Caprine Confusion

The Goat admits that he is nonplussed. The new UAE federal traffic rules were announced on about 29th June 2017 for implementation from 1st July. Some penalties have been increased; others have been decreased; the maximum legal window tint has been increased from 30% to 50%.

But here is where the confusion appears.

It has been normal custom and practice in the UAE to allow a 20km/h over the posted limit. Logical and not unreasonable, given instrument inaccuracy and the known fact that nobody NEVER sneaks, even inadvertently, over the posted maximum. And we are assured that this situation will prevail.  

 

And yet the new list includes a fine of Dh300 for exceeding the posted limit by not more than 20km/h.  

 

So is exceeding the posted limit by say 10km/h a punishable offence or not?

The Goat was surprised and annoyed to receive a speeding ticket earlier in 2017 for doing less than 110km/h in a 100km/h zone. In Fahrenheit, the Goat got busted for doing less than 68mph in a 62mph zone.Incidentally, just past the first 100km/h sign after a long, long stretch of 120km/h highway.

 

This is in accordance with the old Law 183, but is still well inside Dubai's tolerance level. But it's Sharjah; not Dubai.

 

The Goat suspects that these federal rules apply, but because Dubai is Special, Dubai chooses to ignore speeding less than 20km/h over the limit. Other emirates, it would seem, are not as tolerant.

The Goat also observes 1279 fines on the first day. Obviously this count does not include the speed and red-light cameras because the results from these take a few days to come through the process. Moreover, he suspects that most would have been offences under previous laws. But the fact the we see punitive action rather than compliance rather suggests that the system will take a while to become effective.

Or perhaps the novelty will wear off after a few days or weeks, and we will be back to the highway anarchy that we all know and love.

It is gratifying to the Goat to note that, at last, traffic laws pertaining to the American system of having a STOP sign on school buses have now become official. 

 

Compliance and enforcement? Remain to be seen; last time the Goat stopped behind a school bus with its STOP sign out he was hooted at and verbally abused by a nasty man in a large black-windowed Tahoe.

And finally, Law 155. Transporting inflammable ale is right out.

The complete list, should anyone be interested, is here.

]}:-{>

Happy Hallmark Holiday

That was a busy weekend. First, I had to explain to my employers that I had a certain need to be visiting Beloved Wife in Dubai for Valentine's Day. Then I had to persuade the same employer of the need for me to have my passport in hand prior to my booking air tickets.

So it was on Wednesday that I finally received my passport complete with Iqama, or "Residence Permit", and my ID card. Despite having had to be fingerprinted - twice so far - the authorities have given me the same ID number as last time and the time before that. I don't suppose either my fingerprints or blood group have changed much since 1996. Doesn't hurt to check, I suppose.

Buying an air ticket was another simple task fraught with unnecessary difficulties. Fly Dubai had sent me emails advertising special offers, but their website fell over every time I tried to book. Qatar Airways had nothing for the return flight except at obscene expense. I'm not paying QAR 1200 one way for a 45 minute flight in cattle class. Eventually I ended up with cheapskate Air Arabia via Sharjah instead of Dubai. Fine. The only problem was the screaming brat at check-in who ended up being King of the Seat-Kickers right behind me. I gritted my teeth, put in my earbuds, and shutted the fcek up.

I spent Friday morning in the dust of a desert rally. About 90  knobbly-tyred motorbikes went past at speed over two hours, and my job as one of the many marshals was to keep track of when each and every bike went through my control, and to call into Base any who missed the gate. This was Round 5 of 6, but I can't be at the final round of the Emirates Desert Championship because of the Scottish Play.

I took Beloved Wife to the pictures that afternoon, and we were surprisingly entertained by "Kingsman." Knowing nothing about the film, we didn't know what to expect, but were treated to two hours of fun being poked at James Bond and Jason Bourne, with a hint of The Avengers (Steed, Purdey, Kinky Boots, etc., and not Marvel). See "Kingsman" if you enjoyed "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz", and be prepared for violence, gore, and copious use of Adult Language. Samuel L. Jackson does not disappoint in this area.

Following a further Valentine treat over at TFI Friday's, Beloved Wife and I returned home in good time for wine o'clock.

I'd promised myself a motorbike ride on Saturday, and to this end, on Friday afternoon I'd reinstalled the battery and fired up the Black Beast. First stab of the starter. Although I had set an early alarm for Saturday morning, when it rang I merely found the excuse of a nearly-flat phone battery to give myself an extra hour in bed.

My leathers not only still fit, but are in fact now comfortably loose around my midriff as well as baggy in the arse. The latter is a design feature to make sitting on a motorbike actually comfortable. My reprofiled seat is still a success. I covered some 400km on Saturday morning, seeking out known bendy roads over towards the eastern UAE and I only actually stopped and put a hoof down when refuelling. If you saw a streak of black lightning whizz past you at near-relativistic speed, it might have been me. If you clocked the registration plate, it certainly was someone else.

The therapeutic benefits of going for a good thrash cannot be underestimated, except by non-motorcyclists, who don't understand.

Beloved Wife wished me a Happy Hallmark with a full English, and I went out afterwards, removed the battery and mothballed the bike again. I suspect that it needs new brake pads, for which I've been quotes a rather alarming QAR778, but it's due a service soon. That will have to wait until I'm not whizzing in from Doha about one weekend in eight.

To finish the weekend, we ran an errand up to Barracuda and I got out of the car at Sharjah airport for my 1830 flight.

I'm now back to bikeless, wifeless, catless Doha. My life is shortly to be taken over by the Bard of Avon; I'll not be able to get away any weekends until the end of March. Beloved Wife says she'll come to see the play, so there is some variety on the horizon to break up the soul-destroying cycle of work/rehearse/eat/sleep that epitomises my life.

]}:-{>

Déjà vu all over again

When I resigned and left Qatar in 2012, the arseh- crazy people I worked for said that they'd provide an NOC: a letter confirming no objection to my changing sponsorship to work for someone else in Qatar. As this promise eventually turned into a statement to the effect that "We told you we wouldn't give you an NOC," I was banned from working in Qatar for two years.

Welcome to 2014, and here I am back again. I'm working for a different firm and in a senior position, so hopefully I'm in a position to avoid a repeat of the previous unpleasantness.

The rest of the situation is eerily familiar:-

• Beloved Wife can't join me for a year because of the enormously long lead times for teachers;

• I have a motor vehicle (two actually) in Dubai that can't be imported to Qatar because of an arbitrary rule that says you can't import anything that's more than five years old;

• I'm living in a furnished apartment, probably for a year.

However, this time there are some significant differences:-

• My apartment is within walking distance of work, so the nightmare commute across Doha is neatly avoided;

• The said apartment is a hotel apartment, so someone comes in and cleans it twice a week, bed linen and towels are provided, and all utilities including internet are included;

• I have several very old friends in town so I'll not be BillyGoat NoMates;

• I don't have a boss who stands in the middle of the cube farm and screams about how everyone is incompetent.

Being a hotel, the place has a 50m pool, gym, Kwik-e-Mart, numerous restaurants, and also 24-hour room service. Now my complaints have been answered the fridge actually makes ice, there's a proper cooker instead of an electric camping stove, and the washing machine works. I think I shall avail myself of the on-site laundry to get my ironing done by professionals who are better at it than I. As I'm right at the top of the building I even have a view. It would be better without another tower in front of me, but how much time does one spend looking out of the window?

I rented the cheapest 4x4 I could find because a Nissan Sunny won't get to the Inland Sea loaded with dive kit, and I'm investigating devious but legal methods of getting my motor vehicles from the UAE to Qatar. The Kawasaki dealer reckons that I can import my motorbike (again) because the fatuous five-year rule only applies to cars, and it isn't a car. However, when I tried that suggestion at the traffic police I got the same sort of look that sprouting antennae might have achieved. I could perhaps drive around on Dubai plates but, despite there being prima facie evidence that this is possible (vehicles with non-Qatar plates in Doha), my previous attempts to get this to happen have stopped with some wag at the Saudi consulate telling me that this is "imbossible."

Meanwhile I'm entertaining the prospect of buying another motorbike, but until I get my Residence Permit this is also imbossible.

I guess I'll have to go back to Dubai every couple of weeks and get by motorcycle fix in the UAE. The roads are better there, actually. In the mountains there are actual bends.

]}:-{>

Park and riled

The multi-storey car park at Mirdif City Centre, and indeed everywhere else, gets very busy of an early evening. So, like everyone else who had the silly idea of going shopping at that time, I found myself cruising slowly up and down the aisles in search of somewhere to put the car.

I stopped at a STOP line to wait for a gap in the constant, unrelenting stream of vehicles and pedestrians crossing my path.

"Beeeeeeep! Beep! Bip-bip! Beeeep!"

Ah, Mr Impatient was stuck behind me, and I hadn't moved in nearly fifteen seconds.

"BEEEEP!"

Yes, Mr Lexus With Abu Dhabi Plates, I know you're there. I imagine I'm just as keen as you to get a move on. What do you want me to do? T-bone a passing car, or mow down a bunch of pedestrians?

Eventually, after a few more seconds, a gap appeared, and I was at last on the move again. It was a big gap; big enough for Mr Lexus to follow me. But that wasn't good enough. The driver now forced his car down the aisle barely wide enough for one car in order to overtake me, scattering pedestrians and shopping trolleys.

And now the inexplicable bit. Having got in front of me, all thoughts of his being in a hurry evidently evaporated as the driver predictably cut in front, slammed on his brakes, and blocked the aisle. Predictably, of course, which is why I failed to put a gigantic dent in the back of his Lexus.

That's just dandy, sir. I'm glad to have contributed a little unnecessary unpleasantness to your day.

]}:-{>

Alibi

File picture: Gulf News

The Goat made a series of wrong decisions the other evening, starting with choosing the old coast road back to Dubai from Dreamland Aquapark in Umm Al Quwain with a fully loaded car. Roadworks directed him into the depths of Ajman where, after an evening of being cut off by other motorists, being forced to make a number of emergency stops, and being directed in unexpected directions owing to the almost total absence of road markings and advance direction signs, he ended up in the wrong lane and was pulled over and given a ticket by a motorcycle cop.

Oh, joy. Oh, delight. Insert appropriate profanities under one’s breath here.

A couple of days later, the Goat received an SMS detailing the traffic offence, with details of how to pay the fine by going along to the Ministry of the Interior website. This, it would seem, is where all traffic fines end up, except for offences committed in Dubai. Certainly, there’s nothing on the Dubai RTA website, where the Goat's driving record is shown as pure as fresh-driven snow.

The Goat found the offence listed on the MOI website and paid his fine. He was both fascinated and appalled to learn of another offence, apparently committed in Abu Dhabi in 2011. 

The trouble is, the Goat didn’t import his car from Qatar and register it in Dubai until 2012.

The Goat doesn't give two hoots that it’s “only” AED300. He will not be accused of something he didn’t do without fighting it. He phoned the MOI, and was led a long and merry dance to the tune of “This is the wrong number. You need to call this different number” until he’d gone full circle and ended up at Criminal Investigation twice. Here, the very nice officer apologised, and even asked for forgiveness on behalf of the ill-informing multitude.

Dubai RTA subsequently led the Goat another merry dance. Eventually, having arrived at Vehicle Licencing in the RTA headquarters on Marrakech Street, he obtained a letter to take to Abu Dhabi Traffic Police. His request was met with a cheery, “Ah yes, someone else’s fine against your vehicle? We get lots of those. No problem; we’ll give you a letter.”

What had happened is that the previous owner of the Goat’s licence plate committed some traffic offence in Abu Dhabi. Then the plate got recycled without first clearing all fines. This, in turn, was because Dubai RTA doesn’t have access to the centralised federal traffic offence database and gaily undertakes registration renewals seemingly only checking its own traffic fines database. There are two systems: Dubai has one, and All The Other Emirates have the other.

It was easy for the RTA to identify who owned the plate when the offence was committed, and the RTA’s letter simply asks Abu Dhabi Police to transfer the fine to the guilty party. How irritating that the Goat has to do all the running around, getting himself freed from a fine for an offence that he couldn’t possibly have committed. They can’t sort this out in Dubai because of the two separate databases.

Here then is the story of how to deal with Phantom Fines in Dubai. Go to RTA HQ (Block C, Floor 2, Vehicle Licensing) and they’ll either deal with it, provide a letter to get Another Emirate to deal with it, or (if you can’t absolutely prove it wasn’t you even if your car was up on blocks without a gearbox on the day in question) tell you to cough up.

Oh, and don’t pay the fine and subsequently attempt to get your money back. Goods once sold will not be taken back, and no requests for refunds will be entertained.

]}:-{>

Cui bono?

International and emirate borders across the UAE exhibit a strange and wacky arrangement. It’s largely the fault of the pesky meddling British who, way back in the days of the Trucial States, sought to establish once and for all the limits of each tribe’s influence. Teams of squaddies toured the region and interviewed each tribal leader, wali, with one fundamental question: “To which sheikh do you owe allegiance?”

The teams went back to headquarters and presumably stuck coloured pins in a huge map. Then someone drew borders between areas of different colours, picking mountain ridges or other geographical features where nobody lived, so that the situation of “But I live exactly on the border between…” should never arise.

And that’s why there’s Nahwa, an enclave of Sharjah, UAE completely surrounded by a doughnut-shaped exclave of Oman which is, in turn, surrounded by Sharjah, Fujairah, and Ras Al Khaimah all of the UAE. The northernmost tip of the Musandam peninsula is an enclave of Oman, only accessible by land via the UAE.

This brief geopolitical lesson goes some way to explaining the strange arrangement over at the towns of Dibba in the north east corner of the UAE. Dibba Al Fujairah is the southernmost of three Dibbas; Dibba Al Baya in Oman is just over the border and represents a gateway to the Musandam. Sandwiched between the two is Dibba Al Hisn, which is part of the Sharjah emirate. There have been various border disputes among the Dibbas, but Wikipedia (source of all true knowledge and wisdom) asserts that these were resolved in the 1990s.

And now:this! Women who wish to travel to Dibba Al Baya must, it has been decreed, obtain written permission in advance from a male relative or employer before they’re allowed to cross the border. That’s women who don’t hold GCC passports or UAE tourist visas. The latter can continue to do what blokes do and simply show up at the border with a passport and/or Emirates ID card. (Whether you need one, the other, or both depends on the border guard). Apparently you sometimes need evidence of a hotel or dhow trip booking before the Omanis will let you in.

But this new inconvenience has been brought to you by the Government of Sharjah. It’s impossible to get to the border post without crossing Sharjah territory, and the whole thing looks like being inconvenient for shits and grins. It can’t be for morality reasons because guys, GCC passport holders, and tourists aren’t affected, and the border crossing isn’t being upgraded to a full ‘You are now leaving the UAE and entering Oman’ with visas and passport stamps.

What is probably nearer the mark is the tourist trade. Dibba Al Baya is the base for lots of diving and sightseeing dhow trips up the Musandam. Presumably the plan goes something like this: if getting a hair’s breadth over the border involves an unreasonable pile of paperwork, tourists will instead choose to use dhows based at Dibba Al Hisn. And they’ll drive up the night before and stay in a dry Sharjah hotel instead of a Fujairah or Oman one where ‘special refreshments’ are available.

The linked article from The National says that the Omani ministry of tourism was not available for comment. Curiously, the same story picked up by Explorer says that the new rule is Sharjah’s doing.

I wonder how long it’ll be before the Omanis come to some arrangement with Fujairah and simply pick up their divers at Dibba Al Fujairah?

]}:-{>

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.

]}:-{>

Mailstrom

The Goat was mildly surprised when, over sixteen years ago, he arrived in the middle east and was told about the Post Office Box. The essential detail was that there were no door-to-door mail deliveries in Doha, and all incoming mail had to be addressed to a PO box. In keeping with tradition, the Goat adopted his employer’s PO box as his own mailing address. This was highly convenient, because the Goat’s employer had a driver whose duties included taking outgoing mail to Doha’s central post office and collecting all incoming mail. A change of employer and country in 2002 led to a change of address, and new PO boxes in Dubai and later Sharjah were easy to arrange.

Further changes in the Goat’s employer forced further amendments to the Goat’s postal address, despite living in the same Crumbling Villa. Eventually the Goat got Beloved Wife to arrange a personal PO box address; something that in retrospect he should have done years previously. Naturally, frequent trips to the post office are necessary, but this is a more reliable source of incoming mail than the vagaries of promises from former employers to forward anything that came from someone accidentally left off the “My New Address” round robin.

Unfortunately, we now live in a less innocent world than that of the 1990s. Barclaycard, for example, now won’t accept anything addressed to a PO box in the middle east. And because doorstep postal deliveries don’t happen, this means that the Goat has to use Nanny Goat’s home address in the UK for Barclaycard correspondence. Apparently it’s for “security reasons,” which might mean that PO box addresses are perceived as only being used by drug barons, money launderers and other ne’er-do-wells who don’t want mail items ending up at their homes.

Please: the situation with regard to postal deliveries in the middle east (and possibly elsewhere) is this:-

• Normal mail does not get delivered door-to-door.
• Everybody has a Post Office Box, and all mail goes there.
• PO boxes are not solely for dodgy dealers.
• Home deliveries are by courier, which is more expensive and needs someone to sign for the goods.

More recently, one of the Goat’s invest managers kicked up a major stink regarding the change of address when the Goat moved back from Doha to Dubai. The change in mailing address was just fine, but the confirmation letter from the Isle of Man was very heavy-handed, threatening that without a proof of residential address, the firm would be unable to manage the Goat’s portfolio. A long email exchange followed, wherein it became apparent that the Goat was seemingly the firm’s only middle-east client, and the absence of door-to-door postal deliveries was clearly a fiction invented by the Goat in order to be awkward. No amount of “The Crumbling Villa is in Beloved Wife’s name, and all bills and bank statements point at the PO box” would be believed. “Your only client in the middle east? Either you’re lying, or everybody else has found a secret work-around that doesn’t involve a post office box.”

Remember, this is simply to establish the Goat’s residence; his correspondence address was already clear and a matter of written record.

Eventually the Goat managed to convince the Isle of Man-With-Tiny-Brain, and all was fine and dandy. For a month. Then the Goat received an email complaining that official investment correspondence addressed to The Crumbling Villa had been returned undelivered. It seems that the obsession with obtaining a residential address (to where it would be impossible to mail anything) had taken precedence over the correspondence address. The Goat had to fill out the Change of Correspondence Address – again – to finally sort out the matter. No naming and shaming, because they did write and apologise about their screw-up.

And now, according to Emirates Post, there is a new “My Home” service that includes doorstep delivery of mail. Dh750 a year for three deliveries a week; Dh1250 for six deliveries a week. That’s subject to the target address being a villa and not an apartment, and further subject to it being located in one of the “selected areas.” The new service does include SMS alerts when registered mail arrives, and a 10% discount on Emirates Post courier service, so it could work for some, even if it doesn’t look like particular good value for the Goat. If the picture on the flyer is to be believed, Emirates Post will stick a mailbox on the outside of the villa and deposit letters from home in it.

Glory hallelujah! Does this mean that, at last, “The Crumbling Villa, Dubai” could become a real address that banks and financial institutions could use without fear of it being a front for money laundering? Of course not: the service consists fundamentally of emptying the PO box periodically and dumping its contents at a target address.

]}:-{>

'tardy responses

The last thing I probably need at the moment is more stress, yet this is what I've chosen to inflict on myself. It all relates to the demobilisation process.

Long story short: I don't want to sell my bike; I don't want to sell my car. As there is evidently a process for exporting motor vehicles (why else would export plates exist?), I want to export my vehicles from Qatar to the UAE.

International transfer of motor vehicles is always exciting. For some reason, there has to be a massive pile of paperwork. Some of this relates to ensuring that a car manufactured for one market is acceptable for use in a different market. There are certain fundamentals such as where the steering wheel is, and whether the rear indicators are orange or red and combined with the brake lights.

Updating this post on 5th June, inserted below are my latest findings. Look for the italics.

I did this once before, and have learned my lesson. "Hi, Mr DHL. Here's my motorbike and a big wad of cash. Please deliver it to me in Qatar." appears simple enough, but in practice required that I constantly monitored progress and poked DHL at regular intervals to get the process moving again.

This time, I'm going the other way: Qatar to UAE. It occurred to me that if I put the bike on a trailer and towed it to Dubai behind the car, I could move house with a minimum of fuss. It's not as if a 700km drive is any big deal, after all. But between here and there lies the magic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Obviously I have to de-register the car and bike and get them on export plates. These are valid for ten days. Then I need a transit visa so that I'm allowed to enter the KSA, which I'm only allowed to do provided I promise to leave again. No problem.

I suspected that the procedure would be fraught with obstacles, so I started to ask for information. There are many, many people and organisations in Qatar whose job is to arrange import and export, so one might have imagined that someone would know how to do what is fundamentally a very simple process.

"Trailers not permitted." So the money I've spent getting a towbar fitted is a waste. Bugger. I guess I'll not be lashing out thousands of riyals on a bike trailer. In any case, this 'no trailers' thing is surely patent nonsense; I know several rally teams who successfully move cars and bikes between Qatar and the UAE by road, and they use trailers.

You have to go through an authorised agent to get a Saudi visa. Mine told me that there was absolutely no problem with towing a trailer. The small matter of the trailer cropped up after I'd spoken to a helpful gentleman in the Saudi embassy consular section about why my transit by motorcycle had been refused. After I'd told the agent his response to me, the agent called me back and advised that when I'd been told, "Motorbike? No problem," what I should have been told was, "Motorbike? Impossible."

"Cannot own a vehicle in UAE unless you have a residence visa." This is more of a poser, but luckily I have a Beloved Wife who can own vehicles, and she's resident in Dubai.

There remains some debate about importing more than one vehicle, but as it's a car and a bike and not two cars, this is - at least today - not a problem.

"Your wife must come to Qatar and bring a letter of No Objection stamped by the Embassy." What a lot of rot. If you don't know, why do you insist on making stuff up?

It seems that in order to transport her vehicles over land, a Power of Attorney letter from Beloved Wife is required. This is obtained from a Qatar court, or a UAE court, or I can do it on the basis of Beloved Wife's written No Objection to her husband handling matters. Which version is true depends on who's spouting it.

"Cannot transfer ownership in Qatar unless both parties have Qatar residence." A more senior Captain over at the Traffic Police said that this was nonsense, and having a copy of the purchaser's passport and visa would be sufficient.

"Cannot drive without permission of the owner." Well I'd better get a letter of permission, then. Duh.

As above. Power of Attorney letter is required - in Arabic - for land transportation. It's not required for transport by sea, because then Saudi isn't involved.

"Cannot enter UAE without visa." Visa on arrival.

"Cannot leave Qatar by road because your exit permit is only valid for leaving by air." Well I guess I'll have to get a 'Leaving Qatar by Road' exit permit.

There is no difference. It's an exit permit. Period.

"Cannot register bike unless you have UAE residence and a motorbike licence." So it'll have to wait until I've got UAE residence then. I can't get that until after my Qatar residence has been cancelled, and I can't cancel Qatar until after dealing with all of the business.

Having asked about a dozen different professionals in the export business and got nearly a score of different answers, here is what I believe to be the definitive list of Things To Do. It is based on getting the same story from senior people in several different offices:-

1. Letter from Beloved Wife confirming permission to driver her motorbike.
2. Copy of Beloved Wife's passport and UAE residence visa.
3. Go to Traffic Police in Doha and get export plates and transit insurance for the bike.
4. Ensure export certificate is in Beloved Wife's name.
5. Go to Doha Port with original sales invoice, original import paperwork that proves that import duty was paid when the bike first entered a Gulf country, Certificate of Origin, export certificate. All vehicles more than two years old are subject to 5% tax based on current assessed value.
6. Obtain Bayat Al Maqasa, a certificate stating that all taxes are paid. But this is a worthless document if the vehicle is more than two years old.

At this point it would be possible to load the bike into a container, on to the back of a truck, or on to a ferry. However...

1. Take export certificate and passport to company Public Relations Officer.
2. Obtain company No Objection to my riding Beloved Wife's bike from Qatar to UAE through KSA. (Essentially this is an Arabic translation of Beloved Wife's letter).
3. Obtain one-use KSA transit visa. No. Motorbike forbidden.
4. Obtain exit permit for overland travel. Cancelled.
5. Load personal effects on to the bike, and travel. Cancelled.

Upon arrival in Dubai, fly back to Qatar and repeat the entire process with the car.

All futile. Can't get Arabic Power of Attorney letter because nobody will say which version is acceptable, and thus overland transport is out of the question. So it looks like Mr Hobson is going to put everything in 20-ft box and float it over to Jebel Ali at phenomenal expense.

Wish me luck.

When all this is over, I'll post the actual procedure in the naive hope that someone else trying to pull the same stunt will be confronted with the same hurdles.

]}:-{>