Cupid stunt

Photo: 7DAYS

Pictured is "one of 'tens' of 'worrying' images received by Dubai Police on a daily basis".

According to today's 7DAYS front page, it's irresponsible recklessness that is the traffic offence du jour, and we are all to be appropriately outraged. Of course; the biker in the pic isn't wearing boots, gloves, a jacket, and presumably no armour in his trousers. If he falls off, he may live to regret it. Notwithstanding his behaviour, I think the guy in the pic is a bit of a dickhead.

But biking attire isn't the point. Reckless driving by motorcyclists in general is. Apparently, the police have been confiscating bikes at a rate of about eight a week in Dubai so far this year, and Daddy simply pays the fine so that Offspring can continue on his headlong trip off the bike on to the ground or maybe six feet under it.

These guys are giving all bikers a bad name, and from a personal point of view, I don't need to get tarred with the same brush, just because I happen to ride a motorcycle.

But how about getting the level of two-wheeled lawlessness into perspective?

'Tens of worrying images'. Not dozens, scores, or hundreds. Assuming for a moment that Dubai police would have said 'hundreds' if they'd received more than 101 pictures, then 'tens' means no more than 99. Last May, 7DAYS reported how two million traffic offences had been recorded in Dubai in the first four months of 2013. That's around 16,500 offences per day.

'Worrying' images constitute less than 0.6% of the total reported traffic offences. I think it's the remaining 99.4% that should be worried about.

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Video kills the way of the car

The rise of the portable and affordable high-definition video camera has produced video blogs, uncountable numbers on YouTube of videos featuring Russians running out of talent, and copious potential material for the purveyors of law and order. It’s this last point that I want to address here.

Dubai Police actually promotes a campaign that is imaginatively called “We Are All Police,” with a couple of contact telephone numbers: 800 4353 and 800 7000 since you ask. You’re welcome. The basic idea is that you pick up your phone and report an alleged offence, and the police will follow it up. Getting twenty calls all with variations on a theme of “Black Land Cruiser with this registration number driving at speed up the breakdown lane” might produce some police action. However, using a hand-held mobile phone while driving is illegal, so a lot of these witnessed offences presumably go unreported.

Anyway, my business proposal is to combine We Are All Police with a GoPro (or similar) camera. I’m sure many drivers spend their days wondering why there’s never a police officer around when someone displays a monumental lack of regard for safety or the law, and my proposal is to do something about it. Publishing a video on YouTube of someone publicly assaulting a van driver is illegal, and the material should, we are told, be handed to the police. So here’s the plan.

In essence, I ride my motorbike around Dubai with a GoPro camera stuck to my helmet, and I record the registration number of each vehicle along with the offence being committed, all in the same take. Dubai police get a copy of the video, and I receive 50% of the fine as payment. I estimate that I could clear several hundred dirhams a day just going about my daily business and only noting mobile phone use. Dubai police receive the other 50% with little effort beyond entering the data on the RTA’s database. Imagine how much cash I could make if it were my day job…:-

Selected traffic offences: 

Reckless driving                   (AED 2000 and 24 black points),

Mobile phone use                   (AED 200 and 4 black points),
Not wearing a seat belt            (AED 400 and 4 black points),
Inappropriate use of hardstrip     (AED 600 and 6 black points),

Tailgating                         (AED 400 and 4 black points),

Running a red light                (AED 800 and 12 black points),
Stopping on a pedestrian  crossing (AED 500).(I could make a packet every Friday just by taking a GoPro down to outside the mosque on my local street corner!)

The benefits are obvious, from an income stream for Muggins for doing little more than riding his motorbike, but go on to improved driver behaviour and consequent reduction in collisions once the idea that any motorcyclist out there might be a police deputy, in much the same way that wearing a POLITE fluorescent tabard might. Then drivers might actually notice motorcycles, which would be of further benefit in the area of motorcycle safety. Oh, and I’d get to feel as if I was getting back at some of the knuckle-dragging morons who have inexplicably been allowed control of a motor vehicle.

What of gainsayers who say that “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”? How about I only report offences that I never commit? And yes, I would undertake police training if I were required to demonstrate some level of competence on two wheels.

And what of resentful motorists who take it into their pretty little heads to run bikers off the road, much as what happens already? Would you risk it if there were a reasonable probability of the incident being caught on video and used in your prosecution? No, I didn’t think so.

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Ripe for the picking

They're cute, playful, affectionate, well-behaved, 100% indoor cats. But they've got to go. We cannot keep all five cats!

They turned nine weeks old last weekend; old enough for their jabs. So off to the vet they went. Having declared that they're healthy, the vet inoculated the cats against whatever it is that cats can get. Then it was home again, home again, joggity-jog. We've paid for their second jabs, which are due in three weeks' time.

The mother, Luna, we left at the vet so that she could be spayed and microchipped. No more kittens for her. I'm collecting her this afternoon, and anticipate being the recipient of baleful stares until she remembers who can walk on his hind legs, has opposable thumbs, and can open the cat food.

Anyway, the kittens are now considered to have ripened sufficiently to be picked. Two boys and two girls. How many would you like?

UPDATE 25 MAY: Two kittens have found their forever homes. Only the black-and-white pair remain. One boy and one girl.

As if there aren't enough pictures of cats on the internet already, here's an album devoted solely to this particular family.

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Daily dairy diary

Screenshot nicked from O₂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The shock of the new

The Goat engages in vehicle repair

She dances on the sand, it’s true. But when loaded with passengers and/or recovery and/or camping equipment, the rear of Rio my little Terios is a little overwhelmed. In 32,000km of mixed use, I appear to have completely shagged the rear suspension and am thus in the market for some replacement parts. The ride is fairly harsh at the best of times, and as the rear doesn’t sag even when loaded, it’s my belief that the springs are OK. I removed a shock absorber to take its measurements, and quickly discovered an almost total absence of meaningful damping. That would explain the car’s unorthodox behaviour in bumpy corners, and go partway to solving why the rear bottoms out over speed bumps.

Occam’s Razor dictates that I should try to solve the easiest part of the problem first. As this involves one nut and one bolt per side, new shock absorbers would seem to be in order.

So off to the internet. I eventually cajoled the Google elves into telling me which after-market shock absorbers would fit, and where they could be purchased. Because almost nobody seems to list shocks specifically for a Terios, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time comparing brands with each other and selecting shocks that are the correct length and have the right end fittings.

Length: 495mm to 315mm;
External diameter at the top: 50mm;
Mounting: 12mm diameter ferrule in the eye at each end.

Old Man Emu? 

Well, the man in the shop produced one for a Suzuki Jimny. Probably too feeble for the heavier Terios, but it was leaking anyway and he didn’t have any others.

Pro-Comp? 

According to a couple of on-line forums, there are Pro-Comp dampers that will fit, but the people posting didn’t see fit to say which part number. Of the three Dubai retailers listed as Pro-Comp resellers, one had a few for Jeep Wranglers, the second now only does Teraflex, and the third only does Skyjacker. Only for Wranglers, obviously.

Monroe? 

Nobody in Dubai, despite what their company websites continue to allege. I’m told that Monroe and Old Man Emu come off the same production line, so it’s a bit odd that OME doesn’t list Terios, but Monroe does.

Iron Man? 

Nope.

KYB? 

And on the third day I even went to Daihatsu. The original dampers have a Daihatsu part number, but are made by KYB. Naturally, I’ve found nobody in Dubai with any in stock, and I’ve tried plenty of outlets. In any case, I want to upgrade my suspension with something that won’t fail (again) in a year owing to off-road abuse.

“The length is good, but I really want a stiffer one.”

Anyway, Daihatsu has only got one as at yesterday, and that was promised to someone else. The parts guy told me that the OEM dampers weren’t really designed for off-road use, and I should look to the outside market. No shit, Sherlock!

A brief foray into Abdullah’s Shock Absorber Trading LLC was a futile exercise in the Department of Not Coming in Dubai.

I could get some Fox racing shocks, but they’re a bit spendy. The local dealer said I should remove the existing shock, spring, and bump-stop, and measure the actual limits of suspension travel. That way there might be more alternatives in the Fox Universal catalogue. I ask myself why he couldn’t do this with his car lift and air-conditioned workshop if I was expected to drop around $450 in his lap. Apparently I should crawl around in the street with a scissor jack and some piles of bricks.

My final port of call produced a suggestion that perhaps some custom-built Öhlins, maybe coilovers to help the existing springs, were the solution. Trouble is, these are extreeeemely spendy. Numbers like £2000 appear on the Öhlins website, although that is for all four corners.

The project is ongoing, but today I’m taking a break after three days of being told that we haven’t got any. I did find a lift kit, comprising a full set of shocks, springs, and adjustable panhard rod and links. It’s made in Taiwan, as is thus likely to be of top kwolli’y, and is sold by retailers in Singapore and Cyprus. I have asked the price delivered to Dubai, and await responses. This, incidentally, isn’t my favourite option, but I appear to be running out of alternatives.

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Rorty Zorst

During this year’s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, where I was marshalling all week, I got to thinking about motor vehicle noise. It’s obvious that racing cars and bikes produce a lot more noise than normal road vehicles.

Bikes on the Desert Challenge may not exceed 115dB(A) at 2 metres when inspected at the scrutineering just prior to the event. That’s very loud indeed, and it was just as well the test that was being carried out on each competitor just a few metres from where I was working only took a couple of seconds. It’s a lot louder than normal road vehicles, for which I suspect most of us are grateful.

Quoting numbers of decibels is actually pretty meaningless without specifying the distance from the source. The further away you are, the quieter the sound. By way of example, in the United States, the Federal limit from the EPA for motorcycle noise is 80dB(A) at 50 feet. Some high-school physics tells us that this is the same as 109dB(A) at 20 inches, or 98dB(A) at 2 metres. So when New Hampshire specifies a limit of 106dB(A) at 20 inches, this is actually fairly close to the EPA limit. The whole issue of distance is deliberately obfuscated by manufacturers of after-market horns: “138dB(A),” the blurb says, “at 100mm.” That’s 112dB(A) at 2 metres. It’s still a lot louder than the comedy horns fitted by most vehicle manufacturers, but less than the noise made by Marc Coma and his buddies on the ADDC.

Here’s the thing. There are plenty of people who believe that motorcycles alone are responsible for antisocial vehicle noise. If you live in JBR in Dubai, or the Pearl in Doha and you’re not deaf as a post, you’ll have been disturbed by the late-night antics of the Inadequate Silencer Owners Club. And some of these are indeed motorcycles. I wonder how many are performance cars? One solution, the one adopted by Sharjah Police in January this year, is to ban motorcycles from Sharjah’s main roads after 10pm. This, instead of ticketing the driver of every antisocially-loud vehicle.

Typical government reaction is to legislate for ever more stringent noise limits. Manufacturers comply with larger, heavier, more complicated, and more expensive exhaust systems. This in turn encourages an increased proportion of motorcyclists to switch to after-market systems. Reasons include saving weight and cost; another is to make the machine sound like a motorcycle and not a sewing machine. I contend that if the legal limits were set at a more easily achievable level, fewer bikers would replace their stock systems.

My own machine has a manufacturer’s plate stating “95dB(A) at 4400rpm.” It doesn’t specify a distance. When I bought an after-market silencer (yes, I too dislike the gigantic 28lb bazooka dangling off my bike), one feature that I liked was that the manufacturer was extremely candid about how noisy it was. 93dB(A) at 20 inches – the EPA test. This is an identical result to the OEM system, and less than what's on the manufacturer's plate and what's engraved on the original silencer. The “race” performance full system from the same exhaust system company produces 99dB(A) at 20 inches, which is significantly louder but still below the EPA limit.

For cars, the limit set by the European Union from 2012 is 71dB(A). I’ve been unable to find the distance, nor the speed, nor even the pavement surface. All these factors are significant. You experience around 80dB(A) from traffic when you stand on the kerb 5m from a busy road. I wonder, given this 71dB(A) limit, why a Mustang, or a Lamborghini, or a Ferrari all seem to be allowed, in standard manufacturer’s trim, to be significantly louder than pretty much any stock motorcycle? I guess most cars are very quiet compared with motorbikes, and most bikes are pretty quiet. Bikes are invisible anyway, so it’s generally assumed that all bikes: the ones that Mr Joseph Public notices, are loud.

EDITED 21 April. I've discovered a source for how motorcycle noise is measured in Europe. It's EEC Directive 78/1015/EEC. The test, essentially, is to accelerate the bike over a 20m distance in second or third gear between two microphones 15m apart. I found a research paper that compared the results of the European Union test with a static test. It's here. In short, the static test produced sound pressure levels that were up to 13dB(A) higher than the EU drive-by test, with almost all results falling within two standard deviations of the drive-by mean. A factory standard Honda Fireblade produced 83dB(A) in the drive-by test and 95dB(A) in the static. That's equivalent to 83dB(A) at 2m.

I’ve tabulated some sound pressure levels below, all sucked out of the intertubes and corrected to measurement at 2m, unless noted otherwise:-

Noise source              SPL at 2 metres

EU limit for cars         71dB(A) distance N/A

My bike at 5000rpm        81dB(A)

Inside A340 cattle class  85dB(A) distance N/A

Race exhaust for GTR      87dB(A)
Kerbside of busy road     88dB(A)

Inside London Tube train  94dB(A) distance N/A

EPA limit                 98dB(A)

Performance horn         112dB(A)

Diesel truck             114dB(A)

ADDC Moto                115dB(A)

The situation with dodgy after-market exhausts has improved over recent years. Manufacturers of many systems now dyno-develop them and get them certified as road legal. Beowulf in UK and Staintune in Australia, for example. The days of every chancer with a pipe bender and a supply of two-inch stainless steel tube are almost over.

Oh, and lest we forget, these are maximum noise levels. If you don’t ride around at maximum, wide-open throttle, your machine will be a lot quieter. Everyone, surely, owes it to common decency to keep the noise down when leaving at the crack of sparrowfart or getting home after a session of midnight oiling.

And then there are Harley-Davidsons. Mysteriously,these machines are “expected to be loud” and, with the exception of residents of JBR who have to be up for work at 6am, are tolerated by everyone including the vehicle inspectors at registration time, whereas riceburners have to sound like wristwatches…

Found on a HD forum:
Stock muffler 98dB(A)  (the EPA limit, measured at 2 metres)                          

Aftermarket 107dB(A)  Jeez…

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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.

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