go ding-a-ding-a-ding

I was amused to find this scrap of paper blowing around in the Mall of the Emirates car park. I guess someone was displeased about the number of parking spaces that someone else had occupied. Any guesses as to the nationalities of the protagonists?

My Little Phoney

It’s approaching time for a new mobile phone handset. I really like the Nokia 3100. It’s dead simple to use and has an inordinately long battery life. There isn’t a camera, FM radio or MP3 player, it doesn’t make tea, tell jokes or do the ironing, but in the words of a parody advert that I now can’t find, “Get a life. It's only a f****** phone.” Unfortunately, it now seems impossible to buy “only a f****** phone”, and the 3100 is as obsolete as flared trousers, kipper ties and vinyl records.

What I really wanted was a new handset that accepted the same computer cable and charger as the 3100. I have no desire to throw away a load of house and car chargers and the hands-free kit. The Nokia 6020 appeared to fit the bill. It does have a crappy camera, but this now seems unavoidable. Cheaper phones aren’t tri-band; a ‘must have’ when travelling to the States.

Unsurprisingly, mobile phone handsets on sale in the UAE come configured to support Arabic text. It’s not only on the keypad. Having bought the new handset I got it home and switched it on, only to be confronted with Right to Left text. Whilst I can read Arabic, albeit extremely slowly, I had to rummage through both English and Arabic manuals for some time before I could find the language settings buried deep within the menu tree.

Ah, success! English.

Except that any form of text input always defaulted to Arabic. Sure, hitting the ‘#’ key twice to get Latin characters was easy enough, but remembering to do this each and every time I wanted to search for a contact name or write a text message started to be a right royal pain en al shams la laisa*.

Back to the shop. “Oh, no problem Mr Goat. It’ll take us half an hour because we have to reprogram the handset to disable Arabic text support.”

The duly-appointed half an hour later, this had turned into: “All electronic devices sold in this country support Arabic text, and in the case of your phone it’s impossible to switch it off.”

“All electronic devices? Half the laptops in your shop don’t even have Arabic keyboards, and neither do my old phone handset or my own laptop purchased from this very emporium. With all due respect [i.e., no respect at all; the amount you actually deserve], what you have just told me is complete bollocks. Anyway,” I enquired, “Why do your staff say that it’s no problem when you, and presumably they, know that the task is impossible?”

“It’s company policy,” the manager replied. “We always tell the customer that we can do it.”

Well, this sums up Dubai customer service, doesn’t it? Company policy deliberately to lie to the customers.

“We’ll give you a refund, but you’ll obviously have to go home, pick up all the paperwork and packaging and come back here again. We’re open until midnight.”

Having obtained my refund, an almost unprecedented occurrence, I tried several other shops in the mall, but to no avail. Eventually, I discovered that the i2 booth, located about as far as it’s caprinally possible to get from the ski slope without going outside, had a pile of Nokia 6020 handsets. The salesman and I booted one of them up and were confronted with Arabic text. His Arabic was worse than mine (is this actually possible?) but I found the language menu and changed it to English. Miracle of miracles, all references to Arabic text disappeared from the display. Sold.

So “...it’s impossible to switch [the Arabic] off” has now proved to be “complete bollocks.”

I returned to the first shop. Having defaced the English manual with handwritten PINs and PUKs, it was only fair to give the shop the clean one out of the new phone’s box. How interesting to learn from a further staff member that the technician who couldn’t disable the Arabic was “an idiot.”

Now all that remains to be done is to ensure that the phone doesn’t have an annoying ringtone, but is still obtrusive enough that I can hear it.

* Where the sun shineth not

Just a phase we're going through

My congratulations to whoever thought up the idea of having a small exhibition in the Galleria at the Mall of the Emirates about Ramadan, Islam and the lunar calendar.

Unfortunately, someone made a serious series of errors with the 'phases of the moon' part of the display. What a terrific idea: a series of photographs of the quarters of the moon, each with a little explanatory plaque.

It might have been nice if the captions corresponded both to the pictures and to reality. Observed from the UAE at least, the waxing crescent illuminates the right-hand side of the lunar disc, not the left. The waning crescent illuminates the left-hand side (wi' a wanion!) Instead of showing two half-moon photos, the display has used two copies of the same image, with one of them inverted. This is appallingly obvious when checking the craters and seas on the illuminated side. I also suspect that the images have been created by some PhotoShopaholic blacking out different parts of copies of the same full moon image.

If the night sky isn't available to check, some correct moon images may be found here.

Running the photographs from either right to left or left to right would make sense, whereas putting up the images in a pseudo-random order does nothing for public education, which is presumably the main purpose of the display. Maybe it doesn't really matter and I'm fretting about nothing. But I would have thought that a culture that regards the lunar calendar in such high esteem would be very keen to educate the masses on such a significant subject.

If you're gonna do something, do it right!

Norks like an Egyptian

I learned something new the other day. While window-shopping in the Mall of the Emirates I came across this display.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Anubis, the Ancient Egyptian god of embalming and miscellaneous post-mortem business was a bloke. A jackal-headed bloke, but definitely male. I was not aware of any close relative of his, such as a labrador-headed sister.

She's a fortunate therianthrope*, that Ms Anubis. It appears she's the only female who's permitted to stand in full public gaze in Dubai with her tits out.

*(Possibly actually a therigynthrope)

Pirates of Penzance

New laptop? No problem. Pocket DVD player? Easy peasy. Credit-card sized six megapixel digital camera with HiFi sound and 4GB storage? Certainly sir; how many would you like? It's generally possible to buy the latest high-tech gizmo from any number of retail outlets in town. You would expect a new item to be faultless. If it didn't work when you got it home it should surely be replaced or the purchase price refunded. Not here. Retailers have a dreadful habit of referring to the small print at the bottom of the receipt that reads Goods once sold will not be taken back. Fair enough, perhaps, if you discover that you could have bought it elsewhere for less money (should have shopped around, perhaps) but it is totally unacceptable in my view to pay for a new camcorder and then wait for weeks while it languishes in the workshop until the replacement for the burned-out integrated circuit is finally delivered from Korea by pack llama.

Yet just about everywhere only sells boxes. Any technical queries invariably get referred to a workshop that is probably somewhere in the dingy depths of Rashidiya. Despite the plethora of goodies on sale, it's always difficult to locate anything that isn't entirely mainstream. How many times have I been advised by a retailer that the item I want is out of stock and will have to be ordered...from Japan? More often that I should, and that's if it's available at all.

It's not only consumer electronics. I had to trawl Karama's domestic appliance scrapyard before I found a suitable belt for my washing machine, and that was pre-owned. A new drive belt was totally impossible to find anywhere, and that was after a lot of phone calls and visits to any number of purveyors of white goods.

Of course, the retail trade isn't always like this. When good customer service occurs it is very good indeed. I was delighted, when I returned a burned-out battery charger, to be told, "Whoops, our mistake sir. Wrong voltage. Here, have a new one." I was similarly impressed when I rang the cooker shop about a broken pane of glass in my oven door. The replacement was delivered and installed within twenty-four hours, all free of charge.

The following ditty is not aimed at those retailers who believe in customer satisfaction. It commemorates only those who regard customer service as a quaint anomaly, and consequently do not wish for any particular client, or any of his family, or his friends or associates ever to visit his store. The tune is by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and originally appeared in The Pirates of Penzance as "A Policeman's Lot". Appropriate for 19th September, perhaps?


Do you fancy a new flat-screen home theatre,
(Home theatre)
Or a camera, or Sony PS3?
(PS3)
Before taking it away with you, you'd better
(You had better)
Check it's fully working, 'cos the guarantee
(Guarantee)
Is unlikely to provide you a replacement
(No replacement)
If it's broken when unpacked. The sales guy
(Sales guy)
Will send it for repairing in the basement,
(In the basement)
And refunds are not coming in Dubai.

Aaarrrgghh!

If it's broken when it's bought,
Your satisfaction will be naught.
That's the way we all do business in Dubai.
(In Dubai)


They will look at you as if you've grown antennae
(Grown antennae)
If you ask for a replacement part or spare.
(Or a spare)
You might as well request a pile of any-
(Pile of any).
Thing that's from a rocking-horse's derrière.
(Derrière)
My front-loader had a drive-belt that was broken,
(That was broken)
So it wouldn't spin my clothes to make them dry.
(Make them dry)
My garments hadn't washed, though they were soakin',
(They were soakin')
For a spare belt "was not coming in Dubai."

Aaarrrgghh!

If it isn't on the shelf
You must import it for yourself,
For alas, "it isn't coming in Dubai."
(in Dubai)


For domestic bits and bobs in vain you forage,
(Vain you forage)
Though of gaskets, grommets, grub-screws for your car
(For your car)
There is never any shortage. At the garage
(At the garage)
They've all automotive spares, which is bizarre.
(Is bizarre)
If you want an iPod, I am a proponent
(A proponent)
That there seems an inexhaustible supply.
(Bull supply)
But if you need to source a spare component,
(Spare component)
You'll be told, "It isn't coming in Dubai."

Aaarrrgghh!

You will find that in this region
Spares are anything but legion.
For they mostly "are not coming in Dubai."
(In Dubai).