Festival of the Sacrifice

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I’m sitting in Sharjah airport as I write this, awaiting my Saturday afternoon flight. After booking flights for an Eid holiday week in Dubai and screwing up the flight times, I found that I'd not be flying out on Saturday evening, but instead would spend all afternoon devoting myself to air travel.

After booking my non-refundable, non-changeable-without-enormous fees flights, the official Eid holiday dates were all postponed by a day, resulting in the glorious prospect of spending all Sunday in Cloud City because everything in Doha will be shut.

Much was achieved during my week in Dubai:

• Beloved Wife and I selected a new dishwasher to replace the dead one. Carrefour sold us one for Dh1800 and phoned a day later to say that it was out of stock, they wouldn’t have any more, no we couldn’t have the display item, and would we like to come back and select a more expensive one? This blatant attempt at bait-and-switch resulted in a refund and our money being directed to a different store. The man came to install the new machine, but the van broke down and he was three hours late. He contrived to drop some hardware down the outlet, and I insisted that we get it out. He wanted me to call a plumber at my expense, but I was having none of this. Eventually we managed to wash the thing down to the floor gully and recover it through use of a garden hose and water pressure. As this is how I unblocked the pipe before; déjà vu all over again. 

• We got Beloved Wife's car in for service. It turns out that the appalling shrieking noises were not coming from the belt tensioner pulley bearing after all, but the PCV. This is a piece of cheap plastic shit that is notorious for becoming broken on VW engines, but the Sharjah branch of Volkswagen lacked the wit or inclination either to stock the part or phone the Dubai branch. Earlier today I phoned Dubai, collected new PCV, and had the mechanic install it in about ten minutes. All shrieking has now gone and the Eos can safely be presented next week for its annual inspection and registration. 

• I installed the new battery in the bike, started it on the first prod of the button, and went off first to get the thing washed and then inspected and registered. Beloved Wife had sorted out the insurance, so all I had to do was phone AXA to get a new certificate that stated Oman was an included territory; not just the UAE. 

• The runaround for my new UAE residence was likely to take all day. It had to be accomplished entirely before Eid, so the Executive Service had to be invoked. A trip to Al Wasl clinic and Dh790 got me a blood test, then across town and a further Dh370 for a new ID card application and Dh555 for a new residence permit. Then back to Al Wasl to collect my blood test result. My blood group hasn’t changed, as eny fule kno. I am so glad I took the bike for this running around town in the traffic. No problem parking, see? Also few issued with traffic congestion. Everything was done by 1330, and I handed in my passport to Beloved Wife’s PRO. I got it back with the new visa the following morning. I now await the delivery of my new Emirates ID card in due course. 

• I went to the airport to renew my UAE e-gate card. As there is exactly zero free parking at DXB, even for motorbikes, I parked for nuppence at Rashidiya and took the metro two stops. 

• Other errands included getting de-worming pills for the cats in order to stop the vet from bombarding me with reminder emails, Beloved Wife and me obtaining lacerations while inserting said pills into said cats, more pills for me which are not for removing parasites, and a new button battery for the bike's keyless start system. Any and all attempts to purchase additional pairs of Vibram™ hobbit feet failed. They're all knocked down to about 25% of the normal retail price, and of course my size has completely sold out. 

• I braved IKEA, then spent a couple of hours balancing on a stepladder – it isn’t a real ladder – replacing burned-out lightbulbs all over the Crumbling Villa including the one at the top of the stairs that involved standing on the very top rung. It doesn’t matter that the halogens are rated for thousands of hours. I suspect wobbly voltage kills them. Anyhoo, IKEA only had LED globes, which have dropped remarkably in price over the last year or so. It remains to be seen if they last longer. 

• There was shopping and cooking, epic binge-watching of Game of Thrones, and consumption of moderate quantities of special beverage and flat-nosed, curly-tailed haraminal. There was nothing on at any Dubai cinema that appealed, so that was a bust. 

• On Friday, I slipped into my old paths of wrongtiousness with a high-speed ride over to Kalba for an egg sandwich. I rode alone, noted the presence of new speed cameras near Wadi Hilo, chatted with members of the Ducati club in Kalba, and then got comprehensively blown into the weeds on the way back to Dubai. Call me slow and old-fashioned if you like, but if the speed limit is 120km/h and I'm just below the speed camera trigger of 140, the guys who whizzed past me at perhaps 200 must have plenty of disposable income. I am a bit out of practice; I frightened myself a couple of times on some very, very bendy road between Hatta and Munay. Must. Not. Brake. In. Corners. Next time I’m back in Dubai I should replace the bike’s tyres. The Pirellis still have reasonable tread, but they’ve been cooking outdoors all summer. I have some new Michelins poised and ready. 

• Finally, I accompanied Beloved Wife to a dead posh dinner out at the Dusit Thani in Dubai (the hotel near Defence Roundabout that looks like a clothes peg), and very fine it was too. 

Putting the events into writing, it doesn’t seem like I achieved much, but I kept busy and my mood has lifted somewhat. I might even be able to face another week back at work.

]}:-{>

The Moggy Whisperer

The idea was laudable enough. Pet and feed the feral cat, get her to trust me, and then book her in for a 'spay-and-release,' which was being offered free by Al Barsha Veterinary Clinic throughout February. I made a booking, but the earliest appointment was late in the month.

By the time the appointment date was only a few days away, it had become startlingly obvious that the said cat was pregnant. We suspect that the Long-Haired Lover from Over The Road is at least partially responsible. Our stray cat ballooned. She looked as if she'd swallowed a foopball. I quipped that she looked like the moon.

"That's no moon," exclaimed Beloved Wife.

And as I'm not allowed to name her DeathStar, she's now called Luna.

It was clearly way too late for a trip to the vet, so I cancelled the appointment. If Luna decided to have her kittens in the Crumbling Villa, we'd look after them and deal with weaning, house-training, and eventually disposal of the bundles of joy that Luna was eventually going to produce.

It is now obvious that Luna is nowhere near as feral as we'd been led to believe. She's instantly litter-trained, she knows she's not allowed on the furniture or worktops, and she's extremely friendly even when she doesn't want food. We think Luna got the proverbial Sandal Up The Jacksie the moment she got buns in the oven. And she's now obviously mine - or I'm hers. I am now officially the Moggy Whisperer.

Naturally, my popularity with The Family Under The Stairs is reinforced daily by the unfortunate fact that I don't seem to be able to secure any gainful employment. I'm at home every day providing food, water, attention, and removing cat truffles from the litter box. The post of Moggy Whisperer does not pay well, or indeed at all.

LinkedIn has produced nothing by way of job interviews, and applications through multiple employment agencies, company websites, direct mailing, and even personal visits with CV in hand have yielded precisely one Skype interview that went nowhere.

Even my attempts to volunteer for motorcycle marshalling work were also inexplicably ignored. So much for this year's RAK Half-Marathon, the Dubai Marathon, and the Abu Dhabi Triathlon. I know that I was passed over for the Dubai event because of my careless choice of motorcycle brand: it isn't a BMW, but my attempts to volunteer for the Triathlon, even after receiving an email request for volunteers, didn't even elicit a "No thanks, we don't like Japanese motorcycles" response.

At least I managed to do some voluntary work at Yas Marina Circuit last week, and my continuing unemployment does mean that I'm available for marshalling this years Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.

If only any of these were salaried posts.

 ]}:-{>

Bill Stickers is guilty

Unfortunately, it seems that Dubai is one place where the Goat's particular incarnation of Mr William Stickers is not going to be prosecuted.

Not a day goes past without unsolicited crap being hung on the gate of the Crumbling Villa. The cast alimininium curlicues all over the outside of the gate seem to encourage the practice. The Goat isn't particularly interested in the new pizza joint, nursery school, hair salon or dental clinic; he has little use for a borehole in the garden (which is apparently illegal anyway), and always gets his cooking gas from the same outfit. So it's futile hanging the garbage on the garage.

One thing is certain. The Goat always removes the paperwork and stacks it unread on the footway for collection. If that constitutes littering, then address the cause and not the effect. If you prevent everyone from plastering the Crumbling Villa with junk, the Goat won't dump it in the street. Simples.

Just lately, things have got worse. Cars parked outside get additional copies of the same handbills stuffed in the door handles and under the windscreen wipers. These blow off eventually, but the Goat will certainly not read them, nor avail himself of the product or service advertised. The purveyors of cooking gas and of satellite TV rather unfortunately have self-adhesive stickers that get plastered by the elusive Mr Stickers all over the Goat's electricity meter cabinet. They get removed and dumped.

The Goat made the mistake of leaving the gate open the other day. He found yet more junk, left all over his parked motorbike and even shoved under the BACK door of the Crumbling Villa.

He's tried complaining. The Municipality seems to do nothing, and calling the number advertised on the junk results in somewhere between: "The manager isn't available, and will return your call" (which he doesn't, of course), to "Neanderthal grunt."

On the rare occasions when the Goat catches Bill Stickers in flagrante lectaro, on the footway on his motorbike, and asks him to refrain from littering, the relief is extremely short-lived. About ten minutes. Then it's back to paper and plastic waste being stuck to the wall, attached to the car, shoved in the gate, hurled over the wall into the front yard, and even hand-delivered under the Crumbling Villa's door.

]}:-{>

Wet winter weekend

Umbrellas

The rain, it raineth every day
Upon the just and unjust fella;
But mostly on the just, because
The unjust has the just's umbrella.

Beloved Wife and Goat headed off to Istanbul for the UAE National Day long weekend. Despite dire warnings from the Authorities that over-decorating cars and engaging in impromptu parades would be regarded with a very dim view, it was generally considered over at the Crumbling Villa that simply avoiding the mayhem was a more acceptable option.

The Goat hopes that everyone enjoyed the UAE's 41st birthday celebrations.

The wonderful thing that is the internet revealed that going away for the weekend was also an excellent choice for anyone who didn't fancy experiencing torrential downpours and the flooding that followed. Facebook was briefly full of photo stories of blocked drains, flooded houses, surfing in the streets. Yes, really: there was a video of a Toyota Land Cruiser driving down the road with someone water-skiing on a surfboard behind. The Crumbling Villa remains mercifully waterproof, except for one small area in the bathroom that the landlord has failed to fix for over two years and counting.

Not that escaping to Istanbul involved an escape from wet weather. It always rains in Istanbul when the Goat visits. At least because wet weather is more common in Turkey, the infrastructure is better able to cope with a deluge than the UAE where rain is regular but very rare.

The Goat took his waterproof motorbike jacket and a flat cap, and spendthrift Beloved Wife lashed out around Dh5 on an umbrella. Most of the walking was timed to miss the showers, and when it rained, there were indoor things to do.

It does seem bizarre to think that one sunny morning, for the rain wasn't constant, Goat and Beloved Wife hid in the Cistern, an underground water tank with no sunlight and constant drips from the vaulted roof. The "No Big Cameras or Tripods Without Paying an Additional Fee" was not enforced, and the Goat's gorilla pod was great for wrapping around handrails during long-exposure shots.

Cistern

Over at Hagia Sofiya, once a church, then a mosque, now a museum, tripods were absolutely forbidden, and had to be surrendered to Security. This is when a very steady hand, VR (vibration reduction) lenses, and ISO Auto comes in very useful. It's the first time the Goat has been in Hagia Sofiya and it's not been full of scaffolding.

The nave of Hagia Sofiya: Part church, part mosque, part museum

Beloved Wife wanted to see the mosaics at Chora museum, which turned out to be a long taxi ride away. As usual, mosaic details were stunning. Curiously, the taxi ride back was a lot shorter. Other public transport, the trams, were cheap and easy to use, and obviously very crowded because of the wet weather.

Madonna and Child, Chora Museum

Istanbul's Grand Bazaar and Egyptian Bazaar were both open, and extremely crowded owing to the wet weather. Beloved Wife engaged in Christmas shopping, and also compared rug prices with what had been quoted elsewhere. One of her colleagues has worked as a rugmonger in Istanbul, and that was the shop that offered the best value by an order of magnitude. Guess what the Crumbling Villa household got for Christmas.

Meershaum pipes in the Egyptian Bazaar

Lights for sale in the Grand Bazaar

Carpet detail

Apart from spices, rugs, genuine fake designer handbags, and coloured lamps, Istanbul is famous for meerschaum pipes. But the Goat could't find one anywhere where the face on the front had a beard and horns. Plenty of stunning dragons, grizzled old men, buffalo and horses, and even a unicorn for the pipe smoker who's very secure in his sexuality. But no goats, at least, not in Istanbul.

Neither hide nor hair in Istanbul

]}:-{>

Do it yours elf

Kreacher feature

Beloved Wife's Volkswagen is now five years old. When it was under warranty, the window winder motors needed to be replaced and Al Naboodah did so with a minimum of fuss. But shortly thereafter I noticed a bolt occasionally poked out of the passenger door drain hole. Clearly someone had dropped a bolt into the door's innards, or something had come loose.

So next service, I mentioned it and asked that the loose bolt be found, removed and, if it had fallen out of part of the door, replaced. No such thing happened.

A single bolt rattling around is of no real consequence and both Beloved Wife and I simply ignored the problem. However, over the last year or so the rattling got worse. I noticed it particularly after returning from a year in Qatar. According to Beloved Wife, the mechanics at Al Naboodah recognised that there was rattling as of loose mechanicals in the passenger side door, but either could not or would not do anything about it.

As I'm "resting between jobs" as out-of-work actors say, I currently have the time to deal with matters domestic. Beloved Wife insists that I'm not her house-elf.

I took the car door to bits this morning. As soon as I'd prised the inner skin away, three M6 bolts fell on to the ground. Further dismantling revealed that the dozen or so M6 bolts that are supposed to attach the frame holding the window motor to the door chassis were either missing, on the ground, or loose. I was able to retrieve all sorts of metal fastenings from inside the door, including all of the missing bolts.

I reattached the innards and tightened the bolts; something that a qualified VW mechanic had evidently failed to do. I also replaced the broken window winder switch, which was the original reason for pulling the door to bits.

And now everything works and nothing rattles. Why this relatively minor task was so impossible over at Dubai's Volkswagen agency remains a mystery.

And pleased with my success, I'm to spend this afternoon assembling Swedish furniture.

]}:-{>

Rich with creases

The Goat’s new residence is full of – appropriately – LG appliances, including a dishwasher, fridge-freezer and even a television. There was no DVD player, but there is now and, purely by coincidence, this is also by LG. Rather usefully, the magic wand that works the DVD machine also works the telly. The Goat has avoided that irritating spawning of remote controllers that afflicts so many households.

The Goat has been struggling with domesticity in the kitchen. At last, he’s worked out how to persuade the LG Direct Drive washer-dryer with 1200 rpm spin speed, inverter and “10 year Warrnaty for Motor” [sic] (according to a sticker on the unit) not only to turn soiled garments into clean ones, but also into dry ones. The said washing machine has numerous displays, and it bleeps, pings and flashes like a computer from a 1970s sci-fi film.

The one thing that this wonderful machine doesn’t do is the ironing. The Goat hates ironing and would normally spurn it as he would a rabid dog. But ‘business attire’ dictates that turning up at the office looking like he’s been sleeping fully-clothed under a hedge is completely unacceptable. Also unacceptable to the Goat are drip-dry bri-nylon shirts. It’s cotton, or polyester/cotton in an emergency.

And yet, despite putting much effort into wielding a steam iron, most of the Goat’s shirts remain obstinately rich with creases. A great problem is that clothing, although made from flat cloth, is made up of odd shapes so that it’ll go around a three-dimensional body, and therefore refuses to lie flat and be tortured with hot irons. So removal of creases from one area invariably introduces new ones to another.

Some shirts and trousers are better behaved than others. The Goat’s yellow shirt that is made of some pinstriped ridged material is 100% resistant to being ironed, except by someone skilled in the art. A standard test of someone’s skill with a steam iron is the Goat’s kilt, which has loads of separate panels. Nanny Goat can do a splendid job in about five minutes; it takes the Goat up to half an hour to yield an inferior result, and the part-time maid back at the Crumbling Villa made such a hash of it that she’s never going to do it again.

The solution to the Goat’s abject hatred of ironing is obvious. There is a laundry at the other end of the road. They might do an ironing-only service, and they might even undertake home delivery.

]}:-{>

A real state

“Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.” So go the words of Douglas Adams.

The ancient town of Redditch (where needles and Enfield motorcycles originally came from) in Worcestershire (where the sauce comes from) was, in the 1970s, developed into a New Town. A quango was formed, and the employees of this New Towns Commission played SimCity at 12-inches-to-a-foot scale before SimCity had been invented. Redditch sprawled, and later a lot of these New Towns Commission houses were purchased from the NTC by their tenants. Meanwhile, tenants of council houses elsewhere in Redditch bought their properties from the local authority at well below market rates.

Unusually, perhaps, most properties were sold with 99-year leases and nominal ground rent instead of actual freehold, as is more usual for houses in the United Kingdom.

So far, so good. I bought my ex-council house from an owner-occupier with 89 years remaining on the lease and a known obligation to pay £17.50 per year for 33 years, £35.00 per year for the next 33 years, and £66 per year for the remainder of the lease. These figures were enshrined in the title deeds. There were also rules concerning exterior woodwork being white, not leaving cars up on bricks in the front garden, and no playing of Dueling Banjos.

Redditch Borough Council eventually grew tired of chasing and administering the ground rent. After writing to the leaseholders with “Would you like to buy the freehold? It’s a nominal couple of grand plus legal fees,” the council gave up and simply wrote to everyone with a “You are now the freeholder. Congratulations” letter. This occurred shortly after I’d sold my house, such is the Law of Sod.

Unfortunately for owner occupiers, the title deeds for ex-NTC properties did not include limits on the ground rent. And thus, when the NTC disbanded and sold all its freeholds to private developers, the first thing they all did was to whang up the ground rent to thousands of pounds per year. That’s right: £17.50 became £1000, and all houses subject to this usurious rise instantly became completely unmarketable, and the occupiers were, in numerous cases, left unable to foot their unexpected bills.

And so we jump into a police box and find ourselves in Dubai some ten years later.

The allure of buying freehold property in Dubai instead of paying rent was strong. A guaranteed residence visa so I could live there even if I lost my job; known mortgage payments instead of escalating rent. But when I asked to review a draft contract for a place in the Gardens, (or was it the Greens, Lakes or Springs?), alarm bells started to ring. There was nothing to prevent the nine dirhams per square foot annual maintenance charge from becoming Dh12. Or Dh25 or even Dh9999. Bearing in mind what I’d just seen happen in the tightly-regulated UK, what could I anticipate happening in a new and exciting property market in the middle east? Sure enough...

Promises of tennis courts, fitness centres and swimming pools become more towers;

The promise of visa with freehold evaporates;

New rules regarding pets are imposed retroactively;

Freehold is redefined as usufruct;

Ground rent/maintenance charges soar.

What a perfectly marvellous way to kill the real estate market.

“Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it.”

]}:-{>

Frantic corybantic antics

The Goat has been busy. Too busy, in fact, to put in writing those delightful little quirks of Life in the Lands of the Sand. The latest ignominies perpetrated by that old faithful Red Triangles Bank shall, for the time being, go unblogged. So too shall the Goat's most recent experiences with Itisalot.

Most of the Goat's frantic lifestyle derives from living in the Crumbling Villa and working in Abu Dhabi. This eats up about 14 hours a day, leaving six for sleeping and the remaining five for shopping, eating, cleaning, blogging and shoring up the Villa's most urgent crumbles. Yes, that does add up to more than 24, which illustrates the point.

Since commenting on a previous blog post about how the commute was made marginally more tolerable by having the BBC World Service on the radio, the Goat was astonished one evening to encounter classical music on 87.9MHz instead of 'Outlook'. He actually phoned the radio station broadcasting this music to be told that "We've stolen the frequency from the BBC. Shhh!"

It turns out that without notice, Auntie Beeb - or at least the Foreign Office, which apparently is the entity that funds the World Service - stopped renting the VHF band in the UAE, and listeners are obliged to use Short Wave on a variety of frequencies that change throughout the day. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi Classic FM broadcasts on 87.9MHz in Dubai, 91.6MHz in Abu Dhabi and 105.2MHz in Al Ain. Although until last week the Abu Dhabi signal was so feeble it was amost inaudible even in the Capital.

Classic FM in the UK was once described by one of the presenters as "A rock-music station that plays classical rather than rock music." Is Abu Dhabi Classic FM essentially the same station? Certainly the station's theme tune is the same, and the playlist generally comprises bite-size chunks of mostly well-known pieces of music composed mainly by dead guys in wigs. Cue Monty Python's "Decomposing Composers" song.

Not that the Goat is complaining. It beats the pants off boom-tsch boom-tsch boom-tsch boom-tsch and tech-tech-tech-techno pop, and takes some of the sting out of the daily commute. Longer tunes mean a lower deejay/music ratio, and this is generally a Good Thing.

Some observations. Three-in-a-row plays take about 20 minutes, and then there's a distinct lack of back-announcing by the deejay. What was that tune? It sounded like Mozart, or one of that crowd (thank you Tom Lehrer), but from which five-act opera that he wrote when he was nine? It is immensely irritating to get to the end of a long series of pieces, only then to cut to the news or other public announcement.

And to the presenters: please, please, please note: Playing classical guitar is not something John Williams does while he's not conducting the Boston Pops. John Towner Williams wrote the music for Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Schlindler's List, ET, Harry Potter and Superman; John Christopher Williams is the guitarist and former member of Sky.

Finally, the cacophone is a theoretical musical instrument that should not be given any air time. Its name is derived from either of two origins; possibly both. Experimental music, including playing all the black notes at the same time, torturing tuneless scratching out of a violin, and beating a trombone with a hockey stick, have no place in the Goat's music collection.

Oh, and the Goat's musical taste is somewhat eclectic. Look at the screenshot from his Facebook page.

]}:-{>

We've got the power

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

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

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

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

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

What solutions are on offer?

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

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

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

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

]}:-{>

Pearls of wisdom

I generally listen to what passes for Talk Radio on my 90-minute daily commute. Dubai Eye (103.8MHz) does that Business Breakfast thing from 6am until I drop out of range at about 6:45 and have to switch to Radio 2 (106MHz) as I approach the capital. The journey home is marginally better because the BBC World Service (87.9MHz) is in English until 6pm.

On Wednesday I was tuned to Dubai Eye after 6pm, having put in ten of my contracted eight hours (less half an hour for lunch) and I was commuting home. Fortunately, the amount of foopball news was minimal; instead, there was an interesting half hour feature on ‘green buildings’.

Sorry, but as I was driving I wasn’t in any position to take notes, so no names, no firms, no phone numbers.

The presenter had a whine that, following years and years of living apartments, he’d moved into a villa. The air conditioning upstairs was apparently poor, and Mr Maintenance advised him that this was because of the sun. Apparently, sunlight heats the roof which, in turn, radiates heat into the building. Imagine that, eh? Strong sunlight in the Gulf. Who’d have thought it? The solution offered was to run the air conditioning at full throttle for three days until the ceiling and wall slabs had been cooled.

Here we have the problem. Buildings constructed “six months ago” are to the same standards that were considered appropriate for the region in about 1975. A typical build comprises a reinforced concrete frame on a concrete pad foundation, a single skin of hollow concrete blocks make the outside walls, and reinforced concrete slabs compose the upper floors and the roof. If it isn’t flat, the roof slab gets tiles nailed to the concrete. The walls, at least those bits that aren’t windows or doors, are rendered outside with cementicious stucco, and inside it’s plaster.

Where is the insulation? An air gap of about four inches really doesn’t have much insulating effect, particularly when it’s bridged by the block construction, the mortar and whatever the brickies dropped down the gap during construction.

But it’s cheap. And this is why energy inefficient buildings continue to be constructed. This is despite, as the radio article pointed out, “around Dh3000 spent on insulation” yielding a “Dh15000 saving” in terms of smaller air conditioning units running for fewer hours, to say nothing of not having to leave them on for three days. And at four kilowatts per unit, that’s a shedload of electricity.

Most real estate in the Gulf is owned by citizens: nationals. Those who pay little or nothing for their electricity have no real incentive not to run the air conditioning on maximum at all times. Heat pours into the building, and gets pumped out again essentially for nuppence. There’s a perceived financial advantage in throwing up a bespoke villa as cheaply as possible, and someone buying a developer’s house doesn't really have to worry about electricity bills either. You won’t realise your Dh12000 saving if your running cost is zero.

What about the other 85% of the population? Those who don’t get free electricity? These residents either rent or buy cheaply-built concrete boxes. Either way, the incentive is to build at minimum cost because the consequences of no insulation are borne by the tenant or in the latter case, the ‘freeholder’.

There's little incentive for a tenant to undertake substantial environmental building improvements. Even if the landlord allowed it and it were practically feasible, in a year or two you might have to walk away from expensive solar panels - or even compact fluorescent light bulbs, so the long-term benefits wouldn’t happen to the environmentalist or his wallet. And why, incidentally, do the so-called ‘long-life’ CF lightbulbs purchased at additional expense invariably fail within a few months? So much for the alleged ten-year life...

But there is good environmental news on the horizon. In Abu Dhabi there are moves towards more environmentally sustainable buildings. Estidama, which is Arabic for ‘sustainability’, promotes a so-called “Pearl Rating” that includes insulation requirements and a whole lot more besides. Proximity to public transport, non-toxic building materials, grey water recycling, bicycle parking, painting the exterior white, solar panels for free domestic hot water, and even advice on planting native plants outside that don’t drink vast quantities of water. One suggestion is even to use ceiling fans (anyone remember those?) instead of air conditioning in the spring and autumn.

I have downloaded the PDF blurb about villas. Whilst it’s not worth trying to retro-fit insulation in the Crumbling Villa, there may be some useful pearls (ba-doom, tsch!) of wisdom applicable for the Cyprus retirement palace.

]}:-{>

A bird in the hand

Not for the first time, we had an avian visitor in the Crumbling Villa. The normal sequence of events is that I notice chirping coming from upstairs, I investigate, and discover a sparrow, finch or other Little Brown Job fluttering around the upstairs landing, perching on bookshelves and air conditioners, and occasionally smashing its poor diminutive bird brain on the large but unopenable window.

What’s the best way to remove a wild bird from the house? Very occasionally, opening the French window of the main bedroom, closing off all other doorways and curtains, and brandishing a broom at the creature is sufficient to encourage its escape. But sometimes this isn’t enough, and I’ve in the past resorted to chasing the bird until it’s too exhausted to fly. Then it’s easy to pick up off the bookshelf and carry outside. A bit stressful, of course, so this is not an ideal solution from the bird’s point of view.

How do birds get in, anyway? I once watched as a dove swooped in through the open front door, circumnavigated the sitting room and then swooped out again. But I theorise that in general, LBJs get into the house through the extractor fans. They perch outside, enjoying the wafts of cool air provided by the Crumbling Villa’s rickety, old and incontinent air conditioning. Then one enterprising soul climbs through and can’t find its way out again.

Not entirely true; I recently found evidence of LBJ in the bathroom. If guano on the floor, walls and mirror, and little claw marks in the soap and in the dust on the extractor fan are to be believed, the culprit made good its escape.

Our most recent visitor spent the evening in the kitchen. Of course, it utterly refused to fly into the dark void beyond the window we opened. Then I had the brilliant idea of shutting off the lights and using a torch. Sparrows can’t fly in the dark. One crash-landing on to Beloved Wife later, and I was able to scoop up the sparrow by hand and deposit it outside on the kitchen window sill.

]}:-{>

Do you love the commute? Err...

The Goatmobile costs around Dh1.50 per kilometre to run. That includes everything spent to date, but does not allow for any money back when it’s traded in. It is assumed that there’ll be little if any residual value once I’ve finished abusing the vehicle on and off road. Perhaps I can get the odometer right around the clock and then sell it as low mileage but a bit tatty for 2004. More than a million kilometres. One careful caprine owner.

Perhaps the equivalent of a return trip to the Moon is starting to look faintly possible. As regular readers of this little corner of cyberspace will doubtless be aware, Muggins was made redundant a week or so ago, five days after bending over backwards to return from the UK, dodging airborne ash particles and generally cashing in favours with friends and family.

The boot up my jacksie happened on Thursday 29th April. I went into the office the following week to clear my desk, return the company laptop, deal with outstanding issues and leave my former boss with the world’s most comprehensive handover notes. So comprehensive were they that he did not find it necessary to ask any questions at all.

Later that same Thursday, one of my colleagues tried to give me some work to do and I apologised that as I no longer worked for the Firm, he would have to find one of the few remaining engineers to deal with his technical queries. The long story short is that my colleague passed my name and phone number to an employment agency on Thursday, the agent phoned me on Friday, I sent him my latest CV on Saturday, and on Wednesday 5th May I had an interview that was immediately followed by a job offer. I started the new job on Sunday 9th May, five working days after being told Sayonara, habibi.

Having been removed from the old sausage machine, this particular cog is now part of a different machine.

This proves that I have marketable skills; that there is demand for what I do. Unfortunately, my previous employer has clients who appear not to want those skills. More specifically, they want them but are unwilling to pay for them.

A further discussion of the new job brings me back to the subject of driving. I now work in Abu Dhabi, and am thus the latest applicant for the post of Driver who Incurs 1500km per Week at his Own Expense. Running the arithmetic reveals that renting a car and thrashing that into the ground would be marginally cheaper than running the Goatmobile, and there would be no inconvenience every seven weeks of getting the vehicle serviced. My motorbike would chew through a back tyre in typically one month because almost the entire journey is bolt upright on a motorway, and it would need to be serviced at the same time. Big bikes need a lot of servicing. However, a rented car would be a Yaris, Tiida or similar. Ugh. I’m on the horns of a trilemma. Bike; rented Yaris; Goatmobile.

Plus there are the added delights of navigating around the capital to find the elusive parking space. Roadworks on Salam Street are confusing and disruptive to bucolic yokels such as I: yesterday I was completely flummoxed and was unable to find my way out of the city via the new Yas Island highway. Twenty minutes after setting sail for home I was still within spitting distance of the office. This situation will, however, improve as I learn my way around Abu Dhabi.

Beloved Wife has agreed in principle that we should move house to somewhere closer to Abu Dhabi than the Crumbling Villa, yet within a sensible commute to her Dubai job. Assuming, of course, that we can find somewhere at a reasonable rent that is large enough for all our stuff.

Finally, as for EoD and Alexander’s suggestion of commiseratory or even celebratory drinkies, I should be at Dubai’s Oirish Village on Friday night after eightish. Dead easy to identify: I’m the one with the beard. And the horns. All welcome. RSVP in the comments.

]}:-{>

No kidding

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





























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The lazy doth protest too much, methinks

The Crumbling Villa continues its slow and inexorable descent into chaos, in full compliance with the Laws of Thermodynamics. As the landlord’s only apparent function it to receive his rent each year, it is incumbent upon the Goat to deal with repairs and maintenance.

GAMI (Get A Man In) is sometimes preferable to DIY (Damage It Yourself), such as when the work involves split-unit air conditioning units that were originally fitted in the Ark, or when the job involves shovelling pigeon poo off the roof, but as both Beloved Wife and Goat have full-time jobs it is sometimes difficult to arrange for tradesmen to turn up when we’re not out. Especially when “We will arrive at 5pm.” often actually means “At 3pm, or tomorrow at 10:30, or maybe not at all.”

So when the plumbing went wrong a while ago, Muggins replaced the hot water tank single-handed. My other hand was busy grasping for any handhold: the ladder, window frame, stopcock… At least the new tank wasn’t half full of limestone, so weighed less than the old and leaky one: a bonus when teetering atop a stepladder in a bathroom that’s swimming with water. Did I mention that the stopcock won’t fully shut off the water; merely reduce the Niagaresque torrent to a mere dribble? And yes I did turn off the water pump.

Just last week it became the shower’s turn to malfunction. The plastic (Plastic? What were they thinking?!) screw thread attaching the shower hose to the mixer tap snapped off. Initially it looked as if the entire mixer tap assembly would have to be replaced at enormous expense and inconvenience, and then I discovered that it was possible to unscrew the remainder of the plastic fitting.

Armed with this, off I went to the Plumbers’ Central.

So this is where my laziness creeps in. I don’t want to go to the time and effort of replacing the entire tap fitting when changing the screw adaptor takes only a few seconds, so I drive all over Dubai from Ace Hardware at Festival Centre, over to Speedex on SZR, thence into Satwa. All this in the huge traffic congestion that is an inevitable consequence of rainy weather. Twenty shops, three hours and about two gallons of petrol later, I was forced to conclude that this silly little tuppeny-ha’penny fitting was indeed Not Coming In Dubai. Just as you suspected, dear Reader.

Not to worry, tomorrow is another day, and it’s a well-known fact that you can get anything in Sharjah (with the possible exceptions of booze and pork). The trouble is, no-one who knows where is telling.

So this morning I got much the same story from any number of emporia of plumbing supplies. I eventually ended up at the same shop where I bought the hot water tank. The Man asserted that the thingummy I wanted was simply not available (big surprise). So I bought a whole new mixer tap – for the wallet-crippling price of sixty dirhams.

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Herbology expert

Beloved Wife and I spent Eid in Cyprus. We had commissioned a government-approved surveyor to mark out our plot boundaries in accordance with the official Land Registry records. Having met the surveyor on site, noted the lengths of rebar that he had banged into the ground at the corners, and paid the money, we are now in possession of an accurate survey. We have precise co-ordinates of the corners, a contour plan and the whole thing in AutoCAD as well as on paper. This ought to be enough to get an architect started on the planning permission for the Dream Home. But that won’t start in earnest until Beloved Wife and I agree the basic size, shape and orientation of the building.

Unlike defining a plot in town, where measuring off existing buildings and walls easily defines a plot, up in the boonies the surveyor had to measure half of Cyprus in order to ensure that our particular corner or a foreign field was precisely defined. And that, we were told, is why he wanted such a thick wad of banknotes. I was of course shrewd enough to get in writing beforehand that the price quoted was fully inclusive of all taxes, disbursements and those niggling extras that have an unfortunate habit of bunking up the bottom line so that it resembles the GNP of a small country.

The good news is that the plot is unexpectedly larger than we originally anticipated. The original advert said it was around 3300 sq.m; I’d measured the area using existing hedges as seen on Google Earth and discovered a disappointing 2740 sq.m. The survey reveals the actual plot fully includes one of the hedges and extends further south than expected, yielding 3578 sq.m, or 0.884 acres in old money.

I took hundreds of photographs of the land, the views, the existing herbaceous borders and the survey markers.

And this, dear reader, is where you come in: identifying the plants. Essentially, we’d like to retain as much of the mature planting as possible, but if it’s diseased or toxic to goats, it’ll have to go. Hopefully the greenery that remains will be pretty to look at, provide useful windbreaks, and might even produce edible fruit or something that gives a glossy coat.


No.1 and No.2
The first one is easy. It’s probably a carob tree Ceratonia siliqua and might even bear usable fruit. I could get hold of some wild honey and do a John the Baptist impersonation. The second plant appears to be some sort of parasite hanging off the carob. Its fruit is small black berries. No hints in any of our Mediterranean Plants and Gardens books or, so far, from the Interwebs.



No.3
That this is an oak of some sort is obvious from the acorns. But which one? There are holly oaks Quercus ilex around, but this one dares to be different. The leaves aren’t wobbly-edged as per the ‘traditional’ oak leaf, so which species is it?


No.4
The fruit smells of apple, so I suspect a crab-apple of some sort. But is that indeed the case, and is the fruit edible?


No.5
It seems that this one finished flowering a little while back and has perhaps gone to seed. Is it some kind of wild rose? There aren’t a load of thorns on the stems.


No.6
I think this may be Cistus ladanifer. But I'd appreciate the opinion of someone who knows more about plants than I. Most of the population, then.


No.7
I suspect this one is pistachio Pistacia lentiscus. The small berries are red and green. I guess they’re turning from red to black as they mature. Are these what eventually produce pistachio nuts?


No.8
Absolutely no clue at all with this plant.


No.9
Nor this one.


I found this page of the University of Reading's website of some use. Again, those who know and understand plants might get better use out of the page.

]}:-{>

Organic hand-knitted tofu

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

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

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

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

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

Petrol is typically a mixture of C₅H₁₂ to C₁₂H₂₆

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

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

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

72g petrol produces 140g CO₂

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

340g petrol produces 672g CO₂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

]}:-{>

A villa in new DXB

A house in The Greens, an Arabian Ranch.
If you want to own it and not merely loan it
You'll need to come up with a million or more
In cash or a mortgage whose rates make you sore.

There is a catch!
Where?
Buyer beware!
Why should I take such care?
Because the rules keep changing,
Fair or unfair,
And you'll find yourself tearing your hair.
Despair!


At first we were promised a visa with freehold
And then after buyin', it turned out they was lyin'.
No visa? No phone; no electricity.
Small wonder that expats were starting to flee.

Give them six months!
Six
Months at a time
Residence should be fine,
Then send them on vacation.
Smile and don't whine
'cos the problem is yours and not mine.
I'm fine!


If you own a freehold apartment or villa
Your maximum stay's just a hundred'n'eighty days.
Then leave for a month, save up dirhams two grand
To buy a new visa to live in Sandland.

You wonder why
I
Don't buy Dubai?
My, how it goes awry!
Oh, the confusion,
'til from on high
Comes a missive that should clarify
Just why
To buy.

Bye-bye!

The original music and lyrics, by Ted Dicks and Myles Rudge, were made famous in 1965 by Ronnie Hilton.

]}:-{>

Corner of a foreign field

Our lawyer finally confirmed that the land became ours on 23rd April. St George’s Day, which has echoes of serendipity for a ‘corner of a foreign field that is forever England’. (Rupert Brooke 1887-1915).

We shall however not be sticking a red and white flag in one bit for 23rd April and a Stars and Stripes in another bit for 4th July. That would be silly. Would the Gnomad care to remove his nails now?

Once the legal dust has settled, there are still a few odds and ends to finalise. Establishing once and for all the boundaries is extremely important. Do we, for example, own the hedges and the enormous carob tree situated in one corner? We’ll get the local Land Department to peg out the boundaries, then we can set about arranging a perimeter fence or wall. Beloved Wife wishes to plant small trees that will in due course grow and provide vegetation, privacy and windbreaks.

We’re also thinking about house plans. Obviously a qualified architect will eventually have to be appointed to design and supervise (on account of Muggins being abroad and unable to police the contractors at suitably small intervals), but I think it’ll be very useful already to have a pretty good handle on what Beloved Wife and her Goat actually want built. Having a domestic in the architect’s office is definitely to be avoided. To this end, I’ve started messing with Google SketchUp. This is a free, allegedly easy-to-use piece of 3D modelling software that is capable of easy rendering to give quick impressions of what the building might look like. Drawing to scale, it’s also possible to download doors, windows, furniture, stairs, Burj Dubai, or whatever else the army of SketchUp experts have put on the internet for nuppence. I was particularly chuffed to discover that it’s possible to insert the model into Google Earth to give an idea how the house might appear. The final version would have doors and windows, of course.

Moving furniture, fixtures and fittings around is a lot easier with a couple of murine clicks and drags than actually hauling the real stuff at 12-inches to a foot scale. Whizzing a tape measure around the Crumbling Villa helped to establish whether any particular area would need to be bigger or could be smaller in the Dream Home. This also explains what we were doing in Home Centre the other day with no intention to buy anything. We ended up with a new mattress purely on impulse.

The image above is only one of perhaps dozens of potential buildings. The shortlist can be worked up using more sophisticated software, and eventually an appropriately qualified professional can deal with making it all stand up and have functional electricity, water, sewerage and air conditioning. Of course, the timescale for this last bit is heavily influenced by how long it’s going to take the bank account to recover from ravages of land purchase.

]}:-{>

It's make-your-mind-up time

Remember this?

The vendor came back to us with a much improved attitude. This time, we and our lawyer have copies of a document signed by the said vendor.

So, maybe this time... Champagne is in the fridge, but isn't going to be opened until I have a copy of the title deeds in the names of Goat and Beloved.

]}:-{>

Dhobi wallah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's coming on Monday.

]}:-{>