Lear, and present danger

The Muse strikes again. But which one? Not epic enough for Calliope, I’m aiming more at a combination of Euterpe, Thalia and Melpomene. And the picture from the BBC’s website on 17 June 10 was at least part of my inspiration.


The Client and the Architect went to work
On a glittering tower of glass.
With ink still damp from the company stamp,
The groundbreaking came to pass.
With blueprints approved, the Client then moved
The tower ten feet to the right.
“It’s better by far when arriving by car.
Particularly at night,
At night,
At night.
Particularly at night.”

They worked away for a year and a day
And the bills came rolling in.
“Some payment is needed,” the Architect pleaded.
Said the Client: “But my wallet is thin:
I spent all my cash on a speedboat that’s flash
And a diamond-encrusted new phone,
A villa that’s vast, and a racehorse that’s fast.
Why don’t you take out a loan,
A loan,
A loan?
Why don’t you take out a loan?”

The bills were unpaid, and the Architect made
The decision to go to a banker.
He borrowed, of course, for to pay his workforce,
’cos he’d got nothing out of his Client.
When the scheme was complete, he got to his feet
And he boarded a London-bound plane.
The Architect figured that he would be jiggered
If he ever worked here again,
Again,
Again,
If he ever worked here again.

]}:-{>

Gasping

I should like to thank this week’s Xpress newspaper for the instruction manual on substance abuse. In addition to a full front page headline, there are four complete pages inside that include detailed information of the types of chemicals suitable for inhaling along with valuable instructions and diagrams showing some good ways to get stoned. *ahem!*

The issue of teenagers snorting butane, paint thinners, petrol, Tipp-Ex and EvoStik suddenly popped on to the local headlines following the recent tragic death of Anton Tahmasian. Since then, barely a day goes by without a related story appearing somewhere. The Xpress article suggests that solvent abuse is so widespread that business savvy teens are charging admission to parties in posh Jumeirah villas where less savvy teenagers abuse themselves into stupor on a lethal mix of vodka and butane. And here was I, believing that drink-driving was the traditional way of lethally combining hydrocarbons with alcohol.

In other news, another recent storyline involving teenagers and flammable substances concerned an explosion in a Mirdif villa that seriously burned four teenagers. Civil Defence (the Fire Brigade) is on record that investigations into the Mirdif blast are ongoing. The official line is that someone lit the oven, igniting a gas leak.

Interestingly, Xpress does not seem to believe this version of events. Last week’s issue included photographs that show no damage to the kitchen, cooking gas bottles outside remain untouched and almost full, yet the cellar looks like a bomb’s hit it. Big surprise, that. Methane leaking into the cellar from a broken septic tank in sufficient quantities to explode, yet no-one noticed the repugnant miasma of sewer gas? Another big surprise. Perhaps these noxious and highly flammable fumes were ignited by sparks from unicorns’ hooves. This appears about as likely as the rest of the hypothesis.

It was only a matter of time before someone connected the two stories. From Xpress:

“I strongly believe that butane is the common thread that sews together the death of Anton, the four Mirdif teenage girls (whose faces were disfigured in a mysterious gas explosion inside a villa basement) and the poolside party gone wrong at our villa,” said the [anonymous] parent, who called on authorities “to do something before it’s too late”.

A police source added weight to the parent’s statement stating there were indications that butane may have been one of the reasons behind the Mirdif blast.

The implication is clear. Mentioning the gas explosion in an article about substance abuse must surely be paving the way for some sensationalist “Shock! Horror! Snorting butane whilst smoking cigarette causes explosion” headline.

Incidentally, what does the parent expect the authorities to do “...before it’s too late”? Incidences of death and near-death indicate to me that “too late” is already upon us. Controlling one’s own offspring is apparently not an option. Neither, apparently, is Taking Responsibility For One’s Own Actions. It suddenly all becomes the government’s responsibility to deal with the problem. But how? Inhaling camping gas is clearly idiotically foolish, but is it actually illegal?

I anticipate the usual knee-jerk reaction: a ban. Extending this “Ban It” philosophy to its logical consequence, I shall particularly resent no longer being able to cook with gas while I’m camping, simply because some yoof believes that butane is for inhaling. No more cooking at home either, once all the guys in little red pickups are deported for purveying their Death in a Bottle.

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Best discount price, Habibi

Joy and delight! That speeding fine I incurred in Al Ain last October has suddenly dropped from Dh600 to Dh300. It’s part of Abu Dhabi government’s solution to the problem of vast numbers of unpaid traffic fines. That it’s difficult to pay a bill of Dh100,000 or more is no surprise to anyone. Apparently, so many drivers have such enormous sums owing that they can’t afford to pay. As a result, their vehicles can’t be re-registered and are therefore also uninsured. Getting these habitual offenders off the road doesn’t appear to be an option. A side effect is that one of Abu Dhabi’s revenue streams has become clogged to a mere trickle.

Time for some Drano. There’s a change of policy. Instead of the traditional no-nonsense, get-tough approach: increasing penalties for traffic violations in a futile attempt to improve driving standards, the authorities now reduce them in order to encourage payment. The punitive effect of fines is apparently less important than getting hold of the cash. It works too. Traffic police stations are now open until midnight instead of 7pm to cope with the vast numbers of motorists queuing up to avail themselves of the government’s sudden largesse.

What the government has discovered is that traffic fines are no deterrent, increasing them is no deterrent, and successfully getting recidivist motorists off the road is impossible. Fundamentally, anyone who thinks he won’t get caught, or believes he’ll have the fines quashed or reduced, or is rich enough not to give a monkey’s, is unlikely to be deterred from offending. A solution may involve the vehicle being impounded at the perpetrator’s personal inconvenience, and no you can’t have it back sooner if you pay extra money. Black Points on a licence won’t prevent anyone who’s simply going to drive while disqualified, and anyway, the camera that inspects a driver’s licence (or sobriety, come to that) has yet to be invented.

Of course, relying on ineffective but lucrative cameracentric traffic enforcement is a sovereign nation’s privilege. If, as we are repeatedly informed, bad driving causes fatalities, and if the UAE continues to accept a road death rate akin to that of east Africa; some six times Europe’s, then it’s down to each individual to drive extremely defensively. There are a lot of imbeciles out there, and some of them even have driving licences.

I’m reminded of the conflict of interest that some local authorities in the UK have experienced. Illegal parking generates fines that are dished out by enforcement officers, who are paid through income from those same fines. Effective enforcement means no illegal parking and hence no budget to pay for that enforcement. Enforcement degenerates into subterfuge. Cases occasionally pop up in the You Couldn’t Make It Up pages. Traffic wardens hiding in the bushes and pouncing on someone who stops to post a letter; the bus that gets a parking ticket when it stops at a bus stop. Authorities end up setting levels of fines high enough to discourage but not eliminate parking violations, but not so high that parking tickets get challenged rather than obediently paid. Abu Dhabi appears to be going through the process of deciding this level.

What I find particularly galling is that renting the Yaris means paying any traffic fines monthly. So last month’s inadvertent foray into illegality cost me Dh600, plus Hertz’s administration fee. If it had been the Goatmobile, I’d only have had to pay Dh300. I wonder if the discount is retroactive? Somehow I doubt it.

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Mea culpa

I learned to snorkel in the summer of 1973. Living in Poole at the time, the family went out for a day at the beach. This was actually a rare event, but off we schlepped with beach towels, Speedos, picnic, a very small inflatable dinghy and our flippers and goggles. It was a long walk from the car park to the beach. Getting to Durdle Door on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast (N 50°37.24' W002°16.35') - just along from Lulworth Cove - involved scaling a winding track down a cliff face to a little bay protected from the sea by a natural rock breakwater.

I’d previously played about in swimming pools with goggles and flippers, but on this occasion my father decreed that once I’d inflated the squidgy with a feeble foot-pump, I should learn to snorkel. And this I did, first in the shallows right next to the beach, and later out near the rock breakwater. It didn’t take long to get the hang of basic duck-diving, and even rolling off the dinghy into the oggin.

Back in 1973, apart from one area where the water was clear to a sandy sea bed, the bay was full of kelp. Swimming through thick seaweed fronds freaked me out then, and it still does. Grasping tendrils reaching up from the abyss? No thanks. I blame too much Marine Boy. You probably have to be in your forties even to remember Marine Boy... Intellectually I know that kelp is harmless, and some of my diving buddies assure me that there is a special thrill in diving through a kelp forest. Sorry, but phobias are by definition irrational. Maybe I should conquer my fear by donning a drysuit and doing some scuba off California.

But what of this culpa that is mea?

Well, while blobbing about in the inflatable, I discovered that if I blew a raspberry down the wrong end of a snorkel, I could impersonate a fog horn and thereby irritate everyone on the beach. Which is just grand when you’re ten.

Sorry folks: Although one Freddie “Saddam” Maake claims to have done so in 1965, the Goat may have invented the plastic vuvuzela.

]}:-{>

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.

]}:-{>

Tears of a clone

It’s that time of year again. The Day of Reckoning, when the entire year’s motoring violations are laid bare and payment of all fines in full is an integral part of the car registration process.

Imagine the scene. The Goatmobile undergoes its usual thorough 30-second inspection, the Goat produces evidence of having 13 months of insurance, payment is made, and then there is a problem. UAE residents are doubtless fully aware of the so-called ‘fairy fines’ or ‘phantom fines’ incurred owing to administrative error.

Goat: “So, about this fine, officer: the one where I know my vehicle was most definitely elsewhere?”

Tasjeel: “One moment, Mr Goat…” (click, clickety-click, beep) “Here is the photograph of your vehicle caught bang to rights. Give us your money.”

Goat: “Just one problem. That is most definitely not the Goatmobile. It’s the wrong colour, the wrong make and the wrong model.”

Tasjeel: “But it surely is your registration number, therefore you are as guilty as a puppy next to a pile of poo.”

Goat: “Allow me to explain. My vehicle licence matches the Goatmobile in every respect. That car in the picture must be using fake plates.”

Tasjeel: “Agreed, but as we don’t know who it is because all searches on that number plate point at you, Mr Goat, you must therefore be completely guilty.”

Such a shame that traffic enforcement by camera is incapable of checking the vehicle licence against the VIN, make and model, and then asking the driver awkward questions regarding the obvious discrepancy between the plate and the VIN.

Clearly this phantom menace needs to be apprehended. Then, if the Goat has anything to do with it, there will be an attack of the clones; possibly a clone war.

]}:-{>

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.

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