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

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Wheelie becoming a problem

The pile that is "Too Difficult"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sound the alarm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Fly me to the moon

Someone suggested that if I wished to move away from Project Management, and all the financial crystal-ball-gazing that that entails, perhaps I should divert my energies in the direction of a more technical and less managerial role. I can already drive AutoCAD, and I'm also a dab-hand at Excel and PowerPoint. I even taught myself how to use MicroDrainage and SYNCHRO. Perhaps I could learn Civil 3D?

Some of these might be a bit of a mystery to anyone who lives beyond the borders of Civil Engineering, but shall I say that they're technical software packages.

I have a copy of AutoCAD 14 on my little laptop. This is a very old version of the program, and was probably the release used by Noah in the preliminary designs of his ark. Newer versions of AutoCAD and the increasingly popular Civil 3D won't run on my little laptop, a device that has enormous difficulty with Photoshop Elephants (version 2 - how quaint!) because the disk drive is nearly full and the machine is approaching a decade old.

I checked online for Civil 3D and AutoCAD, and was very alarmed at the cost, and also the rather demanding specification of a machine that would run them. Further alarm, then, when I saw how much a suitable computer would cost.

At this point, I had an epiphany: AirMiles.

I've been slavishly presenting my AirMiles card at every possible transaction for many years. In fact, because I started with AirMiles Qatar, it must be over ten years, and those miles have piled up. Beloved Wife has been contributing to the same account, and by using credit cards for everything except petrol, I had managed to amass approaching a million of the things. AirMiles wrote to say that in 2013 there would be a session of "Use 'em or Lose 'em" so there was now some pressure to buy something expensive.

Such as a new computer. The eMax shop does direct exchange of AirMiles. I was expecting to have to apply for vouchers, await their eventual arrival by mail, and then go into the shop to be told that there were terms, conditions, restrictions, and all that other stuff in the small print.

I was really over the moon to learn that eMax exchanges AirMiles for toys at the face value of 14000 miles to AED100, which is the same rate as for gift vouchers.

So it was extremely gratifying to come away from eMax last evening with boxes containing a new and powerful laptop and a second monitor, all for an outlay of less than AED50. And I even have enough AirMiles left over for a bean-grinding espresso machine (but I don't actually want one of those because I'm a fan of the moka pot). Hilariously, no-one in the shop really seemed to believe that I wanted a home computer for work-type stuff; they all seemed to think I want it to play Gears of War or Skyrim. Hey, I don't even play Solitaire or Minesweeper. Honest.

The delight fell over once I got home, when I discovered that AutoCAD 14 won't run on a Windows 7 64-bit system. At least Photoshop does. And I fortuitously remembered that my Office 2010 had one remaining licence, so I'm up and running with a full version of Office too. Apparently AutoDesk doesn't support their software running under the all-singing, all-dancing Windows 8, so I think I'll stay away from Microsoft's latest operating system pro tempore.

Now, Civil 3D and AutoCAD 2012 remain an expensive proposition. I wonder if the nice people at AutoDesk would let me have them on the extremely cheap? It is only for training and non-commercial use. I have a demo version, but that's only good for a month.

The plan, then, is to devote time at home with a powerful computer and a big book of "AutoCAD and Civil 3D For Dummies" until I'm an expert. I may be some time.

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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.

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Fluffy

In my defence, I should first note that there are a couple of reasons for not hanging the clean laundry outside to dry. The first is that it makes the towels all rough and scratchy which annoys Beloved Wife. The second is that nobody likes having their freshly washed linen befouled with guano. It's bad enough that a freshly laundered motor vehicle is immediately spotted with pigeon poo and cat pawprints, but at least these wipe off.

Most of our laundry therefore comes out of the spin dryer and goes straight into a tumble dryer for a couple of hours of treatment. The faster the spin, the less tumbling is required.

There's a lint catcher so that fluff, lint, dirham coins and keys that come out of the laundry don't go into the works of the drying machine, nor down the exhaust pipe. And the lint is always the same colour as the majority of the most recent load. Obviously the drying process removes some of the fabric from the clothes that are being dried.

My question is this: does line-drying the laundry produce the same amount of lint? You can't tell, because it would blow away never to be seen again. Is it wearing clothes that causes them to wear out, or washing them?

One for the long winter evenings: it is theoretically possible to gather up all the lint and fluff from the dryer, spin it into yarn, and knit some socks or a sweater.

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The heat is on

Crested, somewhere near Camel Rock

The cooler weather is now approaching, even if it's not yet actually upon us. Beloved Wife now removes the roof from her car on the drive into work, and the water heaters in the Crumbling Villa are starting to see some action following a summer when, as usual, hot water comes out of the cold tap.

The Goat missed the ME4x4 club's annual September Shakedown desert drive and camp out because of an important brunch appointment. So he was pleased to see a separate, smaller Shakedown drive had been organised a few days ago.

Unfortunately, this drive involved the Goat getting on to his hind legs at the exceptionally ungodly 5am in order to be at Tawi Nizwa by six. Five cars; five drivers, and a plan to drive across the sands to Pink Rock.

Naturally there was a little laughing up sleeves at what the Goat had rolled up in. JT referred to Rio as 'the Baby Goat', seeing as she was dwarfed by the other vehicles.

Toyota, Toyota, Daihatsu, Nissan, Dodge

He also expressed concern about the lack of a front recovery point, which is something that the Goat has been scratching his head about: there must be some way to attach a secure front recovery hook to a Terios that doesn't rely on it being screwed into the tinfoil framework under the front bumper.

The drive to Pink Rock was fun. Easy in some parts and a little challenging in others, there were a couple of refusals and the Patrol got crested on a ridge. Attempts to tow it off with a Terios were unsuccessful (possibly to the relief of the Patrol owner), and it took several tries with the Durango to achieve a result.

Approaching Pink Rock from the west involves a long drive up a steep sandy ramp. Everyone eventually made it to the top. Unfortunately for the Goat's credibility, the Terios simply ran out of welly about 30 metres from the top every time. Maybe turning the aircon off and lowering the tyre pressures to 12psi might have helped, but the Goat simply cheated and went around the rock and appeared from the east side. Fundamentally, 105bhp simply isn't enough to get up the steep slope with over 1200kg and no low-range gearbox. Such are the limits of softroaders, but it's good to discover those limits without breaking something.

There were a couple of additional crestings, including Rio the 'Baby Goat' on the way from Pink Rock to Camel Rock, before the party emerged unscathed at Maliha. The lightness of the Daihatsu which was such a disadvantage when attempting to recover a stuck Nissan Patrol, became an advantage with the roles reversed: she's very easy to pull off the ridge of a dune. There's an after-market towbar fitted with a receiver hitch, so a rear recovery point is in no way a problem.

The Goat has been a tad concerned about the engine temperature of his miniature 4x4. The Terios comes from the factory with a blue/green idiot light on the dashboard to say that the engine is stone cold and should not be thrashed. A red light supposedly comes on when (hopefully before) the engine has cooked itself to death. So the Goat bought an Engine Watchdog mail order from Australia. He'd not had time to fit it before the Shakedown and overheating was not apparently a problem, although Rio did smell a bit hot after repeated runs at Pink Rock.

Camera phone: dodgy focus

The device is now fitted and working. Piece of mind in a box. It sounds a warning buzzer if the engine temperature exceeds a pre-set value, so there's no need to keep gawping at the red LED display of degrees Celsius.

A remaining task is to figure out a front recovery point that won't bend out of shape and that won't upset the inspector at registration time. Another less urgent task is to think up and install some suitable accessories to go in those two switch blanks on the dashboard.

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